| Brand: | Apple | ||
| Average Rating |
|
MacBook Pro brings high performance and precision design to everyone. Every new MacBook Pro features a breakthrough, long-lasting battery that delivers up to 7 hours of wireless productivity on a single charge (8 hours on the 17-inch MacBook Pro) and can be recharged up to 1000 times—nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries. The new LED-backlit display has a 60 percent greater color gamut than that of previous generations, giving you richer, more vibrant colors. Every MacBook Pro features the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor, which provides an outstanding graphics experience for everyday tasks. Power your way through the latest 3D games—including Call of Duty and Quake—and enjoy improved graphics performance with iWork, iLife, and everything you do in Mac OS X. The 17-inch MacBook Pro has an advanced graphics architecture that employs both the integrated 9400M and the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics processor. Experience the fastest, smoothest, and clearest graphics yet for pro applications like Aperture and Motion, productivity tools such as Keynote, and intensive 3D games. Depending on how much performance or battery life you need, it’s a snap to switch between the two processors. And with the latest 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, it’s the most powerful Mac notebook ever. All in a precision aluminum unibody enclosure that’s less than an inch thin. more info
Popularity: 1% [?]
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Vast improvement over Windows
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
It is a pleasure to return to a Mac after a 14-year hiatus as a “business person.” As a stay-at-home-mom, with a new Vista laptop I was ready to hurl through the window, it occurred to me, why continue to suffer?
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
Beautiful, Easy & Very Efficient
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I have been eyeing Macs for a while now but didn’t want to make the switch from PC because I thought it would be really involved. Well my PC finally died so I was forced to do it and I am SOOO glad I did.
I have had no problems at all converting my Word and Excel files and using them on my Mac because we downloaded OpenOffice for Mac for free, which recognizes all my files!
I also purchased the program Parallels ($80) so I can run Windows (while running my Mac operating system at the same time) for those few programs that are too pricey to repurchase for Mac right now.
I am not very computer savvy. I didn’t know ANYTHING about Mac when I switched over and I found it the be incredibly intuitive, easy to understand, and addictive!!
It did help that my husband was a bit familiar and could install Parallels, etc.
What I love most is that the programs seem to be made to work with each other. For example when first adding people to my address book, I noticed it automatically added their birthday to icalander. And when I opened an evite in my email I could click once next to the party time and it automatically adds it to my icalander. My camera automatically recognizes my pictures and downloads them to iphoto which organizes them by day and is very easy to use. This goes on and on.
For the reviewer that said the edges are sharp & rub his wrists raw….he scared the heck out of me and I almost didn’t buy it because of him. Yes the edges are a bit hard but I have never, ever had an issue with this at all. I use it as a laptop and sitting at the desk, in the car, etc. and have had no problems with wrist comfort at all.
I highly, highly recommend Mac. The only problems I have are when I am running PC programs.
Didn’t realize how many popups and issues PC has until I don’t have ANY AT ALL with the Mac. Simply the most amazing product i have every purchased.
WONDERFUL COMPUTER
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is by far the best computer that i have EVER owned, and i have owned over 10 different computers. The quality is unsurpassable, and it is clear that you are getting the most for your money.
Prior to this Mac, i had had PCs, and thought that i would never want a Mac, ever. Some of my reasons were ‘oh it’s too expensive,’ and ‘you’re just paying for the brand’
Both of these were proven untrue once i was gifted this amazing computer. You are not paying for the brand, you are paying for top-of-the-line technology, and an environmentally sound, as well as functionally sound computer.
This computer has literally changed my outlook of all computers. and i wish that EVERYONE who is an active computer user was able to have this wonderful, amazing, stylish, sleek computer.
Pretty machine, pretty poor support
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I’m a PC guy, I’ve owned PC for 20 years and done professional support on them for over a decade and I’ve never seen service as I’ve seen with the Macbook Pro 15″
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!
MacBook Pro question
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Question here – not a review: Some previous buyers have indicated that since mid September, select customers received OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. Earlier, in the product description, even AMZN had a SL logo right under the price. Now, it’s gone. The actual description never changed from OSX 10.5 Leopard. Can anyone confirm that they have or haven’t received 10.6 since mid-September?
Laptop is fine, service is a joke
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
As a long-time (20+ years) PC user, I had to buy a Mac to develop apps for the iPhone. Although the keyboard is still more limited than I would like, I was able to become accustomed to the “Apple” way of getting things done (function follows form with them). The hardware is nice and solid, although one expects that for something costing twice as much as the competition. However, Apple customer care is sadly lacking, and you’ll get differing answers when you ask about getting a repair. For them, the customer is always wrong.
Best laptop ever
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
First, let me say I’m an IT consultant and as such a bit of a computer snob. I build my own workstations and servers and know what’s what and where things count. My previous laptop was a IBM Thinkpad T23 that was the most bulletproof computer I’ve ever owned. I dragged that thing around with me for 8+ years and it never gave me a single problem. However, it was just too slow to keep up with me and my need to run Adobe’s creative suite and MS Office 2007. My expectations for a replacement were quite high and I set my sites on the MBP about a year ago and watched the specs slowly creep up to where I wanted them and of course waited for Snow Leopard to arrive. What finally sold me was VMWare Fusion, which allows you to run Windows as a virtual machine from within OS X. I know Bootcamp can boot Windows, but I wanted to work entirely within OS X as I don’t have time to be rebooting and reopening things. This was a must-have both for the ability to run my huge investment in Windows software as well as run the various flavors of Windows needed to support my clients. The folks at the local Apple store showed me VMWare running and I placed my order the same day. I went for the matte screen and 500gb drive, both of which I am very glad I did. The glossy screen is gorgeous, but I was going to use this as a laptop not as a desktop replacement, meaning it would be going with me in all sorts of environments where I couldn’t control the ambient lighting so glare was a huge concern. The matte screen isn’t quite as sexy, but it is still the brightest LCD screen I have ever used. I turn the brightness down a couple clicks even when on AC power, just because it’s so dang bright.
The performance of this laptop is amazing. I went with the 2.8 GHz CPU and as such got the dual video cards with maximum video RAM. I run at least a half dozen different programs at once, sometimes more, including Firefox with 20+ tabs and VMWare running a virtual machine of Windows 7 and this thing doesn’t not even hiccup. Blazing, screaming, insanely fast. My MBP arrived 9 days ago and I have yet to reboot it once. The trackpad is sweet and the finger gestures are a great innovation. The battery is also amazing. I’ve given up on the dedicated video (see below) and am getting 6+ hours out of a charge, without any extreme power saving efforts. I’m carefully counting each cycle, as I’m sure a lot of other users are, and will happily scream and yell at Apple if this thing doesn’t last 1000 cycles as promised.
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.
Macbook Pro laptop
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Excellent product. it is my fourth one and 9th one for my business. Won’t be the last. The delivery, however, was disappointing. The delivery service had a problem near their depot which delayed and rerouted some of their trucks. They did not update their tracking website for 4 days and when they did it was 6 hours behind. Sending e-mails to their HQ resulted in completely unhelpful replies. Amazon should drop them and go with some other service.
Can’t believe Amazon’s false advertising
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Here I ordered the item as advertised with Snow Leopard, and it arrives with the OLD operating system. I feel cheated and there is no way to get it back to Amazon from South Africa AT THERE COST. I’ve paid for the item, and Amazon makes a HUGE error.
overpriced space heater
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
like any other computer you could run, be it osx, windows, linux, what have you…this computer will allow you to surf the web and read email (lets face it, thats all you use it for). the difference is this beast will cook your lap. i’ve never had a laptop (even other apple laptops) that generated so much heat. a laptop cooler is required if you buy this computer. furthermore the combo trackpad/mouse button is an utter disaster. i don’t know anyone who really likes it.
thinking i made a mistake
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Everyone said you need to buy a mac so i did. Even though there are some awesome apps., I am not blown away like I was expecting. Do I have anytime to learn how to play guitar?…no. I wonder…would I have done better buying something cheaper, while getting the same satisfaction. I bought this for durability, so I will wait and see.
Never back to PCs
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my second Mac, an upgrade in size and disk capacity from my first Mac, a MacBook Pro 15 with Intel processor. There was nothing whatever wrong with that old Mac – after 3 1/2 years I just needed more area on the screen for my work and did not mind the much greater disk capacity of the new model The most telling aspect of my first Mac had been that it never “crashed”, unlike generations of PCs I had used. If I managed to do something really “naughty” to my Mac, it sometimes closed a software program – but without noticeable loss of data. In stark contrast to my PC days, I never had to scramble to recover data. The worst I ever did was to inadvertently delete some ancient email messages. They proved easily recoverable from the external backup. Yes, initially it took a few hours to re-learn keystrokes that are different on the Mac than on PCs. I saved that back in no time, then received big dividends because my Mac never crashed. It just always works as it is designed to do.
The most amazing experience with the new Mac was the transfer of my “stuff” from old to new Mac. I went at it with some trepidation because it had taken seemingly endless hours to migrate “stuff” from old to new PCs. By contrast, everything had migrated from old Mac to new Mac in less than one hour via firewire – and all worked perfectly. By ‘everything” I mean not just all data – files, records, contact information, photos, calendar, etc.- but also all software I had installed on the old Mac. And, everything was exactly where and how I was used to it, and everything worked as it should on my brilliant and larger new Mac. It is now backed up by even greater memory and processor speed, and runs on Snow Leopard – which is just as flawlessly reliable as the previous operating system but faster and more efficient, with a few neat new features strewn in.
I can still hardly believe that it took years, no decades, before I got fed up and dumped PCs and their flawed operating systems and incompatible software and data bases for something that works. A student in my family just “took the plunge” to Mac when she inherited my first Mac – she is thrilled. Before that I had loaned it to friends – decades long PC users – who promptly made me a nice offer for it and who have since bought new Macs from the local Apple Store. They are extremely conservative and frugal folks – but it did not take them long to figure out that one Mac every decade that always works is better than a new PC every three years that frequently “crashes”. Macs serve their owners and serve them well. PCs work sometimes and expect their owners to serve and service them.. Who is master and who slave? There is never a doubt with a Mac!
The Best!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Defnitely the best laptop you can buy. It’s almost perfect and hats saying a lot considering how great their products are already. They just keep getting better and better, but this machine is so great it will last me a long time before another upgrade. Bravo!
Mac is awesome.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I have been using Windows for 13 years now and I have been happy for a while. I built many Windows computers and even my current one (quad core, 8gb Ram) and used Windows Vista Premium 64x. Windows is a very good operating system, it is functional (despite what some say, Vista worked great after SP1) but it uses its resources terribly.
With that said, this laptop is amazing. The screen is larger and so beautiful (using LEDs makes it very efficient as well). The backlite keyboard and the laptop in general oozes sexyness. But some may comment on the hardware included with it (small HDD, 4gb ran, nvidia 9400m) and they can get a really kick-ass windows computer for the same if not less more. Though if you think performance will be better, it won’t. Mac OSX 10.6 uses the hardware provided and runs QUICKER than my Windows PC mentioned above. The laptop itself is thin and lite but is made of aluminum so it is durable. Speakers are great for a laptop and the battery life is 7 hours+ with some dimming. Only problem I have is i cannot connect my networked printer, but I am working on that.
Mac OSX 10.6 is a very stable, quick, sleek, fun operating system. The laptop comes with all you need to get started, just make sure you run the updating software ect. I thought I was going to have a hell of a time adapting to it, but I did so in less than two days. If your looking at this for a laptop GET IT. YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.
Well worth the cost for me
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I switched to Mac in August 2008. I bought the Black 13.3″ MacBook and used it everyday for almost a year. When Apple changed their MacBook Pro lineup in June this year, I waited about a month until I could read the reviews and visit the Apple store several times. I wanted to upgrade because of the aluminum Unibody design, the SD card slot and the long battery life. I also found that the display on these newer one were so much better.
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.