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• Apple’s former ad slogan of “Think Different” isn’t entirely accurate. While Apple is challenging consumers to make the switch away from the most popular operating system in the world, the Apple world is one of conformity. Once you decide to play in the Apple sandbox, you are stuck in the Apple sandbox. I can only buy a notebook in two colors: aluminum and white. I can’t buy a 2.0 GHz Macbook with a lighted keyboard or a MacBook Pro with an aluminum unibody design and a matte screen. I can’t buy a laptop with eSATA or an iMac with a Core 2 Quad or a monitor-less Mac with a Core 2 Duo and an Nvidia GPU. If I go with Apple, I have to play under Apple’s rules. On the other hand, the Apple Kool-Aid is mighty tasty. The iPod and iPhone have been the gateway drugs to the Mac ecosystem and philosophy. Both represent highly structured environments. By giving up the flexibility to load music directly onto your iPod or to use exotic formats such as FLAC or APE, you gain the ease of use that an iPod offers and the widespread support of automotive manufacturers where integrating your iPod with your steering wheel controls requires no trickery. The same is true with the iPhone. You get one provider: AT&T. You only get one form factor. But in turn, you get one of the best smart phones on the market. The strengths of a Mac are clear. On the consumer side, iLife remains one of the best consumer multimedia suites ever produced. For years, iLife’s photo slide show capabilities have outclassed anything available on the PC with regard to ease-of-use and the ability to produce fully animated menus. Apple Aperture offers a great alternative to Adobe Lightroom 2 for a lower price while Apple Shake and Final Cut Pro Studio represent true Hollywood-grade applications falling short only of products from Autodesk/discreet. Built-in capabilities to the operating system such as Time Machine make data security a breeze. Keynote remains one of the most sophisticated presentation tools available on the market, and as soon as Pages and Numbers have support for EndNote and Error Bars, I’m confident that the Mac will gain even more traction in the scientific/academic world. Given the option between a PC that can only run Microsoft-branded software and a Mac that can only run Apple-branded software, the easy answer is the Mac (although admittedly, I am using Office 2008 to write this). Even the day-to-day Mac experience is pleasant. When comparing an eight-core system running Windows Vista/Aero, Mac OS X, and Xgl/Compiz; there is no question that Mac OS X offers the subjective feeling of a snappier interface. I’m not sure what it is about Mac OS X that makes it so responsive, but the last system to have the same level of responsiveness was my SGI Octane. The only similarity between Mac OS X and SGI IRIX was the use of Display PDF/Display Postscript and a closed system with tightly controlled hardware support. Vista/Aero may be slower because non-WPF windows are rendered in 2D (even though the composition is 3D), and Linux driver support lags behind Windows and Mac OS X (DRI2 may change things). In addition, recent benchmarks show that Mac OS X offers superior power management compared to Windows Vista (Anandtech), and in general, offers superior raw performance to Ubuntu Linux (Phoronix). With Mac OS X, you get style and substance.

• Late 2008 MacBook Specifications (as tested) 13.3-inch 1280x800 LED-backlit TN display (AU Optronics B133EW02 V0 or LG Philips LP133WX2) Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 (45nm Penyrn core,  2.0 GHz, 3MB L2, 1066MHz Bus) NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chipset (MCP79 + integrated GeForce 9400G with 256MB shared RAM) 2 GB DDR3-1066, CL7 (Samsung or Hynix) 160GB 2.5” SATA HDD (Toshiba MK1653GSX or Fujitsu MHZ2160BH) 802.11 a/b/g/n (Broadcom Intensi-fi BCM4322) Bluetooth 2.1 EDR (Broadcom Blutonium BCM2045) 10/100/1000 Ethernet (Realtek RTL8251CA GigE) 24-bit/192-khz audio support (Realtek ALC885, 24/192 support for analog I/O, 24/192 digital out, 24/96 digital in) 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+/-R DL, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW) (Matsushita UJ-868 SATA or Hitachi-LG GS21N or OptiArc AD-5960S) 45-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (Simplo Technology) 60W MagSafe Power Adapter Ports: MagSafe Power Port, Gigabit Ethernet, Two USB 2.0, Mini DisplayPort, Audio Line-in (with integrated optical input), Audio Line-out (with integrated optical output) Weight: 4.5 lbs Dimensions: 12.78 x 8.94 x 0.95 inches Boot ROM Version: MB51.0073.B06 SMC Version: 1.32f8 Apple Accessories Tested: Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter Apple In-Ear Headphones Apple 24” LED Cinema Display Aftermarket Upgrades Tested: OCZ SATA-II 64GB Solid State Drive (Samsung SLC design, 2000000 hours MTBF) MacBook #1: LG Philips screen, Hynix memory modules, Fujitsu HDD, Hitachi-LG DVD Burner MacBook #2: AU Optronics screen, Samsung memory modules, Toshiba HDD, Matsushita DVD Burner Before Apple announced their new notebooks, I had planned to get the 15-inch MacBook Pro.When “one more thing…” meant a MacBook with the same aluminum unibody design as the Pro, the plan changed.The difference between a MacBook and MacBook Pro has decreased significantly.The key differences are a considerably higher-quality screen on the MacBook Pro, the addition of FireWire 800, an ExpressCard 34 slot, and a standard backlit keyboard.

• Our MacBook shipped with the Toshiba MK1653GSX SATA-II 160GB drive. MacBook 2.4 GHz machines with 250 GB also ship with Toshiba HDDs.  These drives have some of the highest areal densities per platter (254 gigabits per square inch). The 160 GB drive is a single platter design with two data heads. Average seek time is 12 ms with a track-to-track of 2 ms to a maximum of 22 ms seek. Seeks require 2.2 watts, read/write eats up 1.9 watts, while idle power consumption is 0.85 watts. MTTF is a disappointing 300,000 hours. We also tested a MacBook that shipped with a Fujitsu MHZ2160BH SATA-II 160 GB drive. Track to track time is a faster at 1.5 ms and idle power consumption is better at 0.6 watts. Read/write is slightly worse at 2.1 watts. Seek power consumption is not reported. MTBF is also a disappointing 300,000 hours. The unibody MacBook Pro ships with a different 5,400 rpm drive. We’ve seen MBP’s shipped with Hitachi Travelstar 5K320 drives (HTS543232L9SA02). While this specific model is not listed in Hitachi’s product documentation, the “SA0” designation typically refers to SATA 1.5 Gb/s designs as opposed to SATA 3.0Gb/s. This only makes a difference when transferring data from the cache to the host as 5,400 rpm notebook drives are unable to saturate a SATA 1.5 Gb/s connection. In theory, SATA 1.5 Gb/s connections require less power than SATA 3 Gb/s connections. Average seek time is also 12 ms, but the track-to-track time of 1 ms and a maximum full stroke of 20 ms is slightly faster. Seeks require 2.2 W, read/write is superior at 1.8 W, and active idle consumption is 0.8W. MTBF is not disclosed. In general, these are run-of-the-mill notebook HDDs and we recommend upgrading to aftermarket HDDs. Time Machine makes it extremely straightforward to migrate your computer from one HDD to another (provided that you have an external drive). One good choice is the Seagate Momentus 7200.4. Not only is this a 7,200 rpm drive for added performance, but power consumption is improved to 1.554 W for seeks and 0.67 W at idle. MTBF is 500,000 hours. The Seagate drive offers a 5 year warranty as opposed to the 3 year of the Toshiba, Fujitsu or Hitachi drives that ship with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Solid State Storage For our setup, we elected to go with solid state drives. SSDs are available in two formats: SLC and MLC. SLC is more expensive but offers added reliability and performance. MLC allows higher density memory chips to be produced, resulting in higher capacity drives at relatively affordable prices. Many of the early budget MLC solid state drives have been reported to have poor performance with small files (“stuttering”). The newer MLC drives that ship from Apple directly (manufactured by Samsung), the Intel X-25M, and the OCZ Vertex SSD line are all expected to have good performance because they use a different memory controller. We elected to go with the OCZ SATA-II 64 GB SSD. Based upon Samsung’s SLC SSD technology, the OCZ solid state drive features a flagship 2,000,000 hours MTBF. In addition to the added performance and reliability that solid state drives can offer, the OCZ drive also adds considerable performance benefits over the standard 5,400 rpm hard drives. Power consumption during read/writes is just 0.5 W and 0.35 W with an idle of 0.2 W.The Intel X-25E is expected to offer the same level of reliability as the OCZ drive (2M hours MTBF) with even greater performance. The enthusiast-priced Vertex SSD drives from OCZ have an MTBF of 1,500,000 hours and use a new memory controller which is supposed to prevent the stuttering that has plagued the other budget drives. The Intel X-25M has an MTBF of 1,200,000 hours. The Samsung MLC drives available in 128 GB capacities shipping in current MacBooks have an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours. Going to SSD halved our boot times to about 25 seconds as compared to 56 seconds off the 5,400 rpm drive. Interestingly, the time it took to write a 2GB file was nearly equivalent to the boot time: Time to Write 2GB File (1k blocks) Factory installed HDD: 50.577 seconds (42.46MB/sec): OCZ SATA-II SSD: 25.076 seconds (85.63MB/sec) Time to Read 2GB File (1k blocks) Factory default HDD: 49.915 seconds (43.03MB/sec) OCZ SATA-II SSD: 18.935 seconds (113.41 MB/sec) Stock HDD (5400 rpm)OCZ SATA-II SSDWrite 2GB File (1k blocks)42.46 MB/sec85.63 MB/secRead 2GB File (1k blocks)43.03 MB/sec113.41 MB/secSequential  Uncached Write (4k blocks)62.07 MB/sec85.56 MB/secUncached Write (256k blocks)46.28 MB/sec77.91 MB/secUncached Read (4k blocks)19.76 MB/sec17.5 MB/secUncached Read (266k blocks)55.82 MB/sec95.34 MB/secRandomUncached Write (4k blocks)1.26 MB/sec5.2 MB/secUncached Write (256k blocks)26.58 MB/sec69.41 MB/secUncached Read (4k blocks)0.46 MB/sec10.58 MB/secUncached Read (266k blocks)21.01 MB/sec93.82 MB/sec