TUAW reviews Sponge for Mac OS X:

Sponge, from Dare to be Creative Ltd., is a US$26 program designed to look for the space-wasters on your Mac and help you get rid of them cleanly.

The reader comments are also helpful, as there are suggestions for alternative software and methods to assist you in identifying large files and folders for potential deletion, most of which are free.

The other approach is to save the money and software and put it towards purchasing new, 1 TB hard drives which go for around $100 USD.

This page is a collection of tips on software and hardware you can use to keep you Mac running cool.

Most of these tips are summarized from discussions on Mac forums and online communities. Full attribution is given by linking to the source.

CoolBook – I’d never thought a software solution could be useful for keeping your MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks cool, and extend battery life at the same time. This was suggested by Paul Barnard – read his post where he describes his experience with the software and his MacBook Air.

This page is a compilation of tips on steps you can take to reduce the amount of glare coming off your glossy Mac screens.

The tips are taken from discussions on Mac forums or online communities.

Photodon LCD Screen Protector Films – suggested by Kendall.

Apple has instructions on how to condition your MacBook or MacBook Pro battery for optimum performance, longer battery life and to ensure that the battery functions at its fullest capacity.

Step 1 – Plug in the MagSafe power adapter and fully charge the MacBook or MacBook Pro battery until the light on the MagSafe connector changes to green and the Battery icon in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.

Step 2 – Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for two hours or longer. You may use your computer during this time as long as the power adapter is plugged in.

Step 3 – Disconnect the power adapter with the computer on and start using it with battery power. When the battery’s charge gets low, you’ll see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.

Step 4 – Continue to keep your computer turned on until it goes to sleep. Save your work and close all applications when the battery’s charge gets low and before the computer goes to sleep.

Step 5 – Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or longer.

Step 6 – Reconnect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged. You may use your computer during this time.

Gathered here is a compilation of professional reviews, user opinions and tests on the new unibody aluminum MacBook Pro (or MBP) (introduced in October 2008).

Full attribution is given by linking to the source.

Professional Reviews and Tests

MacBook Pro review by Scott Kelby
Scott Kelby is a professional photographer who has written many books on digital photography and using Photoshop. He found the new MacBook Pro to excel in many areas, most notably the quality of the photos (they “look so darn good”) being displayed on the glossy glass screen.

The new GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor seems to work much better (“… crazy fast, and zooming, moving, rotating views, etc. is just amazingly, crazily, wonderfully fast.”) than expected at accelerating the graphics in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

For more information on the new 9600M GT, read the benchmark and review articles at notebookcheck.net and barefeats.com (“GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor runs 3DMark 43% faster, than the 8600M GT used in the “early 2008″ MacBook Pro).

The only problem plaguing Scott is the new Trackpad, something he feels that Apple should provide a fix for real fast. He’s even made the following video to illustrate the annoyance:

MacBook Pro review at The Apple Blog
They concluded:

With the latest MacBook Pro, Apple has created something which looks and feels ‘right’. All the new additions come together to create a system which is sturdy, powerful and innovative. That said, in blurring the lines between consumer and professional notebooks lines to such a degree, they have made choosing a MacBook Pro a more difficult choice.

Regarding graphics and gaming performance:

Game performance is as you would expect — nothing short of exceptional. The popular games I tested were able to run with settings at their most detailed, at full resolution, with no noticeable problems. I expect that it will make a solid hardware platform for several generations of games to come.

User Reviews, Opinions and Feedback

MacBook Pro dropped on asphalt

STUDIO::DC dropped a new unibody MacBook Pro on the ground by accident. The notebook has dents on the body, but continued to work like a charm.

BikerRob loves the new MacBook Pro’s glossy screen – even when he worked with it outdoors.

The new keyboard allows for more reliable typing – Roberto prefers the new keyboard over the one found on the older MacBook Pro laptop.

Phil Flash likes the glossy screen – Phil says that the colors are better, and what’s shown has more snap and is a joy to look at. He doesn’t notice the reflections too much.

Abbott Schindler sends the new MacBook back to Apple (17-Oct-2008)
Abbott experienced serious reflection issues with the new glossy screen, and says:

I use the machine outdoors whenever the weather is nice. Otherwise it’s in my office with a large window side-lighting it and gentle lights above and in front of the display. Outdoors, I could barely see displayed content beyond the reflections. Reflections from my skin-colored shirt, the stunning blue sky and surrounding trees were so clear, bright, and pronounced that I couldn’t ignore them. And I was wearing glasses, which reflected like brilliant floodlights on the screen.

Polarizing screens didn’t help either …

I have a couple of polarizing security screens for my other laptops and hopefully tried them on the glossy MBP…just gently laying them against the screen. Didn’t help at all. The brilliant reflections from the glass were barely cut by the matte-finish and polarizing in the films. That made me pessimistic about the ability of regular non-glare screens to do an adequate job for me.

Jeff_C’s brief impressions on running Aperture (18-Oct-2008)
Jeff was generally impressed with Aperture’s running speed on the new MBP, and said:

I loaded up some of my 40D raw files, and was very impressed. Speed was on par with my MBP 2.33 (late 2006) with ATI 100 256MB GPU. I tried all the adjustments, no lag. The only lag was trying to straighten an image while zoomed into 100%. loading pics was a bit slower of course, anywhere from 4-8 secs. Interestingly, when trying the stock aperture demos on the new MBPs, the load time was the same.

Shortcomings of the new design

No USB port on the right side
Scroll down to the middle of the Features page of the new MacBook Pro (or view this image).

I have a USB mouse hooked up to the right USB port of my current 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro.

It wouldn’t be as neat to do the same with the new MacBook Pro as both USB ports are now on the left side of the notebook.

I’ve yet to experience any sleep problems (the thing your MacBook does when you close the lid) on my MacBook Pro, nevertheless, this article points to a freeware resource (SmartSleep) that allows you to select the sleep behavior for your Mac laptop without having to dish out commands in Terminal.

According to the Readme.rtf document, the SmartSleep preference pane needs to be installed for all users.

I’ve decided to go with the smart sleep setting with the default value of 20 seconds, which means that if the remaining battery level is 20 minutes or more, the system will just go to sleep immediately without writing the contents of the RAM to the hard disk.

If the battery level is at 20 minutes or less, it will automatically switch to the sleep and hibernate setting, which means that the contents of the RAM will be written to the hard disk during the start of the sleep process.