30 April 2008

"Huzzaah," cried all the Mac fanboys (Billy, Sam, Marcus, etc)!

Well, it happened. Not much to do now but accept it and run with it.

Reasons:
1.) The screen. It's brighter and sharper from more angles than anything else I could find (Thinkpad, you lost yourself a sale because I couldn't find ONE of your notebooks in ANY stores around.)
2.) The price (haHA! not!)
3.) I'm excited to see how much smoother the OS system is. From what I understand, Macs run differently (more efficiently?) than PC (regarding RAM and whatnot) so I wanted to see this.
4.) I realized that there's really not much I (we) do that's NOT related to photography/music/video (other than processing words) so why not get something that's a well known workstation for those items?
4.) I was not at all looking forward to Vista. Period.

There are more (see below), but those are the main ones. In general, it seems like a better personal media workstation than any PC I've seen. I liked that.

Macbook Pro Features & Specs

15-inch widescreen (1440x900)
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB memory (soon to be 4GB thanks to Crucial.com)
200GB hard drive
Double-layer SuperDrive (which is what they call a DVD/CD Burner)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB

So that's it. This is our P(eace)C(orps) workstation. We'll see how it goes. I'm still not even sure I can get used to the "minimize/restore/close" buttons being on the left much less a completely new operating system. I guess I figured, I'd have to learn a lot with Vista so why not do that learning on something that seems fun.


Next Day Update: Well, after a few brief hrs of use, I'm afraid to say, I'm enjoying it a lot. I still don't fully understand the operating system and how the icons and bar at the bottom and top interact. I need to read. However, even on the standard 2GB of RAM it flies. It starts up and/or shuts down in 4sec and installs/updates things super easy and super fast. It came ready to roll. The hardest part was choosing a user name and password :)

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you can't get used to osx, then you can always install vista on it. My boss just got a macbook air and he installed vista on it. Vista feels just as fast as osx on it.

I'm still a little awestruck by the nasty PR that vista has gotten. I installed it as soon as it was available on my 4 year old laptop with 1 gig of ram, and it was able to run just fine and still use the aero interface. I've since gotten a better development workstation, and it flies.

I'm glad you got a new laptop. The mac hardware is top notch! If you have any questions, feel free to call or shoot me an email.

Josh

Josh said...

you know, i just heard so many mixed things about it that i just decided to try something new. obviously, i heard a lot of negative (not just on the internet but from people i know), but also some positive here and there. seems like some people didn't mind it/liked it.

i'm sure i'll install a version of windows on it (i can't burn ALL my PC bridges!)

yeah, WHEN i hit a snag i'll give you a shout. thanks.

Billy H. said...

I knew we would get you to drink the kool aid at some point. j/k...

I'm on a roll, two mac converts in less than a week! Chris is buying an iMac this week too!

I don't mean to dog Windows and Vista like some people. I just know I've had a more enjoyable computing experience since I started using Macs. I very rarely get frustrated with something on my iMac.

In the words of the Grail Knight in Indy and the Last Crusade... "You have choosen...wisely."

Anonymous said...

Huzzaah!

Josh said...

@billy: yeah, but chris already had an iphone. i can't believe he didnt already have one. AND you didnt single-handedly convert me! there were many convert sources. but you helped.

@sam: that's right, sam. let it out.

Billy H. said...

You know what I meant. I know I didn't do it alone. I just meant that I'm helping convince people to switch. Thats clarified now. :)

scott said...

cough*sellout*cough

Josh said...

i'm not sure that's the most accurate cutdown, scort. "fair weather fan" perhaps?

hard to say. i just know that in my search for a new laptop, the macbook was the most appealing option out there. truthfully i'm no happier about this than i was with the iPod. i guess i'm reluctantly becoming a fan.

Josh said...

easy there, billy "mac authority" hammock!

Billy H. said...

I was being nice hence the smiley face :) and I will add an lol on to that.

Josh said...

you can stuff your smiley faces in sack, MacHammock!

Anonymous said...

Some cool features to start with are: expose, spaces, coverflow and hot corners. The mac site has nice quicktime movies showing how they work.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/

You may also want to try out the spotlight and quicklook features.

Anonymous said...

One last thing. You may want to get an external hard drive so you can use "time machine" osx's built in back up. (not that the mac will ever crash and lose data, just in case you ever delete a file that you want)

I think I've been brainwashed by Steve Jobs. I need help.

Anonymous said...

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/

great starter link

Josh said...

you do need help, sam.

but yeah, those are really helpful. i started watching videos on their site yesterday. very cool. it looks like there are so many really intuitive features. i just have to figure out how to enjoy them.

like, i understand how a PC is setup (my computer> c: drive> documents, etc). i still don't really understand what mac calls what and how it's arranged. is "applications" like "all programs" on the start menu? stuff like that.

and i just covered the whole thing with invisible shield (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdePUhubtKw) seems pretty awesome. we'll see.

Josh said...

oh, and i've got 2 ext HDs :)

one 160GB and one 500GB :D

(photography and music are spacious hobbies!)

Jesse E. Hunter said...

I think the bro-in-law only reads blogs when they're Apple-related. What a jerk! :)

Josh, stop bogarting Mack. I want to play on it too...maybe we need his and her laptops.

Oh and Scott-My gosh, the last one who should EVER speak out against following trends. How many The North Face jackets do you own again?

Josh said...

OOHHHHH! nice one, jess! i can't BELIEVE i didn't think of that! ha. oh man. you may apologize when ready, scott.

and yeah, can play with Mackelroy now. i just wanted to get him protected! ...and play around. maybe we could both play on it and learn together! :D

yeah, i should start throwing more apple products in my entries to keep sam around.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record I have read several blog entries from you and your wife but was not inclined to comment until I read something interesting. :)

J/K

I just left a comment because you called out the lurkers by asking us to reply. It really had nothing to do with content.

scott said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
scott said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Josh said...

sam: well i'm glad you came out of the shadows. it's so much more fun to know someone other then me and jess are reading this (i know there are several of you who happily comment, so i dont mean you ;) )

scott: what happen to your comments??