17″ MacBook Pro
I picked up a 17″ MacBook Pro last week.
Having never been a Mac user, so I thought I’d share my initial thoughts. I know I’m going to sound like a total n00b to all of you Mac pros out there. But these are the things that have stood out thus far:
Love:
- Backlit keyboard is awesome and a must have in low light.
- 4+ hrs battery life on a 17″ notebook is ultra impressive
- Magnetic power cable kicks ass – it has already saved it from a huge fall
- 3kg total weight, again very impressive for a 17″ notebook
- Speakers sound friggin awesome
- Slot drive rocks!
- Lid just locks into place beautifully – no dodgey clips or hinges
- OSX is v/clean. I can see why ppl are attracted to it
- 2 finger scrolling is killer! I find my self scrolling around without even thinking – that’s how much fun it is!
- Performance is awesome- i guess this is a given since it’s a Core2 Duo with 2GB RAM and dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
- Video performance is awesome – I’m playing 1280 HighDef h.264 video without dropping a single frame
- Universal binary is v/cool – no install rocks but has its downsides
- Built in apps are fun and useful – Photo Booth, iMovie, GarageBand
- Dock is sexy – very much looking forward to the Leopard dock!
Not so love:
- Not sure why the keyboard has to be so small on such a large notebook – I would’ve like it to have more keys (eg separate PGUP/PGDN keys etc) considering it has so much room.
- Battery gets very hot
- V/expensive (A$3,999). Don’t even get me started on the price of AppleCare.
- Limited apps – I’m already missing my outlook 2007 and J.River Media Center for example. iTunes still sucks even on a Mac
- I miss Visual Studio
- No touch screen – I’ve become quite enamored with my Tablet PC
- FrontRow is sexy when you first see it but it’s very average very quickly – eg lack of divx etc
- Single mouse button is so 70′s – time to add a right-click to your notebooks Apple
- No “maximize” – maybe it’s the way I was raised but I like to have things full screen. This does not mean “zoomed”
- No built in support for syncing with my phone (Windows Mobile 6, HTC s719)
- Macs are no more or less reliable than Windows. bottom line is – good hardware, vanilla install = reliable, stable system and cheap hardware, heaps of 3rd party apps = increased chance of a less reliable system regardless of platform
- Hate being up-sold on things – eg, Quicktime Pro (no full screen video unelss you pay for pro!)
Still to do:
- Install Vista via bootcamp
- Install Vista in Parallels
- Figure out what popular dev tools people use to write apps for the Mac
- Compare performance side-by-side
- Determine whether parallels is sufficient enough to run MS dev tools in (esp Expression Suite and Visual Studio)
So, all up it’s evident that this is one amazing, well built bit of hardware, with every little detail thought out.
For my uses and lifestyle OSX won’t do, so as Leslie Nassar says, the MacBook Pro is the best Vista machine that you can buy. So, don’t fear, I’m not switching (yet :-)).
-dg
Categories: Technology
Use VLC player for video, the Apple mantra follows something like “we giveth and we taketh away”.
I never thought I’d be here to witness the day that DG got a MAC.
ahh, you’re sharing the mac experience ;)
This is the crux of the issue: “Macs are no more or less reliable than Windows.”
So many macheads simply can’t cope with that rather basic fact. All computers crash, all computers have problems at times.
DG,
you should have signed up for the Apple developers connection. With a $750 membership you get full access to all Apple developer tools, Leopard desktop and server betas as well as a whole bunch of other goodies (i cant share due to NDAs you need to sign) including a 20% discount on purchasing a laptop or desktop for development.
The main development tools for the Leopard platform will be Xcode 3.0 (compiler/ code editor), Interface Builder 3.0, Xray (debugger) and Dashcode (to develop Widgets). All of which are quite striking for their simplicity in terms of usability.
Objective-C2.0 will be the programing language to develop for the platform. If you know C# or C++ you should be familiar with the syntax.
The most exciting technology in my book will be Core Animation. It’s somewhat like WPF but light years ahead and clearly reflects the graphic driven nature of Apple’s approach. The code samples in the developers library create insanely sexy animations with stupidly simple code I can’t wait to do some real world apps.
As for your comments re Con I would agree with some of them (also coming from the Windows platform). Although you say you are missing Outlook 2007… working for Microsoft I think you should be able to hold off Entourage 2008 for Mac (which should be in beta by now).
Hate being up-sold on products: I hear you. Something Apple has obviously heard a lot from customers as it will be included in Leopard.
No build in sync support: Try MissingSync. I can’t remember their web site but try Versiontracker.com . Alternatively, use ActiveSync via Parallels.
Lack of DIVX in front row: to a web search, you can get codec plugins for Quicktime (including DIVX). Install is simple as… drop the codec in the Quicktime library and you are done. For WMV support you will need to buy a little tool called Fli4Mac WMV (it’s US$29.95). It will allow you to playback WMV files within Quicktime. Interesting side note, the WMV encoding tool they offer in my opinion produces WMV files far superior in quality then what you get on the Windows platform. Don’t ask me why. That’s just my observation.
Single mouse button: this only is true for the laptops but easily solved. Place two fingers simultaniously on the trackpad and click the button = instand right click. It takes some getting used to but once you get a hang of it it’s actually quite convenient.
Other tips… Finder in my opinion has never been as good as Windows Explorer in Windows XP classic mode. Maybe it’s just the way I work but having two Explorers running side by side on a second monitor allows for really quick file wrangling. There is a tool on the mac platform called Pathfinder which is like a swiss army knive version of Finder and in my opinion better.
There is also a freeware screen capture tool available which gives Camtasia a run for it’s money but I unfortunately can’t find the URL. I have used this quite a bit to create walk throughs for windows apps running Windows in a Parallels session. Excellent quality using Quicktime and you can always transcode to WMV, FLV or Silverlight if needed.
Lastly, try panic.com. They a have sexy and cheap web code editor called CODA. It’s slick as… same goes for their web site actually.
I am still searching for a good FTP client. I am using FlashFXP on the Windows platform but haven’t found anything as good on for the Mac.
Anyway… those are my 5 cents. The really believe that Apple makes the sexiest Vista hardware out there. You install Vista in boot camp and it actually works without hickups. They sure know how to integrate software and hardware.
Something I believe Microsoft has done well with the Xbox360. Just a shame about the high failure rate.
FYI speaking of failure rate, while AppleCare is a little bit more expensive compared to say Dell I believe it’s a must get. Apple repairs are expensive and especially over a 2 1/2 year business usage a lot can go wrong with a laptop.
hey,
the two-finger-click thingo only works in Windows, in os/x hold ctrl key and click. I bought a logitech bluetooth mouse, it has a right-click and it works with os/x with no problems. $65 well worth spending if you use the MBP as a desktop replacement.
I also noticed that with XP on bootcamp it performs way better than my dual core dell that work gave me. Way better.
I use a basic freebie for ftp called Cyberduck. It’s good enough for most of what I do. For Screen capture I use the provided “grab” app inside applications/utilities.
the quicktime thing pisses me off too. Same with their bundled trial version of iWork. I’m waiting for the new ms office for mac and in the mean time I’m still using a bland “office suite” called “NeoOffice” which is a port of Open Office. It’s better than nothing, but only just.
One of the more irritating things that is missing and I’d expect to be there is a decent text editor.
I often want to connect to a sql server from mac, and I found an app called Aqua Data Studio, which is free for download. It totally rocks.
Welcome to the Dark Side ;)
DG, does your mac whine?
Mark,
You need to enable the two-finger-click in Mac OSX in the trackpad settings dialog. It’s unfortunately not activated by default. What also works is simply keeping the left button pressed. It will automatically bring up the context sensitive menu.
Thanks for the software pointers.
In regards to Leopard, I have now had a chance to spend a bit of time with the WWDC beta as well as the new coding environment. Can’t give any details due to Apple’s NDAs but what I have seen so far is pretty mind blowing. Core Animation is like WPF on steroids. You can really tell that who ever has architected it thinks 3D graphics through and through… just think video mapped to real time particle systems.
RE text editor, try BBEdit.
Second your point on MS Office. I actually always thought Mac Office was miles nicer to work with than Office on the Windows platform.
Regarding you whine question… mine doesn’t whine. I did hum/ vibrate heavily first time I fired it up. It sounded like one of the fans was running without lubrication. Strangely enough the noise was gone next time I did a restart. Have you run the Apple updated yet? I think they released a firmware update to take care of the whine as well as a mooing sound some people heard.
Am getting a macbook pro 15″ the info discussed here helpful. When you say Parallels, do you mean Parallels Desktop? I have ordered this as well to run OSX and XP simultaneously. Also ordered dual OS antivirus, hope this makes sense.
Might add to this blog
I can’t believe no one has mentioned “Quicksilver” (http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver).
This is one of those killer apps for the Mac. I pretty much do everything via Quicksilver.