It's me, Apple fanboi again...

No good Apple talk in a while on this blog (or, for that matter, on my personal one either), so I figured I'd share a little talk about the current laptop fleet they're shipping. In one form or another, I either own or use (or have set up) at least one of each, so I've got a good grounds for comparison.

First up: the $999 white MacBook. Except for the plastic case and the 120GB hard drive, this is basically identical to the $1300 aluminum model. And it still has FireWire 400 available on it - the last Mac, in fact, with a "classic" FireWire 400 connector (the Air and unibody MacBooks have no FireWire at all, and the other Pro and desktop systems have FireWire 800). A very good value, as it's based on the same chipset as the entire rest of the portable series, supports 4GB of RAM, and if you want a better hard drive it's very easy to upgrade. When my wife's 4-year-old iBook started to lose the ability to hold a charge a couple of months ago this is what I got her to replace it.

The next step up is the "Unibody" MacBooks. First of all, these cases are rock-solid, and there is no inherent performance penalty to these compared to a MacBook Pro - unlike previous generation models. The nVidia graphics performance is good, and the screens are nice and bright. Battery life on the MacBook models is generally very good. The more expensive model ($1599) offers a faster CPU, a larger HD, and, most notably, the backlit keyboard that was only available before on the premium laptops.

The MacBook Air is a perfect machine for those who need it. Unfortunately, that's a pretty small market. The Air is resonably fast with the new chipset, has a Pro-level screen (sitting with an Air and a MacBook side-by-side you can really see the difference - the MacBook looks really nice until you put the Air next to it). The weight is outstanging, and it's the most solid-feeling ultraportable I've ever handled. But it has definite drawbacks. The battery life is only "OK" (I'd expect 6 hours out of a device like the Air, especially when you can't swap batteries). It has only one USB port - which is a huge drawback if you need to use a wired network, because there is no Ethernet port. Only a $29 dongle for 10/100 Ethernet. The other major Air flaw (a little better in the current version) is heat. The thing cooks - almost literally! Compared to a 2.4 GHz MacBook the 1.86 GHz Air I've used measures almost 8 degrees C hotter at the back edge. It also is limited in storage - but that's not as much of a flaw as it is a side effect of using 1.8" drives. On the plus side, the 128GB SSD drive available for it is amazingly fast, especially for read operations (it warm-boots in about 9 seconds).

Then we turn to the Pro series, a 15" model (in two speeds) and a 17" model. I have the most experience so far with the 15" (the 17" only recently began shipping), and it's a solid, if slightly pricey system. The major features of the Pro series compared to the MacBook line are these additions:

- Better screens
- Discrete GPU
- ExpressCard/34
- FireWire 800
- Official support (in the 17") for 8GB RAM

Interestingly, the Pro systems all let you toggle between the built-in chipset graphics and the GPU. This is managed through the Energy Saver system preference, and at least at this point requires either a reboot or logging out and back in to your account to switch. Performance is significantly higher for graphics apps when the GPU is live, at the expense of battery life. However, even the built-in graphics are much better than the previous generation of Mac (and Windows) laptops that used the Intel chipsets with their integrated graphics.

The only major performance note I'd sound about the Pro line (which is kind of a given on the MacBook) is that when running rendering software using virtualized Windows (via Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion) redraw performance is poor. This is common in most virtualization environments, and the vendors are working to improve this. I have a client where a couple of their users do almost everything on Macs except run Solidworks, and this is an issue there. Though not enough to make them use Bootcamp to reboot under Windows natively!

The 17" MacBook Pro basically gives you two things that the 15" doesn't. One, of course, is a massive screen. The other is a sealed-in battery that's big enough to provide 5+ hours of usage. For real. If the Air was only so lucky!

So to sum up, Apple's current laptop line has a pretty good continuum of models/price points covering a range from consumer to pro. The only real holes are in places they choose (thus far) not to compete in. The major gap in their line is at the bottom - Apple has no "bargain basement" laptop to compete with the $599 Dells that they advertise in Sunday newspaper inserts and they also are not currently a player in the netbook field. I'd say that is a reasonably OK compromise for now - though it wouldn't surprise me to see a device this year that is designed to bridge the netbook/laptop gap to some degree from them.

Sure, Apple says they aren't interested in the netbook market. On the other hand, they once said that about cell phones, too. And look how that worked out.