APCmag.com did a great article on 10 things you didn't know about the new MacBook, however there article was a little long winded, so here is a summery of 10 things you didn't know about Apple's news product:
1. Target Disk Mode is gone
This means no more using your MacBook like an external hard drive, or accessing and repairing the file system without removing the internal hard drive or booting into the system
2. The system migration tool has been upgraded
The system tool is now faster and features a pause button
3. The system chipset has changed, not just the GPU
MacBook's will no longer feature Intel integrated graphics and will have the NVIDIA 9400M chip set instead. This means that you have an Intel CPU but not an Intel controller chipset. Unfortunately, Nvidia's new integrated graphics have caused problems.
4. Brake the glass screen cover; replace the whole screen.
The new glass front panel that covers and protects the LCD is bonded to the aluminum case to keep the laptop lid extra thin and extra strong. However, if you drop your MacBook and brake the screen, then you will have to replace the entire laptop lid.
5. The new MacBook has a special build of OS X
The new MacBook runs OS X 10.5.5, build 9F2114. The latest release on all other Macs is build 9F33. The main difference seems to be changes to the Energy Saving and Trackpad options.
6. The battery indicator is now on the left side of the notebook
The battery indicator is no longer attached to the battery. It's now on the left front of the notebook, which means no more flipping over your laptop to see how much battery you have left.
7. No more flimsy keyboard
Thanks to the ultra-ridged unibody design, the MacBook has a very stiff chassis which means no more flimsy keyboards!
8. The speakers are better!
There are no speaker grills, but speakers quality is really good. There's no real bass, but they don't sound like tinny netbook speakers.
9. The LCD viewing angle still sucks
There is still a very real difference between the screens on the MacBook Pro and MacBook. Tilting the screen helps a bit but not much.
10. Installing a hard drive is super easy!
To change a hard drive in MacBook, all you have to do is pop off the battery cover, undo do one screw, then pop out the current hard drive and pop in the new one.
Bonus Features!
11. Dual Hard Drives!
The new MacBooks are the first notebooks from apple to use a SATA optical drive, this means that you could remove the optical drive and replace it with a second 500GB hard drive and have the first 1TB MacBook.
12. Spend more to use a projector
Apple is not providing any video adaptors with the new laptops which means you will need to shell out an extra $50-$150 to get external display adaptors.
13. Brake the keyboard, replace the whole body.
Thanks to the new unibody design, it you brake a key on your keyboard, you will have to have the entire top case replaced. iFixit wrote about this here
14. Easy hard drive installation for MacBook Pros too
The MacBook Pro now has the same great design for accessing the hard drive as the MacBook does. This means no more paying an Apple technician to replace your hard drive.
15. The cheapest MacBook you can get is a MSI Wind
As long as you don't mind replacing the stock WiFi card for a Dell 1500 WiFi card, and you don't mind using a a USB sound card; then you can install OS X on the MSI Wind just by hooking up a USB disk drive and popping in the OS X install disk. You can find out more about how to do this at the MSI forums.
So, with all of the cool new features and and unfortunate downfalls, what do you think of the new MacBooks? Is a glass covered display worth the cost of replacing the whole lid if it cracks? With better graphics, will more games get ported to OS X? And could more companies start making OS X compatible netbooks? Tell us what you think by leaving a comment or by sending us an email at CaseyTech@GMX.com , with 'MacBook' in the subject line.
source:http://caseytech.blogspot.com
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