IT Professional Switching to Mac

[pcmofo]

Ok, that was yesterday you said it arrived at the house. Put that dang MBP down and give us an update... I feel like I'm waiting for the next episode of some TV show here. Don't make me bookmark this page. Or better yet, use my handy dandy web widget scissors and make a widget out of this thread.

Sorry everyone but this poster is exactly correct. My MacBook Pro came in the mail yesterday and I have not yet put it down. I, unfortunately have had to go to work, eat, and other necessities to keep my self alive long enough to continue to use my new Mac.

I have taken tons of pictures of the unboxing and everything (for myself, I know there are pics on the internet of the same thing) I will be posting the full review over this weekend with possibly a follow up review in a month from now to address any issues that may arise and how I have handled them. As for right now I would like to talk about my initial impressions over the last 30 hours of owning a Mac for the first time.

Hardware
The hardware is amazingly built. I mean I have used the Macs at the Apple stores but to have one unteathered in my hands and fresh out of the box sends chills up your spine. Breaking the seal on the protective envelope that the laptop ships in is like a holy event. Taking out the battery and looking at the Aluminum thats been attached to the case and the small but precise screws that hold everything together.. its just amazing. I have been a big computer modding fan since,.. well it was cool to mod your computer. I remember seeing someone on the internet connect a 2 line Character LCD display to their parallel port so that they could view winamp song info. (which became the basis of my first car pc but thats another story, pics on my web site) I have studied architecture and engineering as well as computer related work and I can really get behind something thats well designed.

Windows computers it seems are focused around whats the BIG features. how much power does it have? does it have a finger print reader, does it come with 6 hard drives, does it light up, etc etc etc. Mac seems to be more about the tinniest detail, which may seem trivial by comparison but in the long run is far more valuable. Take for instance the MagSafe power adaptor. The power plug is basically the LAST thing PC manufactures think about when they build a laptop. And they only think about, hrm can we make this a special plug so everyone has to buy our replacement connectors? The magnets, the fact that it has no up/down side, the tiny led to indicate charge, built in cable management, and you can add the extender or just put the short tip on it. Look how many features the power adaptor has alone and you can begin to image how much thought must have went into the entire computer. The power button is a pleasure to press, the joints have such a small precise tolerance and fit together so well. The iSight is the best web cam I have ever used ( I must have had close to 10 so far ) Its so silent that I forget I am on a computer.

Software
I would like to think of myself as a quick learner when it comes to computers and electronics. Give me a pile of remotes and I will make your home entertainment center come to life in a few minutes! A poster previously said that it takes some time to get used to doing things on a mac because you have been trained on windows to do stuff the hard way. This couldn't be more true. Lets talk about WiFi. It works. Done. No searching for my AP, selecting it, wait to connect, drop a connection, reconnect etc. When I turn my Mac back on I am connected without being aware that I did anything. One less thing to keep me from being where I need to be and getting stuff done. I played with all the settings in the control panel? I cant think of the Mac name at the moment.... blast you windows! Once I figured out how to change folder settings so that files displayed with the right size thumbnails and spacing ( all of like 5 min) I was flying through my files and moving my stuff around on my Mac. I installed a bunch of cool freeware programs like Adium, Mem Info? (memory usage in the bar) Coconut, Azureus, Transmission, and a few others. I was able to set up my mail account in about 1 minute. It takes at least 5-10 in outlook.

A Mac is really a machine anyone can pick up, take out of the box and just use. No crapware, no confusing strange hard to configure settings. Just common sense.

The delightful glow of my new backlit keyboard makes me smile as I type this and I know that the soft pulsing of the white power led that resembles a tiny heart beat will make me feel as if this Mac is more than just any old computer.

I will be posting a more formal review this weekend as I will have more time to get to know my Mac and OSX. Thanks everyone for their positive support and sharing their stories with me so far. )

 

[killmoms]

...Mem Info? (memory usage in the bar) .

Sounds like it's treating you right! Glad to hear it.

This bit caught my eye and I thought you might like to check out iSlayer's iStat menus. Not only do you get very customizable menu-bar indicators for all sorts of system stats, you can click any one of them to get a more detailed look instantly. Really slick.

 

[pcmofo]

Sounds like it's treating you right! Glad to hear it.

This bit caught my eye and I thought you might like to check out iSlayer's iStat menus. Not only do you get very customizable menu-bar indicators for all sorts of system stats, you can click any one of them to get a more detailed look instantly. Really slick.

Wow that looks sweet. I will try that after work. I am going away this weekend to visit my friend ( the one with the MacBook) to give him my old 2 gigs of ram and to spend the weekend playing with our Macs and brewing beer! (www.blackheartbrewery.com) so it should be a fun weekend. Me and my Mac can get to know each other better lol. I hope to try out some more intense apps like photoshop and try some coding with coda.

 

[Cudadown]

Awesome write up. Congrats. Reading it makes me want to go get a MBP to add to my iMac.

The advice about getting istat is correct. That is one nice little utility. Couple other things to consider that I (new mac user also) have found that is very very nice;

Handbrake - convert just about any kind of media.
iGlasses - fantastic isight tool. Change camera settings, add effects, intergrates with ichat and photo booth.
EvoCam - security for your laptop. adds motion detector, records sound/video and emails to you.
iAlertU - motion detector that works like a car alarm. use apple remote. anyone touches MBP, siren screams. must have for MB owners.
KeyCue - integrates into OS X. Hold 'command' key and it lists all available keyboard shortcuts for whatever you are working in. great tool to learn the Mac keyboard shortcuts.
SteerMouse - mouse utility. Adds more acceleration..etc
Stuffit Expander - compression utility.
TubeTv - grab video from URL.

Thats all I can think of right now. Those are programs I have found that are icing on my Mac cake.

 

[pcmofo]

MacBook Pro Review

After using my new MacBook Pro for almost a week now with multiple applications I am read to give a more formal opinion about it. I will be writing further about my experience with Mac over the next few months as I get to use it more often. This review will be split into a few sections, Hardware and Software, with the OSX, built in apps and 3rd party apps being separate.

Hardware
When it comes to most Apple products, especially the Pro line, Apple does not disappoint. Everything about this laptop was thought out. You can tell whoever designed this went to bed every night and stayed awake thinking about how they could better lay something out. The difference is like comparing an old dodge Neon to a brand new Benz. The tolerances in the door gaps etc would be a world of difference. The same is true for the MacBook Pro. Every millimeter is accounted for. Some people wanted a complete redesign with new keyboard and magnetic latches. I thought I wanted the same until I used it. The keyboard cradles my fingertips so they land in the center of the key every time. The magnetic latch that drops the hooks to latch the display works with amazing precision. I don’t like the button to pop the lid (like the hood of a car) The button is a bit to flush and thin to push easily ( which can be good or bad) not really annoying but maybe one of the few things that I don’t like so much.

The power button is a pleasure to press (not that I would ever want to press it to turn it off) I am a big fan of the Vandal Resistant power buttons used in PC mods everywhere with their brushed Al. and precision fit and function and this button is like a miniature version of that. The speakers sound more amazing than any other laptop I have heard, I thought with the strange placement of them on the right and left I would not get good sound coming at me. I was wrong. I wasn’t sure how I would like the screen with the reversed hinge because it doesn’t open as far as some but its great because it creates the illusion that the screen is bigger and the laptop is smaller.

I have to say it’s a relief to not have ports on the bottom of the laptop for once. While I seems like a good location at first, in practice it is so awkward to find the port you want with out flipping your laptop over or around. I am slightly disappointed that their aren’t more USB ports on the sides (only2) but I guess if I needed more I would have a hub at home anyway. I would like a SD card reader on the side but I don’t use the ExpressCard slot so I got an ExpressCard SD reader. It should be here later this week so that will be nice because it will sit flush with the port. I am excited to get a Firewire 800 hard drive so I can test out the port, I will use it for video editing and or backups.

It’s the little touches that make the MacBook Pro such an amazing piece of hardware. The magsafe power adaptor is amazing. The slot loading DVD drive that is great to use and I love that its facing me not on the sides, much more useful. The heat and the fans have not been an issue. I forget my laptop is on and it hasn’t gotten more than warm ever. Even the way the battery charge LEDs light up on the battery, gradually to show power shows how much thought went into this machine. The remote is amazing to use for an IR device. The one thing I don’t like is how the laptop has to go to sleep when you close the lid. I want to close the lid and leave it on sometimes or I want to hibernate it and put it in my bag for the day. I don’t want to leave it on sleep because then it might over heat. The iSight is the best web camera I have ever used, and for its size I cant believe what it does! Overall this is the best piece of computer hardware I have ever owned.

Software
OSX
OSX blows the doors off Vista and Linux hands down in features and usability from the moment you take it out of the box. There was no bloat ware or apps I did not want pre-installed. Expose is a great feature that I have been drooling over since I saw it on someone’s Mac. I love spaces, Linux has had this feature for some time now but Mac does it well. Vista has no useful features or visual effects for all the power it requires, OSX gives you such smooth transitions and useful features its amazing. I figured out the shortcut for the finder (Command+Space , Command+N) and in about 3 characters I can find exactly what I want. I dropped my Applications folder in the Dock and its just like having a start menu from 2000, (I hate XP and Vista start menus. It was a little difficult to wrap my head around how easy it was to install programs and do simple things in OSX, mainly because it was so simple I wasn’t sure if I had done it right, I was like… That’s it? Overall its just as fast if not faster than the stripped down version of XP on my machine.

Built in Apps
The built in apps are worlds away from what you get out of the box with any other windows PC. It’s a crapshoot based on manufacture as to what software will come with you machine, most of it you don’t want and some of it you cant get rid of. I tunes comes with iTunes ( which I think is the best audio program out there, not that its that amazing) iMovie, which is super easy to use, iDVD, iWeb, Garage Band etc. All free apps that are worth using. iChat is actually useable and is the best video chat app that I have used.

3rd Party Apps
I installed Firefox because I have exported all of my old bookmarks etc from my last PC. I would use it but I really got used to that 3 finger swipe to go back and forth. I downloaded a programming app called Coda. Its like dreamweaver but light weight and much nicer for what I used it for. I tried Adium for chatting. Its just as useable as iChat but has no support for video which is sad. I also tried out Skype which works well. Microsoft Office works ok for what I have used of it so far. It takes a little longer to load than on windows (using office 2003) but works fine once it loads. I have had fun downloading other mac apps, some just for fun like Liquid Mac. CS3 works just as well as it did in XP.

Other Notes
Using iStat and other monitering programs I was able to test out the differences between 2 gigs and 4 gigs of ram. When first turning on my Mac it was using 260mb of ram. It settled out around 300mb. When running apps like iTunes, iChat, and Safari it never used more than 1 gig. After a day I could not wait any longer I had to install the 4 gigs of ram. When I did the MacBook Pro just ate it up, I was surprised at the results at first but they made sense after I thought about it. This time my Mac was using 500mb of ram on startup. When running the same apps I was using well over a gig of ram. Then I scrolled through cover flow in iTunes through all of my songs. The ram used got bigger and it started flipping through my songs super fast. No lag at all. My Mac was smart enough to know it had plenty enough ram and it used it to speed up the apps that could use it instead of just leaving it sit there. This is a great computer with 2 gigs of ram and it is amazing with 4 gigs because it puts it to good use. I don’t know what else to say about this computer. I have had quite a few computers, many of which I have built my self, all of which I have been excited to own and use but this is the first one that really impresses me with everything it can do out of the box and the entire community of Mac owners and developers who make outstanding applications that are generally as well thought out as the products Apple makes. In summary, I am more than happy with my decision to switch and I wont be looking back.

 

[GRN99EX]

When I got my first MBP several months ago, the first 3rd party app I was told to download by nearly every mac owner I talked to, was Quicksilver. If you think you are getting the hang of the built-in keyboard short cuts, and you still felt the need to add your applications folder to your dock, then do yourself a favor and try out quicksilver. There is a very good set of demonstration videos on YouTube, and once you start using it, you will never look in your applications folder again.

Watch the first video of the series and you will see what I am talking about.

 

[killmoms]

The one thing I don’t like is how the laptop has to go to sleep when you close the lid. I want to close the lid and leave it on sometimes or I want to hibernate it and put it in my bag for the day. I don’t want to leave it on sleep because then it might over heat.

Sleeping your laptop is actually nearly equivalent to turning it off. It just pushes a tiny trickle of power through the CPU and RAM, enough to keep both aware of the computer's state, but it shuts down all other components (parks and spins down the hard drive, turns off LCD and backlight, etc.). It will never overheat if it's sleeping in your bag, and will come up almost instantly when you open the lid back up. I'd highly recommend sleeping it when traveling.

EDIT: I echo GRN99EX's suggestion of Quicksilver. It's an excellent application launcher (and can do SO much more), an essential companion to OS X for the power user.

 

[pcmofo]

I downloaded Quick Silver a few days ago. I just haven't had the time to play with it yet! ( I got my ExpressCard SD card reader from Griffin in the mail last night. It works as expected right out of the box. I also like that it does not stick out of my MBP. Is it going to use power if there is no card inside the reader? because I plan on just leaving it in there until I need to read something.