So the Mac has joined my replacement work Dell – two new computers in two days! Here are my first thoughts on the hardware:
This post is part of my series focused on switching from PC to Mac.
- The MacBook Pro is much sturdier than the average PC notebook, and even somewhat better than the high-end machines I’ve used (like my replacement Dell XPS M1330)
- The machine is hot on the bottom when using it a lot, and even pretty hot on the top!
- The fan is really loud – much louder than I was expecting
- The MagSafe power cord is cute but very delicate – I’m not surprised at all that they break and burn right and left!
- The screen is gorgeous – I got the matte model rather than the glossy since I hate the bright reflections I always fight with on my other machines
- I wish the 15″ model I got had more than two USB ports – I just know I’m going to be swapping a lot more than I used to. But the new Dell has only two ports, too – my old XPS M1210 had four!
- Since I got the older model, it included the Apple remote, which is cute
- Everything about this machine is classier and more elegant than any PC I’ve ever used, from the packaging to the case to the documentation to the power cord
- I hate the auto-dimming screen – it reacts WAY too fast, constantly dimming and brightening as my shadow falls over the left-side speaker grille. This was the first Mac feature to be disabled!
One really odd thing about this machine is that even though it’s a “Late 2007” model, it was manufactured in April 2008! Why on earth did Apple continue making the old model two months after it was replaced in February with the “early 2008” version?
As for OS X Leopard, I’ve just begun exploring…
- Anyone who complains about UAC on Windows should try OS X – it interrupts just about as much but forces you to type in your password, too!
- I love the packaging system – everything is self-contained so you can just drag and drop or delete
- It took me the longest time to figure out how to be able to shut the lid and use the computer with an external monitor – turns out it always sleeps when you shut the lid but then wakes up again when you click the mouse or type on the keyboard
- The included applications look much more useful than the ones that ship with Vista, which themselves are far better than anything Microsoft bundled in the past – I can’t wait to use iMovie and Garage Band, and iPhoto seems just as good as Google’s Picasa
- I’m loving the included UNIX utilities – ssh and scp should be part of every operating system out of the box!
- It’s ridiculously hard to change the hostname – apparently you have to edit /etc/hostconfig by hand! Do they expect that no regular people want to name their computer?!?
- Network setup beats Vista hands-down! It correctly suggested that my wireless router was filtering based on MAC address, while Vista just said “can’t connect”
- I already installed Boot Camp and VMware Fusion with a Windows Vista partition – talk about easing the transition!
I’ll keep updating the blog with my experiences over the next few months. As a reminder, I offer separate feeds for Enterprise Storage for those not interested in this topic, which will be posted in my Terabyte Home feed.