MacBook
I have had a new Mac for about 3 days now. It’s very nice. I’m not really interested in writing a review or anything like that, but I do want to not a few of my initial impressions. But first, a bit of context. For the last three years I have been using a 12″, 867MHz PowerBook G4. That machine served me well, and I’ve upgraded it to an 80GB had drive and 1.1GB of RAM. But, it is three years old and, well, it feels pretty darn slow and the screen is pretty darn small.
So, I’ve been intending to pick up a new machine since the Core Duo iMacs were introduced in January. And, last week I finally was able to pick up a new iMac. Then Apple released the MacBook that morning. A brief pricing comparison showed me that for what I was going to pay for a 1.83GHz iMac I could get a 2GHz MacBook. And I’d be able to retire the PowerBook to server duty to boot.
Fast forward a week and 3 days and here we are. I’m writing this on my shiny, white, 2GHz MacBook with 1GB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive. Apple only offers 5400RPM drives in the MacBooks, so I bought the smallest one and will be replacing it with a 7200RPM drive very soon.
The screen is wonderful. I had been worried about the glossy factor, but in my day-to-day usage, it’s not a problem. And the contrast and saturation really are improved over the matte finish of my PowerBook. The wireless networking is massively improved. Not only am I getting vastly improved reception on my networks, but I’m seeing networks I never knew existed. My PowerBook can, depending on cloud cover and the phase of the moon, see hints of one network other than my own. The MacBook sees four, clear and sharp. They’re all locked down, but being able to see them is pretty cool. Also pretty cool is the magnetic latching system and the built-in webcam.
As you would expect, the MacBook is faster than the PowerBook. Artificial proccessor benchmarks show the gains to be around 500–600%. Of course, half of that is due to the second core and the multithreaded nature of the benchmarks. In a more reasonable test, I built my toolchain (LightTPD, FastCGI, PHP, GD) in 10 minutes on the MacBook. That same process takes at least 30 minutes on the PowerBook. The major difference being that the MacBook was still completely usable and snappy whereas the PowerBook has to pretty much concentrate entirely on the build process. The downside of the added speed is added heat. But while the MacBook is hotter than the PowerBook, it’s not a huge difference.
There are a few things that I’m going to get used to. The trackpad has a texture. I’ve been using trackpads since the PowerBook 500 series and the last two primary machines of mine were the PowerBook G4 and a PowerBook 1400c. All of which had a smooth surface. I’ve already pretty much adjusted to the texture and the two-finger scrolling and right-clicking are far more cool and useful than the basic left-clicking I’m used to.
The trackpad button was a but mushy out of the box, but after reading a couple threads on the Apple Support Discussion forums I found a solution. Under the battery, on the back of the trackpad is a little metal circle directly beneath the button switch. Bending that circle inward a bit has given me a wonderfully crisp button.
The only real ‘problem’ is the keyboard. The feel of the keyboard is excellent. It’s as crisp as the PowerBook G4’s and the 1400’s. Both of which I prefer to almost every other keyboard in the world. Unlike the iBook’s keyboard the keys on the MacBook do not feel like cheap plastic. I really like the MacBook keyboard, it feels god and looks neat. But this is the first notebook I’ve ever owned where the keyboard doesn’t stretch from one edge to the other. So when I go to hit tab, esc, delete, eject, or ctrl, I miss and hit either the plastic margin of the MacBook or the fn key in the case of ctrl. But I’m pretty sure in a couple weeks I’ll have adjusted to the extra inch of margin.
In short: the MacBooks are excellent machines and anyone using an iBook or 12″ PowerBook shouldn’t think twice about upgrading. I like it.
