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Hardware Review

Review and Benchmarks: Apple 13-Inch MacBook

7/9/2007

By David Nagel

Software Features
Now, Apple has always been known for its thoughtful approach to software in the sense that what's delivered to the end user is straightforward and elegant. I won't get into a comparison between Mac OS X and Windows. As you can probably gather, I'm a Mac user, and that's what I prefer. But the goal is always to provide the right tool for the right user. If some prefer Windows, great. If some prefer Mac OS X, fantastic. They work together nicely these days. Plus, like all Intel-based Macs, the MacBook can run Windows quite well (as you saw in a couple of the benchmark results above).

I will comment on ease of use. I had my seven-year-old daughter set up this MacBook, from unpacking to getting started making comic books. She went through it with a little bit of encouragement, including setting herself up as administrator and giving herself a custom admin icon on the fly during the setup process. The one hurdle she couldn't leap was in setting up wireless access initially. I couldn't either. For some reason, the set-up wizard couldn't figure out my wireless encryption scheme. But we resolved that right after the initial setup using the built-in AirPort utility.

Beyond ease of use, there are several software features tat should be appealing for an education user base. I'll gloss over these briefly; you can find my more detailed reviews of these applications scattered in various publications all over the Internet.

First and foremost, I want to mention GarageBand. This is, in its own right, really a great audio tool--my favorite certainly for anything costing less than about a grand. And it's free. In fact, the only things that stop it from being considered a pro app are the limited number of plugins you can use on any given track (seven at a time per track) and the merely CD-quality supported sample rates. But for education users, probably the most significant thing about GarageBand is that it's the best podcasting tool I've seen to date, with support for ducking, speech enhancement, a huge library of sound effects and various audio samples, recording interviews via iChat, podcast artwork tracks, and up to eight inputs for simultaneous recording (plus one software instrument track, if your podcast for some reason involves a guy on synth). It's slick and easy, and it's a blast to use.

Next up is iDVD. This is a complete DVD authoring tool designed for simplicity and creating DVDs with impact using minimal effort. It's not a pro-level authoring tool like DVD Studio Pro, and it doesn't offer the encoding capabilities of pro-level systems, but it'll certainly get the job done for everything from student projects to event videography applications.

Likewise, iMovie HD is not a pro-level non-linear editor, But for students putting together projects, it's easy to learn, fun to use, and fairly versatile.

Those three are what I consider to be the best of the iLife suite. The MacBook ships with several other software tools (iWeb, iPhoto, etc.), but GarageBand, iDVD, and iMovie stand out as great reasons on their own to invest in a Mac.

Recommendations
Obviously I'm a fan of the MacBook. I bought two myself the day they first came out, and I haven't regretted the decision. The latest generation of MacBooks is even more compelling, with great CPU performance, improved networking capabilities, larger base storage, and larger base RAM. For features, performance, and price, I give it an overall grade of A-. Not perfect, but pretty outstanding.

The MacBook reviewed here sells for $1,199 with an educational discount. As of this writing, Apple is also offering education customers rebate of up to $199 on the purchase of a MacBook with an iPod or iPod Nano through Apple or an authorized Apple Campus Store.

Read More:

• Apple

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About the author: Dave Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's educational technology online publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.

Have any additional questions? Want to share your story? Want to pass along a news tip? Contact Dave Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.

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