Apparently, several Apple users are reporting in forums that the screen in the unibody MacBooks has been quietly upgraded to MacBook Air standards, offering noticeably better quality than older units. It all started last April.

Although the photo is not that good, you can notice the difference here. On the left you have the older screen. According to these users, the new machines have a wider view angle and better blacks. The unibody Macbook 13 had an LG Philips screen, but it looks like the latest boxes are coming out of the factory with a 13.3-inch glossy AU Optronics screen similar to the the one found in the MacBook Air. [Notebook Review Forums and MacRumors Forums via ComputerWorld]

Last February a Turkish Airways jet crashed in Amsterdam killing nine people and injuring 121 others. Passenger Sefer Baris and his MacBook Air survived the crash—but both were a little worse for wear.

Sefer’s friend Bullent tells Macenstein:

He was sitting on the chair in the front [of the airplane]. Seat number seven. (3-4 chairs from the business class). He has his MacBook Air with him, he was watching a movie. When the plane began to land, he closed his MacBook Air, and put it in the skin. A couple of minutes [later] there was the crash.”

Apparently Sefer broke his neck the accident—and his MacBook was bent all to hell. Miraculously, several operations have given Sefer the ability to walk, and sturdy unibody construction prevented his new MacBook Air from completely biting the dust. Despite their injuries, both “booted up” and are expected to recover. [Macenstein]

The patent shows that the iPod’s new casing will be carved out of a single, large and thick block of sheet metal, making the device lighter, thinner and sturdier. Although it may be a significantly stronger product, with it being made out of one slab of metal, it seems that it would be harder to take the iPod apart for second-hand replacements and repairs, meaning that consumers would have to turn to Apple directly for all their iPod needs.

However, having it made out of one block of sheet metal would reduce the costs of creating it. Does this also mean it’ll be cheaper for consumers as well? Please, Apple, let it be so. [iPodNN]

Design
With nothing to scale this image, it’s nearly impossible to tell the new 17-inch MBP from the 13- or 15-inch unibody macs. From the outside, it’s the same thing, only bigger. At first it’s a little intimidating to see such a large, unadorned block of metal. But at 3kg, it’s actually not as heavy in your hands as you’d expect. And at 25mm in stature, it’s only ever so slightly thicker (0.7mm) than the other two MacBooks.

Apple will tell you that the MBP17 is the thinnest, lightest 17-inch notebook in the world. We’ll tell you that for a monster of a laptop, it manages to not be too monstrous. The 17-inch (1920×1200) screen is a sharp, contrasty and colorful panorama, but it’s the little touches that make the MBP17 manageable: The system’s near-silent operation (using a 256GB SSD instead of a hard drive) is almost unnerving. Its underside gets warm, but never hot. And the unibody design makes particularly good sense in this larger size, as the wide chassis does not flex to your grip as you might expect.

The battery is one of the only components that’s significantly different than that of the smaller machines. Striving for 8-hours of battery life the newly designed power pack screws right into the chassis. (Lots more on that topic below.)

What’s missing, however, is the underside hatch that made for easy hard drive and battery replacement. This smart design feature, recently introduced in Apple’s 13- and 15-inch unibody laptops, has been replaced by a series of screws to remove the bottom panel, and another series of screws to remove the battery. Removing a few screws is by no means a horrendous exercise, but we can’t help but feel that it’s a step in the wrong direction. The most spend-happy pro users will be the most likely to crack the lid of their laptops—so this design choice will likely annoy a key part of the MBP17’s target audience.

What’s Different About It?
Compared to the MBP15
• Supports 8GB of RAM; the MBP15 only supports 4GB
• Includes a 256GB SSD option; the MBP15 only a 128GB
• The MBP17 includes five speakers with a wider frequency response
• There’s one extra USB port (3 total)
• Slightly faster processor options
(note: shot comparison of 13-inch model)

Compared to the old 17-inch MBP
• 40% larger battery (95WH vs. 68WH)
• Glossy and matte screen options are now available
• The screen has equal resolution, but a 60% wider colour gamut
• Unibody structure, of course

Performance
The MBP17 features a 2.66 or 2.93GHz processor, up to 8GB of RAM and dual Nvidia 9400M (integrated) and 9600 (discrete) graphics cards. A 320GB 5400RPM hard drive comes standard, but that can be upgraded to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or a 128GB/256GB solid-state drive. (Note: There’s no option for a 500GB hard drive, though they are readily available if you want to swap one in.)

The model we tested was fully loaded, with a 2.93GHz processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

Still, because the MBP17 is so similar to the 15 internally, we’re going to point you in the direction of our last review for benchmarks on the dual Nvidia 9400M and 9600 graphics cards. We also ran Xbench and uploaded the predictably impressive results to their database. However, one feature we wanted to be sure to check out was the new 256GB SSD option, a drive made by Toshiba. It’s a $US750 upgrade that we were able to test in our review model.

SSD Speed Benchmarks:
Against the stock drive that comes with MBPs, the speed gains are obvious. However, the SSD market is still very young. There are only a handful of drives out there, so how do you know if Apple’s $US750 offering is price competitive?

Searching through the XBench results forums, we found a user who tested out a G. Skill Titan 256GB SSD on a unibody mac. It’s not rated to be as fast as Samsung’s $US1000 SSD gold standard, but according to these benchmarks, it’s still considerably faster than the drive Apple will sell you. The catch? The Titan runs $US500, or $US250 less than Apple’s bundled Toshiba. In other words, as with most upgrades, you’re still better off going through a third party for your SSD.

The other bonus to SSDs is how quickly they boot. From the picture, you can see that our MBP17 booted in 31 seconds, despite me having a few hundred icons on the desktop. The MBP15 (normal hard drive, 4GB RAM) took about 90 seconds to load a similar configuration, or “three times longer” in marketing speak.

Battery Life
Everything so far about the new MBP17 is all well and good, but we think there’s one claim in particular that’s going to interest consumers the most: A 7-8 hour battery life*.

*Assuming screen at half brightness, Wi-Fi on, light browsing, light word processing (so no Bluetooth but otherwise a standard configuration). 8 hours on integrated graphics, 7 hours with more beefy discrete GPU.

Indeed, the MBP17’s battery is huge. It takes up roughly the whole bottom half of the computer’s underside. To make the battery as big as possible, Apple removed even the battery’s removal mechanism. Apple’s lithium polymer pack screws in and promises a shelf life of 1000 complete charges—which also means 2000 half recharges or 8000 quarter recharges—before the battery depletes to 80% capacity.

And while we didn’t have the time to test Apple’s 1000 recharge claim, we were able to run some battery tests.

First we put the system up against a day of blogging. This test was admittedly harder than Apple’s cushy benchmarking, but I wanted to see how it would stand up to true pro use. So with the screen just a hair above half brightness, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, backlit keyboard on, discrete graphics on, heavy web browsing and occasional Photoshop work, we achieved 3 hours 57 minutes of run time.

Should we be pissed? After all, Apple offers 7-8 hours in their ads! That’s your call. In truth, we’ve found that most laptops hit about half their rated battery life under real world conditions (cough, netbooks, cough). If we can only cover our ears and hum through Apple’s latest marketing campaign, we’re actually fairly pleased with about 4 hours of heavy use from a fully loaded 17-inch laptop—especially since that metric includes no real compromises to our workflow.

We also wanted to simulate watching a movie on the plane. So we played back an MPEG4 with the screen at half brightness, discrete graphics off, backlit keyboard off, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off and headphones in. We received 4 hours 39 minutes of run time. That’s nearly two hours longer* than we received from the MBP15, and 2 hours 30 minutes lon
ger than we received from the MB13. That’s basically the difference between watching one movie and watching two.

*The previous MBP tests had Wi-Fi on, the backlit keyboard on and speakers on. These alterations should account for a small amount of the increase, but my no means a majority. The 17-inch unit also has an SSD, but these non-spinning drives don’t necessarily mean power savings.

For the Lazy Readers Needing a Summary
A 17-inch notebook has never been designed for the mainstream consumer. But then again, nothing about this MacBook Pro is aiming for the mainstream. It’s a laptop that starts at $US2800, and our fully loaded test model runs a hair over $US5,000. Its screen is as big as most CRT monitors from just a few years back.

The thing should feel like a beast on the couch, but it actually doesn’t. It’s almost frightening how quickly you adjust, appreciating the extra screen space while disregarding that this system is supposed to be a “laptop” in name only.

If you can get over the purported 8 hours of battery life and settle for longevity around half that number, you’ll be welcomed with a laptop that feels like a desktop but is actually a laptop. It’s a Cadillac that you can just about park, a triple cheeseburger in the bun of a double, a stocky man in a well-tailored suit. And we’re liking it. We just can’t help but ask, why can’t Apple fit a 256GB SSD or 8GB of RAM—or even a 4+ hour battery—into a 15-inch MBP?

It’s a big honking computer in a smallish package

As with the other unibody systems, the MBP17 runs cooler and quieter than past MacBooks

Battery life is reasonable, but will fall short for pro users looking for a true day of use

Apple’s Toshiba SSD upgrade is pricey for its performance

There’s no easy pop-off bottom panel like in other unibody models

External Sources [ifixit, Xbench]

A dash of colour is a good thing and so is the added protection from a hard case—but there are a few drawbacks. Heat buildup might be a major concern, there are no 17-inch versions, and the $US50 price tag is a bit steep. [Speck via CNET]

When I went to plug in my Verizon EV-DO card, all was well. But when I moved to hook up my digital camera’s USB cable in the other port, my smile turned upside down–just like the old plastic MacBooks, there is almost zero clearance in between the two USB ports, meaning anything that’s slightly above the normal plug size will block the other opening. Guhhhh.

On the old MBPs, there was a USB port on each side, for happier, double-connected times. Now if you use most any USB 3G card, you’ll have to hang it limply from a short extension cable if you want to get at your other port.

Sure you can also buy a card reader for your ExpressCard slot (even though the CF cards found in most quality DSLRs require an ugly protrusion), but that doesn’t help when you want to download images to your machine live via camera control software–a liveblogging essential. Also forget about using any USB card reader you had, certain bulky flashdrives or your prized USB Humping Dog without blocking the other port.

So if you’re getting a MBP and a 3G card to go with it, go with ExpressCard for the 3G–a nagging little thing that the old MBPs had on this new version. Otherwise this thing is a dream, and our review is more spot-on every day. Just little things like this that you wouldn’t normally think about that pop up. Have you ever been surprised by an unsuspected limitation of new gear like this? Let us know.

From a spokesperson at Apple:

It will likely be years before you need to replace it (1000 cycles at 200 cycles/year = 5 years). You can have the battery replaced at any Apple Store or Apple-authorised reseller. The replacement battery is priced at $US179, which includes installation of the new battery and environmentally-responsible disposal of the old battery.

The non-removable MacBook Air battery costs $US129 to replace, though the lifespan is not promised to be as great. [Apple]