OMG new MBP!
16/02/09 10:38 PM Filed in: My Life
After my
last post, it seems very hypocritical to be a week
late for this post, and have completely ignored the
last one. I have a good excuse though, and I will
present a fair and balanced argument for that
excuse below:
I CAN HAZ MBP!!
I CAN HAZ MBP!!
Thank you
for your understanding. It is true, I purchased a
Refurbished, bottom-of-the-line model MacBook Pro
last Tuesday, one week ago as I write this. It’s
amazing. I will now treat you to a
stream-of-consiousness, mostly chronological order.
It started heating up when I realized I had about $200 more than I thought, and it was about $100 more than I thought to buy. That left me with $50 to go, and I started hunting for a deal. I found one on Amazon for $10ish more than I had, and busied myself with finding out if it had iLife ’09 on it. Then, on a hunch, I found one for just $1 more than I had on the Refurbished section of the Apple online store. I tried to get my dad to buy it and let me pay him back, and he wouldn’t. I then tried some more, and he finally did. Unfortunately our bank apparently only does online transfers during business hours, so he finalized it that day, which happened to be a Friday. I got a printer with it, a Canon although I’m regretting that as HP’s drivers are sooo much better, and am planning on getting that rebate any day now. It all goes back to my dad, who paid for the thing, so don’t get excited.
I got the tracking numbers and stuck them in Delivery Widget, then sat down to a long period of waiting. The printer arrived Saturday, but there’s only so much you can do with a printer. In the meantime, I set up AppFresh and marked all the apps I had on the iMac as “Used” by me on iusethis.com. I moved my Things library into my DropBox. I then tweeted frequently about how much I was excited about getting the Pro and how much I wished it was here already.
Then one day, it arrived. I eagerly opened up the box, and then stared at the laptop. It is beautiful, let me tell you that. Bee-youtuful. I opened it up and simply admired for a minute (it actually lasted 15 seconds, I was impatient to get it up and running). I then did something very, very geeky, about which I am not ashamed in the least.
Bonnngg
Yes, I recorded the first Bong. Isn’t that what you did with your first very own computer? Well, call me strange (oh, you already did? Oh, well) but I did. I then went through the steps to transfer data via FireWire, but forgot that FW400 cables didn’t work with the 800 port. So I remembered you had to use an Ethernet cable on the new Unibody MacBooks without FireWire, and tried that. It took me a few tries to find a functioning Ethernet cable, but eventually I did, then it took me a while to figure out you have to choose Network Migration, not Target Disk Mode, to use Ethernet, and then I had to figure out you need to install something on the old computer from the Install CD on the new one, but I eventually figured it out. I happened to have a lot to do that day, so I did it while continuing to tweet from the ancient family Dell laptop. During any given minute the estimate could range by up to an hour, so I didn’t put much stake in that. It ended up taking around four hours to transfer over my 160 gigs of data. The first thing I did when I fired it up was stick in the iLife ’09 CD, which was in the box because I bought after the ship date but not preinstalled because it was a refurb, and install that. I then installed all my must-have apps, as well as AppFresh. I was able to hold off on QuickSilver for three days, but eventually broke down and installed it.
I’m going to tell you all about my experience with those apps later, this post is all about the MacBook. The new features, mostly accelerometer, battery, and multitouch trackpad, allowed me to use many fantastic new apps like SmartSleep, CoconutBattery, SlimBattery Monitor, MacSaber, AirRadar, and MultiCluch.
There are a few things I want to talk about regarding the laptop. Firstly is the glossy screen. The naysayers are absolutely right, it does get a glare sometimes. However, the glossy fans are also right, it can almost always power through that glare with the LED backlight. In the rare times when it can’t, just adjust the screen or refocus your eyes the way you do to see the other side of an optical illusion.
The battery. It’s supposed to last up to 5 hours, I’m getting around three. It’s not too much of an inconvenience for me, because I’m too scared to take it out of the house at the moment. However, it would be nice to have the 8 hour battery life of the new 17” and actually get 5 hours. I really like the elegance of the MagSafe, and how small or long you can make it if you need to. The magnetic catch, both on it and the lid, are a great Apple touch.
One more thing: The trackpad. Lovely, lovely trackpad. Oh, how I love that trackpad. Simple to use, easy to scroll, rotate, pinch, zoom, swipe, track, and even just click. The two-finger scroll and right click are great. Rotate and pinch I don’t have that many uses for, but they’re nice to have. Three-finger swipes are heaven. I’ve assigned 3-finger Up and Down to switch tabs in Safari, NetNewsWire, and everything else with tabs via MultiClutch, and combine that with swipe sideways to move forward and back and that’s a great browsing experience. Four-finger swipes up and down are cool, and I use them occasionally. The biggest annoyance I have is with the 4-finger sideswipe. You swipe to bring up the Application Switcher, scroll with 2 fingers to the app you want, tap, and then… it goes away. WHAT?? I have to actually track (track: to move the pointer using the trackpad) to the app I want? Annoying. I have discovered that you can hit the spacebar to switch to the tab, but I have found that you can put yourself in all sorts of odd positions with a laptop and it’s sometimes harder to reach.
All in all, though, the pros by far outweigh the cons. I’m glad I got the Pro, because going from a 20” to 15” screen was hard enough. I can’t imagine going down to 13 inches. I know the next thing on my list (after the $50 Recycling Fee that they didn’t tell me about until I actually went to the checkout page, not that I’m bitter) is more RAM, because iPhoto and even writing this post in RapidWeaver brings this thing to its knees. I currently have 130MB free, and am only running RapidWeaver, DestroyTwitter, Things, and iChat–I’ve even quit the Finder. I only have one more thing to say.
Shift-Option-K,
Shift-1
It started heating up when I realized I had about $200 more than I thought, and it was about $100 more than I thought to buy. That left me with $50 to go, and I started hunting for a deal. I found one on Amazon for $10ish more than I had, and busied myself with finding out if it had iLife ’09 on it. Then, on a hunch, I found one for just $1 more than I had on the Refurbished section of the Apple online store. I tried to get my dad to buy it and let me pay him back, and he wouldn’t. I then tried some more, and he finally did. Unfortunately our bank apparently only does online transfers during business hours, so he finalized it that day, which happened to be a Friday. I got a printer with it, a Canon although I’m regretting that as HP’s drivers are sooo much better, and am planning on getting that rebate any day now. It all goes back to my dad, who paid for the thing, so don’t get excited.
I got the tracking numbers and stuck them in Delivery Widget, then sat down to a long period of waiting. The printer arrived Saturday, but there’s only so much you can do with a printer. In the meantime, I set up AppFresh and marked all the apps I had on the iMac as “Used” by me on iusethis.com. I moved my Things library into my DropBox. I then tweeted frequently about how much I was excited about getting the Pro and how much I wished it was here already.
Then one day, it arrived. I eagerly opened up the box, and then stared at the laptop. It is beautiful, let me tell you that. Bee-youtuful. I opened it up and simply admired for a minute (it actually lasted 15 seconds, I was impatient to get it up and running). I then did something very, very geeky, about which I am not ashamed in the least.
Bonnngg
Yes, I recorded the first Bong. Isn’t that what you did with your first very own computer? Well, call me strange (oh, you already did? Oh, well) but I did. I then went through the steps to transfer data via FireWire, but forgot that FW400 cables didn’t work with the 800 port. So I remembered you had to use an Ethernet cable on the new Unibody MacBooks without FireWire, and tried that. It took me a few tries to find a functioning Ethernet cable, but eventually I did, then it took me a while to figure out you have to choose Network Migration, not Target Disk Mode, to use Ethernet, and then I had to figure out you need to install something on the old computer from the Install CD on the new one, but I eventually figured it out. I happened to have a lot to do that day, so I did it while continuing to tweet from the ancient family Dell laptop. During any given minute the estimate could range by up to an hour, so I didn’t put much stake in that. It ended up taking around four hours to transfer over my 160 gigs of data. The first thing I did when I fired it up was stick in the iLife ’09 CD, which was in the box because I bought after the ship date but not preinstalled because it was a refurb, and install that. I then installed all my must-have apps, as well as AppFresh. I was able to hold off on QuickSilver for three days, but eventually broke down and installed it.
I’m going to tell you all about my experience with those apps later, this post is all about the MacBook. The new features, mostly accelerometer, battery, and multitouch trackpad, allowed me to use many fantastic new apps like SmartSleep, CoconutBattery, SlimBattery Monitor, MacSaber, AirRadar, and MultiCluch.
There are a few things I want to talk about regarding the laptop. Firstly is the glossy screen. The naysayers are absolutely right, it does get a glare sometimes. However, the glossy fans are also right, it can almost always power through that glare with the LED backlight. In the rare times when it can’t, just adjust the screen or refocus your eyes the way you do to see the other side of an optical illusion.
The battery. It’s supposed to last up to 5 hours, I’m getting around three. It’s not too much of an inconvenience for me, because I’m too scared to take it out of the house at the moment. However, it would be nice to have the 8 hour battery life of the new 17” and actually get 5 hours. I really like the elegance of the MagSafe, and how small or long you can make it if you need to. The magnetic catch, both on it and the lid, are a great Apple touch.
One more thing: The trackpad. Lovely, lovely trackpad. Oh, how I love that trackpad. Simple to use, easy to scroll, rotate, pinch, zoom, swipe, track, and even just click. The two-finger scroll and right click are great. Rotate and pinch I don’t have that many uses for, but they’re nice to have. Three-finger swipes are heaven. I’ve assigned 3-finger Up and Down to switch tabs in Safari, NetNewsWire, and everything else with tabs via MultiClutch, and combine that with swipe sideways to move forward and back and that’s a great browsing experience. Four-finger swipes up and down are cool, and I use them occasionally. The biggest annoyance I have is with the 4-finger sideswipe. You swipe to bring up the Application Switcher, scroll with 2 fingers to the app you want, tap, and then… it goes away. WHAT?? I have to actually track (track: to move the pointer using the trackpad) to the app I want? Annoying. I have discovered that you can hit the spacebar to switch to the tab, but I have found that you can put yourself in all sorts of odd positions with a laptop and it’s sometimes harder to reach.
All in all, though, the pros by far outweigh the cons. I’m glad I got the Pro, because going from a 20” to 15” screen was hard enough. I can’t imagine going down to 13 inches. I know the next thing on my list (after the $50 Recycling Fee that they didn’t tell me about until I actually went to the checkout page, not that I’m bitter) is more RAM, because iPhoto and even writing this post in RapidWeaver brings this thing to its knees. I currently have 130MB free, and am only running RapidWeaver, DestroyTwitter, Things, and iChat–I’ve even quit the Finder. I only have one more thing to say.
Shift-Option-K,
Shift-1
2009