A Newbie on week one.
So I've been an apple user for a week now and here are my findings so far:
Bought a 12" powerbook (totally overspecced for what i want but it's damn cool).
Pros:
Everything from the slowly pulsating sleep light, to the screen latch that hides when not in use, to the glowing apple on the back just screams chic. Even the power adaptor in it's ice white plastic, and the power indicator ring around the port is lovely. The screen is wonderfully clear and gives me great performance in DVD playback (incidentally the sound is fantastic through the headphones - i've ripped a fair few albums in in AAC format and). Downloaded Safari and find tabbed browsing an absolute godsend. Dynamicly changing wallpaper that fades between changes is cool - my IBM thinkpad at work almost has a heart attack when i change wallpaper and thats only every couploe of months, not every five seconds! I just love the styling of osx - the dock everything about it is just, well, right i guess. OS X is truly the operating system that consumers need, they just don't know it - everything is intuitive and works. My airport extreme card found our home wireless (PC) newtork and got on easily (all it needed was the encrytpion key and away it went).
Cons:
Battery life is dissapointing (i know it's the airport extreme card). The machine gets a little warm (hot even). Theres no right mouse button (WTF?! it took me while to get used to this, getting there now). The finish is so lovely i'm scared to use it - wash my hands before each use. The @ and " keys are transposed, not a major niggle, but slightly confusing. If you do a "save as" theres no way of saving things into Macintosh HD (that i've found anyway). So really there are no cons, just a couple of niggles.
So there you have it. In short, I love my mac. Best money i've spent. Even better is that I got a refund on what i spent over the recent price reduaction.
Bought a 12" powerbook (totally overspecced for what i want but it's damn cool).
Pros:
Everything from the slowly pulsating sleep light, to the screen latch that hides when not in use, to the glowing apple on the back just screams chic. Even the power adaptor in it's ice white plastic, and the power indicator ring around the port is lovely. The screen is wonderfully clear and gives me great performance in DVD playback (incidentally the sound is fantastic through the headphones - i've ripped a fair few albums in in AAC format and). Downloaded Safari and find tabbed browsing an absolute godsend. Dynamicly changing wallpaper that fades between changes is cool - my IBM thinkpad at work almost has a heart attack when i change wallpaper and thats only every couploe of months, not every five seconds! I just love the styling of osx - the dock everything about it is just, well, right i guess. OS X is truly the operating system that consumers need, they just don't know it - everything is intuitive and works. My airport extreme card found our home wireless (PC) newtork and got on easily (all it needed was the encrytpion key and away it went).
Cons:
Battery life is dissapointing (i know it's the airport extreme card). The machine gets a little warm (hot even). Theres no right mouse button (WTF?! it took me while to get used to this, getting there now). The finish is so lovely i'm scared to use it - wash my hands before each use. The @ and " keys are transposed, not a major niggle, but slightly confusing. If you do a "save as" theres no way of saving things into Macintosh HD (that i've found anyway). So really there are no cons, just a couple of niggles.
So there you have it. In short, I love my mac. Best money i've spent. Even better is that I got a refund on what i spent over the recent price reduaction.
Comments
Originally posted by david101
1. Battery life is dissapointing (i know it's the airport extreme card). The machine gets a little warm (hot even).
2. If you do a "save as" theres no way of saving things into Macintosh HD (that i've found anyway). So really there are no cons, just a couple of niggles.
1, go into system preferences and energy saver- tune down your battery power settings to squeeze the life out of it.
2, Huh? From the pull down menu you can select a lot of popular locations, or by hitting the reveal triangle you can select any folder on your drive.
Probably still stuck in the windows way of saving things to C
Like i say though, i'm really really pleased with my new toy!
Battery life goes up a lot when you turn off airport and bluetooth but very much so when you crank the screen brightness down to one above black.
Originally posted by david101
Theres no right mouse button (WTF?! it took me while to get used to this, getting there now).
I actually liked the one mouse button when I switched. At least for the trackpad that is. I never liked (when using other people's laptops, my TiBook was my first own latop) using the two button trackpads because I had to keep moving my thumb back and forth. It just wasn't comfortable for me. Granted, I like a mouse I am using to have two buttons, but the one button trackpad I really like.
The finish is so lovely i'm scared to use it - wash my hands before each use.
Make sure that you are nice to the painted parts. I dunno how much better the Aluminum books are with this but the top case on my TiBook was horrible. I got my friend to replace it for me though. Now I'm very careful not to let things rub against it too much so that it doesn't chip liiike before.
Once you hit the discloseure triangle next to the location pop-up in your open/save dialogs, it shows your place in the directory in column view, so the hard drive is on the very left when you scroll across. The top level of the hard drive is not the right place for most stuff anyway, the files should go in your home location or in the shared folder for the most part. If you save stuff to the top level of the hardive, you might not be able to manipulate it since most stuff on that level is locked from tampering.
The only hardware complaints I have at all about the 12" PowerBook are the lack of a DVI port and the lack of a 'forward delete' key.
i think i know what you mean by not knowing how to save to Macintosh HD...
it's not a good idea to save something 'directly' on Macintosh HD, OS X is a multiuser OS, and as you have probably noticed there is a home folder, which is 'your' folder. (Each user created on a system has its own home folder). So instead of saving stuff on Mac.... HD, just navigate to your home folder and save it there, either in pre-defined folders (music, movies, etc..) or create a new one.
There are tons of usefull key combos to get you to a specific folders fast. (ie. if you have this save-dialog box open, hit cmd(apple) key + D, it will select desktop as destination folder, cmd+shift+a, to go jump to applications folder, cmd+shift+h to jump to your home folder, etc...)
have fun.
Originally posted by Influenza
the lack of a 'forward delete' key.
fn + delete will get you what you want...
check out http://gnufoo.org/ucontrol/ to customize the keyboard layout... I use it to remap the enter key into another fn key...
it also adds a scroll to the trackpad, very useful...
You can achieve the Windoze-esque practice of making an option menu appear by pressing the Open Apple-flower-clover button ( the Command button ) while clicking the mouse. After a while it's second nature. This will make life easier.
Have fun!
Originally posted by msnotesgod
<<Theres no right mouse button>>
You can achieve the Windoze-esque practice of making an option menu appear by pressing the Open Apple-flower-clover button ( the Command button ) while clicking the mouse. After a while it's second nature. This will make life easier.
Have fun!
or you could get a two-button mouse. Which will work just like on a PC.
Like i say the problems i've experienced are nothing more than slight niggles really - no more than if i'd picked up a PC for the first time ever. If apple want to capture more market share though surely they should address these minor issues.
However, i'm completely satisifed with what i've bought. I certainly won't be going back to windows, except at work where it's forced on us (major major company, highly prescriptive IT policy). This powerbook is the most aspirational product that i have owned and i love it.