The Machine itself is sleek and pretty, the display looks nice and it has a comfortable fit to it. The processor etc seems to do what needs to be done and does it well. It is however twice the price of a compatible PC.

That in itself wouldn’t be much of a problem. Until there was a problem.

My son wanted a Mac, as his first machine, since he was paying for it we checked out Macs and bought this model, he was very pleased with it until he opened up the casing yesterday and the display looked like the a squashed spider from a Garfield cartoon.

I drove the hour to the apple store and am currently sitting in it. I talked to a manager named Lloyd and a “genius” named Henry and they informed me that the damage was our responsibility and that repairs would cost $1100. That is 70% of the cost of the machine and that price alone is more expensive than a compatible Windows 7 machine.

I have been involved in customer service for a lot of years and I’ve never seen anything so short sighted in my life, my son will be purchasing a lot of machines over the next 40 years, I’ll be purchasing several myself and have another son who will be going to college in a couple of years. As a technical support person I am called to recommend machines and companies. The willingness to discard customers once the money is in hand is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m afraid that slick media and good actors selling a product is no replacement for actual customer service.

You couldn’t get me to buy an apple now with a federal bailout. And you shouldn’t either!

Now for the Con’s, although they are minor.

1. The dual video cards seem a bit gimmicky. Okay, I’m glad for the dedicated card when running Adobe CS4 apps, but really, I could live with the performance of the onboard card. The dedicated video card also sucks battery and heats the laptop up considerably, almost alarmingly hot. Running the onboard video there is almost no discernible heat. The biggest annoyance is that you have to close everything and log out every time you want to switch cards. Because of the heat and battery issue, I’ve found myself just living with the onboard video. It’s not worth the hassle to log out and change it.

2. It’s a BIG HONKING laptop, almost as big as the 17″. If it was an inch narrower it would be the very definition of perfection. It barely fits in the laptop sleeve of my gigantic Patagonia Half Mass bag and it’s girth makes it a little cumbersome and unwieldy to pick up and move around or use on one’s lap. I would have happily gone for the 13″ model if I could have gotten the same performance specs.

I sell and repair computers for a living and this is hands-down the best laptop on the market for my specific needs. While I paid a premium I feel it was a good value. Average users would do well with the MacBook or 13″ MBP. Nothing in the PC laptop world even comes close. That being said, this review is specific to my needs for a laptop. A desktop is a completely different beast and my desktop workstation still runs Windows XP Pro.

Overall, I love this machine. I can have 4-5 applications open at a time with no slow-down and no crashing (this includes memory-hungry photo and music apps). Eureka! I can group photos together and pop them into an email without checking five-gazillion times whether or not they went through, nor having to wade through yet another reboot, praying Vista will *then* have enough RAM to do what I’m asking it to do (yeah, I had 1G RAM on the Vista laptop – pathetic). And BEST of all, as a busy Mom, I can shut the lid, putting the machine to sleep MULTIPLE times (I mean, around 20??) and not have it hang, crash or slow down. Fellow Mom’s of two-year-olds know: if you have 30 seconds to do something, that’s all you have. If your machine doesn’t do what you ask of it in that time, Grandma doesn’t get her photos, husband doesn’t get his Amazon order, bill doesn’t get paid, etc., etc., etc. This machine virtually NEVER lets me down. Hallelujah!

There are some minor annoyances:

–Firefox crashes a bit. The underlying Mac OS never does, but I do have to relaunch Firefox a surprising number of times. Not true of Safari, but there are a few antiquated bill-paying sites that do not play well w/ Safari, so I have to go to Firefox (Macy’s charge?? Hello!).

–I love the track pad and dislike it too. Scrolling and zooming are super cool, but I am constantly accidentally doing things I do not intend. Probably user error? But physical documentation is slim unless you want to wade through the Apple sight (I have no time for this). And I CANNOT consistently master the PC equivalent of right-clicking. Very frustrating.

–THough I feel stupid writing this, the Mac’s delete key only works when cursor is in front of what you want to delete: i.e., like a PC’s Backspace key. What is the Mac equivelent of a PC’s delete key? I.e., put the cursor in front of text, and “pull” text in front of cursor backwards into oblivion. This drives me nuts.

–Pages (Mac equiv. of Word) and Numbers (Mac equiv. of Excel) have really “pretty” document templates that are way sexier, but the apps themselves are clumsy, counter-intuitive and difficult to use (I couldn’t BELIEVE what I had to do to set the print area in Numbers, for example, nor how long it took me to find the solution in help). Pretty lame, esp. as I paid extra for these, and now plan to partition my drive with Bootcamp to run Windows on the side for Excel and Word. This is rectifiable with the work-around, however.

–Compatbility issues with silly/cheap USB devices you wouldn’t expect: my daughter’s Elmo phone, my digital photo frame, etc. Have to wait until I can use my husband’s PC. That said, stupid Vista wouldn’t recognize my 2003 digital Cannon Powershot 45 camera, and my Mac zipped my photos right into iPhoto without me doing anything except plugging it in! NICE. Also, Mac recognized my 2001 HP printer with no problems and automatically had/used a simple driver which prints just fine. SHOCKING to a Windows veteran.

–Changing default print preferences is so counter-intuitive I cannot believe it is an Apple process (PC equiv. is Start, Control Panel, Printers…).

Otherwise, no major problems. Some things are different/frustrating, but the pros FAR outweigh the cons. And I figure, when my daughter turns three, maybe I’ll finally be able to read the manual online! lol

I sold my Black MacBook for a nice price and decided to go with the 15″ model here on Amazon. I’ve had it for about three months now and I still marvel at the simple elegant design. It is a pleasure to use everyday. The start up time is quick, the display and keyboard still look brand new. I don’t have a desk top computer anymore so this MacBook Pro has to do it all, My one complaint would be the mini dvi port, It’s not the same as my 13.3″ one so I have to buy a new adapter. I’m holding off because I am seriously considering getting an Apple display to complement this laptop.