Apple Macbook Pro Review
User Experience
In keeping with Apple's approach towards minimalism the Macbook Pro's operating system is suitably simple, starting up with a white Apple logo on a plain grey screen whilst the operating system loads in the background. There are no alarming DOS-like screens of text showing cryptic items like IRQs and memory counts at every boot.
Upon first starting the machine new user's are greeted by Apple's first time assistant which asks for a user's personal information, username, password, and so on. It also offers to migrate a user's information from an old Mac. This can be performed over a network, firewire cable or by directly attaching the old Mac's hard disk. The process copies a user's program settings, their files and their applications.
Startup Time (seconds)
Lower is better
- Macbook Pro 39 (90%)
- Macbook 38 (87.6923076923%)
The Macbook Pro starts up from off to a working desktop very quickly indeed.
Desktop
Apple's desktop consists of three main elements, the desktop itself, the menu bar at the top and the dock along the bottom. The desktop is much like any system desktop allowing a user to store their files (and clutter!) as well as links to applications. In addition any attached storage, such as hard drives, USB drives and optical media popup here.
On most computer systems each application windows has its own menu bar along the top. The Mac however has a main menu bar along the top of the display which shows the menu options for the current application. Choose a different application and the menu bar also changes. The Dock is like Window's taskbar and displays any open applications, in addition it can also display closed applications which a user wants to always appear there. Selecting any of the Dock icons opens the application or brings it to the foreground. A pale dot next to the application icon indicates that the it is open.
