MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

The StarPhoenix reviews Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Pro: light, incredibly strong, a wonder

Saturday, November 15, 2008 - 11:14 AM EST

Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Pro's "new unibody enclosure is a wonder. I got to have a good look at just the enclosure and could see and, more importantly for me, feel how light and incredibly strong the frame is. I had to apply a considerable amount of pressure to get any kind of flex at all," Murray Hill reports for The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon, SK, Canada).

"The new backlit display makes a 15-inch notebook screen look a lot like it is a 17-inch screen; it looks a lot bigger than it is because of the absence of a metallic bezel around it. It's a different type of screen now -- much more environmentally friendly, and with a gloss finish and amazing colour depth and clarity. A lot thinner than my old MacBook Pro, it's the best screen yet on a Mac notebook," Hill reports. "The new NVDA GeForce video card renders intense graphics with absolutely no lag, so the MacBook Pro that I have for a review is able to play games unlike any Mac notebook I've ever seen."

"You can actually choose which processor to use on the video card on the fly. By choosing the 9400M processor, you'll get great everyday performance and five hours of battery life. Want to play games or use high-resolution graphics? Select the setting for the 9600M GT processor and prepare to be blown away by incredible graphics. The price to be paid for ramping up the graphic capabilities is a reduction in battery life to four hours," Hill reports. "The control to switch graphics is in the system preferences, under energy saver. You go to the power adapter settings and select either better battery life, or higher performance -- it's a simple as that."

"The really big difference over past MacBook Pros is the new Multi-Touch trackpad. Much larger than previous trackpads, this new wonder doesn't have the usual click button -- the entire trackpad is the button," Hill reports. "As with the MacBook Air, the new trackpad uses multi-touch controls, so you can use two fingers to scroll up and down, pinch to zoom in and out, or rotate an image. Use three fingers to do something like flip through photo libraries, and swiping with four fingers will view all open windows, switch applications or show your desktop. I love it."

More in the full review here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]