Apple White MacBook Early 2009
Apple's best-value mobile Mac by far
Review Recession or no recession, Apple’s latest set of quarterly financial results saw the company top $10bn in sales for the first time ever. As well as selling zillions of iPhones and iPods, it also increased Mac sales by almost ten per cent. That growth was largely down to the success of its MacBook range of laptops, which were completely redesigned and upgraded in October 2008.
Apple's white MacBook: rather good value for money?
That redesign no doubt helped boost sales, but the remarkable fact about the new MacBooks is that their gleaming new aluminium design actually resulted in a hefty price rise, with prices now starting at £929 for a model with 13in, 1280 x 800 screen and 2GHz processor.
The fact that Apple can increase its prices and still rack up significant sales increases during the worst recession in the entire history of the universe says something about the sheer eye-catching quality of its designs. Even so, £929 is a lot of money for what is meant to be the low end of Apple’s product range. And, in particular, it’s a lot of money for the cash-strapped students and the bulk-buying US schools and colleges that make up such an important part of Apple’s market.
So, when it introduced the new aluminium MacBooks, Apple also decided to keep one of the older MacBooks on sale in order to appease its key educational customers. Priced at £719, the old model retained the somewhat cheap and cheerful white plastic casing that it had used for several years, emphasizing the fact that it was very much the cheapo alternative to its shiny aluminium siblings.
Then, in January, with virtually no fanfare at all, Apple went and upgraded the white MacBook as well, and while it may lack the gleaming good looks of the aluminium models the new white MacBook actually works out as rather good value for money.
The secret's in the spec
The new white MacBook costs £719, as before, and includes a 13.3in screen, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of DDR 2memory, 120GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive and – the key improvement – an Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chip. On paper, those specs look almost identical to those of the 2GHz aluminium MacBook model that costs £929. However, you need to look a little more closely at the spec sheet to spot the differences.
COMMENTS
Cars v PC
The one question that always bugs me is:
All those who post "I can buy (name cheap PC maker here) for (name huge price difference) less and that anything from Apple is overpriced junk" comments. Do these same people turn around and say "I can buy a Chevrolet Epica for £6-20,000 less and anything by BMW is overpriced junk"?
Getting a complex?
A read of pretty much any Reg comment thread will reveal what many have long suspected - that there is far more hydrophobic fanboy behaviour from the anti-mac contingent than the ones that are actually being accused of fanboy-ism.
And really, mario - *no-one* weeps with envy for penguintards. Really, um, no-one.
Get yourself out the house a bit more.
Firewire
The CPU is laden by USB2, Firewire's chipset does more work which results in less CPU overhead.
USB 2 in reality is about 240-280meg BPS.
It's such a shame USB won the legacy replacement war. Licence fees for Firewire in the early days were the killer. Firewire even provides a decent amount of bus power for external devices.
buy and acer
get a decent spec acer for a lot less, load linux on it and watch your i-tard and win-tard friends weep with envy.
@patrick
Where you have overheating laptops that can't legally be called laptops as if you put on on your lap you would get burnt, nasty white plastic (I have my aluminium and steel PC cases, much nicer than any mac I have ever seen), non-replaceable batteries in your laptops and portable devices, a propietary OS filled with useless 'features' for their own sake and a lack of customisability and software support, and you are tied to apple's overpriced hardware out of misguided loyalty...
Oh yes, an ARM CPU... I'm sure if you overclocked it you might just be able to run something resembling a modern desktop OS, as long as you don't to to run more then 3 applications. If you want a low power CPU, look no further than intel Atom (although that is only useful for netbooks), although for real laptops, modern CPUs have plenty of power saving features.
As for desktops, to quote the BOFH, "A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back! In fact, a REAL computer would have a hole in the front to push trees into and an exhaust pipe out the back for the black smoke to come out of."
