The Laptop
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Opening up the laptop for the first time is stunning. Apple really did a good job with the design of the machine, and you can tell not only by looking at it, but by feeling it. The aluminum is smooth to the touch, and it feels incredibly sturdy, even over the previous generation of MacBook Pros. It is very difficult to bend the aluminum at all on the upper enclosure, while on my old one the creaking of the top case against the surrounding parts was quite irritating. It might just be that that laptop was aging, but it more likely comes down to the new unibody enclosure. The edge of the laptop does not have a plastic piece running around it, but is the same part. Not only does this look much nicer, but it results in a much more durable build.
Some people have complained that they don’t like the black keyboard on the silver case, but I do, and there’s a simple reason for it: readability. A highly touted feature on the older MacBook Pro was a backlit keyboard, but when the keys glowed, they would sometimes blend right in with the silver keys. With a black keyboard, turning on the backlight is rarely even needed due to the increased contrast. It just makes more sense to have white characters, and a black background is the only way to do that.
On the topic of the keyboard, the new one is much more comfortable to type on than the previous generation of MacBook Pros. I always liked the MacBook keyboard, and having it in the Pro family is a very nice addition.
The new trackpad is... well, different. I’m getting used to it, but don’t expect to ever be able to go back to a regular trackpad: this one is significantly larger, and the method for clicking is different enough that going back to a small trackpad will be very hard to live with. The multi-touch gestures included are more or less useless: the pinch to expand is difficult to execute and often results in scrolling instead of increasing size, swiping through files is only implemented in a few select applications, and the double tap to drag a window around requires turning on the “tap to click” feature: a feature which allows you to click not by pressing down on the trackpad, but by just touching your finger to it. I find this difficult to use, resulting in clicking by just moving my finger or accidentally tapping while typing, meaning the text I’m typing gets moved around. Overall, just a pain.
However, I was happy to discover my worst fears were not true: the trackpad does not rely on this “tap to click” feature, but it is actually a button. You need to apply pressure, and it does make the reassuring “click” noise when you do so. The laptop would have been sent straight back to Shanghai otherwise.
Another welcome change from our friends in Cupertino is increased accessibility to the hard drive. It sits right next to the battery: to access it, just pull a lever on the underside of the machine, and unscrew the drive. No taking apart of the entire case. However, Apple made it much more difficult to change the RAM: you need to remove the underside of the laptop now. Luckily, mine’s maxed out at 4GB now anyway.