I've been visiting the Apple store a lot lately, started to become interested in the 13" Macbook air and Macbook Pro aswell. The UK Apple store online seems to have some decent offers on their refurb store. There is a 13" Macbook Pro for £849 which is usually £999, still deciding though, I can't make up my mind anymore!
I'm copying my Essay-length "I love my Mac" rave that I posted on another forum. As someone has already posted, at first you think, "Wow this is cool" and then as you get more used to it you just want to shout from the rooftops about how awesome it is.
One addition to my list of raves... I took mine out with me today and got over five hours battery life using Chrome, web development apps & photoshop. B***dy brilliant. I think the 13" battery life is even better.
Definitely go for a Refurb, most are just computers returned within the 14 day period so are almost-new. Not a scratch on mine and from my research pre-buying it seems almost a
more reliable way to go. And the savings are huge!
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I received some fantastic advice from here when I was tossing up whether to go with a Macbook Pro and thought I might do a post listing what I find awesome about it which might hopefully help other people considering the switch.
*Trackpad people had said the Macbook trackpad was awesome but I didn't realise how awesome until I'd been using mine for a few days and especially until after I turned on the "tap" feature so you don't actually have to click. The left/right click thing is really easy (especially considering it was something I was worried about) but the real bonus is the two-finger scrolling which totally brilliant, so brilliant that I've accidentally tried to do it on my work PC mouse! oops. I also love the four finger swipe for expose. With my old Compaq I found using the trackpad frustrating and the buttons often got stuck (it was replaced twice in three years) so I used a mouse where possible, but with the Macbook I haven't even thought about using a mouse, and in fact I think it would be less productive.
*Keyboard shortcuts... getting used to option, shift & control takes some getting used to but I've quickly realised it offers a whole lot more opportunities for keyboard shortcuts. I guess in some ways you could achieve this on a PC using, alt shift & control but it never seemed as intuitive as the Mac.
*Talking about being intuitive, that's how I've found the Mac. Really easy to get used to, installing programmes etc has been a breeze (simply dragging application icons into the apps folder got my super excited until I realised it was the norm!) and I installed my (rebated) wireless printer in about 30 seconds. It's that easy. I can't recall my PC ever being that easy to use.
*It's beautiful. It seems like such a throwaway line but it's hard to get a real sense of this until you get it home and have it on your lap. Much like when I first held an iPhone it just feels like a thing of wonder. Much, much more pleasant than any notebook I've ever used. I didn't care about using food near my PC, but I'm doing all I can to protect my Mac! I notice one huge difference before it was even turned on, my Compaq had a jigsaw of panels & vents on the underside but the Mac is just one beautiful piece of aluminium.
*Battery life probably isn't as good as was advertised but quibbling over the difference between 6 and 8 hours seems ridiculous when I consider my last battery barely lasted an hour new or half an hour by the time I switched. It's taken a while to get used to the fact I don't need to take the charger out with me. Pair it with a Pocket Wifi for working wirelessly on the go and you're even better off.
*It's pretty much instant-on. I continue to marvel at how I let it sleep during the day, come home and within a second or two it's on and ready for use. In the past I've had to wait a good 10 seconds + to simply get it to wake up, and I was having to wait for MINUTES to get Firefox to work... and even then it usually crashed within the first couple of minutes of use.
Sure there are some trade-offs, there are some programmes I dearly miss on the Mac but once I've saved up for replacements I don't think it's really going to be an issue. The one thing I'd say for anyone considering buying is that you really can't get a sense of it in a shop. I thought it was pretty fantastic when I played with it at JBHiFi but actually using one day-to-day brings a whole new level of wow.
So many people said to me, "Once you go Mac you'll never go back" and now I've gone there I definitely know that that's true! It's certainly an investment, and I more than blew my budget but knowing that I have support for it for three years and an easy way of accessing that, on top of all the stuff I've listed above, makes it worth it.
I am so grateful for all my friends, here and elsewhere who talked me into it! And a special shoutout to DaveMark who said to go with the 15" and not overthink it... best decision ever
Oh, and mine is a REFURB! And there's not a mark on it. Saved $300. I can't imagine why anyone would consider paying full price when the refurbs are indistinguishable from new!
