expert_witness's Full Review: Apple MacBook 13.3 in. (MA254LL/A) Mac Notebook
I purchased two laptops almost simultaneously -- this MacBook for using Final Cut, and a Thinkpad T60 for everything else. Though OS-X is supposedly a hugely stable operating system, I find it is as buggy and prone to crashing as anything else I've ever dealt with, and if anything is more likely to not recognize external drives that get plugged into either USB or Firewire ports. Can't tell you how many times this machine has suddenly forgotten it had a 500 gig drive attached to it, which obviously immediately brings my editing to a screeching halt.
I chose the white plastic model (chosen because the cool looking black one is hundreds more for basically nothing more than being black); unfortunately, though people complain about the black version picking up fingerprints and dirt, I find the white model picks up scratches and looked really heavily used after about a week. And no, I don't think I was particularly hard on it. Its fan has a tendancy to turn on and off and on and off and make an annoying whirring every fifteen seconds -- it drove me crazy fifteen minutes into owning it.
But the clincher is the supposedly great Apple support. I didn't buy Applecare, assuming the machine would fail right away or work for years. 92 days into owning it, it started turning off suddenly, often after being on for less than ten minutes. Didn't matter whether on AC power or battery, suddenly pow, black screen, no warning whatsoever. I called in to Apple (which doesn't list an 800 number) and was told they wouldn't talk to me because the telephone support ends on day 90. The machine has a one year warranty, so they told me to bring it to a Genius Bar at an Apple Store. Fortunately I do indeed live near one, and I called to see if I could just bring it in. Answer: NO. Make an appointment online. Fine. Went to the website, entered my store location, and was told sorry, all appointments are filled, goodbye! End of story. Whaaaa? I have a defective computer, I can't get any work done on it, and this is your support? Goodbye? I called the store again and reached a human, who informed me that yes, I needed an appointment, and that tomorrow's appointments would start at 10am in the morning, so call in at 10am to get an appointment for tomorrow.
So -- if you're running a business and your time is valuable, be prepared to drop everything at 10am to grovel for an appointment sometime during the day if you want them to remedy their own defective design. I feel like I'm trying to schedule an appointment at Kaiser or something -- it's just a stupid defective computer, guys.
Knowing what I know now, I'd never purchase one of these machines if I didn't have a specific need for it. Final Cut doesn't yet run on a Thinkpad, so I'll have to keep a Mac, love it or hate it, but if I had a choice in my software I'd give serious consideration to a company that is poorly equipped to handle my support needs.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1000 Operating System: Macintosh Processor: Other Processor speed: over 1000 Screen Size: 14 inches RAM: More than 256 Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
With MacBook, you get a fast mobile architecture in a beautifully designed notebook that costs less than slower, clunkier models. That s like getting ...More at eBay
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