So far, I'm not gonna lie...I made "the switch" and although it still feels weird, its not bad in many ways. Besides the Mac fanboys who think they're technical know-italls because they know the ins and outs of their little Maccy (sp?) world. (Whether or not you think Windows PCs are "inferior" you should still know how to use them. Why? Because they're everywhere. Don't be such a simpleton.)
Regardless here's the +'s & -'s of my MacBook Pro experience (incl. things that aren't Apple's fault). And yes they're very particular.
________________
Hardware & Other
-------------------
(+) Pluses
-------------
All in one package (Microphone, Bluetooth, iSight, Wireless is just THERE. (no labels advertising the features all over it like "BLUETOOTH 2.0 TECHNOLOGY" like Bluetooth is new)
RIGHTEOUS 3-D performance. GeForce 8600 (even the 128MB i got, not 256MB) ran Unreal 3 at full res 1440x900 with all the options on high without a hitch. This isn't even a cement-brick 'gaming' laptop!
Runs Windows natively. Huge selling point.
Ports, ports, ports. ExpressCard 34, USB 2, DVI dual-link, Gigabit, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, infrared, audio in & out.
Very bright screen + auto-lighting keys = nighttime code-hacking bliss.
Plays HD video so clear and hiccup-free its like you're at the movies.
Option for a matte screen (which i quickly took advantage of. Glossy-screen people: You can have your "stark contrast" because when you're trying to do something anywhere with significant lighting you're gonna be hating it.)
$200 education discount. (Tip: student discount > military discount)
Societal: Because you look like an "Apple fanboy" people don't really expect you to know anything. Anyone who's been in tech for a while knows this is a good thing more often than a bad thing.
Societal: Kid at the Apple store was just dead honest with me. Didn't try to force me to buy jack. No hassle, no spin doctory stuff (used to sell laptops retail and there's some shady dudes out there)
(-) Minuses
--------------
Fn key is on the outside. (Liked having CTRL there...fingers dont have to "look" for it)
NO HARD DRIVE ACTIVITY LIGHT. Drives me mad. (Might write a prog to reprog the Caps Lock light to be an HDD indicator in OS X.)
$2 extra to 'activate' 802.11n part of wireless card online
hard not to touch palms to HUGE trackpad while typing
No HDMI
so beautiful that every single oilmark is visible. Feel like i own a sports car, wiping it off with my shirt and scared it'll get ripped off)
user HD replacement voids warranty (only on Pro, not regular MacBook).
Don't like the noise the 'SuperDrive' makes when you insert a disc. Sounds like an old car cassette player.
3rd party: MSN Messenger on Mac OS X doesn't do video. Thats the only reason I even USE MSN.
Societal: Every Mac-only ignoramous thats actually dumber than rocks because they have little "real-world" computer experience but they wanna be nerds. Correction, 'geniuses'. How quaint.
Societal: People assume looking at you that you ARE one of those ignorant Mac-only fans.
__________________________
OS X & Software-specific
-----------------
(+) Pluses
----------
Things just...work. Especially in Mac OS X. No questions. No fiddling with new and old drivers.
love iChat. iLife in general. (iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal)
iCal can sync ("subscribe") to Google Calendar automatically. Its so convenient its sickening.
"Open With..." already knows which apps on the system can open your file of choice
Can speak the time aloud on the hour. (Useful when you're on a schedule and focused on something other than the time)
Speakers may not be super loud but they don't distort. Very crisp sounding.
Very stable. No driver issues.
(-) Minuses
-------------
No driver issues BECAUSE very little non-essential device compatibility (out of like 20 non-HID usb peripherals i have only 2 work) (bad/conflicting device drivers are usually what bring Windows crashing down first)
No program-independent acknowledgement of a compatible device connection (i.e. Handheld GPS)
Leopard: Very difficult to set up triple boot w/ Ubuntu! Between Tiger and Leopard, apparently Apple removed "Linux" as a file system type when partitioning the disk with their 'diskutil' terminal prog. Which happens to be the only util to safely partition the drive with (supposedly GParted isn't good with EFI manipulation or something)
Leopard iTunes: No matter how many times I tell OS X to always open my MP3s with VLC by default, it insists on opening iTunes instead (is this an iTunes setting?) and i have to manually "Open With..." every time.
----------------------------
All in all I'm very pleased with it. And also, to all you pussy Mac boys complaining about how "heavy" it is to "lug around" the Pro...lift some freaking weights. Its five and a half pounds. My mother goes walking with weights twice that heavy. And she's 55. And 'not skinny'.
09 January 2008
First blog - macbook pro v2 leopard tri-boot madness
OK so I finally made a blogger acct because, seeing as 95% of my friends aren't techno-dorks, it didn't make any sense to write about experiences (so that others can learn from them and it's not completely wasted time when something gets botched) in a myspace blog.
Anyways. quicklog: triplebooting macbook pro (2.2GHz, 2gb ram, 120gb hard drive)
used boot camp, added 32gb fat32 part for winxp pro
installed rEFIt (before or after windows i don't remember when?)
installed winxp pro
so far so good, (which means its not good enough though. :P)
tried to install ubuntu 7.10 x64. really annoying problems (no graphics during boot [only after], graphics resolution not working right, tried to set it right and it blanked out the screen until i hard-rebooted it. what an a-hole you are, x64.)
burnt and ran ubuntu 7.10 i686. muuuch better. (natively detected 1440x900 from the get-go)
install. (note: for 'advanced graphics' [probably referring to compiz/'beryl'] req. download of nVidia drivers, which req. inet connection)
deliberated over installing bootloader (grub). installed it anyways against my better judgement (note: major choice is merely a checkbox in an 'advanced...' type menu)
rebooted, osx works, yay.
rebooted, ubuntu works. (option-boot to 'windows' partition in mac efi loader, grub list pops up, pick ubuntu.)
rebooted, (rEFIt finally comes up? WTF? only now that there's 3 OS's it decides to work?) winxp w...ill probably end up broken. which sure as the crow flies south, it was. (missing or corrupt hal.dll file)
did some research. people have success (no mention of tri-boot though) wiping out win partition and re-doing it with NTFS. i was originally going to use ntfs and not fat32 but being able to write the winxp partition straight from osx was pretty tempting. very convenient.)
Tried to use boot camp assistant to restore back to a sole os x partition and have another go at it, but turns out boot camp won't touch it unless its either a osx-only or bootcamp-orthodox osx/xp setup. (at this point there's 5 partitions: mac os x efi, mac os x, win xp, linux, linux swap)
tried disk utility. disk utility will erase THE INSIDES whichever one i want. it
will burn to CD/DVD THE INSIDES (read 'data') of whichever partition i want. and
yet it can't actually remove or add a partition. Awesome, thanks so much.
Now my choices are:
a.) boot into OSX, remove rEFIt, and see if that lets bootcamp re-do the setup
b.) use the EFI-based fdisk tool via rEFIt to remove the offending partitions
c.) (back up personal data first) see if apple extended hardware diagnostic (an hour...sigh) detects awkward setup as a problem (as boot camp did...great engineers usually think alike) and offers to fix it
d.) (back up personal data first) boot off leopard CD and try and 'restore' things (last resort: wipe it clean with said CD)
Like I said, one of the benefits of trial-and-error is learning, and why keep it to myself? Hope this helps some people who might read this before going about it the wrong way.
Eventually I will figure out a cut-and-dry method to do this, so help me God.
Anyways. quicklog: triplebooting macbook pro (2.2GHz, 2gb ram, 120gb hard drive)
used boot camp, added 32gb fat32 part for winxp pro
installed rEFIt (before or after windows i don't remember when?)
installed winxp pro
so far so good, (which means its not good enough though. :P)
tried to install ubuntu 7.10 x64. really annoying problems (no graphics during boot [only after], graphics resolution not working right, tried to set it right and it blanked out the screen until i hard-rebooted it. what an a-hole you are, x64.)
burnt and ran ubuntu 7.10 i686. muuuch better. (natively detected 1440x900 from the get-go)
install. (note: for 'advanced graphics' [probably referring to compiz/'beryl'] req. download of nVidia drivers, which req. inet connection)
deliberated over installing bootloader (grub). installed it anyways against my better judgement (note: major choice is merely a checkbox in an 'advanced...' type menu)
rebooted, osx works, yay.
rebooted, ubuntu works. (option-boot to 'windows' partition in mac efi loader, grub list pops up, pick ubuntu.)
rebooted, (rEFIt finally comes up? WTF? only now that there's 3 OS's it decides to work?) winxp w...ill probably end up broken. which sure as the crow flies south, it was. (missing or corrupt hal.dll file)
did some research. people have success (no mention of tri-boot though) wiping out win partition and re-doing it with NTFS. i was originally going to use ntfs and not fat32 but being able to write the winxp partition straight from osx was pretty tempting. very convenient.)
Tried to use boot camp assistant to restore back to a sole os x partition and have another go at it, but turns out boot camp won't touch it unless its either a osx-only or bootcamp-orthodox osx/xp setup. (at this point there's 5 partitions: mac os x efi, mac os x, win xp, linux, linux swap)
tried disk utility. disk utility will erase THE INSIDES whichever one i want. it
will burn to CD/DVD THE INSIDES (read 'data') of whichever partition i want. and
yet it can't actually remove or add a partition. Awesome, thanks so much.
Now my choices are:
a.) boot into OSX, remove rEFIt, and see if that lets bootcamp re-do the setup
b.) use the EFI-based fdisk tool via rEFIt to remove the offending partitions
c.) (back up personal data first) see if apple extended hardware diagnostic (an hour...sigh) detects awkward setup as a problem (as boot camp did...great engineers usually think alike) and offers to fix it
d.) (back up personal data first) boot off leopard CD and try and 'restore' things (last resort: wipe it clean with said CD)
Like I said, one of the benefits of trial-and-error is learning, and why keep it to myself? Hope this helps some people who might read this before going about it the wrong way.
Eventually I will figure out a cut-and-dry method to do this, so help me God.
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