Towards the end of last year Apple said that they were about to launch a brand new MacBook Pro, featuring an all-new unibody aluminium construction and tapered sides, similar to those of the MacBook Air. We here at the TechSmart office can, however, smell the hype a mile away, so our skeptic-radar went on full alert.­­

But when the fabled 15" version of the MacBook Pro finally arrived, we could do nothing other than say: “Sorry that we ever doubted you, Apple”. People raved about the old one and we just expected a few incremental improvements, but the Apple design team have done a sweeping number of brilliant improvements on the Pro.

The entire housing is machined from a solid billet of aluminium, allowing for a stiffer, more durable construction. The new design is also very good looking, probably the best looking notebook we have seen to date (we admit, begrudgingly). A small point on the construction that is actually rather annoying; the edges where your wrists rest when typing are all sharp ­corners so after ­typing for a while your arms start to feel like they’ve been hit with a steel ruler a few too many times.

The Pro comes in two standard configurations, but we tested the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo version and the performance is excellent. And apparently performance will be even better when Apple eventually release their new version of OS X, as the MacBook Pro hardware has actually been optimised to run with software that has yet to hit the market.

Probably the stand-out feature of the new Pro is the glass trackpad, which makes doing even basic scrolling, paging and zooming tasks a real pleasure. The trackpad uses the same type of multi-touch gestures that you find on the iPhone. We thought this was probably more a gimmick than anything else, but we were very wrong. Other manufacturers will definitely be scrambling to get something like this in their machines ASAP. The only question you do have to ask yourself is: “Do I really see myself spending at least R24 000 on a notebook?” Well, do you?

If you do, call Computer Corporation on 08616-08616 for more info.