Yes, I finally bought my first MacBook Pro a little more than a months ago. All my life I ‘ve been working in MS Windows environment with a small injection of UNIX when needed. My teenage son got the first MacBook in our family last Spring, he was very enthusiastic about his new toy and didn ‘t even want to compare it with anything like Dell or the other Wintel products saying that they suck.
I ‘m neither an Apple Mac OS Nazi. I ‘m not a big fan of hypocrites who make their living spending at least 8 hours in MS Windows just to come home and bash Microsoft.
I bought my MacBook Pro (15 “, 2.54Ghz, 4GB RAM, 7200rpm 320Gb HD) for $2399. It ‘s $200 cheaper than a regular price – my NYU ID entitles me for an educational discount.
I like the design of new MacBook Pro. It feels very solid… How do I put it… Have you ever owned any Mercedes car? Let alone the other qualities of the car, just listen to the sound of the closing door – it ‘s very tight. Japanese cars don ‘t generate this sound. American unions-produced cars are not even admitted to participate in this door sound competition.
OK, if you didn ‘t own Mercedes, do you at least have an iPhone? It feels good in your hands. Who cares if Blackberry or some Nokia products offer more functionality? iPhone looks and feels great so is MacBook.
An old Jewish joke keeps coming to my mind.
“Haim, have you circumcised you newborn boy yet? ”
“I will, but I ‘m not sure why circumcised penis is better? ”
“First of all, it looks gorgeous… ”
The lit keyboard is convenient, the UI of all OS widgets is well done and won ‘t take you long to get used to it. Unless you need to do some heavy duty programming in this environment the switch is pretty easy.
At home, I noticed that my MacBook works a lot faster on the same Wi-Fi router than my two-year old Sony Vaio. A friend of mine explained that MacBook comes with faster N-type wireless card, while my old one had slower G type.
Its monitor built on some new technology, which makes the screen brighter with theoretically lower energy consumption. The sound from internal speakers is excellent for a laptop.
The video quality is great. If you have MacBook, watch the trailer for the Up cartoon http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/up/hd/
Here ‘s another one for you (not sure who ‘s the author):
Macs are for those who don “t want to know why their computer works.
Linux is for those who want to know why their computer works.
DOS is for those who want to know why their computer doesn “t work.
Windows is for those who don “t want to know why their computer doesn “t work.
With MAC, my experience so far is more of a user than programmer. I ‘m using MS Word for Mac, Eclipse, Sound Booth, Skype, Acrobat. MS Word gives scary msg once in a while and dies – it less stable that it Windows brother. I can ‘t use another word processor because I ‘m writing a book for O ‘Reilly and they require use of specific Word templates.
The body of my MacBook does not does not get overheated more than my older Vaio. My colleague suggested to purchase a cooling pad from Belkin, I did, but it ‘s a noisy and inconvenient piece of junk. Costco took it back – no questions asked.
Installed Fusion from VMWare, and starting MS Windows OS is like starting any other app. No need to reboot . It just works great.
Not everything looked rosy during my honeymoon. Here are some cons:
1. Bigger is not always better- the screen is too big for a laptop – I prefer 13 inches. I often use my laptop on the go – riding a bus or sitting in economy seat of the airplane. When the person in front of me presses that button to recline his seat, my fifteen inches immediately move up onto my growing belly. If I had thirteen inches, it ‘d stay on my laps.
2. Not having an option of matte monitor sucks. I understand that Steve Jobs uses his MacBook sitting in a limo with tinted windows, but I ‘m not there yet.
3. The battery life does not impress – 2.5 hours of real work is a mediocre for a newly released product (lowering the screen brightness helps). Don ‘t trust these specs that promise 5 hours. Those results can be repeated if you keep it on with a black screen saver not touching a keyboard.
Overall, I like my MacBook Pro and MAC OS X. But I don ‘t mind working with Windows XP either. Am I bisexual?
Yakov Fain
Twitter: http://twitter.com/yfain
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