MacBook first impressions
I bought a new core 2 duo macbook last week and i figured now might be a good time to write down my first impressions, having had some time to migrate my stuff over and settle in on the new mac.
The macbook i ended up with is an off-the-shelve mid-range macbook, a white one with a 2ghz core 2 duo processor, 1gb ram and no build-to-order upgrades. This was a pretty weird pc-buying experience for me, as i didn’t really feel an urgent need to buy a new pc. My 3-year-old ibook was holding up surprisingly well – sure, it was a pain to play world of warcraft on (and there’s no denying that playing this game takes up a sizable amount of my time spent in front of the computer screen) and working with eclipse wasn’t exactly a smooth experience, but most of the time, the trusty old ibook did a good-enough job. That being said, though all this new processing power might be wasted 80% of the time, when it isn’t, i’m really happy with all this speedy dual-core goodness. As i’m writing this in marsedit, there’s world of warcraft, skype and firefox running in the background and the system is still very responsive, something entirely unimaginable on my old ibook.
Anyway, here’s a list of stuff i like and dislike, in no particular order:
- It’s pretty large compared to the old ibook. Not uncomfortably larger, but definitely noticable. And what’s up with this thick border around the display? Makes it look like they could’ve fit a significantly larger display into this thing. Surprisingly, it seems lighter than my ibook (i have no idea if it actually is or not).
- The new 13″ widescreen display offers a nice bump in screen resolution and its brightness and contrast are stunning, especially compared to the abysmal display in my ibook. The glossy thing definitely takes some getting used to, so far i’m not really sold on it. It’s not that i don’t like glossy, it’s just that the macbook displays are very, very glossy. Anyway, most of the time my macbook is hooked up to an external display.
- Now this is kinda heretic, but having a computer capable of booting windows xp is actually pretty nice. I’ve only used windows for playing pc games so far, but finally catching up with some of the great games of recent years is nice. Also, bootcamp is easy to use and works surprisingly well.
- System migration worked beautifully – it was a little bit annoying when the setup dialogue asked for my wifi-password moments after copying my old system (including my keychain) over, but aside from that, everything worked very well. It’s really nice when you can start working in your familiar environment on your new macbook an hour after it arrived.
- There was some weirdness with my printer – i suppose this is somehow related to the system migration from my ibook, but i could be wrong. Changing my printer driver made my printer at least usable again, but there’s still some weirdness with printer sharing. This tutorial has some useful information on how to resolve printer problems in mac os x – it didn’t help me, but it might help you.
- Note to self: To disable or remap the caps lock key, go to system preferences -> keyboard & mouse -> keyboard -> modifier keys… – weirdly enough, spotlight won’t help you find this setting.
- The apple remote is a nice touch. Above all, it’s delightfully simple, especially compared to what your average remote looks like these days, and it still manages to be really useful. It depends pretty heavily on on-screen-menus for providing some of its functionality through front row, but it works pretty well for me.
- No display adapter cable included – if you want to hook your macbook up with an external display, you need to buy an adapter. I can understand this decision to some degree, i mean, should they bundle a vga-adapter or a dvi-adapter? The former is far more common, but the latter delivers better results with tft displays and most people are moving or have moved to these in recent years. Bundling both just seems excessive. Still slightly disappointing that you can’t even give a powerpoint presentation on a beamer out-of-the-box though.
- That integrated isight camera staring at me all the time is somewhat scary in light of this recent security flaw…
- The macbook comes in a pretty small box compared to the box my ibook came in. Much easier to stash away in some closet.
- When the fan turns on, it is pretty annoying. It doesn’t seem much noisier than the ibook fan, but it’s way more irritating, kinda like a plane taking off right there on your desk. The fan doesn’t turn on too often, except sometimes when watching streaming video on youtube &c and when playing world of warcraft.
I’ll add to this list as more things come to mind.
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