Some say that the new MacBook Pros aren’t pro-quality machines. The evidence given seems compelling, but a second look suggests sacred cows of the sort that Apple’s never been afraid to slay.
Three examples crop up over and over again in web chatter and reviews of the new models: unswappable batteries, integrated video, and the speed of the hard drive controllers. In each case, however, the complaints have little practical meaning unless “Pro” is taken to imply every imaginable pro use (a scenario Apple has never supplicated itself to) instead of gear powerful enough to satisfya broad family of professional users.
That you can’t hot-swap batteries is the poster child for flaws that seem obvious at first, but whose underlying assumptions dissolve under close inspection. For netbooks, where swapping small batteries is a practical daily reality, it’s an understandable complaint. But Macs aren’t netbooks, and nor are they iPods, whose batteries often failed. Apple’s notebook batteries now last for more than five hours of active use per charge. Moreover, they’ll be installed free of charge when you need a replacement a few years down the line. Doing so yourself requires little more than a confident hand and a screwdriver.
For the loss of an amenity that few avail themselves of, the machine itself is made lighter and smaller — a practical benefit that professionals and consumers alike can appreciate.
Another example given is the use of integrated graphics instead of a discrete video card. Again, this seems more an issue of sacred cows than actual results: a new ATI chip sharing DDR3-based memory with the CPU outperforms many machines with discrete video, especially in the rarely-updated Mac ecosystem. For professional purposes one might put small notebooks to, the standard MBP will be very capable on the graphics front–and you can upgrade.
A good illustration of the thinking behind this complaint, I think, came when someone sought to demonstrate the lack of “professional” quality in the MBP 13″ by running Windows-based gaming benchmarks on it. People often assume that professionalism means simply having outrageously high-end gear, but that isn’t the case. Professionals need tools, not toys.
The third example: earlier this week, many complained about the SATA bus in these new machines being 1.5Gbps instead of 3Gbps. You’ll only be affected by this if you install expensive third-party drives (something that would be just as troublesome to do as replacing the battery!) but everyone seems to be appalled by this.
Perhaps this explains Apple’s supposed disdain for its most devoted fans: they just don’t appreciate the image that Apple seeks to project of itself (however self-serving it is) whereby design is all about the user experience instead of the spec sheet. When Apple says “Pro,” it imagines artists and architects, musicians and lawyers–but never just one of them. This is why its gear is so interesting, despite the pretensions of its marketing culture.
There is one professional community that will be disappointed by the smaller models: video pros stiffed by the loss of A/V ports and the ExpressCard slot. But photographers will love the new SD card reader. All this proves is that Apple is as capricious about details as it is disinterested in cultivating niche markets–but you all knew this already, right?
Quoted for truth.
How come it’s assumed that photographers will automatically love an SD slot? The cameras I use the most all have CF slots, which I currently read with an Express Slot card reader. The new Macbooks are somewhat less than exciting for that reason.
Audio pros are also freaking out – mostly about the ExpressCard slot, since Apogee’s Symphony system relies on it.
However, it’s worth pointing out that the 17″ MBP still has an ExpressCard slot, and that the added cost of the 17″ MBP is peanuts compared to the cost of the audio gear that would necessitate using it.
I think some of the apple hate is just that, hate intended to gather clicks to their website. Write some vitrol and watch the faithful come by to read it. Haddad’s old BusinessWeek articles come to mind.
What are the modern DSLR cameras running as far as flash memory? It looks like the D90 uses SD. What about the Canon and Sony lines? If all modern DSLR cameras use SD then it’s not unreasonable to move to SD. But ExpressCard Slot is a lot more universal since you can adapt it to anything. Try adapting an SD slot to read CF.
I don’t understand why they can’t have both. An SD slot is minuscule. Literally less than an inch square by a few millimeters thick. Can you tell me that a talented engineer wouldn’t be able to fit both SD and EC slots in an identical chassis? Because I think they could.
I find it humorous that a mid-grade Dell laptop adds functionality when new standards come out, and Apple replaces them. An E6500 has SD, ExpressCard, and PC Card slots. In addition to bluetooth, 802.11n, gigabit ethernet, firewire, USB2, and DisplayPort, along with options for internal GPS and EVDO. I guess Apple just doesn’t like connectors “ruining” their design.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple makes decent enough hardware. They just make some decisions that are baffling for reasons that are nonsensical. As you said, professionals need tools. Not fetish objects. And removing functionality from a tool for no good reason is idiotic.
Every time a new Apple is scheduled to come out, I think “maybe this will be the one.” But, come launch day, they always end up just short of the mark.
Oh, these discussions about the badge of “pro.”
I would like to suggest a different definition:
Are you getting professional work done on it? Your actions define the device infinitely more than three letters of laser-cut text.
dculberson, Canon gear uses compact flash predominantly. There are rumors that the newest gear coming (not out yet, and only mentions the “prosumer” D60) may be moving to SD, but currently they use CF. Sony also uses CF (with an adapter for memory stick!) and the “more professional” Nikon D3x also uses CF. I think the D90 is the first to move to SD for DSLR, but there are a host of “pro” photographers who will be using CF for at least 2-3 years.
Clay, indeed. Welcome to the world of DSLRs as well, where people complain because they’re using a non “professional grade” camera and getting paid for it and the marketing department of Canon or Nikon doesn’t call their camera “pro”.
Personally, I think if you make money using it, call it whatever you want and stop listening to the marketing department trying to upsell you. But then, I didn’t buy a pro camera, so I might not know that much.
@4: DCULBERSON – “I don’t understand why they can’t have both. An SD slot is minuscule. Literally less than an inch square by a few millimeters thick. Can you tell me that a talented engineer wouldn’t be able to fit both SD and EC slots in an identical chassis? Because I think they could.”
As an electrical engineering undergraduate, I have to say that Apple’s board’s are AMAZING, just for the way the parts are placed, and the paths between components are routed.
That said, I believe an ExpressCard requires more than an SD card. There’s a higher data rate (and inherently higher frequencies) which with long traces, introduces a whole mess of noise into a signal (parasitic inductance and capacitance). There’s also many more traces required, which either means you need more space on the board.
All that said, I think the introduction of FireWire 800 is the reason why SATA 1.5GBps is on the current 13′ model. An SD card slot seems like it’s just thrown on there, seeing as how easy they are to implement. And if the choice came between a microphone-jack and an SD-card reader, I’d go with the SD-card reader.
But yeah, I’d prefer an ExpressCard interface over a (SD-card + 1 USB + Microphone Jack). But seeing as how this one has FireWire, I think I’ll get the 13-inch model this summer.
(The lack of ExpressCard on the 15-inch model though, is unforgivable.)
Ever since the very first Macs have been sold, rabid fanatics have complained that Apple screwed them by not including their own personal favorite feature.
No, I am not exaggerating not even one bit: no less a maven than Jerry Pournelle of “Chaos Manor” fame complained that the cord that connected the original macintosh keyboard to the computer box looked like, but was not, a standard telephone extension cord. (It was a standard telephone handset cord — which unfortunately caused Pournelle to let the smoke out of some chips while trying to put the computer far away from the keyboard.)
Luckily, these complainers almost always will end up buying a new whatsit anyway, even if not immediately. There are a few that refuse, but on closer inspection, almost all of those people are still using their Power Computing clone computers that are roughly 12 years old. They’ve been holding off on a new Mac ever since Apple had the NERVE not to allow Mac OS 8 to run on this hardware of theirs.
@9: HAINEUX – I agree with your conclusions, though not with your examples. Jerry Pournelle was/is a long-winded dilettante, with delusions of geekdom. Your example is but one of many showing his incompetence.
And it’s been a years since I powered up my Power Tower Pro, which runs OS 9.2 by the way.
No matter, the new MacBook Pros (MacBooks Pro?) won’t please everybody, any more than any other machine would. But speaking as a professional software developer for the past thirty years, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my 13-incher. Thought it would arrive today, and I’m annoyed I’ll have to wait ’til Monday.
Rob says, “A good illustration of the thinking behind this complaint, I think, came when someone sought to demonstrate the lack of “professional” quality in the MBP 13″ by running Windows-based gaming benchmarks on it. People often assume that professionalism means simply having outrageously high-end gear, but that isn’t the case. Professionals need tools, not toys.”
Apple says, “Power your way through the latest 3D games — including Call of Duty and Quake.” All the benchmarks provided by Apple are for Call of Duty, Quake 4, Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament. Apple doesn’t provide benchmarks for video performance in professional tools – only benchmarks of toy games.
Rob says, “Many complained about the SATA bus in these new machines being 1.5Gbps instead of 3Gbps. You’ll only be affected by this if you install expensive third-party drives (something that would be just as troublesome to do as replacing the battery!) but everyone seems to be appalled by this.”
Apple offers 7200rpm SATA drives for the 15″ MBP, which are bottlenecked by the 15″ 1.5Gbps controller. Apple also offers SSDs for the 13″ and 15″ that are bottlenecked. Unless this is a firmware issue that can be patched, Apple is selling you first-party drives bottlenecked by a SATA controller that’s a downgrade from the 15″ non-Pro MacBook.
Who’s most likely to spend the extra money on an SSD or 7200rpm HDD straight from Apple? Professionals who expect better performance for their money, and won’t get it.
These selective arguments and factual inaccuracies don’t detract from Rob’s main point – the branding doesn’t really matter – but they do hurt Rob’s ability to make a salient point that others will accept. In rushing to battle frothing fanboys, he only looks as blindly irrational.
And the only point in this argument that makes any clearer case for mobile professionals of any type to choose the MBP over any other laptop in its price range, is the one on battery life. Even that’s – forgive the pun – polarizing.
My guess is that Apple ditched the expresscard slot for the same reason nintendo removed the component video output on the gamecube: as good as it was, research probably showed that a majority of owners never used it, and taking it out made things cheaper. I’ve never once had occasion to use the expresscard slot on either of the macbook pros that I’ve owned, whereas an SD card slot I would probably use.
CF would indeed be more useful to “Pros,” although the circuitry for implementing it would indeed be a bit more bulky (remember that CF cards are fully compatible with Parallel ATA)
Top-end DSLRs (ie. anything costing more than the macbook itself) that legitimate ‘professionals’ would use still standardize upon CF, presumably because professionals tend to be creatures of habit.
SDHC will almost certainly replace CF in the long run for these devices, given the stagnation of CF media in terms of price and capacity. SDHC cards are cheap enough to be disposable, and offer increasingly huge capacities. I expect that this decision by Apple will further push the photographic industry in this direction.
For now, though, the *vast* majority of users have SD-based portable devices. (To give an idea of where my biases lie, my camera uses CF)
I’m not mourning the loss of the expresscard slot either. Although it was nice for wireless connectivity, Bluetooth tethering appears to be the way forward in that arena. It’s not the most elegant solution, and I do hope that Apple devise another option for those of us wanting built-in cellular connectivity.
Firewire800 should be perfectly sufficient for any high-end A/V tasks. Apple’s been including it with most of their “professional” models since 2003. It’s *FAR* more compatible and ubiquitous than the ExpressCard slots, which only appeared on a handful of models.
I’d guess that the ExpressCard was sacrificed to allow for more room inside the chassis, presumably for the huge new battery, which is, IMO, the machine’s biggest selling point by far.
Seeing that the former MacBook didn’t have an express card slot, the addition of an SD card slot is a positive.
I think some people complain about all things Apple just because they like to hear their own voice/read their own comments. Hey, they put Firewire BACK (updated to 800 no less)! That’s good enough for me!
Re: Slots
Every added convenience is nice and all, but a CF slot is almost certainly pointless.
You own:
One camera- It probably uses an SD card.
Two cameras- The pocketable one is probably an SD card.
Fancy cameras only- You own a cardreader, and it travels with your computer bag.
I’d also wager that even for those willing to buy the 17 inch MacBook Pro, less than 5% have ever used the ExpressCard slot.
The reasons for removing ExpressCard are pretty obvious. Barely anyone used it, and it took up space, which reduced the size of the battery. There were niche uses of ExpressCard, but very few which can’t use the FireWire or USB port instead.
I am still doing “professional” work on a four year old iBook G4, my desktop machine is an iMac G5. Both run all the software and hardware I need. The Pro badge is on the person using it – not on the computer.
I consider myself a “pro” – I make my living with art, and I use my laptop to do most of that art. I have never used any of the ports on my machine except USB. And the headphone jack sometimes.
If you need certain ports, either use an adaptor or get a bigger machine.
It’s funny how people find this one being a non pro laptop, and for me it is the first pro I’m considering buying. It will replace my 12″ lenovo, portability and power are important to me. The air was just a bit lacking and I think that is what Apple wanted to correct with this smaller Pro.
“The third example: earlier this week, many complained about the SATA bus in these new machines being 1.5Gbps instead of 3Gbps. You’ll only be affected by this if you install expensive third-party drives (something that would be just as troublesome to do as replacing the battery!) but everyone seems to be appalled by this.”
Don’t know about you, but I can use my computer for more than 4 hours in a row without having to change the hard drive, and I’ve never had to change a hard drive while on the road.
Elle, it’s true that Apple overmarkets its products, but it’s the accuracy of the “pro” designation that’s the matter at hand. Your suggestion that professionals buy MacBook Pros to play video games on, simply because Apple includes gaming in its ads, is deliberated stupidity in the service of a derelict argument.
“7200rpm SATA drives for the 15″ MBP, which are bottlenecked by the 15″ 1.5Gbps controller”
Got some benchmarks to demonstrate this? I ask because most 7200rpm SATA drives top out at 60-80MBps, whereas the 1.5Gbps controller will still handle real world throughput about twice that. I haven’t seen real evidence of a bottleneck on the hard drives supplied with the MacBook Pro which the vast majority of professional users won’t replace.
“they do hurt Rob’s ability to make a salient point … he only looks as blindly irrational”
You get a C for trying.
seriously, no one has said anything about the lack of a line-in? This is the only reason why I wouldn’t call it pro. You’ve got to have line-in.
Rob-
You are WAY off on your coverage of the battery — and the article should be amended.
You said this: “Apple’s notebook batteries now last for more than five hours of active use per charge. Moreover, they’ll be installed free of charge when you need a replacement a few years down the line.”
Apple says this: “Apple does not warrant the battery beyond Apple’s one-year Limited Warranty.”
( http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/battery/ )
Before you start thinking about the extra-cost AppleCare policies…
On their battery replacement info page, Apple further states this: “However, the AppleCare Protection Plan for notebook computers does not cover batteries that have failed or are exhibiting diminished capacity except when the failure or diminished capacity is the result of a manufacturing defect. ”
( http://www.apple.com/batteries/replacements.html )
Rob, you missed my point on the videogame benchmarks. You bashed detractors of the Pro badge for citing gaming benchmarks in their criticism of the system’s performance, but Apple themselves cite nothing but gaming benchmarks – not professional application benchmarks – in promoting the system’s graphics performance.
Of course professionals aren’t buying MBPs to play Quake. I never suggested otherwise. What I did suggest is that Apple is advertising the MBP on its strengths as a gaming platform, using gaming benchmarks to fuel its claims of “5x graphics performance” over an Intel X3100. If they’re not selling laptops on game performance, why are they using game performance as a selling point, and why are you going after detractors for using those same benchmarks as a point of criticism?
As for the SATA controller, again, your assertion that only people who install 3rd-party drives will be affected is at odds with Apple themselves offering SSDs as a factory build-to-order option on both the 13″ and 15″ MBPs.
Yes, the 5400rpm HDDs that are the most basic option for the 13″ and 15″ BMPs won’t ever saturate the 1.5Gbps bus. I didn’t say those people would care. I said pros who’d spend the money for SSDs and 7200rpm HDDs would.
Unless Apple is selling very low-quality SSDs at high-quality prices – which I wouldn’t put past them, considering their RAM prices – a SSD would saturate a 1.5Gbps controller with read rates above 200GBps.
Also, even with a HDD, the value of a 3Gbps controller in a laptop isn’t in the sustained rates, but in burst transfer rates of data already in the cache. 1.5Gbps controllers are fine for 5400rpm drives with 2MB-8MB caches, which aren’t capable of burst transfers of more than 150MBps/1.2Gbps.
But 7200rpm drives with 10-16MB caches will burst from 170MBps-300MBps/1.4Gbps-2.4Gbps – unless they’re attached to a 1.5Gbps controller, where they’ll be bottlenecked at up to 60% of their potential.
So what’s the cache on the 7200rpm drives that Apple ships? Apple won’t say. If it’s more than 8MB, there’s likely a bottleneck here would affect HD video editors and people working with .5-1GB images in Photoshop, where the data being worked on fills the HDD cache. These are things you probably don’t do, Rob, but photo and video professionals considering a MBP would.
A small minority? Absolutely. These people are also the ones most likely to already own a 15″-17″ MBP that already has a 3Gbps SATA controller, and very likely to be the people most loudly contesting the “pro” designation on the new 13″-15″.
The 1.5Gbps SATA controller’s existence is even more mystifying considering that NVIDIA doesn’t even ship a chipset that doesn’t have a 3Gbps SATA controller – every laptop and desktop with an integrated 9400 GPU has a 3Gbps SATA controller. Apple may have shipped a downgraded driver, like Lenovo also did recently on their Thinkpad T61s, or even a custom chipset. But a 3Gbps controller doesn’t draw more battery or cost more money than a 1.5Gbps controller, so downgrading the SATA controller and offering SSDs as an option doesn’t make much sense.
Are there benchmarks? No, Rob, I don’t have a couple grand lying around to buy an up-specced MBP and benchmark it, and nobody’s who’s benchmarked the MBPs have benched batch RAW photo image operations or HD video editing on a 13″ MBP with a 5400rpm HDD and compared it to a 13″ MBP with a SSD or a last-gen 15″ MB with a SSD.
But I do know the specifications of SATA II and the features of the components well enough to say that a bottleneck there would exist, and others who know this are either Apple fans complaining about it, or Apple detractors using it as ammunition.
You coming in and saying the problem doesn’t exist is the same brand of plain ignorance that’s on display on both sides of the fanboy debates, and doesn’t help anybody.
Jonathan,
You’re assuming the battery will die when the warranty does.
As annoying as it is when this happens, that’s very rare. I’ve never had a battery fail on any laptop I’ve owned before 2 years, except for a cheapo Dell Mini 9 — just a slow decline in the charge it will hold.
Moreover, the battery’s life span would be the same whether it was easily replaceable or not. As you can have them replace it at the store when you buy a new one, or open the case to do it yourself (which does not void the warranty) it’s clear that we’re still having problems with sacred cows here.
The real problem for some pro users with non-replaceable batteries is being unable to hot-swap in the field.
But even then, only a tiny fraction of users hot-swap MacBook Pro batteries to begin with, a circumstance even less likely given the excellent charge the new ones hold — 5-6 hours of active use.
The fact that Apple doesn’t care about hot-swapping users doesn’t mean that the MBP isn’t worthy of the Pro label. That’s the point here, and none of these vague objections ever quite addresses it.
Rob-
I’ve had huge declines on Apple batteries over the past 10 years. Usually after 18months they hold 1/2 their charge — so I’m hoping that the newer generations are much better.
In any event, the battery performance is not what I have issue with…
You stated “they’ll [batteries] be installed free of charge when you need a replacement a few years down the line.” However Apple’s policy clearly runs contrary to that – batteries on these units will not be replaced or installed free of charge should you need a replacement battery due to anything other than a manufacturing defect.
Your commentary on Apple’s installation is erroneous and should be corrected.
Sorry, you’re just plain wrong. Installation of the battery is no additional cost:
“A replacement battery can be purchased directly from Apple. The price of the replacement battery includes installation of your new battery”
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/
Did you infer “free battery” from “installed free of charge?”
Elle wrote:
“Apple themselves cite nothing but gaming benchmarks – not professional application benchmarks – in promoting the system’s graphics performance.”
This is a good point, but it doesn’t mean the machine isn’t capable enough for pro use — only that Apple’s marketing is characteristically away with the fairies.
“Why are you going after detractors for using those same [gaming] benchmarks as a point of criticism?”
Because gaming benchmarks and their marketing doesn’t really impact the issue of whether the machine is really good enough for professionals to use.
“Yes, the 5400rpm HDDs that are the most basic option for the 13″ and 15″ BMPs won’t ever saturate the 1.5Gbps bus. I didn’t say those people would care. I said pros who’d spend the money for SSDs and 7200rpm HDDs would.”
My own benchmarks of 7200rpm 2.5″ hard drives in other contexts leads me to think they won’t saturate the bus, either. The fastest, last time I looked, hit 120MB/s read — about enough to push the throughput of a 1.5GBps SATA bus, but you’d need benchmarks to notice.
While SSDs are often faster still, has anyone demonstrated that the MBP’s bus is throttling the ones offered by Apple? Apple’s marketing claims only that SSDs have “no moving parts for enhanced durability” — no speed boasts.
The rest of your analysis is impressive, but here’s the bottom line: does the slower SATA controller make the system unacceptable to professionals? I’ll bet a dollar those Apple 7200s and SSDs won’t get far past 120MBps in *any* controller.
“These are things you probably don’t do, Rob, but photo and video professionals considering a MBP would.”
I do work with large images in photoshop and haven’t noticed any problems with file operations in the 13″ MBP, though I haven’t used it much yet. Video pros who add top-shelf SSDs to their MBPs will still be disappointed, of course!
“Are there benchmarks? No, Rob, I don’t have a couple grand lying around to buy an up-specced MBP and benchmark it
You’d think someone would have by now. We could arrange it! The test that matters would be to take out the supplied MBP 7200 and SSD and test in other controllers, right?
“You coming in and saying the problem doesn’t exist is the same brand of plain ignorance that’s on display on both sides of the fanboy debates, and doesn’t help anybody.”
The fact remains that a half-speed SATA bus is still going to be enough to make the MBP good for pro use to most professional users — that bottlenecking at ~120MBps is an academic problem not just for most, but for all but a tiny constituency of users. In fact, this focus on edge-case performance demonstrates well the point that Apple’s never respected the niches it picks up: it will always ditch a specific pro community to appeal to the perceived interests of a wider one.
Elle has a point, but the underlying “Apple truth” to that argument lies with the commenter(s) mentioning RAM.
If you have the money, and / or just don’t know what RAM speeds and costs are then you’d upgrade at the Apple store. Any other sane person would get 3rd party RAM and do it themselves or through an Apple approved dealer.
With the 1.5Gbps downgrade the same can no longer be said – or at least beneficial – for hard drives and SSDs. Even if you are smart enough to get a 3rd party option, it won’t make a big difference compared to the Apple Store counterpart. It’ll still be cheaper, though, just not faster.
You do need to see if Apple’s previous and current bus implementation is outperformed by other hardware, testing both the drives and connection. Fun!
Solutions to this madness about hard drives:
-Add a FireWire drive and go into software-RAID, boosting your theoretical speed to 2.3 GBps.
-Add RAM and just use a RAM-drive as swap-space for Photoshop.
-Spend the extra money for a 17 inch. I mean, who really does all of their media-editing on a 15-inch laptop?
-Realize that a halved sequential data throughput doesn’t impact performance nearly as much as seek-times.*
-Make your own Apple-compatible laptop with 8 hours of battery life, a Nvidia 9400m chipset, a 3.0 GBps SATA port, etc…
-Stop being your own bottleneck, and do things productive instead of whining.
*= The only exception I can think of that might even come on a daily basis is hibernation. But will the extra seconds really stop you from being professional?
Think you guys have missed the point , by far the best pro mac book was the 12 inch , fitted perfectly in the camera bag. The new 13 inch is a nice machine , could be better with a matt screen but you can’t always get what you want… As to the SD card slot I found that a SD /CF carrier works find in my D300 so no problem there as to it being a pro machine well its running OSX.
“Sorry, you’re just plain wrong. Installation of the battery is no additional cost”
Rob – did you find out the COST of a replacement battery?
You know there is a BIG difference between “installed free of charge” and “the price…..includes installation of your new battery”.
Is the battery more expensive than previous hot-swap models for a comparable capacity? If so this is a rip-off maquerading as an offer.
Could I then for example buy the battery at a discount if I want to install it myself w. screwdriver etc.? If not, then Apple oblige people to pay for extra installation costs they may not need.
Not knowing the price I can’t say for certain, but you should check it and update so that we know you have your facts right.
it wouldn’t be the first time Apple have pulled this kind of trick on people – see eg. upgrading memeory on a macmini without voiding warrenty etc. Perhaps they’re just getting more clever at it by pretending it’s a freeby?
I did. The unibody replacement battery is $130, same as it is for the last-gen ones. No discount is available for self-installation. Apple stuff is overpriced, as ever it is.
The 13.3″ MacBook Pro is very sleek and classy, which is what we have come to expect from Apple. The design is sharp with the unibody chassis showing no panel lines or breaks except on the bottom for the huge panel that covers the internals. Apple gives us a very simple interface with little clutter (and ports) turning what is usually a mindless appliance into a work of art. To further simplify the design they switched to an internal battery for this model, instead of having a cover and release bar like in the previous revision.