Before the latest mid-2009 wwdc announcements, I debated for the longest time which apple laptop to get my wife. To get into the macbook pro strata was almost an additional $700 canadian. Now the choice is much clearer. Here’s a great breakdown on theappleblog
—
A Mac laptop question I’ve been getting asked over the past few months is which 13-inch MacBook is the better value — the posh aluminum unibody model, or the $300 cheaper carryover white polycarbonate unit, which, after two substantial updates in 2009, had been upgraded to pretty closely match the more expensive machine performance-wise, and had the bonus of a FireWire port, which the unibody didn’t.
My take has been that it’s a nice sort of dilemma, since you really couldn’t go wrong. Both models offered excellent value — more computer for the money than ever before in Apple portables.
However, the Mac portable landscape, and the relative value equation for these two models, shifted dramatically with the MacBook Pro line announcements at WWDC, and I can now declare a clear value-leader. The renamed, upgraded, and price-chopped 13-inch MacBook Pro now wins at a walk, retaining all the goodness of the aluminum MacBook but with a boatload of value added, along with a $100 price reduction. You really can’t go wrong with the new baby MacBook Pro now having a FireWire port restored and the welcome addition of an SD Card slot for good measure — something that’s never been seen before on an Apple laptop. You also get a backlit keyboard, a quarter-gigabyte more clock speed, and a built-in battery claimed to go up to seven hours between recharges.
The WhiteBook, now sole designate of the plain “MacBook” name, is still a formidable machine for $200 cheaper if you’re on a tight budget. Last week, prior to WWDC, Apple refreshed the white MacBook, quietly bumping the Core 2 Duo clock speed to 2.13GHz, the RAM speed to 800MHz, and matched the base unibody’s 160GB standard hardware drive capacity (upgradable to 500GB), which for a brief interval actually made the price-leader MacBook faster than the more expensive base unibody. But no longer. Here’s how it all shapes up between the WhiteBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro now that the dust has settled a bit.
The Shootout
Processor Clock Speed
WhiteBook: 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo
Unibody: 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo
Advantage: Unibody
Frontside Bus Speed
WhiteBook: 1066MHz
Unibody: 1066MHz
Advantage: Draw
RAM speed
WhiteBook: 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Unibody: 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Advantage: Unibody
Standard RAM
WhiteBook: 2GB
Unibody: 2GB
Advantage: Draw
Graphics Chipset
WhiteBook: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
Unibody: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
Advantage: Draw
Hard Drive Capacity (Standard)
WhiteBook: 160GB
Unibody: 160GB
Advantage: Draw
Display Backlight
WhiteBook: CCFL
Unibody: LED
Advantage: Unibody
USB Ports
WhiteBook: 2
Unibody: 2
Advantage: Draw
FireWire Ports
WhiteBook: One FireWire 400
Unibody: One FireWire 800 (backwards compatible with FW400 via optional adapter)
Advantage: Unibody
SD Card Slot
WhiteBook: None
Unibody: 1
Advantage: Unibody
Backlit Keyboard
WhiteBook: No
Unibody: Yes
Advantage: Unibody
Bluetooth
WhiteBook: Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Unibody: Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Advantage: Draw
Ethernet Port
WhiteBook: One Gigabit Ethernet
Unibody: One Gigabit Ethernet
Advantage: Draw
Video Out
WhiteBook: Mini-DVI
Unibody: Mini DisplayPort
Advantage: Depends on your needs and legacy hardware
Trackpad
WhiteBook: Conventional with button
Unibody: Glass multi-touch buttonless
Advantage: Unibody
iSight Camera
WhiteBook: Yes
Unibody: Yes
Advantage: Draw
Housing Enclosure
WhiteBook: White polycarbonate plastic
Unibody: Aluminum carved from a single billet
Advantage: Unibody
Price
WhiteBook: $999
Unibody: $1,199
Advantage: WhiteBook
Score (Wins in these 18 categories)
13″ Unibody MacBook Pro: 8
13″ White MacBook: 1
Draws: 9
Comparison continued at theappleblog
Related posts:
- Daily Digest for June 12th Published 13 inch White Macbook vs. Unibody Macbok Pro...
- Daily Digest for June 11th RT @samradford: Simply BRILLIANT. Must read (and watch) from...
- Daily Digest for June 11th The twitpocalypse is upon us – http://bit.ly/rqAli [#] —...
- Daily Digest for June 12th Getting laser focused on clearing out some majorly backlogged...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
