13″ MacBook Pro: Time to say goodbye?

Written by Charles Moore

Apple - Apple Topics

So argues CNET’s Scott Stein. I beg to differ on the point of hustling the 13″ Pro out the door, although I expect that Stein will soon get his wish.

Concededly, the original 13″ aluminum unibody form factor, which debuted as a plain MacBook in October 2008, is getting a bit long in the tooth. As Stein observes, that was before Barack Obama was elected president, Avatar hadn’t yet been released, the iPhone was still on its first refresh, and the iPad was still a year and a half away.

Still, that’s a much shorter production tenure than the old dual USB iBook form factor had (that model (in various G3 and G4 permutations) staying in production for about five years), and the 13″ unibody is a much better design than the iBook ever hoped to be. I’ve owned both, and know whereof I speak.

Stein seems disgruntled that since October ’08, the 13″ unibody has barely changed in appearance at all, although he acknowledges that beneath its anodized aluminum skin, it’s a completely different computer today than it was 3-1/2 years ago—now with an Intel Core i processor, Thunderbolt, an integrated long-life battery, and a better screen—but he seems bothered by the fact that you can plunk a 2008 13-incher down beside the latest 13″ Pro and most people won’t be able to tell the difference.

And the problem is? Sometimes they get things right on the first try. I would argue that the 13″ aluminum unibody is one of the best, if not the best, all-round Apple laptop design(s) ever. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Indeed, Stein concedes that he himself has leaned slightly toward the 13″ Pro as the laptop of choice if one had to pick an all-around Apple computer.

Of course the hot new(ish) kid on the block is the second generation MacBook Air, but bear in mind that it’s already nearly a year and a half old itself, and has undergone major refreshments since its debut in October 2010. I find the Air enticing too, but the 13″ Pro still retains some substantial advantages, such as the built-in optical drive, vastly greater hard-drive storage capacity compared with the Air’s SSD-only, RAM expansion capacity up to 16 GB compared with the Air’s hard-soldered, non-upgradeable two or four GB, a FireWire 800 port, and built-in Ethernet networking. It’s also significantly cheaper than the 13″ MacBook Air, and you can order or swap in a SSD if you wish as well. The 13″ Air does have a higher-resolution display.

Stein counter-argues that few people use optical drives (I still do, albeit not often), both processor and graphics performance are roughly equivalent, and he suggests that making hybrid drives optionally available in the Air—a la some of the new PC Ultrabooks—would address his only misgiving about the Air vs. the 13″ Pro since hybrids are available with 500GB capacities. He admits that he doesn’t want to live with only 128GB of storage on a laptop, and would rather not pay the stiff tariff for 256GB.

I think that’s skipping over the Air’s RAM limitations a bit too blithely, but with Apple’s entire notebook lineup due for replacement in 2012, I’m guessing he’s probably right that just one 13″ form factor will emerge, and it will almost certainly resemble the current 13″ Air more than the 13″ Pro.

Nevertheless, the 13″ MacBook Pro is established one of the great Apple laptops of all time, and like the Pismo PowerBook and the 12″ PowerBook G4, it’s destined for the Mac portable hall of fame as one of Apple’s classic computer designs.

NTD Source: http://goo.gl/DKKdU