Apple MacBook Pro MC371LL/A

The new MacBook Pro sets all new benchmarks for Mac notebooks. This 15 inch MacBook Pro features an Intel Core i5 processor and next generation NVIDIA graphics that bring high performance to everything from 3D games to photos and videos. Also, the MacBook Pro comes standard with auto graphics switching that gives performance when you need it and energy efficiency when you don’t helping the fitted battery last up to 8 9 hours. The 15 inch unibody MacBook Pro (see bigger image).

107 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Love the matte screen choice. Great computer. Time will tell if its worth the $$, May 11, 2010
By BBbeans (Missoula, MT) See all my reviews This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC371LL/A 15.4 Inch Laptop (Personal Computers) After having a three year old Dell die on me (to be just it was put through many trips to and from school in my bag, on occasion while it was still on) and a Toshiba Satellite fail after a year, I has been tired of paying bargain prices and receiving a frustrating experience to go with it.

My girlfriend had talked about purchasing a Mac and I generally balked at them as being too costly. Well, most of the major problems with my old laptops were compatibility issues between hardware and software, frequently involving frustrating searches for new drivers. Knowing that Apple makes the hardware and develops the software for their computers made me think they could be able to integrate the two part better than PC’s I used. I still have nightmares about all the drivers I had to hunt down when I downgraded my Toshiba from Windows Vista to XP.

I had really bought a 13″ Macbook Pro with a glossy screen from some days before Apple did their big upgrade in April 2010. It was a beautiful looking machine and was easy to use after I became accustomed to the differences from a PC, ie; What is the “Finder”? But, the 13″ screen was a little small for me. I do many photography work, and I watch movies on it also so I decided the 15″ Macbook Pro could be the way to go. Once they did their upgrade for all their machines I decided to purchase directly from Apple.

I debated long and hard on the glossy and matte choice. Going with the high res screen (1680 X 1050 as opposed to standard 1440 X 900) was a no brainer. After doing many online research I also chose the matte choice (as opposed to the default glossy screen). I had never really seen a matte screen as the local Best Buy did not have one in stock. I was a little nervous on my choice, but I called Apple tech support and easily arranged for a return on my not yet arrived 15″ Macbook Pro am I supposed to want one with a glossy screen instead. The person I spoke with arranged for return shipping labels paid for by Apple! I did not upgrade the harddrive or RAM because I can do those myself, or have them done afterward, for many cheaper than Apple’s pricing.

The new 15″ with the matte screen came and I opened up many high res You tube videos and compared it side by side to the glossy. This was the center of the day and the single window in our living room created all kinds of reflections on the glossy screen while the matte has been unphased. Sure the blacks on the glossy were a deeper and the colors may have “popped” a bit more, but knowing I could be using my laptop in a room lit by daylight or with a bright light, the henious reflections on the glossy screen certainly made it a no go for me. This was a window that was in front of the computer and was not directly shining on the screen. I was really happy I decided to go matte.

That being said, I loaded up Photoshop CS5 and it runs great. Way faster than my old laptop. I appreciate many of the little touches that Apple puts into their merchandise that are becoming more and more noticable every day I use it. (Such as their search feature is generally available with one click from the desktop) I plan to purchase an Applecare plan towards the end of my one year warranty period to be sure this lasts me at least three years. Hopefully I may be able to keep this for four or five years.

Overall, if you have the $$ I greatly recommend this product.

Pros
Unibody design is super sturdy and thin.
Love the matte screen
The high resolution upgrade helps with multi tasking, programming, photo editing, web browing, ect..
Super fast w/Photoshop
Good side to side looking at angle, (better than the screen on the Windows based laptops I used)
Keyboard is nice to use
Speakers are adequate
Touchpad is awesome! big and easy to use with 2, 3, and four finger controls not found anywhere else
But on a Mac. I rarely use a mouse anymore, which works well for using it on my lap.
Fast boot up time. Opening and closing the cover for “sleep mode” waiting time is just zero.
Good battery life

Cons
Costly (duh)
Can get hot on the underneath towards the back where the processor is.
Up and down looking at angle not so good (this is common w/laptops though)
Many software not available for Mac
USB 2.0 (instead of newer 3.0)
Glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen is some marketing I could do without.
Sharp Edges on front (can seemingly be filed down but I’m cautious about doing this)
No Blu Ray drive


Update:

Maybe it’s just me, but my Apple looks to have more issues with Flash and streaming internet content than I have ever had with a PC. I know Apple is at war with Adobe and went to great lengths to disparage the Flash format. They don’t seem to worked too hard to ensure that Flash content works flawlessly with their machines. Streaming videos will stop or fail to load alltogether. This does not happen frequently, but with a PC I never had any issues like this at all.

Update x2 (8/30/10)

So my power supply had been giving me intermittent issues (every couple of days the power could come on and go off every couple of seconds for no reason). I called Apple support and they suggested just using the shortened variant (the power supply is customizable to be either longer with an extra cord, or not), , then to call them back if the problem continued. The man I talked to thought the cord that lengthens the setup may be the issue. Well I was not have any more problems for a while..

Then yesterday (the day before I started a new job teaching at a university) the power supply quits working totally. I call Apple and they say contact the authorized Apple service providers in my area (neither of which were open that day since it was Sunday). The next day, Monday, I called the two authorized service providers in my area, one of which says I have to leave my computer there overnight for testing to find out if I’m qualified for a new power supply, and the other which could not handle my problem when I was available to come.

Now I attempt to contact Apple support and all day I have been to get the most ridiculous message that says

“At this moment, the buyer support team isn’t available for your support caused by unavoidable reasons.. Sorry for the bother caused..”

I suppose it’s impossible for Apple to properly staff their service center, so not being available was of course, unavoidable. So I’m stuck with a bogus power cord for now.


Update x3 (9/2/10)

I decided to decide the choice where I call Apple about my problem, instead of them calling me. That worked much better. I received my substitute power cord in the mail today, a Thursday, after my power supply first quit working completely on Sunday. I have to send back the old one, which has really started to work intermittently now. If Apple deems that I replaced a non broken power supply they’re going to charge me $80. We will see.

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83 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Video Review: MacBook Pro i5/i7 Hopefully this video will assist, October 10, 2010
By D. Bowman “Tech Dork” (LA, CA) See all my reviews
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I hope this video helps you make up your mind.
You won’t regret purchasing this machine.

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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of five stars Just as robust as my 13″ with some caveats., June 28, 2010
By M.D.C. “The Franchise” (San Diego, CA) See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER) This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC371LL/A 15.4 Inch Laptop (Personal Computers) For summary skip to the bottom. Video to come soon.


I already wrote a review and posted a video on the 13″, so I will spare you the pre story. The 15″ MacBook Pro (Summer 2010 version) is a step up for me. I want to go on record by saying that I didn’t choose the high res screen, and I will tell you why in a moment. I am still an MCSA and an MCTS, and Microsoft is still main in my world, but I access these resources via Apple.

First, I want to clarify why I chose to purchase the 15″ when I had a 13″ that was enough. Because I run VMs many (I have reviews of Parallels and VMWare), the real estate of the screen was vital. The 13″ handled everything I threw at it like a champ, but I needed more screen area. I also needed a stronger multitask processor to keep up with the demands I put upon it. The 2010 variant of the MacBooks accomplish gains in three key areas: The processor, which on the 15″ and 17″ models is the Core i5 and i7 models; the video cards, which again, on the 15″ and 17″ models are improved with newer technology; and the power management.

The last processor was the Core two Duo an older technology but not a slouch by any means. It was and is a powerful processor, all things considered, and the 13″ was able to deal with everything I threw at it, as well as many VMs simultaneously and video encoding processes. Where the Core two Duo struggles is with multi tasking speed; while it can handle many processes, it allocates resources towards the most intensive of what is running at the detriment of everything else. In other words, if you encode a video at a medium resolution, you could find that the machine was almost unusable otherwise; not frozen or dirt slow, but slow enough to be annoying. The fan could come on and the heat could multiply, and you frequently could fear for the poor MacBook’s life. Not so with the i5. It also does get hot hotter, in fact, than the Core two Duo but though it is dealing with intensive processes, it never breaks stride with other applications that may be running. You could encode video, then jump over to your email and work as if nothing goed on. The laptop’s fan could be going almost full blast and the heat could be expunged at an exponential rate, but the laptop could not slow down. I think about that remarkable, particularly given the fact that battery life didn’t suffer from older years. The i7 is more powerful than the i5; but the main reason I couldn’t think about that variant has to do with the heat. It is so extreme it is got people online worried about cooking eggs. I know they are not exaggerating; the i5 can get quite hot, if the i7 is as strong as I know it’s, I can only imagine how hot it must get.

The video cards have been improved in the new MacBooks. They’re newer variants of the NVidia cards that were released, and many of the MacBooks have the higher class Intel integrated chips. If you do not understand many of the video card technology, there are dedicated video cards , then there are integrated cards. The dedicated cards mean simply that they have their own memory and do not share the RAM of the computer. Integrated, as obvious by the name, uses shared RAM to function, either in whole or in part. The integrated chips are reduced cost, clearly, at the trade of a performance hit the RAM it is sharing is inaccessible to the OS and applications, and because the RAM is generally a chunk of other RAM, there’s an efficient tug of war going on when using the integrated card. It is really liked in lower end laptops due to price point if you paid less than $700 for your laptop chances are it is got an integrated card. All of the lower priced 13″ Apples (MacBook, $1199 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) integrated chips. The Air may have gotten bumped to NVidia, not sure. In any way, Apple mixed many models with integrated and dedicated chips, so that less acute processes use the integrated and higher processes switch automatically to dedicated, which is more powerful. Most informal users will think this a pointless feature; but it is good to have for battery life.

Speaking of which, the new MacBooks feature a newer variant of the MagSafe power adapter. Caused by fraying and melting issues with the last models, Apple has seen fit to redesign this adapter to deal with the issue. It now holds many more solidly than before, and is partially cylindrical instead of rectangular (you can see pictures above, of course). The cylinder part is where the fraying most usually occurred, so it seems right why they did this change. The real cable itself also feels more solid; kudos to Apple for improving this. It is also retroactively matched, if you purchase a new adapter you will most likely get the newer variant, and it should work good for your model (assuming it is a MagSafe variant and not the plug in style from old times). The new 13″ MacBook Pro claims a battery life of up to ten hours due in part to the newer video card; the 15″ that I am reviewing here has already shown improved battery life over the older 13″, at maximum screen light. The common actions will of course kill the battery: VMs, video encoding, audio recording, anything where there’s a constant stream of data going one way or the other, just.

One area of disappointment coming from the 13″: The speakers. Because the 15″ sports real speaker grills instead of the implanted speaker of the 13″, I somewhat projected at least somewhat better audio quality. To my surprise and dismay, I didn’t get it. I do many of audio records of songs and I use Sennheiser HD 280 Professional Headphones.But the problem is, a song can sound perfect in the headphones, but then I listen to it on the MacBook’s speakers and the same song sounds totally awful. I know it can not be the song that is bad, because the headphones are spot on with the way it should sound; but the MacBook’s speakers just separate sound streams too much. It is hard to describe, but it is like the treble is cranked and I can not change with an equalizer or something. Movies are good, but again, no appreciable improvement over the 13″, where I could watch DVDs usually with great effect.



So.Do I recommend it? Well.It depends. I do not recommend it if you are just a informal user, if you like the bigger screen. Go for the 13″ and if you totally have to have screens of a bigger size get an external. I just can not justify the $300 premium for a bigger MacBook unless you’re really going to use it for gaming, audio/video, or VMs. Then it seems right. As far as the high resolution 1680 screen, suggested only if you are gaming, really. I could like to emphasize don’t get the antiglare from Apple. It is nice looking, it really is. It’ll shock you; it’ll tempt you; it’ll compel you to fork over the extra $50. Do not do it; the quality of that screen isn’t as good as the glossy, because the antiglare isn’t the full glass. Get one of the Green Onions Supply Anti Glare AG2 Screen Protector for 15 Inch Aluminum Unibody Apple MacBook Pro and do it yourself. You will thank me afterward.

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