Macopinion

$999 2.0 GHz White MacBook With Nvidia Graphics: Most Notebook For The Money From Apple Ever?

Instead of releasing a stripped-down, feature-challenged MacBook to address the market share challenge posed by the small, cheap PC laptop (AKA *netbook*) phenomenon, Apple has evidently chosen, as a first response at least, to hold their entry-level price point, but add value - an impressively substantial amount of value - by upgrading the price leader $999 white polycarbonate MacBook with some solid enhancements.

GMA X3100 Graphics Gone

Most importantly, gone is the old, slow Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chipset - replaced with the state-of-the-art new Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics with 256MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared memory that was introduced with the aluminum unibody MacBooks last October, followed by the Revision B MacBook Air. Apple claims the Nvidia integrated graphics offer performance up to 5x faster and powerful enough to support 3D games and applications. That alone would be cool enough, but it's just for starters. The white MacBook also gets a faster 1066 MHz frontside bus (up from 800 MHz in the preceding model}, plus 2 GB RAM standard instead of the former 1 GB, all for the same $999 price point, and.... it still has a FireWire 400 port, which is a huge point for some users. Unchanged are the standard 120GB Serial ATA 5400 rpm hard disk (upgradable to 320 GB) and dual layer 8x SuperDrive.

Photo Courtesy Apple

The white MacBook has been clocked down 100 MHz, now using the same 2.0 GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed as are used in the base unibody MacBook. However, given the faster graphics and frontside bus, I don't think we'll hear many complaints about that. The White 'Book also comes with (less expensive) 667MHz DDR2 memory instead of the faster 1,066MHz DDR3 used in the unibodies, but again, the performance difference for real-world tasks should be insignificant for most users.

The Best Value Apple Notebook Ever?

It looks very good, and I'll venture to say that this machine arguably offers the most power and features and best value for dollar spent that Apple has ever offered in a notebook.

The form factor's not as sleek and sexy (or solid) as the unibody machines carved as they are in one piece from a single block of aluminum. The unibodies are also gorgeous — no argument. Another shortcoming by comparison is the conventional CCFL display backlight as opposed to the newer design's super-bright, instant-on LCD backlighting. The white MacBook also still has a Mini-DVI video port instead of the new Mini DisplayPort interface of the unibodies, but some might regard that as an advantage thanks to cheaper adapters. Ditto for the old-school trackpad and button instead of the newer machine's too-gimmicky for my taste buttonless trackpad.

I do wish that Apple had chosen to carry over the black old-school MacBook instead of the white one, which is attractive enough but dates in general form-factor and appearance back to the original dual USB iBook of May, 2001, and has been looking past its best-before date for some time now.

Value Purchasers Will Find It Hard To Resist This One

Anyone who is on a tight budget and in the market for a new Mac notebook should find this one hard to resist. I have to say that I agree with Apple's philosophy of value-added rather than ditching features in order to hit a lower price point. This machine is a whole lot more satisfactory than a PC netbook, provided you can swing the $999.

There is precedent for Apple's pile on the features strategy. Back in August, 2005, with sales sagging after the June announcement that Apple would be switching to Intel processors, they helped goose sales of lame-duck (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) G4 iBook by throwing in a raft of theretofore PowerBook-only features while holding the price points. The summer 2006 iBooks got the PowerBooks' scrolling TrackPad and the Sudden Motion Sensor, Bluetooth 2.0 (Enhanced Data Rate) and AirPort Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g WiFi, and with its system memory expandable to up to 1.5GB maximum, the last revision iBook actually exceeded the 12" PowerBook in that category by 256MB thanks to having 512MD rather than 256 MB soldered to its motherboard.

Apple as usual kept its cards close to its chest as regards sales figures, but G4 iBooks seemed to sell reasonably well through the remainder of '05 and into 'o6 before finally being replaced by the first 13" MacBooks in May of that year.

Sales Spike Predicted

(Photo Courtesy Apple)

I predict that the white MacBook value enhancement announced this week will also provide Apple with a nice little sales spike at a time when that should be most welcome, but that said, the $300 more expensive base unibody merits serious consideration as well. Choosing between these two excellent-value machines is a nice sort of dilemma to have. As someone observed last week: "The white one is a better buy, but the aluminum is gorgeous." Both are great values. It boils down to your budget and which will make you smile the most.




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cmoore@macopinion.com

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