Love the matte screen option. Great computer. Time will tell if its worth the $$
After having a 3 year-old Dell die on me (to be fair it was put through multiple trips to and from school in my bag sometimes while it was still on) and a Toshiba Satellite fail after a year I was tired of paying bargain prices and receiving a frustrating experience to go with it.
My girlfriend had talked about buying a Mac and I always balked at them as being too expensive. Well most of the main problems with my old laptops were hardware/compatability/driver issues. Knowing that Apple makes the hardware and develops the software for their computers made me think they would be able to integrate the two aspect better PC's I have used. I still have nightmarew about all the drivers I had to hunt down when I downgraded my Toshiba from Windows Vista to XP.
I had actually purchased a 13" Macbook Pro with a glossy screen from Amazon a few days before Apple did their big upgrade in April 2010. It was a beautiful looking machine and was easy to use after I became accustomed to the differences from a PC ie; What is the "Finder"? However the 13" screen was a little small for me. I do some photography work and I watch movies on it as well so I decided the 15" Macbook Pro would be the way to go. Once they did their upgrade for all their machines I decided to buy directly from Apple.
I debated long and hard on the glossy vs. matte option. Going with the high-res screen (1680 X 1050 as opposed to standard 1440 X 900) was a no-brainer. After doing some online research I also chose the matte option (as opposed to the default glossy screen). I had never actually seen a matte screen as the local Best-Buy didn't have one in stock. I was a little nervous on my decision but I called Apple tech support and easily arranged for a return on my not-yet-arrived 15" Macbook Pro should I want one with a glossy screen instead. The person I spoke with even arranged for return shipping labels paid for by Apple! I didn't upgrade the harddrive or RAM because I can do those myself or have them done later for a lot cheaper than Apple's pricing.
The new 15" w/ the matte screen came and I opened up some high-res You-tube videos and compared it side-by-side to the glossy. This was the middle of the day and the lone window in our living room was creating all sorts of reflections on the glossy screen while the matte was unphased. Sure the blacks on the glossy were a deeper and the colors might have "popped" a little more but knowing I would be using my laptop in a room lit by daylight or with a bright light the henious reflections on the glossy screen definitely made it a no-go for me. This was a window that was in front of the computer and wasn't even directly shining on the screen. I was really happy I decided to go matte.
That being said I have loaded up Photoshop CS5 and it runs great. Way faster than my old laptop. I appreciate a lot of the little touches that Apple puts into their products that are becoming more and more noticable every day I use it. (Such as their search feature is always available with 1 click from the desktop) I plan to buy an Applecare plan towards the end of my one-year warranty period to make sure this lasts me at least 3 years. Hopefully I might be able to keep this for 4 or 5 years.
Overall if you have the $$ I highly recommend this product.
Pros-
- Unibody design is super-sturdy and slim.
- Love the matte screen
- The high resolution upgrade helps with multi-tasking programming photo-editing web-browing ect..
- Super-fast w/Photoshop
- Good side-to-side viewing angle (better than the screen on the Windows-based laptops I have used)
- Keyboard is very pleasant to use
- Speakers are adequate
- Touchpad is awesome! Large and easy to use with 2 3 and 4 finger controls not found anywhere else
but on a Mac. I rarely use a mouse anymore which works well for using it on my lap.
- Quick boot up time. Opening and closing the lid for "sleep mode" waiting time is basically zero.
- Good battery life
Cons
- Expensive (duh)
- Can get hot on the underneath towards the back where the processor is located.
- Up and down viewing angle not so good (this is common w/laptops though)
- Some software not available for Mac
- USB 2.0 (instead of newer 3.0)
- Glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen is a bit of advertising I could do without.
- Sharp Edges on front (can apparently be filed down but I am wary about doing this)
- No Blu-Ray drive
Update:
Maybe it is just me but my Apple seems to have more issues with Flash and streaming internet content than I have ever had with a PC. I know Apple is at war with Adobe and has gone to great lengths to disparage the Flash format. They do not seem to have worked too hard to ensure that Flash content works flawlessly with their machines. Streaming videos will stop or fail to load alltogether. This doesn't happen often but with a PC I never had any issues like this at all.
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