Just got a Samsung rMBP 15"!

[Spetsnazos]

Exchanged my LG for a Samsung and I'm very pleased . I will admit that the brightness on the LG was better but not having to worry about IR is enough peace of mind so I am glad with what I have.

I'm sort of new to Mac. What programs or menu items are essential and good to have???? What do I need to get started to be productive

 

[M5RahuL]

Congrats! You lucked out!

To start with, you can try:

1) Alfred : Great Finder tool !!
2) GFX Card status : Set your machine to use the Integrated or Dedicated Graphics Card and other options!
3) iStatPro : For Temperature and Resource monitoring.
4) Caffeine : To prevent the computer from sleep when the lid is open.
5) Geek Tools - If you're into that kinda stuff... I Love it!
6) Coconut Battery : To monitor battery health, life, charge cycles etc..
7) Interfacelift.com : For some awesome Retina Wallpapers
8) Parallels [paid]: For VMs
9) Chrome browser: Works better for me over Safari !!
10) Office for Mac [paid] : I need it, otherwise if you're bootcamping or VM'ing Windows, stick with the Windows version!

That's all I could think of at the moment...

Enjoy!

 

[ixodes]

Thanks to Samsung you have a wonderfully clear & enjoyable display.

No thanks to Apple's addiction to spewing venom, launching legal assaults, and going "thermonuclear"... (how mature) the days of Samsung equipped Apple laptops & iDevices will be coming to an end.

 

[Deasnutz]

Exchanged my LG for a Samsung and I'm very pleased . I will admit that the brightness on the LG was better but not having to worry about IR is enough peace of mind so I am glad with what I have.

I'm sort of new to Mac. What programs or menu items are essential and good to have???? What do I need to get started to be productive

How did you go about getting a verified Samsung display on 2nd try?

I'm in the market and would rather not exchange too many times.

 

[alphaod]

I considered the Samsung Series 9 as well, but it didn't really feel the same. I'm glad you like yours.

 

[M5RahuL]

I considered the Samsung Series 9 as well, but it didn't really feel the same. I'm glad you like yours.

lol !

 

[Mac-Tech]

Exchanged my LG for a Samsung and I'm very pleased . I will admit that the brightness on the LG was better but not having to worry about IR is enough peace of mind so I am glad with what I have.

I'm sort of new to Mac. What programs or menu items are essential and good to have???? What do I need to get started to be productive

So the LG was brighter then the Samsung display? How are the black levels on the Samsung panel? I know LG produces a deeper black and Samsung produces a better white then LG. How bright can you get your Samsung display at? I mean to a comfortable level for the eyes?

 

[mrsir2009]

Exchanged my LG for a Samsung and I'm very pleased . I will admit that the brightness on the LG was better but not having to worry about IR is enough peace of mind so I am glad with what I have.

I'm sort of new to Mac. What programs or menu items are essential and good to have???? What do I need to get started to be productive

Hackintosh, huh? Nice

 

[Dyno-Mike]

How are the whites and general picture quality on yours?

I find my Samsung replacement screen to be worse on picture quality than my old LG was.
It has a kind of yellow hue on the whites and a bit of yellow light bleed at the bottom on dark images and blacks are not as good as my old LG was.

Still, at least it's IR and dead pixel free unlike the old LG.

 

[Spetsnazos]

How did you go about getting a verified Samsung display on 2nd try?

I'm in the market and would rather not exchange too many times.

luck of the draw I would say.

THe only thing that concerns me is that there are 3 cycles on the battery so MAYBE it was a return but I won't fret. It looked PRISTINE when I opened it so maybe they shipped back all the components after a return and reassembled it...who knows...but then again I hear there is massive amounts of glue on these laptops so it might be unlikely.

I won't lie, I was pretty rude to the apple support on the phone when they tried to go into full blown denial mode. "We've never heard of IR issues on these laptops". Yeah right, is that why theres a 400 page thread on apple support forums?

They agreed to let me hold on to my laptop(LG) until the new one shipped to the store. Once I got to the store and exchanged it, the first thing I did was pull up terminal and run the script. I had a feeling it was a Samsung when it first booted up, it definitely did not seem as bright as my LG.

Honestly once you max out the brightness, it isn't noticeable. I also think the Samsung display is a little crisper. The colors might be better on an LG but I'm sure most of them will develop IR so I don't want to deal with it.


So I noticed I don't have any flash drives at home but I do have a legit version of Win7. I'm going to buy some flash drives at bestBuy and try to do a bootcamp install. I was reading online that I need 1 flash drive to do a bootable and another to save mac drivers?

The battery life vs. performance on this thing is amazing. Seriously this is a lot of portability with LEGIT battery life!

 

[shmonkus]

Couple of extra applications worth looking into:

Cinch - an easy way to resize windows to fit half the size of the display if you need to compare 2 websites/documents etc. Functionality is similar to Aero Snap in Windows 7.

Little Snitch - a wonderful firewall that informs you when an application requests access to the internet, helping you to manage what applications give out specific information.

Perian - a set of video codecs that allow playback of different video files within Quicktime

VLC - one-size-fits-all video player - plays just about every type of video file.

Growl - Notification bar-style application

 

[Haifisch]

I second Alfred. It's a cheap app and I use it all the time to launch programs not in the dock or find files.

 

[ScholarsInk]

How are the whites and general picture quality on yours?

I find my Samsung replacement screen to be worse on picture quality than my old LG was.
It has a kind of yellow hue on the whites and a bit of yellow light bleed at the bottom on dark images and blacks are not as good as my old LG was.

Still, at least it's IR and dead pixel free unlike the old LG.

The yellow hue can be fixed using OS X's built-in calibration utility.

So I noticed I don't have any flash drives at home but I do have a legit version of Win7. I'm going to buy some flash drives at bestBuy and try to do a bootcamp install. I was reading online that I need 1 flash drive to do a bootable and another to save mac drivers?

In my case, at least, Boot Camp Assistant transferred both the Windows image and the Boot Camp drivers together.

 

[Acronyc]

My original 15" rMBP came with a small chip above the trackpad, so Apple sent me a new one. I got it today and this one has the Samsung screen, while my first one had the LG screen. Honestly I don't notice much difference, but I only used the first one for about a week. Both screens seem equally fantastic in my brief time with them.

Something a little disconcerting was that there was an unpleasant looking hair between the trackpad and the thin paper that protects the screen. I know these are built and tested by people and things like this can happen, but it wasn't a pleasant sight upon opening it up for the first time.

 

[kittiyut]

I will admit that the brightness on the LG was better

I always thought that Sammys were brighter, and LGs have deeper blacks?

 

[MCAsan]

What do I need to get started to be productive

Much depends on what you want to be productive doing. Are you doing photography, videos, writing documents, music, financial spreadsheets.....or????? Without a goal, it is not possible to measure progress.

 

[Mac-Tech]

I always thought that Sammys were brighter, and LGs have deeper blacks?

It's actually LG's are brighter and produce a more natural look and deeper blacks and Samsung's produce a better whites.

The yellow hue can be fixed using OS X's built-in calibration utility.

Nice I did not know that. Hopefully I remember to do this when I get my RMBP!