Check It Out: Apple MacBook Pro A1278

Visit TechTurn's online store today to find great deals on high quality laptops, such as this MacBook Pro A1278. 

The Pros: Good-looking design; Fast performance; Burn DVDs with nearly 9GB of space

The Cons: Expensive; No HDMI port; No Blu-ray

The Bottom Line: The Apple MacBook Pro is extremely fast with an Intel Core i5 processor. Not to mention, the advanced graphics are quite impressive. 

The MacBook Pro now has the latest Intel Core processors including either a Core i5 or Core i7, yet it still weighs in under 3 pounds. This allows you to do everything you normally do on a computer, only even quicker. Send e-mails, write reports, create presentations, edit home movies, upload photos to Facebook, and all the other tasks you can imagine. Since the Core i5 and i7 processors feature a graphics processor with an on-chip engine for video encoding and decoding, you'll have a longer battery life when chatting with family on FaceTime video calls or watching movies on iTunes.

The aluminum unibody construction gives this laptop an extremely sleek design. The entire encolsure is thinner and lighter than other notebooks. It feels strong and durable - perfect for life inside (and outside) your backpack or briefcase. Two words to describe this beauty: polished and refined.

The interior comes with a large glass multitouch pad in addition to a large keyboard that allows for easy typing. The large trackpad uses multitouch gestures for much of its functionality. One of my favorite gestures has to be the sweeping movement you can do with four fingers; up hides all your active windows, left or right brings up the application switcher. There's also one called "inertial scrolling" which you can do by flicking two fingers up or down. This will make the page continue to move slightly up or down, depending on the direction you're going, even after you've lifted your fingers.

The MacBook Pro includes all the necessary connections and ports you could possibly need (and probably didn't even know you wanted.) When you're out and about, the latest 802.11 N wireless technology in MacBook Pro makes it easy to get connected just about anywhere you go. Now you can surf the web, send e-mail and print documents no matter where you are. Stay connected whether you're traveling from room to room or cubicle to cubicle. Another bonus of having wireless is the ability to download apps from the Mac App Store anytime you want. Can't wait to buy that song you just heard on the radio? With wireless, you can buy it right away. Perfect! Other ports include two USB 2.0 ports, an SDXC card slot, FireWire 800 port, Audio in/out, and the Thunderbolt port that connects to the new Apple Thunderport Display or external hard drives.

The MacBook Pro delivers amazing battery life. An energy-efficient processor architecture with an integrated video encoder, along with automatic graphics, all help improve battery life. You can expect to surf the web for up to 7 hours on a single day.  

Overall, the MacBook Pro is the talk of the town with its beautiful design and fast performance. I use a MacBook Pro and home and I've never been disappointed with its performance. Once you go MacBook Pro, you don't go back.

TechTurn Editor's Rating

Reviewed by Chelsea Rivet

 Click here to find out more about the MacBook Pro A1278.

Apple Announces New iPad

Today, Apple unveiled a new iPad, the third edition of the majorly successful multitouch tablet. The new tablet includes a Retina display, a better camera, a new A5X quad-core processor, a high-speed mobile broadband technology LTE, and voice dictation support. Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, declared that this iPad, "redefines the category that Apple created with the original iPad." Here are descriptions from PCWorld explaining what each of the new features will include:

Retina Display 

Although the iPad’s display measures the same 9.7-inches (diagonal) as the first two iPads, it doubles the number of pixels in play; that means the screen now contains a whopping 2048-by-1536 pixels—264 pixels per inch—for a total of over 3.1 million pixels, which Schiller called “the most ever in a mobile device.” Apple coined the term Retina display when it unveiled the iPhone 4. It describes a screen with pixel density so high that, at normal viewing distances, the average human eye can’t discern the individual pixels.

A5X quad-core processor 

The iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 both leverage Apple’s custom-designed A5 system-on-a-chip. The iPad is instead powered by the new A5X chip. It offers four times the performance of the Tegra 3 processor that powers many Android tablets, Schiller said.

New Cameras  

The iPad now sports a 5-megapixel iSight camera with a 5-element lens, IR filter, and in-plane switching built into the iPad’s new chip. Schiller said the new iSight camera has automatic exposure and auto-focus, and now records HD video at 1080p resolution. Like the iPhone 4S’s camera, the iPad’s camera features automatic face detection, automatic exposure lock, and automatic focus lock. Also thanks to the new A5X chip, Schiller said, you also get image stabilization.

Voice Dictation 

New to the iPad is a microphone button on the virtual keyboard, one that looks just like the corresponding icon on the iPhone 4S’s keyboard. You can use that microphone for dictation anywhere the keyboard appears.

4G LTE 

LTE is a high-speed wireless broadband technology—which is as much as ten times faster as 3G Internet access. Like its predecessors, the iPad will come in both Wi-Fi-only and in mobile-broadband equipped models; the iPad will be the first iPad to offer support for high-speed LTE networks. In fact, the iPad will support HSPA+ with a maximum downlink of 21 Mbps, dual-carrier HSDPA with a maximum of 42 Mbps, and LTE with a maximum of 73 Mbps download. Schiller described the performance of the upgraded broadband technology as “amazing.” The new iPad will work with Verizon, Rogers, Bell, Telus, and AT&T for LTE support, Schiller said. All iPads will offer 3G support. The iPad can also now serve as a personal hotspot, if your carrier supports it. Because of different technologies at play, there will be different iPads for Verizon and AT&T’s networks.