> The chassis for example uses air gap between the board and the base for insulation. Even condensation can bridge it, which is the theory why mine exploded.

What environment are you using your laptop in that's allowing condensation to form inside the device? Electronics are typically not rated for use in condensing environments at all.

Air gaps as insulators are pretty typical in electronics. That's how it works in every desktop machine I've ever used. And it looks like the air gap inside the MBP is plenty large, and even if it weren't, the attached components would be making contact with the case, not the board itself.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+M...

I think the "condensation inside the case" theory is incorrect. I don't know if that's your own theory or if someone working for Apple told you that, but I don't see that as feasible. You'd need a lot of liquid inside the case for a short to involve the case. And frankly, if you've got any liquid inside your laptop, the fact that the case is metal is irrelevant.

> Regarding appearance, and? Does that really matter?

Of course not. No one cares about the way their $1300 device looks any more. As a society, we moved past caring about appearances in 1992.

> "What environment are you using your laptop in that's allowing condensation to form inside the device?"

I can think of a pretty easy hypothetical--have the laptop indoors, powered down in a very cool air conditioned room for enough time to make it cool. Then take it outside in a high humidity region like Florida and turn it on. Bam, condensation inside the device.

That's a fair point, but it doesn't seem extremely likely. I could see developing "fog" on/in the device (like glasses fogging when coming in from the cold), but enough to produce a short is hard to believe. The aluminum should actually reach equilibrium with the environment faster than plastic.

So now it's that I'm "obsessed" with shiny?

The number of MacBooks in the environment that I work in that have serious dents, battle damage from severe falls, outnumbers those that don't, and they're all in functioning condition. Don't think that Lenovo laptops are the only ones that are durable.

If you look at the resale value for a MacBook it's a lot higher than a Lenovo. I'm sure there's something other than "shiny" that makes a five year old MacBook still have significant value.

"If you look at the resale value for a MacBook it's a lot higher than a Lenovo. I'm sure there's something other than "shiny" that makes a five year old MacBook still have significant value."

I rather enjoy the availability of cheap good recycled laptops such as the Lenovo Thinkpads.

I suspect the lower price compared to Apple laptops of similar vintage may have to do with the volume available, and the tendency of corporate purchasers to refresh their stock en masse.

If my hypothesis is correct, one would expect to see a drop in resale value of Apple laptops in the future as the volume increases, and as they are seen more in the corporate world in larger numbers.

Boards usually have a transparent coating, I doubt that it's only air separating the board from the chassis. For this very reason - laptops are thrown into the water as a test, they must not explode after that. I have never had a problem with a unibody Macbook. Please don't be ridiculous.

It's called solder mask and it doesn't cover the entire board...

Compressing the bottom of the case will short.

It's badly designed.

I think he's talking about conformal coating, not solder mask. Conformal coating can help but it's mostly there to prevent shorting across component leads from condensation. If you smash the Al casing against the board there's a good chance you can chip the coating and short things out.

Exactly, that's what I meant. Good point about the chipping off!

Shucks.

I don't even have a dog in this fight except for the following facts

1) I am a current owner of the storied T61 and 2) I have grown fond of the stupendously neat rMBP and am mulling getting one.

  That and you can throw the damn thing across the room and
  it'll still work. Mine is 5 years old, has been thrown,
  dropped, spilled on, yanked off the table, stood on and
  it's as good as new.

Now that I've been made familiar with the fact that the T61 is in very small company of notebooks that can put up with even moderate household battery - a fact I've long suspected but never gloated about, given it's outmodedness - I am suddenly struck with angst over my limited options.

Yes, T61 is all those things that the author mentioned.

My T61 has survived falls on hardwood floors, physical shocks in poorly padded cases and other uncharitable abuse.

I just can't fathom the prospect of not being able to do all those things to my new notebook, whatever the eventual pick is.

rMBP owners: Please do share your insights into the mean level of abuse your units have handsomely survived.

> rMBP owners: Please do share your insights into the mean level of abuse your units have handsomely survived.

I do not own a rMBP, but laptops in general are not as fragile as we sometimes imagine. Most of the failures I've experienced over the years have been for things unrelated to drops. I've had a dead screen backlight, a dead trackpad (water spill), and similar one-off failures. I've also seen overheating, failed logic boards, and of course dead batteries. I've never seen a laptop that died because someone dropped it (though obviously that can happen).

However, if you drop a metal laptop, you're likely to get scratches and dents. You won't see that as much on a Thinkpad because the plastic will shrug this off better. With cheaper plastic laptops, you might see cracked plastic.

If you drop your laptop a lot, you might want something like a ThinkPad just so it won't get dinged up. But then you might want to just stop dropping your laptop so much.

I once slipped on ice and dropped my T60p from about chest height onto a steel manhole cover. It was perfectly fine. Worrying about the structural strength of a T-series Thinkpad is entirely unjustified as far as I can tell.

> rMBP owners: Please do share your insights into the mean level of abuse your units have handsomely survived.

A week or so ago, I was riding my bicycle on the comute from work and had to avoid a psychopath in a car. I'd forgotten to close the straps over the rMBP and it went flying off the back of the bike, skittered along the bitumen for a couple of metres and smashed into a gutter. It's not quite as handsome as it was, but despite landing on the screen corner everything still lines up perfectly, opens and closes perfectly and works perfectly.

I have dropped my rMBP at least three times from a coffee table or bed height or so. It seems sturdier than the regular MBP in that I haven't any noticeable dents, though I believe I got lucky in that each impact seemed spread across the edge or the bottom, and not a corner. I also have the SSD version, for what it's worth.

After using it for 4 months daily travelling cross-continent for development, presentations, and running multiple virtual machines, it's the finest laptop I've owned - by far the fastest and most aesthetically pleasing.

For background, I've owned three Dell Inspirion or Latitudes, a Thinkpad T61, three MacBook Pros, a Macbook Air, and three PowerBook G3/G4s.

I'm a continuous early adopter of first gen Apple technology - I've had some mishaps (heat on the first MBP that needed a warranty repair; poor backlight on a pre-unibody Macbook Pro, poor signal reliability on the first AirPort Extreme, and case flex on the early PowerBook G4s and MacBook Pros) but nothing that made me curse their name. I was lucky to avoid the logic board issues on the iBook G3s which was the worst experience I know of based on my friends' experiences.