Black MacBook Review by anonymous

Hard to say whether you want reviews on OS X or the hardware itself. Hardware-wise, it's a nice machine. New owners will likely immediately notice the fact that the black finish will quickly appear as if you have owned the machine for several more months than you actually have. Put simply, it shows grease and finger prints more vividly than the white model. Personally, I prefer black, regardless. The keyboard is quite nice, although not nearly as nice as the offerings from Lenovo/IBM. Nonetheless, I can type fairly easily on it and have gotten used to it over the past 6 weeks or so. The screen is nice - I have had no issues with glare on the glossy screen.

A few 'buyer beware' items. First is the well-known processor whine. I have a Core 2 Duo model running at 2Ghz. In a quiet room, you can hear the whine from the other side of the room. It's only there when the AC adapter is plugged in, and goes away when you run Photo Booth. The whine comes from either the power circuits or the processor(s) themselves. I know other laptops have a similar whine, but I regard it as simply unacceptable.

Second is the heat/fan. It is generally NOT a hot laptop (perhaps unlike the earlier versions), but one thing that I absolutely cannot stand is how loud the fan gets when it spins up. If I am running, for example, one or two apps and then open, say, GoLive or Dreamweaver, the fans start to spin up as if to respond to higher CPU temperatures (I have 2GB of RAM). Or, if I open a Powerpoint file in PowerPoint 2004 for Mac, often the fans will spin up because the processors are being taxed. I know Office 2004 for Mac is not Intel-native, so here's hoping the next version of Office for Mac (if we ever see it), runs 'cooler'. I used to have a small menu application that showed me the operating temperatures, but I stopped using it because I became obsessed with it. Generally, though, under light duty the fan spins low and there is a faint 'buzz' that I've gotten used to. Why not take it back, you say? Because Apple will just say it is 'within spec'. Why wouldn't they? I know I would if I was them!

With respect to OS X, there's a lot to like about it, but some applications (or rather, the way they are implemented in OS X) may drive you crazy. For example, in Word 2004 for Mac, why on earth it is not possible to hold down one of ctrl/option/command and use the scroll wheel on a mouse to actually increase the zoom on a standard document is beyond me. I blame Microsoft, of course, and not Apple.

Overall, it's not a bad machine, but it's far from perfect (both hardware and software). I came (back) to Macs after being in Windows for nearly 10 years. Now, it's a little too soon to suggest that my productivity was definitely higher in the Windows environment. One thing that the Mac is desperately needing is a good desktop search application. Don't get me started on the piece of sh*t that is Spotlight - perhaps the most useless search program I have ever used. Note to Apple: try Copernic Desktop Search on a Windows machine for a few hours and you'll see how search is done right.

I would recommend, but somewhat cautiously. Give yourself the time to get used to it if you're switching from Windows, and don't switch during a particularly busy time of your life, that's for sure.

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