{"id":494,"date":"2010-09-22T14:07:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T21:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markandkelley.com\/mark\/?p=494"},"modified":"2012-02-02T21:34:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T21:34:14","slug":"macbook-pro-good-and-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/2010\/09\/macbook-pro-good-and-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"MacBook Pro Good and Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0 0 2em 2em;\" title=\"MacBook Pro\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/redesigned20090828-300x176.jpg?resize=300%2C176\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" \/>My employer just upgraded my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macbookpro\/specs.html\">MacBook Pro<\/a> from the old 2006 model to the latest 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB or 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve noticed some pros and cons about it so far&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pros<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>High-def screen is crystal clear 1680&#215;1050 compared to my old 1440&#215;900.<\/li>\n<li>Glass screen has eye popping brightness and contrast.<\/li>\n<li>After Effects is blazing fast compared to my old machine.\u00a0 This machine is actually worthy of video and 3D work!<\/li>\n<li>SD Card slot!<\/li>\n<li>Uses the same power adapter!<\/li>\n<li>Side-loading CD\/DVD<\/li>\n<li>True multi-touch pad<\/li>\n<li>Body casing design is much better.\u00a0 If you need to upgrade you can access the critical components much easier.<\/li>\n<li>New mini-display port supports HDMI although there are lots of complaints about different adapters not supporting audio through it.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s heavy!\u00a0 Not sure if this is a pro or a con.\u00a0 Noticeably heavier  than my old machine.\u00a0 Maybe it just feels heavier because it&#8217;s so  frickin&#8217; solid?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Cons<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Glare.\u00a0 I opted for the glass screen with the expectation that it would have better color.\u00a0 It does have much better color but I already miss my old matte screen because the glare is unbelievable on this thing.\u00a0 I can definitely work with it but I&#8217;m constantly adjusting the screen angle.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crappy speakers!<\/strong> The biggest problem is that these speakers will tire your ears in a matter of a few minutes.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t believe how bad these speakers sound compared to my old MacBook Pro!\u00a0 I can&#8217;t believe they are part of an Apple product!\u00a0 They are undeserving of the name.\u00a0 They are very tinny and harsh sounding.\u00a0 That said, I am a big time audiophile so I&#8217;m probably more sensitive to this than most people.\u00a0 I tried tweaking the EQ in iTunes and discovered that these speakers have little to no response below about 115 Hz.\u00a0 Horrible bass response.<br \/>\n<strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> I finally got around to plugging this in to my TV via HDMI.\u00a0 I was very disapointed to find that the sound quality was just as crappy as the speakers on the laptop itself.\u00a0 Interestingly it sounds like it has the exact same issues, tinny and harsh sounding.\u00a0 I know that my TV sounds great most of the time so I can now eliminate the Mac speakers as the issue.\u00a0 It&#8217;s got to be either software or hardware processing because the headphone jack spits out great quality sound.<\/li>\n<li>Ultra light sensitive.\u00a0 The screen is constantly adjusting brightness based on ambient light.\u00a0 The variations are dramatic to where it bothers my eyes.\u00a0 I will probably have to disable this feature in the preferences.<\/li>\n<li>It has a mini-display port instead of a direct DVI.\u00a0 This means that you have to purchase the new adapter<strong>s<\/strong>.\u00a0 Yes that&#8217;s plural.\u00a0 If you hook up to a DVI in one location and a VGA or HDMI in another you&#8217;ll need 2 or 3 adapters at $30 a pop!\u00a0 That really sucks.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s heavy!\u00a0 Not sure if this is a pro or a con.\u00a0 Noticeably heavier than my old machine.\u00a0 Maybe it just feels heavier because it&#8217;s so frickin&#8217; solid?<\/li>\n<li>Keyboard arrows aren&#8217;t labeled with home, end, page up and page down (although they still work as expected).\u00a0 This is helpful when remote controlling a windows machine with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/mac\/products\/remote-desktop\/\">RDC<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My employer just upgraded my MacBook Pro from the old 2006 model to the latest 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB or 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve noticed some pros and cons about it so far&#8230; Pros High-def screen is crystal clear 1680&#215;1050 compared to my old 1440&#215;900. Glass screen has eye popping brightness &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/2010\/09\/macbook-pro-good-and-bad\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;MacBook Pro Good and Bad&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickendesign.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}