You Grade The Brands: Apple Notebooks

December 17th, 2009 by K. T. Bradford  

rating_apple_shApple’s popular I’m A Mac commercials reveal more than just their cleverness and snarky attitude toward Windows machines. They also highlight that Apple’s notebook offerings are unified, elegant, and simple. If you’re a PC you might be an HP, a Dell, an Acer, or any number of disparate vendors. But when you’re a Mac, you’re getting a Mac.

From now until the end of the year we’re taking a holistic look at notebook brands and how vendors fare when we aggregate data from our reviews and research, as well as third-party data. Check out Apple’s strengths and weaknesses and their 2009 review scorecard. Then sound off in the comments and tell us what you think of the brand and about your own experience with your Mac. Without your input, our report card will be incomplete.

Strengths

  • Design – There’s no doubt that every system in the MacBook line lives up to Apple’s excellent reputation for design. True to form, Apple doesn’t skimp in this area even for their least expensive system, giving as much care to the construction of the unibody plastic MacBook as they give the sturdy, aluminum MacBook Pros.
  • Touchpad - The large glass mutltitouch touchpad now featured on every MacBook released this year is easily one of the best we’ve ever used. The robust suite of gestures makes navigation, switching between windows, and every other workflow task a cinch to execute.
  • Display - The three MacBook Pros have particularly good screens. Each is bright and vibrant, making for colors that pop and true blacks.
  • Battery Life - As well as being powerful and beautiful, most of the newest MacBooks impressed us with their longevity, especially considering their graphics performance scores. Apple has also done a good job with creating batteries with longer life cycles that most of the Windows competition.
  • Mac OS X Snow Leoparad - The operating system behind every MacBook is designed to compliment the hardware and help the system sing. The tight integration of hardware and software accounts for the excellent performance we’ve noted. Snow Leopard adds welcome enhancements like a refined interface, faster performance, and out-of-the-box Exchange support.

Weaknesses

  • Ports – Though we’re fans of Mac designs overall, we’re often frustrated by some of the choices Apple makes concerning ports. For example, the MacBook lacks a memory card reader, the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros have only 2 USB ports, and the 17 inch Pro doesn’t have a memory card reader. No Macbook has an HDMI port, instead opting for the less common DisplayPort.
  • Price - With Apple you’ll always pay a premium. Knowing this, it’s hard to call the high prices a weakness when the systems have sold well enough to keep the company in the black for years. Still, we were happy to see that the unibody MacBook’s price was comparable to other systems in its class.

Best Rated Macs

Worst Rated Mac

Review Report Card

Apple has released five notebooks this year, most of which were updates to existing products. The MacBook and all three MacBook Pros received 4 stars. Only the MacBook Air trailed behind its compatriots with a low score of 2.5 stars. Every MacBook Pro also earned LAPTOP’s Editor’s Choice award.

AppleRatingGraph

Tech Support and Reliability

Apple has scored an A in our Tech Support Showdown three years in a row. According to a study by SquareTrade, Apple laptops have a failure rate of about 17 percent over a 3 year lifespan, which is a little below average when compared to other brands.

Apple’s concentration on a core line of well-built and thoroughly designed notebooks produces impressive results — the list of strengths and weaknesses speaks for itself. We’re looking forward to even more powerful notebooks in 2010 if Apple upgrades to new, more powerful Intel notebook processors. We also look forward to getting our hands on the rumored Apple Tablet.

Now It’s Your Turn

Do you own an Apple notebook? Owned one in the recent past? What does Apple get right and where do  Macs need improvement? Tell us how you’d rate Apple and why.

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What grade would you give Apple's laptops as a group?
 
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Comments (9 Responses) 

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9 Responses to “You Grade The Brands: Apple Notebooks”

  1. Andrew Says:
    December 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am

    consistently happy with apple!

  2. Dave Barnes Says:
    December 17th, 2009 at 10:58 am

    I think my AirBook is the perfect travel computer.
    It enables me to run ALL my software (including Adobe CS4) and has a full-size keyboard.

  3. Jon Fingas Says:
    December 17th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    Apple isn’t perfect — I’ve had hiccups with PowerBooks and MacBooks — but what keeps me with the brand is the consistently good design. The company is one of the few that understands notebook design should revolve around… well, portability. Too many other notebooks are built solely to cram as much into a box as possible.

    Instant sleep and wake. 7-hour batteries that don’t stick out like a sore thumb. Trackpads that are large enough and are genuinely intuitive. Not to mention technical support that not only shares your same primary language but actually knows something about its products.

    Macs may be expensive, but you DO get what you pay for.

  4. kelvin Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 10:57 am

    I just bought my first mac book and boy was I surprise. From the moment I started using it I fell in love with it lol. Its a big difference between apple and pc’s. one thing i really like is that I can run windows 7 on my mac is like having to computers in one. The quality is great and the tech support is excellent there isn’t hardly any waiting time. I’m glad I decided to switch over to a mac.

  5. Kevin Says:
    January 24th, 2010 at 9:18 am

    I had a Mac a few years back, but it was nothing but problems. It was underpowered and to upgrade it yourself is near impossible. These computers are not designed for people with a brain who like to be in control of their software and hardware. I’ve had 3 sony laptops, a dell desktop, and built my own desktop since, and the user experience has been much better. I’d advise staying away from macs, if your not very computer savey and you don’t like windows then I’d advise getting ubuntu. But I guess that a lot of people think its hip to own a mac.

  6. nethawk7 Says:
    January 24th, 2010 at 11:05 am

    45% give Apple laptops an “F”. ROFL. What an astute readership!

  7. Andrew Says:
    February 3rd, 2010 at 1:08 am

    Kevin said ” I’d advise staying away from macs, if your not very computer savey and you don’t like windows then I’d advise getting ubuntu.”

    What? Are you nuts? Recommending non-tech-savvy people to try and wrestle with Linux and give up any and all support from the manufacturer of the computer is such shockingly bad advice that I can’t trust anything you say.

    One problematic Mac “a few years back” does not make a bad brand.

  8. Gary Says:
    April 17th, 2010 at 10:39 am

    There’s always a PC head who is obviously jealous of Macs and comes up with comments like ‘I had a Mac and it was nothing but problems’. Really? What sort of imaginary problems would they be? (for the record, I have owned quite a number of Macs since 1993, and all of them still work, 1 PC I owned does not)
    Let’s just acknowledge the fact that an Apple Mac has a better operating system, more reliable than a PC, built from quality materials and last way longer than an ordinary PC. So what if it costs more? You are paying for a superior quality product and it’s worth it.
    If you want a stick with a PC due to an individual preference or the fact you can’t afford a Mac and suffer from an inferiority complex, don’t just make up stories…

  9. maxy9 Says:
    July 17th, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    The problem with windows is that it requires users to have a degree of understanding about the way operating systems work! With Macs, there is no such problem as everything plugs in and works without too many headaches.

    Though as good as I am with computers, I found the apple OS to be a little counter-intuitive and working out how to manage something more specific about hardware or software took a lot of guess, trial and error. Also, my mother is not very confident with computers, but I don’t think she would cope more easily with an apple.

    Macbooks seemed stable enough, but hardly a LAPtop, given that the underside was simply way too hot to rest on your lap! That’s something I’ve only enountered with apple and is definately a downside to the ultra slick, slim design.

    In many ways, if you want to pay top dollar, have limited knowledge and confidence with computers generally and like having computers that look good (why though?… it’s a computer, not a car!) then apple is probably a suitable choice. For those with IT nous and enjoy cheaper upgrades and wide arrays of small software packages, PCs are far better and half the price. Somehow I feel like with an apple notebook, i’m basically being brand-jailed as the next logic purchases would be ipods, iphones and ipads! All of which are hardly cheap. I prefer to save money on something I’ll probably replace in two years anyway and have hardware and software that I feel I have more control over.

    After all, if you plug a device into USB on a mac and it doesn’t work, what do you do? …. It seems like nothing, the end. On PCs, there’s always a few work arounds people work out!

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