When the MacBook Pro was introduced in January 2006, everyone was left wondering: If this is the MacBook Pro , where’s the MacBook? Five months later, the other shoe dropped.
The new non-pro MacBook is a 13-inch laptop that replaces both the iBook and the 12-inch PowerBook G4. But despite its lack ofPro in its name, this little laptop is much more powerful and full-featured than the laptops it’s replacing.
A box-opening hubbub
This morning we got the call — two MacBooks were waiting for us at the downtown San Francisco Apple store. So Macworld Senior Editor Jonathan Seff and I set out on foot to grab Apple’s latest laptops and bring them back to the offices for unpacking, poking, prodding, lab testing, and (who are we kidding?) eventual dissection.
We returned to a crowd of excited staff members, all waiting to see the new laptops. If the buzz around our offices is any indication, there’s a tremendous pent-up demand for the MacBook. (One of our staff members has already placed his order for one, and more are threatening to do so even as we speak.)
The MacBook box is a slightly smaller version of the thin MacBook Pro box. Inside is the MacBook itself, along with an Apple Remote and a MagSafe power adapter. Once I slid the first MacBook out of its protective bag, the entire office oohed and aahed — it was the black model!
If you’re an old Mac hand, you’ll find the black MacBook quite reminiscent of the “Wall Street” generation of G3 PowerBooks. Unlike the white MacBook (or previous iBooks), the black MacBook has a matte finish. Numerous Macworld staff members complimented its look, although another group clearly preferred the “classic” shiny white appearance inherited from the iBook.
Size matters
Compared to a 15-inch MacBook Pro, the MacBook seems quite small. The MacBook is slightly thicker, but the MacBook Pro is 1.3 inches wider and .4 inches deeper than its new little brother. Likewise, the MacBook weighs 5.2 pounds, compared to the MacBook Pro’s 5.6 pounds.
 The 12-inch PowerBook G4 atop a MacBo |
But how you view size is a matter of perspective. I like little laptops. One of the perks of being the editorial director of Macworld is that I generally get to use whatever Mac system I want to. And yet at one point I was an iBook user, entirely because it was so much smaller than the Titanium PowerBook G4.
