WarrantyĪpple only offers a standard 12 month warranty. The notebook has to be sent in or needs to be taken to an authorized reseller in that case. Only the battery is not user replaceable.

The fan unit can be cleaned should it become necessary. Hard disk drive and RAM are easily accessible and a breeze to change. The MacBook Pro is quite user friendly in that aspect: after removal of ten small Phillips screws, a part of the bottom plate comes off and allows access to the internal components. 'Unibody' usually means difficult maintenance. Apple stores usually have a huge selection of accessories, both from the manufacturer itself as well as other vendors. AccessoriesĪpple usually ships their notebooks with only the most basic accessories, so it wasn't a big surprise that the box only included the power adapter and a few user manuals. The main advantage of the already three-year old technology is the decreased power consumption, which leads to better battery life. With Bluetooth 4.0, Apple incorporates the latest standard of the short-range wireless technology. The LAN controller (Broadcom) supports Gigabit Ethernet, the WLAN controller (also from Broadcom) supports 802.11a/b/g/n (both 2.4 and 5 GHz). Not much has changed from the predecessor. One thing up front: the somewhat low display resolution regrettably hasn't changed. Other changes we will discuss more thoroughly in the respective sections. Additionally, the USB ports have been updated to USB 3.0. Courtesy of the new processor generation is the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000. This mobile CPU featured a 2.5 GHz core frequency and can overclock to a maximum of 3.1 GHz using Intel Turbo Boost. So what did change? The most noticeable difference is the Ivy Bridge dual-core CPU Intel Core i5-3210M. And why fix something that's not broken - the customers obviously appreciated the design. The chassis is still a slim unibody structure made from solid aluminum.

The outside of the new MacBook Pro entry-level notebook looks almost identical to the predecessor (we are talking about the version 'Early 2011', since we had no chance to test the 'Late 2011'-model).

Not everybody was happy: screen too small, display glossy, and not even a matte option? Fast forward a few years: the little MacBook Pro is now well-established and was refreshed recently, when Apple updated the current portfolio. When the 'Unibody' MacBook was absorbed into the MacBook Pro line and debuted as MacBook Pro 13, it became the new entry-level 'Pro' model. But fans don't quite agree on the entry-level notebook into the realm of Apple Pro notebooks. Today, the 15-inch MacBooks are commonly accepted, and the Retina model is a worthy successor to the now discontinued 17-inch version. If you asked any die-hard Apple user a few years back about the 'ideal' MacBook Pro, he or she would have insisted on a 17-inch display, non-glare of course.

Macbook 2012 hard drive