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For expansion, Apple have ditched PCMCIA and gone with the much faster ExpressCard34 slot. Unfortunately there aren't many compatible cards available as yet, so it's unclear whether or not this standard will eventually be widely adopted.

Some hardware companies have announced compatible FireWire 800 and eSATA cards, helping to mitigate concerns over the lack of high-speed external disk connectivity.

Internally, ExpressCard34 provides access to the PCI-Express bus and extra USB 2.0 ports.

As a music production platform, the MBP is incredibly powerful, fast and responsive. The benchmark figures show that it has plenty of raw power on tap and is capable of handling even the most ambitious projects.

Unfortunately, this raw power comes at some cost: battery life is rather limited at around 3.5 hours and certain areas of the casing get ridiculously hot during even moderate use.

Fortunately, the machine remains fairly quiet, but we can't help being concerned that the excessive heat could cause long-term reliability issues.

As for the infamous processor whine that many users have reported, we only noticed it running on battery power, and even then it was so quiet that we had to listen out for it.

Also, enabling Bluetooth seemed to get rid of it completely, so we can't really level any criticism at the MBP in this area.

Compatibility

OS X 10.4 for Intel Macs includes the behind-the-scenes Rosetta translation interface, which enables PowerPC apps to run on Intel processors.

Although a very impressive technology, Rosetta isn't suitable for real-time music applications, so potential buyers should check that their favourite apps and plug-ins have been converted to Universal Binaries.

At the time or writing, Logic Pro 7 and Live 5 have been 'done' (and both run beautifully, particularly the dual-core enabled Logic Pro), with Reason 3 on the way.

While some external USB and FireWire audio interfaces will work straight away with the built-in CoreAudio drivers, others will require updating – again, our advice is to check first.

All of Apple's bundled software is already native, including the iLife bundle, which features the latest GarageBand version.

Logic Pro users who already own PowerPC hardware will be glad to know that Logic Node works just fine on a combination of PowerPC and Intel hardware.

Summary

High-end Apple hardware always comes with a bit of a price premium and this is no exception.

The design, build quality, excellent OS and bundled software more than make up for the extra cost, though.

Did we mention that the MBP can now officially dual-boot Windows, under which it's a potentially stellar performer? Yes indeed, Apple pie never tasted so good.