Apple's 17 " Mac Book Pro - what is the REAL deal here...

It is always a good idea not to rush with evaluations immediately after the release, so let's see what we've got here a couple of months post release of the 'new" Mac Book Pro.
First, for busy shoppers, in brief: the Mac Book Pro flogged as 'new' is not new, just polished up version of the stalled old piece.
It is an ordinary (very ordinary, mind you!) contraption, steady positioned in the grey straits of similar products.
And, yes, it is overpriced, as usual basking on old , faded glory. Don't bother. Full stop.

Now some details for seasoned computer users with more time on their hands.

They (from Apple Inc's marketing office) say the latest Mac Book Pro has much faster chip - 2.66Mhz
How faster? Well the previous Mac Book Pro model's chip is 2,5Mhz
It means the chip in the current unit is about 5% faster, that's all! But gullible punters never do maths, they just buy, don't they!

Further on, the body is made of what they call 'Precision aluminum. The new gold standard.'
One may wonder Is there any computer body made of non-precision aluminum and what is this new gold standard.
Well all this is marketese as usual.

The truth is that the body of Mac Book Pro is made using well known technology which makes production costs much lower. This may mean lower retail price, but as we know it is against the Apple's practice which, to put it politely, is about hype, keeping the price high and grabbing the money now. Instead of selling at lower price Apple Inc. realises higher profit. Simple as that.
This is not the only area where lower production costs are used for increase of profit margins. Very high increase, mind you!
Here are another examples:
If you want to buy Mac Book Pro with solid state drive instead of the obsolete motorised hard drive you have to pay extra 300 dollars at least. The reality is that solid state drive is much, much cheaper because Apple is doing bulk buy and any insider knows that when you bulk buy , say, 100,000 units the price per unit drops immensely. Result - almost all of your several hundred dollars are pure profit for Apple. Easy money!
The story with conventional 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive is the same, except that 5400-rpm HD bought bulk are even cheaper because are obsolete. Also, Apple has stored enormous amount of them and needs to sell them.
Want 7200-rpm HD - pay more, the same old trick.

That long life battery capable able of up to 8 hrs. web browsing and so on.
The key word here is 'up'. Translated from marketing lingo into plain English it means 'may go for under 8 hrs at best but don't count on it'.

To get even near 8 hrs. you have to set the laptop in a way that renders it practically un - useable. Here is what the small (the very small!) print on Apple site says: 'The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%.
We tried these settings, the 8 hr. lasting battery blurb is just another piece of spin. Advise to everyone - don't bother.

Evaluating whether the Apple 's 17 " Mac Book Pro is worth taking seriously in both technical and price-wise sense is easy.

1. Negatives. Here are some (but not all):

Software - strong and continuous tendency amongst software makers to stay away from Apple. Just go to a dozen software websites and shall see the familiar picture - majority of them offer Windows only stuff.
Also check how many of those electronic gadgets\appliances in the nearest store are truly Mac compatible.
Just one example - Cannon printers' software for Mac can perform only part of the tasks available for Windows machines. Disappointing picture but manufactures just do not take Apple seriously enough to invest in making their products fully Mac compatible.

The video card NVIDIA GeForce 9400M - not good enough for nowadays. Period

The ridiculous battery arrangement, i.e., hard to replace, need to be done in a repair shop for extra payment…
In contrast, see how easy is to remove/replace the battery of, say, Sony Vaio laptop and others.
The same for RAM chips. It is cheaper (i.e. profitable for Apple) to manufacture laptop body for Mac Book Pro as it is now but it puts hidden expenses (RAM, Battery replacement) on the user. Bad.

Windows compatibility is cute but makes little sense to use it when one has to spend even more money for Vista.
Inside info - selling the Mac Book Pro with Vista in the box sitting next to OSX disks at no extra charge is entirely possible from financial point of view but Apple has rejected the idea. No surprise here.

The current price $ 2,799 is arrogantly high and if one still wishes to buy a relatively decent 17 " Mac Book Pro
the extra costs will push price higher still. The old, money making "buy optional" trick!
For example:

Solid state drive. No need to explain why it is better, regardless of its smaller capacity in Gb. One pointer - think battery energy saved.
However for a 126GB solid state drive, you pay extra $300.

Eliminating the nasty and potentially harmful for the eyes glare of the screen.
Buy an antiglare screen protector, pay extra $50

Broadband is still not universally available everywhere, except in as they say Sth. Korea and Japan. So, for an external dial-up modem, pay extra $50.
Be warned - this modem is notoriously buggy and unreliable. There are many complaints on Apple's website about it but links to full text are mostly broken (by accident? )
It is a big issue this modem and be very aware that you may end up with a laptop with your dangling external modem unable to connect.

The software. Perhaps you want a decent word processing program (not half baked TextEdit ) like in old times when Apple Works was mandatory and free. Now for iWork you pay extra $50.

So, to have a reasonably equipped Mac Book Pro one has to fork out at least extra $500 making the final price $3300!

Mind you, this is a conservative calculation not including the extra cash you have to pay if need to replace a battery.

2. Positives:

OSX is still superior to any of the ridiculous shambles Microsoft call operational systems. Superior so far. However with the strong tendency amongst the Apple's software employees to bloat OSX with useless widgets/schmidgets and other so called improvements it is not sure for how long this superiority will remain.
Being optimistic, we are convinced that there is no chance Microsoft will make its operational system any better any time in near or distant future.
Yes, RAM 4Gb is relatively OK .


So, to sum it up, is 17 " Mac Book Pro's price fair? No.

It is a very ordinary machine, with plenty of possibilities for hardware troubles and the usual for all Mac computers software limitations.
The real, true price is no more than $800.

For a machine properly configured (see above)
real price is no more than $900.

Essential points to remember here are:

1. For Apple Inc. computer manufacturing is definitely a side show of no importance. No real research and development there, just make-up and gloss-over.
Only the marketing spin based on the ancient glory days is to be maintained together with ridiculous prise kept high in order to create false impression of superiority of the products (another old trick).

2. Future of Apple Co is set to be in flogging stuff like iPhones , iPods and similar gadgets. Reason - they are easy to make, deliver high profit margins and can keep the company alive for reasonable long period of time.

3. Apple Co is in a deep stagnation.

See, it's simple, folks!
And for those who still want to buy Mac Book Pro (or any other computer made by Apple) knowing the current way of thinking ( or lack of) in the company - you do it at your own risk.
In plain English, there is a lot of hot air in Cupertino. Hot air, complacence and one too many salary collectors whose main activity is to look busy. Got the idea?

Actually Mac Book Pro is a good laptop for the year 2001. However now is 2009


Simon Stone
Mac User for over 20 years