Maclust Realized

Apr 16, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Technology

An ongoing review of Me and my MacBook Pro.

As Brent pointed out, I’ve not yet done a post about the shiny new bundle of joy that’s come into my life.  Well, let’s just say I’ve got a new toy.  More so than a toy, I’ve actually got my hands on a professional tool that’s going to allow me to be more productive, creative, and generally a better all around person (ok…that might be pushing it a bit far).  In other words…Maclust realized!

So dear readers, this is the first post I’m writing on the new MacBook Pro, and I’m sure you’ll understand and forgive me if the ‘screw doesn’t have a few posts for a few days….I’ve still got to use this darn thing. Biggest difference right off the bat; what’s the funny command key for, and I have to mount applications to install them?

I say a few days…probably more like a few hours. But all in all, thanks to all of you who’ve already sent me congrats messages. I’m incredibly happy already, and she’s only 6 hours old!’

A few days later (edit update) …

I’m just a little short of one week with my new MacBook Pro, and I’ve already decided that it’s (almost) the love of my life. I was talking with an uninitiated the other day, and she asked me why I love it. I honestly had to stop and think for a minute, as there are so many reasons, but I wanted to put it in plain and simple words she could understand. My answer? ‘Because it just works’.

Simplicity

Since this silver bundle of joy is brand spanking new, it shipped with Leopard, so I don\’t really have a version comparison to make, but all I can say is that OSX Leopard is probably the most intuitive OS I’ve ever worked with. Sure, it’s different from winblows and yes, it’s going to take you a minute or two to get used to it. But once you do…things just start making sense all of a sudden. There’s that lightbulb moment of, yeah…that was easy, why was that so complex with winblows?

Included Goodies

I’ve not yet done it, but I’ll be reformatting my old pc soon and rebuilding winblows xp. This got me to thinking, when I install winblows, what ‘extras’ and ‘goodies’ come with it? The core OS sure, along with solitaire, a calculator, and Internet Explorer. Oh wait…there’s defrag as well. If you buy your dell/hp/toshiba/sony, they often come preloaded with a boatload of crap that most of us go ahead and delete right off the bat anyway, so these do NOT count as goodies.

Upon booting up the Mac, I was delighted to find iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, AppleMail, iMovie, Dashboard, Frontrow, (shall I continue?) preinstalled. Ok, I’ll admit it, one of the first things I unchecked as default was Safari in favor of Firefox, but hey…can you blame me?

It’s HOT!

Actually, quite the opposite. Coming off a 1.5gHz Centrino processor where I could more or less fry an egg on the keyboard after about an hour of usage, this duocore 2.5 gHz could keep my drink chilled. The secret? Aluminum. The mac comes in a super sexy aluminum casing. The aluminum acts as a heat sink and wicks heat away from the key components inside, thereby increasing overall operating stability and speed. Conversely, take a look at your PC notebook. I’m going to take a wild guess, and assume that it’s probably made from plastic? Plastic. Un huh…a heat INSULATING material. Along this same line, I was told before my purchase that one of the most frequent gestures I was going to make was to hit the shift key just to make sure that the machine was actually on. Whereas the fan on Compaq could sound quite close to a vaccum cleaner running at full speed, the Mac is virtually silent.

Power for Days

I think it’s no secret that I like to watch my American television here in Austria. That requires and download, and then a trip over to the TV to have a watch (the other monitor isn’t actually required, I just like to watch TV in the living room). Normally, I’d have another dedicated power source in the living room to plug the computer in, as I know it’d never make it through more than 1 one hour program. My first reaction after recabling my desk was, hmmm…I’ve probably got to go get another power adapter for the mac now as well. But I figured at least we could watch one episode of American Idol (I know…don’t hate, but David Cook IS seriously a good singer) before I’d have to recharge. Well, low and behold, I cued up 2 episodes, and watched them both back to back without the battery even flinching. Upon taking it back to my desk, the battery meter indicated that I wasn’t even half way empty. Doing a quick mathematical equation, this means that I could potentially get almost 4 hours of computing time from this battery in minimal conditions? WOW! Now that’s what I call power management!

BuiltIns

It’s just a bunch of the little things built into this quite possibly perfect mixture of function and form. Everything from the built in iSight webcam and microphone (making skype calls an absolute pleasure), to the magsafe power cable (I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes, and have tripped over a cable or two in my day). The environmentally sensitive ambient lighting feature knocks me out every time I watch it in action. The iSight webcam actually monitors the ambient lighting around you, and automagically adjusts screen brightness and illuminates the keyboard. I didn’t mention that already? Yeah, the keyboard f#(ing lights up in dim conditions. The 1440 x 900 display is absolutely breath taking (and I’m already trying to figure out how I can swing one of Apple’s 23″ cinema displays), and the 512mb NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT doesn’t hurt either.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this one very short. Have I mastered this beauty yet? Not even close. Has Apple made the (almost) perfect machine and OS, whereby I can get my way around and utilize some of it’s super fun and cool features within a few days? Absolutely.

A few moths later (edit update):

Things are still rock solid here at camp mac, chez DT.  Since the addition of a Vestax VCI-100 that I use to controll Traktor (thanks Ludwig), the mac now replaces my down dust collector Technics.  The Canon Vixia HF10 in combination with Final Cut Express is about as close as I’m going to get to Hollywood, and while I’ve completed the 12 step process for my World of Warcraft addiction, gaming on a Mac is still a heckuva lot better than my winblows experiences.

I’m still a VERY happy MacBook Pro owner, and want to buy the world a Mac.