Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
The MacBook benefit nicely from its unibody face - elevator : it ’s swooning and more attractive , and it performs undecomposed than the model that get before it . Think of it as a MacBook Pro minus the FireWire port and SD visiting card slot , for $ 200 less .
13 - in MacBook/2.26GHz ( belated 2009 )
In just three and a half long time , theMacBook , direct at medium computer users , students , and microcomputer switchers , has become Apple ’s best - selling Mac manikin . In its first major remodeling since 2006 , the polycarbonate MacBook has gained many of the marquee features of the 13 - inch MacBook Pro ( ) , include a unibody conception , a glass trackpad , and an LED - backlit display .
13-inch MacBook/2.26GHz (Late 2009)
New design
In many ways , the white MacBook was the lone holdout among Apple portable . As the least - expensive model , it was missing several of the new design features that had already been made standard across the repose of the laptop rail line . One of the great ones was unibody construction . make the MacBook ’s master example out of a individual piece of polycarbonate plastic ( aluminum on all other Apple models ) results in fewer part , fewer nookie , a lighter weight , and better enduringness . In switching to a unibody plan , the fresh MacBook shed the greyish Earth’s surface that appear grafted atop the frame in the old model ( ) . The outcome is a consistent blanched color , and a smoother surface without the sharp edges of the earliest generation . The keyboard also feels more whole and logical .
Instead of nonskid pad of paper in the corners on the bottom of the MacBook , the intact Earth’s surface is one giant rubberized infantry secured by eight Phillips screws . This surface is smooth and does n’t supply as much rubbing as the pads on the quondam MacBooks did , and it collected a fair amount of shit and detritus from my desk ( although a quick hang-up got it take care good as new ) .
Another job with the unibody design is that it requires that the stamp battery be built in . As with Apple ’s other unibody laptop , the barrage is not user - replaceable , but Apple says that the assault and battery turn over you between three and a one-half and seven hours of succus and up to 1000 charge cycle before being quash to 80 percent capacity . Apple enjoin that the battery should take about five year to reach that pointedness , but your mileage will vary . The society charges $ 129 to supersede the battery — the same price you ’d pay for an surplus battery for an older MacBook — which can be done as a same - day armed service in an Apple Store ( or whatever they ’re call in 2014 ) . It is still jolly easy , however , to enter the knockout driving and random access memory slots for quick upgrades or replacements in those expanse .
The new MacBook has a fixed battery, located to the left of the hard drive (photo courtesy of iFixit.com).
integrate the battery into the design allows for a bombastic ( and therefore longer - hold out ) shelling , plus it reduce some weight . In our battery trial run , the charge lasted for an impressive four hours and nine minutes while playing a looped video clip in QuickTime X at full screen and full brightness , but with AirPort turned off . That was precisely the same continuance as the 13 - inch 2.26GHz MacBook Pro , and 40 bit longer than the previous MacBook . During that time ( and during our other testing ) the bottom of the MacBook never got very warm , which had been a complaint of some MacBook exploiter in the past .
The new MacBook has a fixed battery , settle to the left field of the hard drive ( photo good manners of iFixit.com ) .
Also new is that the MacBook — like every other Mac laptop computer other than the Air — now has a glass Multi - Touch trackpad with gesture support . It ’s larger than the unite pad - and - release surface area on the old framework . After using the new MacBook for a while , I ’ve get hold the smooth , heavy trackpad more enjoyable than the one on my early - generation MacBook . It takes some getting used to if you ’ve been using the previous design , but the change is a effective one .
The 13.3 - column inch display offers the same 1280 - by-800 - pixel closure as before , but as with all other Mac portables , the unexampled MacBook uses LED backlighting on its show instead of CCFL ( cold cathode fluorescent fixture lamps ) . The display is noticeably brighter than before , and the replacement to run lets Apple finally add the MacBook to its list of arsenic- and hydrargyrum - free laptop computer displays . Viewed side by side with the screen of the onetime MacBook , the unexampled MacBook ’s screen shows a yellow coloring shift when changing your horizontal viewing slant ( the previous framework simply got more washed out ) . The 13 - column inch MacBook Pro sustain from the same color shifting .
The back of the cover has a slight wick that give it a thin show than that on MacBooks of yore , and a narrow galosh bezel protects the screen door from coming into contact lens with the keyboard when you close down the hat .
Overall , the new MacBook is slenderly wide and deep than its herald , although it shaves 0.3 pounds from the total weight . That little difference in weightiness is really quite noticeable for someone like me , who ’s been using the MacBook since it first came out . It is slightly larger in all dimensions than the 13 - inch MacBook Pro , and weigh 0.2 pounds more than its aluminum counterpart .
Ports and more
The new MacBook has a round iSight lens with only a status visible radiation to its right — the mike has moved to the upper left corner of the keyboard area . The mightiness button in the upper correct street corner of the keyboard area is diminished than before , which makes it a little harder to press .
On the front bound , the quietus condition indicant is farsighted and narrow-minded than before , but conspicuously absent is the infrared ( IR ) port that used to sit to the right of it . Without an IR port , you ca n’t use the new Apple Remote ( or the erstwhile remote , for that thing ) to control Front Row , volume , and the like . you may , however , utilize an iPhone or iPod touching with a remote app over Wi - Fi .
Speaking of port , there are also some changes to the raiment of port on the side of the MacBook . The biggest alteration is that there ’s no longer a FireWire embrasure on the MacBook — until now , it was a basic on all polycarbonate MacBooks . If you need a FireWire port — for relate a camcorder or for using FireWire Target Disk Mode , for example — the MacBook is n’t for you . For $ 200 more , a 13 - in MacBook Pro with the same processor gives you a FireWire 800 larboard , plus an South Dakota card slot and an Al natural enclosure ( although that model includes a 160 GB hard drive versus the 250 GB ride in the MacBook ) .
The showing connexion is now Mini DisplayPort ( previously there was a mini - DVI connection ) , and Apple is using a single audio interface for analogue / digital output as well as product line - in . The Sound preference window glass has a Use Audio Port For pop - up menu , from which you could choose either Sound Output or Sound Input . The level-headed larboard also corroborate the Apple Stereo Headset with mike . The other ports are gigabit ethernet , MagSafe ability , two USB 2.0 , and a Kensington ringlet expansion slot . As before , the other side features an 8X expansion slot - dilute forked - layer SuperDrive .
On the inside
The latest MacBook stills uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor , but the speed of it has bumped from 2.13GHz to 2.26GHz . The new MacBook , like its harbinger , has 3 MiB of share L2 cache . And although the MacBook wield the same 1066MHz frontside bus as before , the new mannikin supports 1066MHz DDR3 RAM as opposed to 800MHz DDR2 RAM .
The MacBook ship with 2 gigabyte , and Apple will double it to 4 GB for an spare $ 100 . Apple officially lists the maximum RAM at 4 GB , but since it uses the same chipset and element as the 13 - column inch MacBook Pro , it does suffer up to 8 GB as well . Of course , 4 GB SO - DIMM RAM modules are still very expensive . OWC pop the question an 8 GB upgrade kitfor $ 476 , for example , but as prices drop in the next year or two , having that 8 GB ceiling as an upgrade option will be a skilful affair . ( Apple does n’t offer up an 8 GB pick for the MacBook , and currently charges $ 700 to elevate the MacBook Pro from 2 GB to 8 gigabyte . )
Graphicswise , the novel MacBook utilise the same Nvidia GeForce 9400 M graphics processor , which share 256 M of RAM with the main memory , as both the old interpretation and the 13 - inch and low-down - end 15 - inch MacBook Pros . In our Call of Duty test , the fresh MacBook produced almost one systema skeletale per second more than before , but a full frame per sec less than the 13 - column inch MacBook Pro with the same specs . The MacBook still lets you mirror or extend your screen background to a second display at up to 2560 by 1600 resolution at millions of colors . You wo n’t find any of the Mini DisplayPort adapters demand to connect to an external display , however , in the box . All are freestanding accessories from Apple . The MacBook also retains its 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 wireless networking .
Performance
To gauge the new MacBook ’s speed , Macworld Lab ran our full retinue of bench mark . The new MacBook ’s slightly faster processor amphetamine and ameliorate RAM fastness make this MacBook a little bit faster than its predecessor , as you might expect . advance swan from 5.5 percent quicker for an iTunes MP3 encryption test to 17 percentage faster for an Aperture import test . The fresh MacBook shaved seven second off the Photoshop CS4 test suite ( 12.5 percent ) , 13 seconds off our iMovie archive importation test ( 10.4 pct ) , and nine seconds off our unzip archive Finder test ( 11 percent ) .
The new MacBook also match or bested the 2.26GHz 13 - column inch MacBook Pro in almost all of our trial run — somewhat surprising consider the two systems have almost identical component ( although it ’s possible that the MacBook Pro ’s smaller hard drive was a gene , or that we have a test system with a somewhat wonky voiceless crusade ) . The MacBook bollocks up the latest MacBook Air out of the water supply in all tryout except our Finder pamphlet duplication ( only one second faster ) and unzip archive ( 16 seconds slower ) tests .
New 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook benchmarks
Best results inbold . For Call of Duty 4 and MathematicaMark 7 , higher scores are undecomposed . All other tests are timed consequence where lower time are good . point of reference systems initalics .
Call of Duty mark is in anatomy per secondly . MathematicaMark is a performance musical score . All others are in minutes : seconds . All laptops were tested using Mac OS X 10.6.1 . All laptops were tested with 2 GB of RAM unless otherwise noted . The Photoshop Suite test is a curing of 14 written project , using a 50 MB file . Photoshop ’s remembering was lay to 70 pct and History was set to Minimum . We put down how long it take to render a scene with multiprocessors in CineBench . We used Compressor to encode a .mov file to the software ’s H.264 for video podcast scene . We timed the import and thumbnail trailer creation metre for 150 photos in Aperture . In iMovie , we import a Camera Archive and export it to iTunes for Mobile Devices set . We converted 90 mo of AAC audio files to MP3 using iTunes ’s High Quality place setting . We double a 1 GB folder , created a Zip archive in the Finder from the two 1 GB data file and then unzip it . We operate WorldBench 6 multitasking test using Windows via Parallels . We imported 150 photos into iPhoto . We rip a videodisk chapter to the hard drive , using HandBrake . We opened a 500 - page Word written document in Pages ’ 09.—Macworld Lab examination by James Galbraith , Chris Holt , and Roman Loyola
Macworld’s buying advice
The MacBook benefits nicely from its unibody face - lift : it ’s light and more attractive , and it perform better than the good example that come before it . you’re able to remember of it as a MacBook Pro minus the FireWire port and Coyote State batting order one-armed bandit , for $ 200 less . It performs very well and does n’t feel like an entry - level scheme . If you have only USB - based camcorders , hard drive , and peripherals , the missing FireWire port wo n’t be an issue for you . However , if you ’re still using FireWire equipment and plan to use say equipment with your laptop computer , you should or else reckon at the MacBook Pro ( an Coyote State card slot is less of an issue , since you’re able to just buy an cheap card reviewer ) .
[ Jonathan Seff is a Macworld senior editor . ]
