Lappy
Yes, over two weeks after ordering my new laptop, it has arrived. My white Macbook is here and I’ve been using it for the past day or so.
Coolbook
The Macbook is cool. It is easily the best time I’ve had using a computer ever. OS X runs like a dream. It’s fast, thanks to 1 gig of DDR2 RAM (667 MHz) and the Intel dual core processor, accurately named Core Duo. It’s really the little things that you don’t notice in the pictures that amaze you. The polish that they put into OS X is astounding. All of the graphical pretties are all seamless and unobtrusive. It’s quite elegant and, again, it’s the small little extras that no one bothers to emulate on other platforms that really make OS X stand out. And same goes for the hardware as well, even the packaging. I can’t stress enough that everything about the Mac is really, really, pretty, even more so after actually using it.
Hotbook
The Macbook is hot. They weren’t kidding when they said that the Macbook runs hot. In fact, I really wanted to not believe it, but they were right. The Macbook is really hot. I don’t know if this is normal for laptops, but it makes me a tiny bit worried. Hopefully, there’ll be a logic board upgrade or something.
It’s Easy
Everything works. I plug in something and it works. Not like Windows, where you plug in something and it sometimes works and sometimes you have to install something. Speaking of installing things, it’s so simple it’ll confuse you. Basically, all you do is drag the program to the apps folder. That’s it! Don’t double click it, there’s no installer, just drag and drop. And drag to the trash to uninstall.
It’s fast,
It is much, much faster than my old computer. On my old computer, I had a first gen P4 1.6 GHz cpu, 512 megs of DDR RAM (PC 2100), and a Radeon 7000. I was playing ET at the lowest settings and 800×600. Starcraft would slow down once I had selected a unit. Now, everything is zippy and I play ET at high settings at 1024×768 and it’s wonderful. Everything looks prettier. I’m going to enjoy gaming on this thing, even without dedicated graphics. The dual cores more than make up for it.
Expose
Expose is one of those things that you can’t emulate on other platforms. It’s one of the greatest things ever. Basically, it smoothly zips and zops and displays all of your open windows with the original content in it. So you can have a video playing and it’ll continue to play while you’re Expose-ing. And all of this is really smooth and seamless.
The Dock
The Dock serves as much more than being a place to put your shortcuts. It tells you lots of information. All of your minimized windows go there. All of your open applications have a spot there. Any alerts from your apps will be there. For example, in Thunderbird, if you get new mail, a number will appear in the corner of your Thunderbird icon and it’ll bounce. Same for your feedreader. For Adium, my IM client, it’ll bounce and it’ll have the name of whoever sent you a message. Clicking on the Adium icon like that will bring you to the IM window.
Closing and Quitting
The Mac differentiates between windows and applications. An application can still be running without any windows, so closing a windows will not close an application. That’s what led to all of the frustration back in Grade 2 when the Mac would keep shouting that you have no more memory. Anyhow, this is convenient for keeping apps working in the background, like Thunderbird checked mail, without cluttering the desktop with open windows or keeping the dock filled with minimized windows.
Decision
The Macbook is the best comupter I’ve ever used, oh yes it is.