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Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt)

June 6, 2011 by admin

As fate would have it, an Intel chipset glitch delayed shipments of almost every laptop manufacturer, save one. Apple, which has typically been last in transitioning to new technology, is now among the first to launch laptops with Sandy Bridge (known officially as second-generation Core CPUs)—and arriving first has its privileges. The Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) ($2,199 direct) is the fastest laptop on our bench, thanks to a component overhaul that involves the first ever quad-core processor on a Mac laptop and a rekindled romance with AMD graphics. And then there’s Thunderbolt, a new connection technology that has mounds of potential, but I’ll contain my excitement until compatible peripherals ship. This, and a new Facetime HD Webcam, places the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) at the peak of technology’s Mount Olympus and earns it an Editor’s Choice in the desktop replacement laptop category.

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Thunderbolt Icon Is the only Design Change
Design-wise, don’t expect a thinner or lighter laptop. The only change to the design is the addition of a Thunderbolt icon next to mini-Displayport. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) keeps its wondrous shape and form, since all of the changes are from within. At the moment, I don’t see a need to alter its exterior. It’s still the thinnest, most streamlined laptop in its class, made so by carving the center out of a thin slab of aluminum. It’s at least a quarter of an inch thinner and about a pound lighter, at 5.5 pounds, than the Dell XPS 15 ($1,115 direct, 4.5 stars) (6.3 lbs) and Asus N53JF-XE1 ($1,015 street, 4 stars) (6.3 lbs).
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Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Top
Apple MacBook Pro : Angle
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Angle
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Front

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The MacBook Pro15-inch (Thunderbolt) has several screen options, all of which require that you pay a significant premium, although I can’t think of many consumer laptops that have an anti-glare screen (a $150 option). There are laptops that can scale to higher resolutions, though. The XPS 15 and the N53JF-XE1 either ship or have an option for a 1080p display (1,920-by-1,080); the Macbook Pro 15-inch is available with a 1,440-by-900 or 1,680-by-1,050 display ($100). Still, having screen options is a luxury that few others are willing to offer. The HP Pavilion dv7-4283cl, for instance, is only available with a glossy screen and 1,600-by-900 resolution.

The chiclet-style keyboard carries on the Macbook Pro tradition of black keys that matches the black of the screen’s bezel. Backlights, which are found between the keys and aluminum foundation, are absolutely invaluable in low-lit situations. You can also find a backlit keyboard in the XPS 15. The signature Apple clickpad dwarfs all others in terms of size and responsiveness. No other touchpad can recognize two- to four-finger gestures as accurately and fluidly as Apple’s, and the reason for this is two-fold: First, it’s made of glass, which doesn’t wear out over time. Others use acrylic or some lesser material in their touchpad construction. Second, the coding drivers and software for the touchpad are created in-house (instead of through some third-party developer) so that each click, swipe, or pinch works to perfection.
Specifications

Type    Gaming, Media, Business, Small Business, Desktop Replacement
Processor Name    Intel Core i7-2720QM
Operating System    Mac OS X 10.6
Processor Speed    2.2 GHz
RAM    4 GB
Weight    5.5 lb
Screen Size    15.6 inches
Screen Size Type    widescreen
Graphics Card    AMD Radeon HD 6750M
2nd Graphics Card    Intel HD Graphics 3000
Storage Capacity (as Tested)    750 GB
Networking Options    802.11n
Primary Optical Drive    DVD+R DL

What is Thunderbolt?
The last time Apple led the way with a new connection technology was when it initiated the FireWire standard. Thunderbolt, an I/O technology from Intel (codenamed Light Peak), operates under a similar principle in that it boosts transfer rates to unprecedented levels. The technology lives inside the mini-Displayport, so structurally the port looks exactly like the one in the previous MacBook Pro iterations. But when it’s connected to a Thunderbolt-equipped peripheral, transfer rates can hit a theoretical 10Gbps. That’s roughly 21 times the speed of USB 2.0 and FireWire 400, 12 times that of Firewire 800, and twice that of USB 3.0.

The Thunderbolt port, as Apple explains it, is essentially taking PCI Express—the channel that every port and slot goes through—out of the box. It’s like finding the shortcut that gets you directly onto the five-lane highway. Originally, Intel designed Thunderbolt to work over an optical cable, but because it has yet to figure out how to power external peripherals through this method, copper is used instead. You’ll need a new cable that runs from the Thunderbolt/mini-Displayport to the external device. Yes, it can still output to an external display—or connect to any device for that matter. As proof, Apple demonstrated a RAID server (made by Promise Technologies) attached to the laptop, which was then attached to an Apple Cinema Display, in a daisy chain configuration. Thunderbolt is bi-directional, meaning it can have two streams going at the same time—up to 10Gbps for each stream. In practice, for instance, you can simultaneously stream four uncompressed 1080p video clips from the RAID server to the laptop (first stream) and then display out to the Cinema Display at the same time (second stream) without lag or distortion. You can barely stream one uncompressed 1080p clip through FireWire, let alone four. During Apple’s demonstration, transfer speeds were peaking at 5Gbps—the realistic speed of Thunderbolt, judging by the throughput meter Apple had in place.

You can also think of Thunderbolt as a universal port. If a company were to create a Thunderbolt hub or adapter, it can work with all sorts of connection technologies, including FireWire, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSATA, and Gigabit Ethernet. Remember, all of these technologies go through PCI Express at some point. Before you get too excited, though, Thunderbolt peripherals won’t ship for months (the ones that were on display were prototypes), and Apple is rumored to have an exclusive on this technology until 2012. So doubts about its adoption rate is completely understandable. Update: Intel pointed out that there is no exclusivity on Thunderbolt, OEMs are free to implement it when they think the time is right.)

Facetime HD and Usual Suspects of Features
With the new HD Webcam sensor, video feeds no longer look grainy or grotesquely stretched when filling the entire screen. The streams are broadcast at a resolution of 1,280-by-720 (720p), which is about 3 times the resolution of the Webcam in previous MacBook Pro models. Video chatting with the Facetime app, over a Wi-Fi connection, was free of distortions. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) isn’t the only laptop with an HD Webcam, though. You can find one in the Dell XPS 15, which has a Skype-certified HD Webcam. Lenovo, Sony, and HP have also rolled out laptops with 720p-capable HD Webcams.

Every other port and slot remains untouched from the previous iteration. It has two USB ports, FireWire 800, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and SDXC media card slot. The dual-layer DVD burner will seem generic compared with the Blu-Ray drives found in the Dell XPS 15 and HP Pavilion dv7-4283cl ($999.99 list, 4 stars). And don’t expect to see a Blu-ray drive in a Mac laptop anytime soon, as this is a road Apple so far refuses to take. This configuration ships with a 750GB hard drive that spins at 5400rpm; the Dell XPS 15 and HP dv7-4283cl come with faster 7200rpm drives. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) offers SSD drives as well, in 128GB ($100), 256GB ($500), and 512GB ($1,100) capacities.

Massive Component Overhaul
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) With Intel’s second-generation Core architecture, this isn’t a mere brain transplant where you swap out one processor for another—it’s a multi-organ makeover. For the first time in MacBook Pro history, the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is equipped with a quad-core processor—a 2.2GHz, Intel Core i7-2720QM (past models had dual-core processors). The two extra cores play a vital role in multithreaded tasks, such as those found in professional video and photo editing packages (think Final Cut Pro and Adobe Products). A revamped architecture also means faster memory speeds (up to 1333MHz), although capacities are still 4GB to start, 8GB ($200) maximum.

On our PCMark Vantage test—a gauge of overall performance—the MacBook Pro 15-inch scored 8,315 (under Windows 7 Home Premium via Bootcamp), outpacing the Asus N53SV-A1 (7,257), which has a second-generation 2GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU and 4GB of memory (stay tuned for our review).. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) finished Handbrake, a single-threaded video transcoding test, in 1 minute 53 seconds, well ahead of the Asus N53SV-A1 (2:06). It crushed the previous Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Core i5), particularly in Cinebench 11.5 (5.07) and Handbrake (1:53) tests where the gains were doubled. It wouldn’t even be fair to compare the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) to the Dell XPS 15, Asus N53JF-XE1, and HP dv7-4283cl, since the other three are running previous-generation Intel parts. Suffice it to say, it was a massacre, but I suppose being first with new technologies on our labs bench has its advantages.

One of the more unexpected changes lies in the graphics. Apple has long been an Nvidia proponent on the laptop side, although it has used ATI (now AMD) graphics chips in the past. But the company believes that the AMD Radeon 6750M is a better 3D chip, and the performance numbers bear that out. This is the first time a MacBook Pro has broken the 10,000 point mark in 3DMark06 (it scored 10,878), edging the Asus N53SV-A1 (10,073) and its Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU. The MacBook Pro15-inch (Thunderbolt) blew past the Dell XPS 15 (8,174) and HP dv7-4283cl (4,723) in the same test, although the Dell XPS 15 is being updated with a new Nvidia chip as we speak. At high-quality settings, popular game titles like Crysis (18.8 frames per second) and Lost Planet 2 (30.8 fps) were absolutely playable, as I found out by running them in Windows 7, via Bootcamp.

Apple also found a way to link its Automatic Graphics Switching (AGS) technology with the AMD graphics chip, whereas Windows-based laptops are still performing the switch manually through software. The switch, like the previous iteration, is done automatically by recognizing which apps or tasks require a heavy-duty graphics chip. So plugging in an external display, running 3D games, or transcoding an HD video defaults to the AMD Radeon 6750M, while basic tasks (e-mail, Web browsing, etc) defaults to the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics. Apple will also let you to force the laptop to run on the AMD graphics, done through system preferences.

Although the size of the battery didn’t change and the internals aren’t any more energy efficient than the previous platform, the MacBook 15-inch (Thunderbolt) improved its battery score on MobileMark 2007 (run in Windows via Bootcamp) to 4 hours 40 minutes (from 3 hours, 21 minutes in the previous version). It goes without saying that power management and battery optimizations are better tuned in the Mac OS 10 environment than in Windows7, which is why I also looped a MP4 movie file in OS 10 until the battery died. The 15-inch lasted 6 hours 43 minutes in this test. Whether it’s in Windows 7 or Mac OS 10, it outlasted the Dell XPS 15 (3:48 on MobileMark 2007) and Asus N53JF-XE1 (3:15).

Final Thoughts
Now, I realize that it’s still early in the game, as scores of laptops will eventually arrive on my bench with Intel’s second-generation chips and with graphics chips as powerful as the ones found in Apple’s new laptops. As it stands, however, the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is the fastest and fastest shipping laptop to date (you can stroll into Apple store and buy one as we speak), and it’s all thanks to an Intel chipset glitch that prevented every other manufacturer from shipping their new laptops on time. Apple has assured me that this glitch will not affect any of the MacBook Pros, since they’re all using new and unaffected chipsets from Intel.

As for the new Intel architecture, this happens once every year, if not longer, and Apple made the most of it. The speeds clocked from our full range of performance tests were mind-blowingly fast, as were the graphics frame rates that came from a renewed partnership with AMD. Although Thunderbolt is still very early in its third-party support stages, it’s a hot new technology that Apple wrestled away from everyone else. Add the Facetime HD Webcam and the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is a technological tour de force.

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