Apple’s MacBook laptop, the company’s low-end portable computer aimed at average consumers, isn’t just any old product. It’s the best-selling Macintosh in history at a time when Mac sales are growing much faster than sales of PCs in the United States overall. And, according to the sales-research organization NPD Group, the midrange model of the MacBook has been the single best-selling laptop of any brand in U.S. retail stores for the past five months.
So, when Apple completely revamped the design of the MacBook last week, it was a big deal, not only for Mac die-hards, but for anyone shopping for an everyday laptop.
I’ve been testing the base model of the new MacBook for the past five days, and I like it a lot, despite a few downsides. I found this new MacBook to be speedy, solid, innovative and comfortable to use, with very good battery life.
The new model sports a sturdy aluminum case, instead of the old plastic one, and looks gorgeous. It even seemed to run cooler than earlier Apple aluminum laptops. It’s 10 percent lighter, at 4.5 pounds, and 12 percent thinner, at 0.95 inches, than its predecessor, and it continues to include a built-in DVD drive. Its processor is slower, yet it has good performance because of much faster graphics, and it also offers a far brighter screen in the same 13.3-inch size. It still gets strong battery life — slightly better in fact than the older model, in my tests.
Plus, the new MacBook includes a huge, innovative glass track pad that functions as a combination of a traditional track pad and the multitouch screen of an iPhone. This track pad allows all sorts of fingertip gestures you can use to navigate Web pages, manipulate photos and switch among programs.
In another radical step, Apple eliminated the…