Which MacBook Pro Laptop Would I Buy?

As a professional digital photographer, I spend most of my day pushing images into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and out through Adobe Photoshop CS3. If you are reading this post then I assume that you are a serious digital photographer and that you are interested in buying a new Mac. We might have completely different photographic styles but I bet that your average workday is a lot like mine.

If you are shopping for a new Mac right now you have a number of great choices. I believe that the Mac mini and the MacBook Air are under powered machines but the higher-end MacBook models, the new iMac line and the Mac Pro are definitely worth carefull consideration. Of course, the Mac Pro tower crushes any laptop but most of us don't truly need that much power for our standard photographic projects. Plus, you can't work with one in your lap or take it with you to see a client.

I chose the MacBook Pro out of all Apple models because I need both power and portability. I use my MacBook Pro laptop when I am on the road and I also connect it to an external monitor and Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000 when I am at home. These MacBook Pros are expensive machines but they are powerful enough to do everything that I do in Photoshop both at home and on the road.

So which MacBook Pro what would I buy?

15" MacBook Pro
2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
250GB Serial ATA Drive @5400 rpm
The AppleCare Protection Plan

Please let me justify my suggestions. First, I am going to declare that I do not like 17" laptops. It doesn't matter what brand--Apple, Dell, etc.-- I just think that 17" machines are too big, too heavy, and that their battery life is terrible.

Trust me, a 17" laptop sounded like a great thing until I got on an airplane with one and the guy in front of me leaned his seat all the way back. With his seat tilted back I could not open the laptop up wide enough to see the screen. I was sitting there cursing. Here I am dragging this damn boat anchor of a machine through the airport and I can't even use it comfortably onboard the plane.

I suggest that you save your money here. Instead of buying a 17" laptop use the money to buy yourself a professional grade external monitor which you can run side-by-side with the 15" MacBook Pro's screen when you are at home. Use the MacBook Pro as the heart of our desktop setup. This way you are getting the best of both worlds.

Second, I am not convinced that the higher rotational speed hard drives are worth the price. Higher rotational speeds produce more heat and they suck the batteries down even faster. I think that the stock 5400 rpm drives are fine for most photographers. Not only is there litle improvement in performance but the higher rotational speed drives that Apple currently offers are smaller. You are paying more for shorter battery life and are actually getting less storage space.

There is considerable debate over whether the glossy or the standard surface is better suited for photographers. Apple suggests "the glossy widescreen display to make your graphics, photos, and videos appear with richer color and deeper blacks." I went this route and love my screen but there are plenty of professional photographers who prefer the standard matte finish display.

The last part that I am suggesting, the extended AppleCare Warranty, irks me. It bothers me that the default warranty only last for one year and the default Apple's tech support vias telephone is only free for a mere ninety days.

Hopefully, I'll never need to have anything repaired and I will never need to call for assistance but let's be real. It's a laptop which means I am to take it all sorts of dangerous places. No warranty cover accidents and abuse but even if I kept this machine in a padded bubble the odds are that something will need repairs within the next three years.

I should point that you are not required to buy the AppleCare Protection Plan right away. You can opt into this program at anytime. If money is tight right now skip this option with your initial purchase but I do urge you to sign up for it before the standard one-year warranty expires.

This about wraps it up for the internal hardware that I recommend on a MacBook Pro. Before I conclude this post though let me add that it would be foolish to buy this or any other Macintosh computer without also purchasing external hard drive. One of the best features of the new Mac Operating System is it's integrated backup program which Apple calls Time Machine. The thing is that Time Machine, like any backup utility, cannot help you unless you put your backups onto an external disk.

I'll put another post up later this week all about external hard drives and backup systems. I hope that you will come back for it and please follow this link to a previous post if you also need advice on photography and office software for a new Mac.