My experience with a MacBook
At work, we just got a new MacBook, and my boss let me take it home for a day or two. So far, I love it. It is so amazingly smooth, fast, and intuitive. Everything I thought should happen, did. Remember, I’ve only spent a minimal amount of time on a Mac, and that mostly came from taking Stat quizzes during my undergrad. So I knew nothing. I absolutely love the two-finger scrolling available on the touch pad—it makes navigating so much easier. I may even be able to use it without a mouse. And the view of all open applications was awesome (not sure what it’s called, but the F9 key). And the slide up feature (F11? F12?). And the Doc. And the entire thing.
Aside from loving it, I do have a couple of issues. They’re not really issues per se, but more like questions/concerns. So here they are:
Shiny screen—I’m pretty sure there is an option to choose the “xbrite” type of screen or a regular screen. For me, I think the screen was a little too shiny. Rather than viewing the screen perpendicularly (for lack of a better word), I had to angle it a bit to get rid of the glare and see the true colors.
Testing in IE—If I were to get a Mac, I would move all web development work to it, but I still need to be able to test on IE (mainly IE6). I’ve read about parallels, but I’m not sure how it works. And I don’t know if IE for Mac has the same rendering as IE for Windows (a.k.a. painfully wrong). Anyway, specifically using Rails, migrations, and subversion, it’s no big deal to update and run it on a Windows machine, but I would imagine there are better ways.
Safari’s bold-ish text rendering—This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I’ve read that Safari handles type beautifully, but it looked a little “bold-ish” to me. Is that just how it is? And how does Firefox work on a Mac? I would assume it’s fine, but I didn’t install anything other than what’s already there. Safari seemed to handle everything perfect, so I don’t think there are any issues using it, but I’m very partial to Firefox these days.
Photoshop—I’m guessing it’s extra to get Adobe Photoshop on a Mac? Someone once told me it came pre-installed as part of what you buy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Unless I just didn’t see it. Anyway, it would be hard for me to not use Photoshop when building a site, but I’m not attracted to the thought of buying it extra, either.
Overall, I’m sold on the Mac. Now I just have to figure out how to come up with an extra $3,000, and decide if I want a desktop or a laptop (right now it’s 60/40 with the laptop in the lead). Until then, I’ll keep dreaming. Oh, and Amie was right. I did end up posting about the MacBook… I just couldn’t resist.
Chris Thursday, 21 Dec, 2006 Posted at 04:52AM
F9-F12 use the app known as Expose. F9 shows you all applications, F10 shows you all windows for the current app, F11 hides all apps, and F12 brings up the Dashboard. (Also, if you hold shift while pressing any of these keys, the effect will happen in slow motion).
As far as the shiny screen, I agree. The MacBook only comes with the glossy screen, and that’s a big turn-off for me. My MacBook Pro has the original matte finish (no gloss) and I prefer it that way.
Parallels is really pretty easy to use. It lets you install other operating systems by creating virtual machines on your computer (and creates a huge file that acts as the hard drive). The way I test IE is pretty simple: I added an entry to the HOSTS file on Windows which points to the IP of my Mac, turned off the firewall on the Mac, and now I can easily browse my local Rails server (WEBrick, mongrel) in IE with local.host:3000 for example. No need to install anything else on the Windows virtual machine.
Photoshop definitely doesn’t come with the Mac, and unfortunately it’s not a universal binary yet. So, it’s PPC code that’s emulated by Rosetta on the Mac, and as a result it isn’t quite as fast as the native code (naturally).
I’m glad you are sold from just playing with the MacBook, but I have to say the MacBook Pro is far better. I would consider the MacBook as a replacement for my desktop at home if it didn’t have the glossy screen.
What did you think of the keyboard? I know it’s a much different style than traditional laptop keyboards, and I’m just curious about how comfortable it is. It seems like there is a big gap that could easily trap food crumbs, etc.
Ryan Thursday, 21 Dec, 2006 Posted at 05:23AM
I’m glad there’s an easy way to test in IE. That sucks about Photoshop, though. I expected it to not come with it—that would be insane if it did, but I’ve been surprised by worse.
In terms of typing, I thought the keyboard felt good. I like the small gap, but I’ve never considered the foot trap aspect. That’s a good point. I always pretend I don’t eat while on the laptop, but I do. And I probably always will. So I would imagine I’d eventually fill those gaps with crumbs.
Since Photoshop costs just under million dollars, do you know of any alternatives? Do you use Photoshop or something else? I’ve heard of GIMP, but I don’t know if it’s worthy.