I stopped by the Apple Store on my way home last night, and I can report that the new laptops are, indeed, sexy. Duh. Water’s still wet.
They feel as solid as… well, as a brick. There’s no “flex” or “give” to them at all, and in spite of that, the 15″ MacBook Pro feels about half as heavy as my MBP, it’s definitely thinner than my current one, and the curves are all nicely rounded (completely subjective measure – in reality, the new one weighs 5.5 lbs and is .95 inches thick and mine weighs 5.6 lbs and is 1.0 inch thick, according to the tech specs for for each. Not sure I can actually feel a tenth of a pound or a 0.05 inch difference. Must be the sexay getting to me).
In the store, the glossy screen isn’t as distracting as I thought it would be, but I’m still skeptical that glossy is the right choice for all lighting conditions. And me and two of the sales folk had our doubts that the trackpad was, in fact, glass. If it’s glass, it’s painted or coated with something because it looks and feels just like the trackpad on mine.
And the clicky pad is… odd. It would take some getting used to. I’m used to touching or tapping the trackpad to do my clicking; the pressure required to click the entire pad feels like too much to me. Luckily, I still have the option to enable tap-clicking in System Preferences.
The thing of it is – yes, they’re beautiful machines, and yes, my laptop is getting older, but there isn’t really any compelling new features (beyond better battery life, more storage space, and a faster overall machine) that would make me want to upgrade right now. My laptop already does more than I need.
So I’ll wait until after the January Macworld Expo before I consider upgrading.