Royal Battle - Hardware: Apple vs. Other Manufactures
by Opetek on Dec.19, 2009, under Hardware
I just got the new (to me) old late-2007 model of Macbook Pro. Here are some small things I like about Apple’s hardware… briefly
- Keyboard: automatically adjust back-lit (it doesn’t matter much to me since I am a 10-finger typer
) - Monitor: automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes
- Trackpad: multi-touch, and gestures (even though Synaptics does have this technology, somehow they disable this feature (???) )
- Battery: nice compromise between powerful and mobile (lasts up to 7 hours), indicators in front (with new model), able to be swapped to another when laptop in sleep
- AC adapter: magnetic-safe, nice design to pack up wires
- Heat air vent: hidden in the back (with my late-2007 model)
- Sensors: ease to monitor all the values (iStat)
- Speakers: loud enough, and louder with software amplifier (mPlayer, VLC)
- Body: aluminum case, unibody (late 2008)
- Remote: IR remote for media, alarm (nice feature with discontinued iAlarm software)
- Nice close/open lid mechanism
- Nice Apple logo in the back of monitor with light
- Nice slot-loading DVD/CD drive
Here are what I don’t like or need to get used to:
- Keyboard: lack of insert key (I used it a lot to paste text in Terminal in Linux), combined keys (page up, page down, home, end), less sensitive (even though it’s very soft-pressed), small arrow keys
- Less of USB ports (might be essential to some people, i don’t need that much)
- Does not have nice touch-sensitive buttons (I like these buttons from other laptops’ manufactures)
- Mini DisplayPort (in new models): free, but less popular than HDMI interface, need adapter
