Macbook trip report...
So it's been about a week on this newfangled thang.
Good:
- OSX Leopard is still pretty keen. I like it a lot more that Vista. I can see why people think it's at best a lateral "upgrade" from Tiger. I don't really think any of the new features are particularly compelling...
- Battery life. It's pretty easy to pull 5-6 hours without necessarily going to extremes.
- Magsafe. It's a very keen little connector. A small thing, but it's cool.
- Nice big responsive and precise trackpad. Two finger scrolling is also nice.
- Still the best text rendering available.
Bad:
- Still way underpowered video. 3D performance is completely worthless. 2D is fine, it can play HD video and all, but gaming is RIGHT OUT.
- The case gets a scratch if your neighbor down the block rips a loud fart. If you don't get some kind of shell on it, it really doesn't matter how careful you are, it is going to get scratched.
- Connected an external monitor can be a bit weird. Sometimes you have to shuffle things around a few times to get it to fly.
- Stereo audio only.
- Still dealing with the curse of the one-button. One button trackpad means a lot of reaching for the "Ctrl" key.
Overall I would rate it a solid 9/10. The hardest adjustment was not OSX itself, but more finding good applications. I think the trick is to stop thinking Windows ports and start looking more for things coming from the Linux side and open-source. Things like mplayer being the end all be all video player are not necessarily immediately evident.
Good:
- OSX Leopard is still pretty keen. I like it a lot more that Vista. I can see why people think it's at best a lateral "upgrade" from Tiger. I don't really think any of the new features are particularly compelling...
- Battery life. It's pretty easy to pull 5-6 hours without necessarily going to extremes.
- Magsafe. It's a very keen little connector. A small thing, but it's cool.
- Nice big responsive and precise trackpad. Two finger scrolling is also nice.
- Still the best text rendering available.
Bad:
- Still way underpowered video. 3D performance is completely worthless. 2D is fine, it can play HD video and all, but gaming is RIGHT OUT.
- The case gets a scratch if your neighbor down the block rips a loud fart. If you don't get some kind of shell on it, it really doesn't matter how careful you are, it is going to get scratched.
- Connected an external monitor can be a bit weird. Sometimes you have to shuffle things around a few times to get it to fly.
- Stereo audio only.
- Still dealing with the curse of the one-button. One button trackpad means a lot of reaching for the "Ctrl" key.
Overall I would rate it a solid 9/10. The hardest adjustment was not OSX itself, but more finding good applications. I think the trick is to stop thinking Windows ports and start looking more for things coming from the Linux side and open-source. Things like mplayer being the end all be all video player are not necessarily immediately evident.