The new MacBook Pro: Apple's concrete shoes

Concrete shoes, not as a bad thing where the Mafia throw people into a river and watch them drown. Oh no. I mean "concrete shoes" which are firmly holding Apple into the hardware marketplace. Sure, we've got the iPod and the iPhone; they've taken over the world faster than Starbucks took over America, but the new MacBook Pro, I must admit, looks pretty damn cool.

One of the main reasons why the small percentage of the market who use Mac OS X actually use Mac OS X, seems to be the fact that "it just works", and that so because the operating system is designed to work with the hardware given. No driver issues, no hardware problems, just smooth sailing along the Mac experience highway.

Now I've already admit (as to many other things when I conceived the notion we could all suddenly die) that I have a cumulated usage time on a Mac being a mere 25 minutes, but that's because I just can't get suited to Mac OS X. I'm a Windows person myself, and that's just personal preference.

This new MacBook Pro is beautiful. It's slim, sleek, curvy, bright and powerful. I find it funny how I just described my perfect woman; although I doubt I'd replace my partner with one... (yet). Just take a moment to notice some interesting changes in the new design and the new specs with everything thrown in:

• 15" instant-on LED screen, 2.8GHz Intel Core Duo 2 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB hard drive with a 128GB solid state drive;
• Less than an inch thick, aluminium unified casing, muti-touch trackpad, and environmentally aware (but really, who cares?)
• Two graphics processors: the integrated Nvidia 9400M (256MB memory) and an added Nvidia 9600M GT (512MB memory)
• Gigabit Ethernet port and wireless 802.11n with a/b/g compatibility that runs for 5 hours on battery, and integrated Bluetooth 2.1
• and there's a whole load more all explained on the MacBook Pro website and on ZDNet Videos.

This would be the ultimate machine for a student... if it didn't cost so much. The most basic MacBook will cost $1,999 and the more advanced MacBook Pro will set you back your first born child and your left kidney. It's even worse if you're in the UK; the basic MacBook package will cost £1,399 and the MacBook Pro at £1,949. For me it's not so bad, but I've got a good job.

As you'd expect, it comes with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but why should it have to? You may have just churned out more money than you'll spend on fruit and vegetables in your entire lifetime, but with the first beta of Windows 7 around the corner, I can't see how this couldn't be the perfect computer to run it on - ironically.

Students, there is a reprieve. Apple loves us - maybe a little too much. They offer an education discount which can be found here, but only accessed through your university network (off-campus VPN works, if you've got access through that), and if you're lucky, they'll throw in an iPod nano.

Ballmer's kid is hitting college soon. I wouldn't blame him if he started sleeping with the enemy...

Update: there seem to be some discrepancies with pricing; but then again, all of my pricing sources are from the Apple website as linked to earlier in this post.

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