My base Gold Macbook Retina arrived today, about 30 minutes ago. I'm coming from an early-2008 Macbook 2.4GHz. I decided to order the new Macbook because I also have a custom-built Intel PC that does all my heavy lifting like a boss, so I didn't need the power of a MBP. Also I desire the size of the new Macbook.
So I open it up and go to the setup process. First screen asks me what language. I choose and BEACHBALL. I get through it to the next screen, what country, beachball. I make it to the FileVault screen without another beachball but here I had one that lasted an eternity. So I restarted the computer, went through at least one more beachball and wound up setting up FileVault while logged in.
Hopefully this is not a symbol of my life to come with this machine. Also my keyboard inexplicably quit working for a couple minutes. No idea what that was about or how I fixed it.
Beachballs aside, here are my other impressions:
1. The gold color is the bomb. As you can see in my pictures, sometimes it comes off a little silver. The touchpad is a slightly different color of gold, more of a classic "gold bar" gold tone than the rest of the machine which is more champagne.
2. The keyboard is wonderful. Honestly, when I first typed on it, I didn't feel a difference and it felt so natural. Now I can easily tell the difference but I love typing on it all the more. As a side note, I use an Apple keyboard on my Windows machine as well as the chicklet on my 2008 Macbook so I'm definitely an Apple keyboard fan.
3. The touchpad really does feel like it is moving. It feels exactly like a Macbook Pro when you do a light click. If you start to do a force click on a word but you're not there all the way, OS X has a subtle animation where it brings out the content slowly, as it begs you to press harder. I have a screenshot to illustrate this.
4. The machine starts so quick I'm not even going to time it.
5. I have not ran any speed tests or benchmarks yet.
6. The retina screen is beautiful. I'm running it in the default resolution of 1280x800. I tried 1440x900 but the text was too small, even with my contacts in, I didn't like having a headache.
7. The design of the machine is the best of any Apple notebook thus far. It truly is a world-class design and it both looks and feels like that. Side note: the Apple logo behind the lid is a fingerprint magnet.
I'll update this as I spend more time with the machine. Just got Dropbox synced and have to install some more programs. Last night, I loaded up a USB drive with content from my previous Macbook. This morning I remembered that there is no way to plug it into the new one since I didn't order the adapter. Oops.
Daniel
So I open it up and go to the setup process. First screen asks me what language. I choose and BEACHBALL. I get through it to the next screen, what country, beachball. I make it to the FileVault screen without another beachball but here I had one that lasted an eternity. So I restarted the computer, went through at least one more beachball and wound up setting up FileVault while logged in.
Hopefully this is not a symbol of my life to come with this machine. Also my keyboard inexplicably quit working for a couple minutes. No idea what that was about or how I fixed it.
Beachballs aside, here are my other impressions:
1. The gold color is the bomb. As you can see in my pictures, sometimes it comes off a little silver. The touchpad is a slightly different color of gold, more of a classic "gold bar" gold tone than the rest of the machine which is more champagne.
2. The keyboard is wonderful. Honestly, when I first typed on it, I didn't feel a difference and it felt so natural. Now I can easily tell the difference but I love typing on it all the more. As a side note, I use an Apple keyboard on my Windows machine as well as the chicklet on my 2008 Macbook so I'm definitely an Apple keyboard fan.
3. The touchpad really does feel like it is moving. It feels exactly like a Macbook Pro when you do a light click. If you start to do a force click on a word but you're not there all the way, OS X has a subtle animation where it brings out the content slowly, as it begs you to press harder. I have a screenshot to illustrate this.
4. The machine starts so quick I'm not even going to time it.
5. I have not ran any speed tests or benchmarks yet.
6. The retina screen is beautiful. I'm running it in the default resolution of 1280x800. I tried 1440x900 but the text was too small, even with my contacts in, I didn't like having a headache.
7. The design of the machine is the best of any Apple notebook thus far. It truly is a world-class design and it both looks and feels like that. Side note: the Apple logo behind the lid is a fingerprint magnet.
I'll update this as I spend more time with the machine. Just got Dropbox synced and have to install some more programs. Last night, I loaded up a USB drive with content from my previous Macbook. This morning I remembered that there is no way to plug it into the new one since I didn't order the adapter. Oops.
Daniel
Too bad, because the machine is so insanely great that it deserved a better launch...
