MacBook Pro!

[iceman]

I'm now the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro.

Our work laptops used to be all Dell's, and now they've gone and rolled out MacBook Pro's across the whole organisation.

They come with dual boot, but for now i'll be staying in Windows XP. I'll give the Mac OS side a look-see once I get used to this!

It feels like I'm a newbie again.. I really miss the page up/down keys, home/end keys etc when I'm using it on the train etc. Oh and the mouse pad!?? What's wrong with actually having buttons? Kind of annoying.

At work, I plug in the normal mouse and keyboard so it's much better.

Oh and what's the deal with only 2 USB ports? Very annoying!

Anyway it's much faster than my old Dell so I can't wait to give Photoshop a whirl and see just how much faster. I'm also very pleased that I finally have some excess hard-disk space instead of constantly copying stuff off to the external drive, just so Photoshop has enough disk space for the scratch disk!

The screen resolution takes some getting used to, as well. 1280x800 instead of the old 1024x768. :)

Now I have to spend the next day or three re-installing all the programs and copying back all the files I'd grown accustomed to :)

[gbeal]

While I congratulate you Mike, really the only way with Mac (sorry dpastern) is to jump right in, never look back.
I did, and love them, OK, I don't use them for work, but the only PC I own is solely for imaging, and only because I like Maxim DL etc.
I'm working on becoming completely Mac.
Great system.
Gary

[dpastern]

That's OK Gary - I like Apple products, just not the company. I'm thinking of getting a 13" macbook pro myself, mainly to use the excellent OS X. That said, not all Apple products are great, or innovative. Many people today are simply sheep.

Dave

[gbeal]

Hey, I am not alone, there are about 4 million 2 legged ones, and at last count about 14 million 4 legged ones, I am in good company, LOL.
Gary

[dpastern]

My sheep comment was referring to iPods. Other Apple products are generally better designed than their non Apple counterparts I do admit. As I said, I like the products, but dislike the company.

Dave

[mac]

Hey Mike, I own a 13" Macbook Pro (dual booting OS X and Windows 7) and I can assure you that you'll get used to the trackpad really soon - in fact you may soon wonder how other laptops can possibly operate with a 'regular' trackpad.

Try using the trackpad's 'multitouch' features - two fingers scroll up and down and left and right... three fingers moved left and right go back and forwards in web pages - three fingers up and down does HOME/END (that's why you don't need the buttons)... four fingers switch between apps. And you can 'pinch' to zoom in and out...

Good times, good times.

[slippo74]

Welcome to the Mac users club :) I'm owning mac computers since 1988
For anything related feel free to ask...

[dpastern]

This is the one thing that I'm sort of weary of on the new macbook pros - I traditionally have a very hard time with all sorts of touch screens (my fingers just don't seem to work reliably). I had a play on a Macbook pro in JB Hi fi a few weeks ago and I had a real hard time getting the touch pad to respond. That's me of course being problematic, not the mac. I wonder why I have so much troubles?

Dave

[troypiggo]

Welcome to the dark side, Mike. I've had a 15" MacBook Pro now for a couple of months. Bit of a learning curve for Snow Leopard OS, but very nice. I'm getting there. I'm used to different operating systems as I use Windows, Linux, and now Mac all on a daily basis.

I'm running Windows XP inside a VMWare Fusion virtual machine. Handles it surprisingly well. Nothing graphics intensive like OpenGL games or anything, but all of our structural engineering analysis packages that are Windows only run fine, as does all of the astro software like EQMod, Deep Sky Stacker, Registax and so on. I run Mac native versions of Nebulosity, PHD, AstroPlanner etc where I can.

Very happy and I'm sure you will be.

[Miaplacidus]

Welcome to the other dark side, Mike. I go back to system 6.9, and still think system 7 was one of the best ever. I got my new Macbook Pro only last month and pretty much adore it. I especially like the backlit keys, and the fact that I can just do that two finger spread thing on the trackpad to zoom in and out. Way neat.
Mind you, I don't like the way I can't emulate the numeric keypad by just pressing the function key, the way I used to on my old Macbook. (Anyone know if there is a fix for that?)
Enjoy,
Brian.

[mac]

I'm pretty sure the 'official' line on the numeric keypad issue is to purchase a separate USB keypad. Apple are big on reducing functionality to try to increase simplicity; sometimes they just go too far. For example, on OS X Tiger, they had 'power profiles' - when running on battery, you could select if you wanted maximum battery life, or maximum horsepower - with the release of Leopard and Snow Leopard, that functionality is gone. :screwy: I now have to use a 3rd party app called 'Caffeine' to stop my computer from sleeping when I use Stellarium next to my telescope.

[Benno85]

Congrats Mike, I've had a Macbook Pro for 3 years now and they are superb (yes I am slightly bias as I was raised on Apple computers, thanks to my Dad!!:D)

[starlooker]

I wonder why the company went all Mac.

With the Dells, other than the motherboard, any component can be bought of the shelf at any computer store. This would have made maitenance easy and cost-effective.

With the Macs, it's all propriety hardware. There's only one place to buy components - Apple - and they charge $$$, as befitting a monopoly supplier.

[iceman]

Thanks all. Initially, I wasn't going to give the Mac OSX a try, and was just going to boot in Windows XP, but after the training we received yesterday (including the demo of the OSX features), I have to say it looks brilliant! Some really great features! And so fast!

I'll probably give OSX a try and run Outlook and any other Windows software in VMWare Fusion. I just need to be able to share files between them so will have to setup the shared folders.

Still getting used to this damn trackpad but i'm sure it'll get easier.

[dpastern]

Because it's the "cool" thing to do.

Dave

[Omaroo]

I'll tell you why ;) ... at least in light of my 30 years-worth in IT as IBM mainframe engineer through to running development and engineering departments for some large corporates.

Currently as IT director for a combined advertising creative firm and software development company working within the newspaper and magazine publishing industry, I've installed Macs for the past 9 years we've been running for everything non-server. All desktop machines are either dual-G5 towers or Intel iMacs. Components? What are they? Macs come fully loaded with everything I've ever required already. I don't ever need to add anything, apart from maybe more RAM on the high-end graphics machines. As far as component replacement, I've never had a Mac fail here. Ever. In any way. They've all (29 of them) been utterly reliable for way past (in some cases) their intended life span. I still have some from when we first started that sit there running backend processes without complaint all day, every day. I'm not just lucky either - it's a common experience within my circles.

My servers (HP, IBM and Sun)? They've generally been OK too, but have had Ethernet cards and other small stuff like that fail on occasion. Never on the Macs for some reason.

OS-related problems? Don't go there. OSX - for my users it's run, enjoy and forget. I sit in my office with a PC. I actually envy my users.

They actually are great machines. I'm not a starry-eyed Mac user defending my turf as I've been accused of by some with "VAST" experience here before. I couldn't care less what the machine, OS or company behind it was or were - as long as it best performs the task at hand. It isn't "trendy" or "cool" - it's just good business sense. To balance, my servers run either Linux (RHE) or Solaris, and they do admirable jobs as well. They're no where near considered "desktop" ready yet - not in our application environment.

[dugnsuz]

I use VM Ware fusion to jump between OS's when processing images Images Plus in the PC environment and PS in OSX.
Trying to run things concurrently does slow the processor down considerably though so I usually do my "PC" stuff then quit VM Ware and return to the Mac!
I'm using a 24" 2.8Ghz iMac - loverly!!!!!
Doug:thumbsup:

[kustard]

The following image is a joke, so please take it as such...

http://www.kustard.org/images/silly/appletg.jpg

Whilst I don't own any apple products and don't run any at work (due to Windows based CAD software), they are good machines for what they can do and for their target demographic.

[Omaroo]

"For what they can do"? What does that mean? LOL! It's up to the availability of apps isn't it?

[kustard]

That's part of it yes (for a long time Mac's were light years ahead of Windows for desktop publishing and WYSIWYG applications so many people used them for that). But Another aspect is that due to their often all-in-one type hardware design it is harder to add specific hardware for certain applications.

For example, I work at an electronics firm where we have several robotic production lines that require a computer with a custom controller card. The only computer that can utilise this card is a PC running either Windows or Linux (we run both). Now it has to be a PCI card because the system needs to run in real-time and communications over say USB or RS232 would be just too slow. Several embedded programming development tools we use here also only run on a Windows/Linux based PC as typically they have been the most common tools for that kind of work. Often virtual machines will not emulate hardware correctly or run too slowly for then to be useful. With the advent of USB, a lot of this is changing and many tools I've used now have Mac counterparts.

It's all good, I could care less what O/S I use and I've used a lot but if a system doesn't offer what I need then I have to use what will and for the majority of what I do Windows and Linux does it.

(Doesn't mean I don't occasionally drool over my friends MacBook *grin*)

[Omaroo]

Yep Simon - that's all understood and spot-on. You probably should have clarified that you were referring to a custom, bespoke hardware environment earlier. In this regard the humble X86 architecture is of course more flexible for sure. Horses for courses! :thumbsup: For most users here, your particular scenario would never arise - we just use our machines on our desktops for "typical" application duties. Some specialist apps that we, here in amateur astronomy, might use also fall outside the "typical" desktop box. Again, due to the sheer numbers of Win-based machines out there it doesn't make business sense for many application developers to cater to MacOS as well... so Mac users, on occasion, miss out... well in native mode anyhow. Go virtualisation! :)

[kustard]

Yeah Chris, the problem with forum talk is often the flow of ideas gets constrained by the medium itself :)

The good thing now though with the Macs having part of the core based on *BSD many powerful scientific applications that ran only on *nix machines are now finding their way to Macs. And like you say, virtualisation fills the gaps :)

(Anyway, I think I've pulled this thread off topic enough for now ;) )

Gratz Mike on the new toy :D

[fringe_dweller]

they probably got the 3 year applecare protection plan with them?, wish i hadnt wasted money on the ap plan over the years lol ;)
if it doesnt go in first 3 years, its unlikely to go at all, maybe the power supply will go first after 8 or 9 years continuous use! altho i dont trust their laptops quite the same way as towers ect.


way to go Mike! stink different as they say! :lol:

[Omaroo]

Same experience here - I've given up on AppleCare. Not because it's no good - I've just never required it since.. well.. I can't remember. I could have bought many machines with what I used to spend on it at department level.

[dpastern]

Well, my boss was thinking of a Macbook pro. In the end he's decided against it. His reasons?

1) for the price, he can get a much higher spec dell machine

2) his data, on his hdd is private. Apple won't let him return a unit for repair without the hdd

3) no on site repairs option. Dell offers 24/7 on site repair

His words, not mine. Yes, it's a business laptop, but apple's support simply doesn't serve his needs/requirements.

My experiences with Apple products are mixed - if it works for the first few years, chances are it'll just keep on working. If you're unlucky to get one of the "dud" units, then you're in for trouble. Early 20gb/30gb iPod units, early eMac units (10% d.o.a rate).

Dave

[Miaplacidus]

I assume that the Apple Extended Care warranty merely resets the obsolescence microchip somehow so that the motherboard won't blow up until three years and one day. Always seemed to work that way for me.

"The best operating system is the next operating system." Funnily enough, when Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple the first time he called his new start-up OS "NeXT", which Apple then bought as the foundation for their OS X. Serendipity? (You've got to hand it to that guy. Shame about the pancreatic cancer. We're all waiting, aren't we?, to see if money can actually buy you a cure.)

I was trying to explain to my kids about the old programming punch cards. "Say-what?"

[dpastern]

Well, if I may say, generally speaking, to the average consumer, the APP (it's what Apple coins it internally) is pretty good value. Full hardware warranty for 3 years. Full, unlimited tech support, mon-fri 9am to 9pm, Sat 9am to 6pm (unless support times have changed). I don't know if Apple Australia has outsourced their tier 1/tier 2/tier 3 tech support to overseas or not yet, so it's a good chance that you'll speak to someone within Australia. Let me be clear that I'm not being racist when I make this comment - many foreignors speak perfect English, but their accents are harder to understand, especially over a phone system, and that can become an issue. The core aspect of technical support is effective communication - if you can't understand the customer's technical issue, you can't fix it. Communication is a 2 way process btw.

Dave

[mac]

For certain models of Apple Mac (eg, plastic Macbooks), Applecare is a must. The casing materials are of such poor quality that they crack and fall apart after 6-18 months of use. Thank goodness for the aluminium Macbook Pros... unless you drop it of course - then you'll have a bent computer - it happens!

[purplebottles]

My Dad gifted me a 17" iMac when 800Mhz was top of the range. Seven years later it was still doing Seti 24/7 when the power supply died. Short-long story - Apple couldn't help as they were obselete. I managed to find a second-hand power supply and eventually got a dealer to install it. They forgot to mention the HD was dying and it was dead when I got home 600km away. Months later I was still trying to install a 160Gig (x2 standard) HD when I saw a letter in MacWorld magazine that said you have to hold down 4 (FOUR) keys simultaneously to boot a new HD.
Yes Applecare is good. They replaced a keyboard recently, no fuss, on an MacPro quad core that was on the Apple Australia specials web page and now it's doing Seti 24/7 [btw 40x faster ] with 3 additional 150mm external 240v cooling fans boosting the internal originals. CPU temp [ambient 25C] drops from 46C to 28C and memory 79C to 46C. The power supplies only drop 52 to 46[has own internal fan]. Good idea? Anyone tried water cooling, I've only seen it on the net and not on AU chats.?

[Davros]

Tell me about it, mine has a character mark where i bounced it off the floor and the power connector pushed the side in. I love my mac but i hate the fact that a new power cable cost $110

[AdrianF]

Have a look at www.atomicmpc.com.au (http://www.atomicmpc.com.au) in the overclocking and cooling forum you may need to search but many people have watercooled their PC's and would be only too willing to help out with advice.

Adrian

[DJDD]

my understanding of this is that NeXT bought the failing Apple company but kept the Apple brand-name as it obviously had more appeal.

I am sure it was more complicated than that, though.

[Miaplacidus]

I'm pretty sure the flow of funds was Apple to NeXT. Gil Amelio was CEO; buying NeXT got Jobs onto the board, and then the inevitable staged "coup", with Amelio leaving with bags full of money and Jobs back in the saddle. (Everybody was caught off guard because they expected Apple to buy BeOS, I think.) Amelio was the scapegoat for Apple's woes up until that time, but actually he was largely responsible for repairing the business after the disaster of John Scully, who'd orchestrated the eviction of Jobs in the first place. History might be unkind about his experiments with licencing the OS, or in attempting to migrate to RISC processors, but at least he knew what he was trying to achieve, and in NeXT he must have recognized the bare bones of OSX's potential. He no doubt knew Jobs was good for Apple, even if Jobs is an egomaniac and would probably mastermind his assassination. I think Apple shareholders owe quite a debt to ol' Gil.

[dpastern]

This is reasonably accurate.

Dave