Pictured above is my new MacBook (2.0GHz/White) beside my old Twinhead 12KT. I got it on Saturday and it’s been an absolute joy to set up so far. I’m quickly warming to the shiny screen too, as although it gives sharp reflections it also offers better "clarity" and as can be seen here fares a lot better when illuminated by a camera flash. It’s a pity they couldn’t have shaved an inch or so off the horizontal dimensions, since it’s significantly wider than the Twinhead, which I really appreciate for its compact size.

Outstanding features:

• Magnets! — The power connector attaches magnetically, so you can kind of wave the cable in the general vicinity and it will just snik into place. Also the lid is kept closed by (very strong) magnets— there is no latch mechanism.
• IR Remote — Very simple remote (with iPod Shuffle style buttons) can bring up the sexypants Apple media center at any time, even while I was installing WindowsXP (within Parallels virtualization software) directly from an ISO image stored on an iPod.
• All the good stuff built in — Bluetooth, iSight camera, microphone, wifi, IR, Firewire, USB-2, 10/100/1000 Mb ethernet, Dual-layer slot-loading DVD writer.
• Two finger trackpad control — using two fingertips on the track pad gives direct control over scrolling (when dragging) and context menu (when tapping). The lack of right mouse button has always been a sore point when using a Mac, so having this double finger tap option is fantastic.

Performance seems great too; Drivey runs very smoothly (using Parallels) at 1280×800. I’ll be installing various developer tools today so getting a better idea of how it will fare as a development machine (for both Windows and OSX).

Wirelessness

Telecom’s wireless broadband is still my only means of connecting to the internets, and it relies on a PCMCIA card (for which there is no slot on a Macbook, an omission that I was well aware of when purchasing). So for now I am using the Twinhead as host machine, although weirdly I can’t get it to create a local wifi network, so instead I have to create a network on the Mac first and have my PC automatically connect to it… Basically it was easier for me to set up a wireless host on an operating system I’d been using for two days than it was on one I’d been using for five years.

Obvious Conclusion

So yeah, Windows is old and busted, Apple provides the best out-of-the-box user experience I’ve ever had, and everyone should just buy a Mac instead of upgrading to Vista. It will cost you about the same as a PC with similar hardware spec (actually was cheaper than Toshiba, HP Sony equivalents) and will run XP as well if you want it to. The average mid-sized computer store here offers about 25 different laptop makes and models, and they’re all ugly like Buck Rogers’ briefcase in silver and black, they have stupid "50% more crap installed!" stickers all over them, and yet they often don’t have all the features of a standard MacBook.

I haven’t had time yet to properly test drive the OS or bundled software, that can wait for a future post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.