Breakdown: MacBook (Late 2008)

The long awaited upgrade to the MacBook line has finally arrived during Apple’s special notebook event. While the looks strike a chord with some potential buyers, the specs mark a drastic change in Apple’s marketing ventures. A mix of Nvidia GPUs and environmental friendly designs dominate across the board. A new glossy LCD clad with a glass cover offer deeper and more vibrant colors. The new Unibody enclosure provides for a sturdier and lighter chassis.

Apple did a peculiar thing in the face of an ongoing economic crisis: ignore the less cash strapped consumers and focus heavily on those looking for pro features. While anyone who waited for a MacBook Pro in the miniature size of a MacBook will be satisfied, Apple’s attempt to appeal to switchers and bargain notebook hunters alike won’t be met with much success considering the odd variations between last generation’s MacBook and the current generation. $999 will net you a nice white plastic MacBook sporting a slightly faster Core 2 Duo processor and Firewire 400 but bogs you down with an aging Intel X3100, smaller Hard Drive, slower and minimal RAM and the absence of a Super Drive. The gap between the old entry level MacBook and the newest Aluminum clad model is monumental in terms of Apple’s marketing which should make for a greater price drop considering the same difference will only net you a slightly faster CPU bigger Hard Drive. Sadly, this wasn’t the case.

Faster Graphics

Pricing abominations aside, the newest MacBook tries to position itself as the minimalist professional spec’d machine in a smaller package. What really makes the MacBook and even it’s slimmer sibling, the Air, excel is the inclusion of Nvidia’s integrated GPU and Chipset the MCP79 or better known as the GeForce 9400M. While it also resides in the MacBook Pro as a low power alternative when battery levels are running bare, the prospect of having something other than Intel’s pathetic excuse of a graphics processing option paves the way for an expansive Mac gaming library and support for OpenCL when it ships with Snow Leopard next year.

The nitty gritty of the 9400M is the most appealing aspect of this new MacBook and of course for Apple, the opportunity to announce another company’s product before they do. At the surface, liberation from the crap-tastic Intel integrated graphics chipsets should be enough of a reason to upgrade for any media enthusiast. Video junkies will especially appreciate accelerated H.264 and MPEG-2 decoding which saves on battery life, casual gamers of course will be excited by being able to have “Mac” and “gaming” in a positive sentence and finally, the trendy environmental saving advocate will be impressed with the energy savings.

Display Port makes a dominant appearance on this chipset and arrives on one of the first laptops to sport the new spec. Apple’s reasoning for the sudden upgrade; smaller port size, higher pixel resolutions and multi display support which were just outside the limitations of the previous generation MacBook’s Mini DVI port. This means you could hook up a 30 inch display running at 2560 x 1600 pixels to the newest MacBook and for comparison, the current 17 inch MacBook Pro which packs a GeForce 8600M GT can barely drive one such display through the old DVI spec.

Future proofing is the theme with these laptops and Nvidia’s chipset not only supports Intel CPUs new and old but also whatever comes between now and the newest addition, Nehalem. Support for DDR3-1333 MHz and a Memory Controller are also built in effectively removing another chip off the Logic Board, something Apple chose to take advantage of by slimming out the case. It should be noted that since the Chipset Apple chose is 32 bit, the maximum amount of memory supported will be capped at 4GBs

The other show stopper in Nvidia’s Chipset is support for PhysX and CUDA, something gamers and especially Apple will take notice of. PhysX allows for additional physics processing to take place if part of the GPU’s processing is freed up allowing for more realistic game play. CUDA on the other hand, won’t be a big deal on its own to Apple. Instead, having support for the Compute Unified Device Architecture means OpenCL, Apple’s version of the CUDA spec, can be implemented easily once Snow Leopard ships. This means that tasks which utilize parallel processing can be offloaded to the GPU and be accomplished in less time.

Real world use of the new GPU are being benchmarked under OS X and are showing massive gains over the previous X3100. Primate Labs has a CPU intensive benchmark posted along side a gaming benchmark by Obsessbable. More memory is utilized, (256 MB DDR3-1066 over 144 MB DDR2-800) and CPU cycles are freed up not having to process graphics and execute code simultaneously.

Unibody Enclosure

Usually an enclosure redesign is nothing much to Blog about but in this case Apple, has made it a high priority during the MacBook’s facelift. Rumors sprang about a new manufacturing process that pointed towards Apple creating the entire case from a solid block of Aluminum then melting it down into another Aluminum block again. The process is even more expansive than previously thought requiring much more precision through the use of Computer Numerical Control.

The new Unibody enclosure takes its root in a solid block of Aluminum which must go through 13 different milling process and before that can happen, massive blocks of the metal are cut and cut again to create the perfect size slab. This is radically different than Apple’s previous manufacturing process and the current build process of today’s PC makers. Before, pieces were cut and welded to frames which were curved and bent but the opportunity for design defects were always present. Apple is hoping that with this new precision process, no flaws will translate into to the final product.

All of this means an overall lighter notebook and more environmentally friendly design. The removal of many toxins has garnered praise from various environmental advocates such as Green Peace and a slimmer frame plus smaller packaging means more MacBooks can be moved in one shipment cutting back on Carbon footprints. Another step in achieving a greener design was the incorporation of LEDs to light the display. Not only do they cut back on power, but are also less harmful than CFL bulbs which take a while to achieve full illumination.

Apple has even provided us a close up look at the new manufacturing process via Quicktime which can be streamed or downloaded from their site.

Other Bits

The new glass trackpad and other hardware bumps make this MacBook a real contender when compared to other notebooks as well. Pro level features can be found on the MacBook and give consumers as well as pro-sumers a powerful computer in a small frame. Multitouch gestures have finally made their way to the MacBook in a revolutionary way that almost fools you into thinking you’re using an iPhone. Multi-finger gestures can control Spaces, iPhoto and Preview editing tools, window navigation and can act as a massive button requiring a slight push on the whole pad to activate a single click while a two click tap acts as a control+click.

However, there are some caveats to this new design. Due to the slimmed case design, Firewire 400 is noticeably absent. While Steve attributes its removal as being unpopular when compared to USB, this alone will decide if some professionals should get a MacBook Pro over the MacBook for high speed data transfer. However, consumers who wished to take advantage of Firewire for Target Disk mode and Migration Assistant will be disappointed as the former is long gone without the supported Hardware and the later will only work over alternate connections such as Ethernet.