Nilesh Kapadia

I don't personally own any Apple notebooks at the moment, but I have done some research into buying one (though I ended up getting a Mac Pro). I recently had a friend ask me about them, so I have written up some things to consider when looking at purchasing one. You of course have two options: the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.

The first step is to look at the online store (http://store.apple.com/) and look at the different options, specs, and prices for the two notebooks.

Things to consider in either case:

Both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro have some options that you can configure. In either case, you have the option of configuring the amount of RAM and hard drive size.

RAM (memory)

The base configuration might be good enough, but the more you have the faster and more responsive the machine will run. The problem is Apple is extremely overpriced when it comes to RAM. The only advantages to buying from them is it ends up covered if you buy AppleCare (the warranty package) and you don't have to bother with installing it yourself if you order it configured with the RAM.

Personally I like to order my memory from Crucial and install it myself. In comparison, Apple's prices are often 3 to 4 times as much as what Crucial offers, and Apple's prices are for options that replace the standard configuration; you don't even get to keep the RAM that is being replaced.

Maybe you'd want to take a wait and see approach and see how well it runs with the base configuration. Upgrading to 2GB is pretty overpriced but still not a lot of money. But Apple's prices for 4GB are so ridiculous I can't imagine anyone buying it from them unless they are on a very loose budget. In the case of 4GB, if you don't want to install RAM yourself and don't have a friend who can do it for you, you can pay someone else to do it for you and still save quite a bit of money.

Hard drive

In either case you'll need to decide whether you want to upgrade the hard drive to a larger size or not. Think about what you will be using it for and how much space it will take up. Video editing, for example, can take up a lot of space if you have a lot of footage to work with. For example, I import standard definition video from my miniDV camcorder and each hour of footage takes up 13GB of hard drive space.

If you are considering buying a larger hard drive from somewhere other than Apple and then installing it yourself, do note that in the MacBook Pro it is very difficult to replace the hard drive. In the MacBook it is supposedly easy enough.

AppleCare Protection Plan

You'll want to think about whether you want to get their "AppleCare Protection Plan" which is their 3 year extended warranty. Without it, you still get 1 year of repairs and 90 days of phone support. With it, you get 3 year of repairs and 3 years of phone support. I personally would get it for a laptop as things are more likely to go wrong than a desktop machine. But you can wait and get it later if you want (within the first year I believe), but its still applies to 3 years after your original purchase and not when you purchased AppleCare Protection Plan.

MacBook

If you get the MacBook, note that the lowest priced model doesn't have a DVD burner (the "Combo Drive" is only CD burner though it reads DVDs). If you want to be able to burn DVD discs, get the one that has the "SuperDrive" which is the DVD burner.

There might be some software that won't run on the MacBook due to its less powerful video card, but that is pretty rare. If you are going to use Final Cut Studio 2 (FCS2), the MacBook is not an option because its Intel video card is not even supported (according to the system requirements). I suspect that its only parts of the suite that won't work (like Motion, which is a 3-D application), but if you are seriously going to need to use Final Cut Pro or any other parts of FCS2, I wouldn't risk it. Final Cut Express is supposed to run on it, though.

As of this writing, the MacBook comes with 1GB RAM (aka "memory") standard. I personally would consider getting at least 2GB of RAM, but many people could get by with 1GB. See the section below for my thoughts upgrading RAM.

The MacBook only comes with glossy screens.

MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro's base configuration is quite adequate. 2GB RAM is decent enough for a standard configuration. You may want to consider a larger hard drive if you need it. There is are options for a 7200RPM hard drive which will be faster than the 5400RPM hard drives.

Also you have a choice of a glossy or non-glossy screen. I personally like non-glossy, because glossy can produce glare and reflections, but some people really like the glossy screen. I was using a glossy screen at work for a while and I eventually got used to it (seeing reflections of myself when the screen is solid black is really weird), but I never had any light shining directly at my screen which could be a more likely problem with a laptop.

MacBook vs MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro is the better machine of course, but other than price, the one advantage the MacBook has is that its smaller. There are rumors of a smaller sized MacBook Pro coming out soon, but you never know. They still haven't produced a laptop that truly replaces the old 12" PowerBook.

Windows?

You can run Windows perfectly well on the newer Macs (since they switched to Intel processors they are basically the same hardware as PC's). There are few options in this regard:

• Virtualization - this means that Windows will run in a "virtual machine." This is basically an application that runs in Mac OS X that pretends like its a computer and runs Windows inside of it. I like this option because you can still continue using OS X at the same time. The two popular options for this are:
  • VMWare Fusion - I personally think is the best option
  • Parallels - this has a few cool features especially the way it allows Windows apps to integrate into the Mac desktop
• Run Windows natively with the help of Apple's "BootCamp" software. This is a good option for software that doesn't run well in a virtual machine, such as games and 3-D applications. Though, virtual machines are slowly getting to point where they can handle those as well. The disadvantage of this option is that you have to actually boot the machine into Windows and can't use OS X at the same time.
• Use compatibility software like CrossOver Mac which lets you run Windows applications in Mac OS X. This is nice because you don't have to own a copy of Windows. I don't have any experience with it, so I can't comment on its effectiveness.

Apple notebook keyboards are a little different and the mouse only has one button. That might be something you will have to adjust to when using Windows. Attaching an external mouse and/or keyboard will help with this, though, but that's something you might not want to do with a notebook.

Apple Store

It's always good to go into the Apple store (or somewhere that carries them) and check out the machines in person. If you do buy your computer from the Apple store, note that they will try their best to sell you a .Mac subscription (they get some kind bonus for the number of those they sell). Personally I think .Mac is too expensive ($100/year) for what you get and not particularly compelling to begin with, but I honestly haven't used it.

The other thing about buying from the Apple store is that it will be more difficult to order more customized configurations. They might do it, but it may end up costing more than it would from their website. Its often better to order a customized configuration from their website. At Apple's stores you can often get online on the computers there, so you can compare prices before purchasing if you need to.

Education Discount

Apple gives a significant discount for students on their computers and the AppleCare Protection Plan. If you are a student take advantage of this!

External Hard Drives and Backup

I would get an external hard drive to do backups. You don't have to get one from Apple, and its something you can wait to get, but something to consider getting at some point (especially when you start to store a lot of important files on your computer that you don't want to lose). I haven't used it myself yet, but the latest version of Mac OS has a good backup tool (called "Time Machine") that is pretty easy to setup and once setup, runs pretty much automatically when you connect the external hard drive. If you do get one, make sure that it has a Firewire interface (most of them only have USB). USB will work, but Firewire is much faster.