So, I’m writing this on a new MacBook Pro 13 that I brought home from work last night. I figured I’d better practice with it, since I intend to use for the labs and workshops at the Adobe Max conference in October. I have to say, there are lots of things I like about it, including the backlit keyboard. I’m still trying to tweak the settings (it comes with “stupid” turned on), and I don’t know as I’d want one as a desktop, because of all the things I do that I suspect would be difficult to set up and run on this thing (though I’ll give it a try), but for surfing the Internet and using the Adobe CS4 apps and that kinda stuff, it’s really pretty nice. This is the first extensive use of a Mac for me since having to support one a few years back. It was one of those all-in-one see-through gumball machine things (that for some reason people seemed to think were a great “design,” but didn’t do much for me; I already knew what the inside of a teevee looked like), right after OS X came out. The people who “had” to have it seemed to have no clue how to use it, and I had to go through all sorts of contortions to get it to do the simplest of things (often having to boot back and forth between X and 9, because, while you were supposed to be able to run legacy, “non-carbonized” apps – like the version of Quark available at the time – in an OS 9 shell, it didn’t actually work). It was disappointing, because, contrary to urban legend, the damn thing would lock up and die constantly. This seems better, so far, but we’ll see….

Seems a bit slow when starting up a new application, but that might be because of all the cutesy cartoon effects and whatnot. I really like the two-finger scroll and the oversized touchpad (once I figured out how to set it to allow tap to click and bottom corner “right-click,” though there are still thins I seem to need to option-click that I can right-click to do on a PC, which is a bit annoying). It has a much larger footprint that my 12.1″ Dell Inspiron (even given the slightly larger screen size), with a fair amount of wasted space (in part due to the large touchpad and more comfortable keyboard size). I don’t know what the official weight is (edit: just looked it up, and it comes in at 4.5 pounds, which isn’t terrible, but not exactly ultralight, either), but it feels quite a bit heavier, too. At home, that’s not a problem, but having trudged through airports with a 15″ Dell brick, weight is something I’m sensitive to. Some of that weight is due to the 7-cell lithium polymer battery, which seems to be worth every ounce. It purports to be capable of 7 hours or use (the Dell gets a pretty solid 5). I unplugged it as I left the office last at about 5:00, played around with it last night (nothing heavy duty), closed it up (but never shut it down), and still have 35% remaining. I’ll have to see how long it lasts playing a DVD.

It keeps telling me that I downloaded Firefox from the Internet, and wants to know if I really want to run it. I do – I really do. Honest. There’s gotta be a place to turn that off, right? So, who knows. My current laptop is getting a little long in the tooth (got it the Summer of 2005) and the sound no longer works (been itching to get a new one for a while now), so maybe I’ll get one of these things for myself. Other than they’re rather overpriced (a very quick look at Best Buy for a similar HP – same screen size and RAM, double the hard drive size, and a lightscribe DVD burner, which the Mac doesn’t have is literally half the price; the Mac is a bit nicer looking, I’ll admit, and I’m not an HP fan, but, damn, we’re talking 2-for-1, and that’s without doing any shopping around) and don’t have a user-replaceable battery (at least in theory; I reckon I could do it). RAM is pretty pricey, too. They currently come with 4-gigs on two chips (only two slots total), and to go to 8GB, Apple wants another $1,000. 😯 Even looking at Crucial, two 4 GB chips go for $799 (and then you have pull the 4-gigs out, but I suppose you could at least sell ’em on eBay, unlike letting Apple stick you for a grand). BTW, what’s the warranty on these things? Like 90 days or something, and then you pretty much are forced to pay for Apple Care (another edit: I see that it’s 90-days for phone support – which I’d never use anyway – and 1-yr on the hardware, which is comparable to most other manufacturers)?

Still, it’s pretty. And it isn’t frickin’ white, which is a big plus. So, we’ll see.

A sad day yesterday, as we lost both Mary Travers and Henry Gibson, who was great as the rather odd judge on Boston Legal. Also sad was Max Baucus’ homage to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Nobody on either side seems to like it, so I am officially predicting that this is the version of the health care reform bill that will pass and be enacted, signaling an end to the Democrats brief reign as rulers of both Houses of Congress, as well as the beginning of the end of that Kenyan/Indonesian Mooslam President dude.

Oh well, time to head to work. Post your Mac tips.