Once you go Mac...

...You're gonna need a wheelchair (or at least a few third-party apps).  :D


So a few weeks ago I bought a MacBook Pro...


Overall I really like this thing (I'm typing this blog on it).  After doing a few upgrades on it, namely upping the RAM and installing an SSD, the thing flies.  I bought it not to replace my systems that I use to edit my work on; rather I bought it to brush up on my Mac skills (last time I worked on one was back in the days of OS9!).


Being that I'm an IT guy by trade you just know that I can't leave well enough alone though. I tend to tinker with systems at a deeper level than what your average user does, so I'm going to see and find things that the average user isn't going to find.  :)


Some of the nice things I *REALLY* like:

• Boots to the desktop in about 10 seconds from a cold boot (SandForce2 SSD for the win!).
• At moderate screen brightness I get almost 6hrs of battery life out of it.  My old laptop barely got 1.5 hrs!
• It's the perfect form factor for toting around (13").
• Runs cool
• Slick UI.  It reminds me of Intuition (w/MagicWB installed) so much that it's scary.
• Default color calibration for the screen is almost dead on out of the box.
• The multitouch gestures integration into the system is a really slick touch.
• The physical build of the laptop is literally hands down the best I've used.  The only other laptop brand that I've used that even comes close is Lenovo (if they only made a Thinkpad in an all unibody aluminum shell...).
• Magsafe:  Best-Invention-Ever (assuming that the newly re-designed connector doesn't fall apart like the old version was prone to doing. :D ).
• Close the lid and it goes to sleep.  Open the lid and it wakes up almost instantly.  Niiiiice!!
• Backlit keyboard.  'Nuff said!
• The ability to do a full system restore from a time machine backup directly from firmware...  FREAKING AWESOME! (cmd+opt+r at boot). 
• Expose is pretty cool.
• Can open my Canon .CR2 raw files (and give me thumbnail icons) right out of the box.   Sweeeeet!

Now let's take the Red Pill shall we?  Now that the reality distortion field has worn off, let's look at some of the "not so nice things" I've found:

• Is it too much to ask that when you insert an SD card into the system that it fits further into the slot so I can leave it in there during transport without worrying if it's going to break either the card or the port (like almost every other laptop out there)?  There's times where "thinking different" pays off.  This isn't one of them.  :D
• The default Apple photo viewer app sucks harder than a Hoover vacuum on overdrive with a supercharger strapped onto it (I ended up buying Viewer 4.1 from the App Store that supports the multi-touch trackpad AND works like you think it should out of the box.  :D ).  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/viewer/id414653494?mt=12
• Expanding a window to full screen doesn't work like you think it would (coming from Windows).  Scratch that, even my old Amiga 500 w/Workbench 1.3 understood what "expand to full screen" meant.  :P  Granted I know that's because "full screen" apps on the Mac literally take over the screen like they did back in the good old days of the Commodore Amiga.  Unlike  Amiga full-screen applications though,  Mac apps don't call up custom resolutions that completely take over the screen and have different bit-depths than the desktop (best way to describe it is that it's getting it's own page to itself on the Mac).  It'd be really nice if you could click that "+" button to maximize a window to take up the entire screen on the active window without having to resort to a third party app.  :)  http://www.blazingtools.com/downloads.html#RightZoom
• Aero's snap feature is sorely missed coming from Windows (yeah I know it's technically not a ding, but for all the moaning that your average MacLuser does about how Microsoft stole so much of their UI from Apple, you'd figure that Apple would learn a little tit-for-tat and put it in.  :)  You can add it using a third party app but that's besides the point).  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cinch/id412529613?mt=12
• I decided to use this system as my main system that my iPod will sync to.  After copying my music files to the system and importing them into iTunes, I quickly discovered that some of the music files became truncated.  Remove and re-add them and they're fine though.  It's not a major problem but the only way to figure out what files didn't get imported correctly is to either listen to every track in my collection or just remove and re-import them all.  Greeeaaaat.  :/
• Unlike Win7, if you buy a system that comes from the factory with a hard drive, if you upgrade the HDD to a solid state drive, TRIM doesn't turn on by itself (bad Apple!  Bad, Bad!).  Of course there is a way to turn it on manually but being that this is supposed to be the Etch-a-Sketch of computers that "just works", I find it mildly amusing that it doesn't do it on it's own like Windows 7 without... you guessed it, yet another third party app.  :D  Here's that utility BTW:  http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322
• CTRL+SHIFT+EJECT activates the screen saver (and locks the screen if you have it set that way).  COMMAND+OPTION+EJECT puts the system to sleep....   try not to confuse the two or you may end up accidentally rebooting the system trying to wake it up.  :D
• I'm a keyboard junkie.  Although I can use the mouse I just find I work faster by hitting keyboard combinations to get done what I want done in the fastest way possible.  To that end, COMMAND+TAB doesn't work anywhere as efficiently as it does on Windows.  If you press and release it, if the active app is minimized, it won't un-minimize the window.  If you do some finger-gymnastics it will though (CMD+TAB to desired application then hold CMD.  Press Option key, release CMD).  So much for simplicty, huh?  Here's an app that fixes that default behavor.  :D  http://manytricks.com/witch/
• Finally, for a system that's supposed to be more stable than Windows, I've already gotten the spinning beachball of death four times (update:  I've gotten it about four more times already), lost a document I was writing in OpenOffice when it hung, and had to hard-restart the system twice when it became unresponsive.

Apple reality distortion field my ass.  :D  Overall though even with the annoying things and quirks (not to mention some learning curve stuff) I've found so far I actually really like this system though.  It reminds me so much of my old Commodore Amiga that I jokingly call it my "Amiga on Steroids".


That's a compliment, not an insult BTW.


Now I just gotta figure out how to make a "Guru Meditation" error screen show up when something goes wrong.  :D



*+10 Internets to you if you got the "White Chicks" reference.  :)