AoA my dear fellows
This is Ameer Hamza and it's my review of the mid 2012 MacbookPro 15", the very last generation of it's kind. So let's talk this last gen thing first, Apple announced it's MacbookPro Retina series along side this laptop marking the start of another kind, from now on all the macbook pro will be retina and this model will be the last(I believe).
Apple has moved to Flash architecture with the macbook pro retina which is very compact lightweight and extremely fast and reliable, but there's a catch, Flash architecture that apple used allows no user upgrades what so ever, Apple put a lot of proprietary technology in the new pros which can only be upgraded by Apple folk at the time of ordering. Ram is integrated into the motherboard and the SSD is proprietary. So you get speed at the cost of no upgrade and being a Pakistani buying a laptop is not about using it and throwing it away when it's old, we upgrade it we try to suck out every inch of performance as long as we can, so when I decided to buy the Mac I went for this model which relies on Legacy Hardware, which means I can replace a lot of parts with 3rd party hardware (RAM, Hardware etc etc) and I can even make it as fast as retina by installing SSD, and it will all be cheaper than what Apple asks for.
Let's talk Hardware and Design.
This is one serious piece of kit that Apple has made, it's an Aluminium uni body design that not just looks awesome and feels premium, it's quite durable too. The main body and the screen assembly is uni body, a piece of glass protects the screen, a piece of glass takes place of the track pad, the panel that is screwed to the bottom that hides the hardware access is also a sheet of metal. only plastic found in this machine are the keys and a hinge to the screen connecting the board.
So when you pay by an arm and a leg to buy this machine, it's doesn't hurt that much when you get it.
So Awesome choice of materials here but what about the Keyboard and Track pad, are they as good as they look?
They keyboard has nicely spaced keys in a chic let style design, accidental taps on unwanted keys is minimal and on top of all that it's back lit. Key presses are nice and deep but I do miss the somewhat end of the keys, you know when you are sure that a key is pressed, it's not quite good here(not that laptops that have it, have such a nice keyboard), the end of a key press feels somewhat... squeegee. But it's nothing to worry about.
The layout of a Mac's keyboard is quite different from PC but you can get use to it after a while.
Track Pad is AWESOME, there is no laptop on earth that can match the quality and the fluency of the Track pad that a macbook holds. It's made out of glass so it's quite slippery which in this case is required, they whole pad is a giant click button (Windows users will find this setup troubling) The experience is enhanced with the Mac OSX gestures and use.
The track pad has multitouch and knows your fingers from your palm, so typing is not problem if you like to rest a part of your palm on the trackpad, which it should do since the track pad is quite sizable.
buttons are good track pad is AWESOME, what about the screen?
This is a non retina version so the resolution is 1440x900 which in my opinion is more usable than the retina one, lemme explain how, As a Pakistani I don't have access to a super fast Internet or have the finance to buy Software that only Apple offers on their app store, so what's my point you say, Well, a lot of software are designed for this macbook's resolution so they would look ridiculous on that HUGE retina resolution and so will the websites, I mean the sites are designed for this type of resolution and since a Fast Internet connection is hard to get, this resolution serves best for our needs and not to mention when you play a 720p video on it it looks alright but play a 1080p movie on retina and it will look pixelated a bit, so this resolution is best in my opinion (Although I wished that local retailers also offered the high res non reflective option like in other countries)
Resolution aside how is the screen quality, well If I tell you it's IPS Panel then you'll believe me because it had quite wide viewing area and popping colours, but the truth is, it's you average TFT screen with LED backlit, but apple has calibrated it and made it THE BEST LCD of it's kind. SO quality wise it's a beauty to behold.
On top of the screen lies a small dot, it's called an isight camera, it's a webcam with 720p res and quality is top notch for a webcam.
Let's talk about the ports, they are all on the left side of the machine, you get a Magsafe Power port, an ethernet port, a firewire 800 port, a thunderbolt port, 2 USB 3.0 an SD card slot and ports for mic and headphone. Most annoyingly the HDMI is no where to be found and neither is there any adaptor available from Apple.
on the right side you get a slot DVD RW drive and a kensington lock.
The Magsafe power port is quite cool, it attaches to the Mac via Magnetic field so no chance of ripping your hardware out when you accidentally pull away your laptop from the power socket.
With the exterior out of the way they dive into what runs the machine.
Underneath the Metal Case lies a powerful city of silicon chips. The model I m using is the 15" baseline model it comes with
2.3 GHz Core i7 ivy bridge CPU
4GB RAM (Upgraded to 10GB myself)
512MB nVidia 650GT GPU
500GB 5400 rpm HDD
DVD RW Optical Drive
It's legacy hardware and since it's Intel, you can easily swap the ram or harddrive with any old brand from the market, I upgraded the RAM by taking out a 2GB chip and putting in a 8GB one, I get a total of 10GB and it's quite adequate now :)
This is quite a capable machine and as they say in the tech world, with great power comes great HEAT. So now let take a look at the cooling system.
The cooling system in this machine is a bit confusing. I mean unlike normal laptops, there are not 1 but 2 fans and there are no intake slots what so even, not on the sides not underneath. only explanation can be that the speaker holes are intakes and the exhaust is not free channel of hot air either, it's a small slit between the screen and the machine(pictured above). But it manages same level of heat management as all other top tier laptops.
Lastly let's talk about the Battery Life, it packs a HUGE Battery pack inside the case, you need to un screw the back to reveal it. Battery time is among the best, for a legacy hardware machine I m getting about 5-6 Hours of useage, meaning using Wi-Fi browsing and watching movies. play games and the battery can manage 2-3 hours. Keep in mind that if you use it in hot area and the cooling system kicks in more than usual than the battery time can get hurt real easily.
I m not gonna talk about the software in this post, but it's life changing so it deserves another post. Stay in touch to get to know about it.
Final Verdict
This is money well spent in my opinion, Sure you can get an HP laptop with same specs for half the price of this and as HP tells you, you get HP smart cooling, HP smart HardDrive protection and HP smart backup features for free... total Bullcrap. Apple offers all these features and then some but doesn't make a fuss about it. This machine is leaps and bounds better than any other legacy Laptop out there.
and if you like to have an OS that works for you and not the other way round, OSX is the way to go.
Plus you get this (pictured below) which makes your friend Envious and takes you status level to new heights, Hope this review helps :)
0 comments:
Post a Comment