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My Mac So Far - A Diary

Switch to: MacOS X

Date: November 23, 2008

As a switch to MacOS X also means switching to new hardware, the story goes beyond operating system user experience.

Background

I have been a PC user all my life. I have known Mac users and for as long as I can remember have been taking the p*ss out of them for one reason or another. In fact, I can’t actually think of a day that went by when I had nothing to say that was derogatory to my colleague with the Mac.

Over that past weeks though I have noticed the part of the office I work in has slowly been filling up with the Macs in one way shape or form. Great, more people to take the p*ss out off…

That all changed though 2 weeks ago. I travel a lot. An awful lot, and therefore wanted a travel companion, predominately built around my World Of Warcraft addiction. So I looked at Alienware, I looked at Dell XPS I looked at ASUS etc etc, this list goes on. All nice and cheap in the US which is where I am now. The problem is, Dell or Alienware, Or ASUS don’t seem to want my money, these high end machines have to be pre built, I wanted something now.

Leading up to my trip the guys in the office showed me what they were doing with their Macs. In fact they even installed WOW for me to play. I was sold, entirely at this point because this computer could allow me to play WOW and was available from the Mac store in London right away. I am so glad I made this choice.

First impression

1. I cannot believe how easy it is to stay in contact with my family. Am not saying you cant do any of this on a PC, however, I have a Mac, and the added benefits that bring are immense. Back on track, I installed skype on my sons PC at home and on my Power Book. The money I will save this trip alone in phone calls will be £300. In 4 trips or so and I would have paid for my Mac.
2. Photos. I have Nikon D2X and enjoy taking pictures. How easy with the Mac? A child could do it. Easy = fast = no hassle = more time for me to get on with what I need to get on with.
3. The laptop is so light. I can chuck it in a slip, but it in my rucksack and I don’t notice it. It’s not much more heavy than my camera.
4. Screen resolution. Stunning. WOW looks better than it does on my 22" monitor at home, and that PC is running 2 SLI’d ATI GFX cards. The first comment anyone makes about the Mac is the quality of the screen. Great for editing photos too.
5. Style, I don’t really do style. But the Mac is undoubtedly stylish. Makes those big chunky butt ugly Windows laptops looks crap.
6. Issues? I have had none. Touch wood the Mac has performed non stop. Only occasionally does it break into a sweat whilst playing WOW.
7. The support you get from any Mac store around the world is great. Instant assistance. They even installed the 4GIG of Ram I bought room B&H for me at 05:30 in the morning
8. Mail, what a simple little app. Simple making it in my opinion far superior to MS Entourage/Outlook. Microsoft's offering is far too complicated and that goes against everything the MAC is not. I want simple and easy. I will stick with the MAC mail client
9. Loving the dashboard. Really helps you out.
10. I love the calendar function as well. Again simplicity. I have realised that all signing and all dancing is not necessarily always a good thing.
11. Speakers are awesome for a laptop. Just right for me.
12. Dual booting into Windows, I have a copy of my work laptop running under VMware. Now that’s handy and it means I only need to hump one laptop as I can put a build of my work machine of the Mac. Shsssh, don't tell anyone.

3 Bad things

1. I hate how easily you can scratch the surface of the Mac. I have some protective stuff coming UPS today
2. Ventrilo audio codecs don't seem to work well. All my gaming friends would need to change to the codec I use in order for it to work.
3. The lack of a decent wired gaming mouse with drivers for the Mac

After a month

MacBook Pro owner now for just under a month. Still loving every minute of it. I had bought the aluminium keyboard and it’s a great addition. I think I read a review in MacWorld after I got back to London from my last trip to the states. They liked it, although commented on the fact it took them a long time to get used to it. That certainly was not the case with me. It’s actually a very very good keyboard. Perfect for gamming whilst away from home.

On the subject of keyboards I do find I miss spell a lot of words with the MacBook Pro keyboard. Perhaps it the way I sit at the keyboard on the train, I just find I miss a lot of letters out of words.

The screen continues to amaze me. EVERYONE who comments on the Mac comments about the screen first, then its looks, then generally slags Mac’s off for not being a PC. This baby has not fallen over once. It starts very quickly, it shuts down very quickly, pretty much flawless at the moment. Since I returned to PC gaming after my trip I guess my PC which is of a high spec, SLI, 4GB Ram etc., has fallen over about 10 times, which as a PC user is the norm, I really notice that a lot more since I have had the Mac. This from a devoted PC user of 36 years.

I said pretty much flawless. The more you play with new toys the more you get to know them, and their quirks. The ONLY thing that I am unhappy with right now is brining it out of sleep, which sometimes means you have to close the lid back up because it wont wake up at the first time of trying. This is actually getting a little annoying.

I am still using Mac Mail although I have MS Entourage installed. Simple is good.

I was discussing the Mac with a friend yesterday and I was trying to sum up how I felt about it, and why I rate it over any other laptop. I still can’t, I will manage to put the words together one day. It’s a combination of have everything you need pre-installed, together with simplicity and style, the fact that its stable etc. Like I say, one day I will think of a word or phrase.

So, as I make my way to Milton Keynes on the train, with my mobile internet working and iTunes playing Green Day, I am still a happy chappy.

Some time later…

I have mentioned before that I have mobile broadband installed. I choose Vodafone as they are offering 7MB (eventually in London) connection speeds. It’s definitelly enabled at Heathrow and I get a 3MB connection on the train to and from work. This enables me to play WOW on the train. Fantastic.

I have been installing a few bits and bobs as I come across them. The latest addition was is an app called “The Missing Sync” which enables me to (amongst other things) sync my work Blackberry with iCal. A life saver.

Why is it a life saver? Well, a bit naughty I know, but I have put an image of my work laptop running under VMware on my MAC. Perfect. Only one laptop needed.

I have my Nokia N95 synced up as well. Easy as pie to it, as with everything.

The protective full body kit from Shieldzone has arrived. This is a well worth piece of kit. I will fit that at the weekend as it requires a bit of patience.

I went to the Apple Store in London today, I was looking for another power adaptor so I can leave one at work and one at home. Apparently Apple have not seen them in that store for over a month. Not good. It looks like I will have to wait until next Saturday when I go to Miami on business.

The battery has been fine, no issues, the fans hardly come on. I watched a DVD on the way home today and could not hear anything. The Mac stayed pretty cool as well.

I have been editing loads of photos for myself and friends, made a few comic books, I am still amazed at how many apps you can have open at once, including CS3 with multiple RAW pictures. The Mac remains rock solid.

This morning I got on the train and there was another MacBook Pro user sitting across the way. Opposite him was a Dell user. Not sure if I was imagining it but he seemed to put his PC away fairly rapidly when we got our Mac’s out

I have been thinking more and more about desktops. If you never owned a Mac and then start using one like me, but, still have a gaming PC to go home to at night I would imagine, like me, you will start to get annoyed with the unreliability of Microsoft. That’s the point I am at now. I have made up my mind that after Xmas when it’s bonus time I will buy a fully loaded Mac Pro, and a 30″ Apple monitor. This way I can stick in SLI’d GFX cards, as many HDD’s as I want, and the new processors will be out.

I am fully converted. Its only taken 35 years. But in the 4 weeks I have had this Machine and used (albeit only brushing the surface) I have fallen in love. Not only with the computer, but with the image, the support, the rapport of fellow owners, the accessories etc.

Before a flight to Miami

Still going well, very well in fact. I am off to Miami on Saturday on the hunt for a Lacie drive. I can then backup my machine in readiness for the release of Leopard.

I have installed the Invisible Shield on my MBP I go the full body shield (http://www.invisibleshield.com/laptop/apple/macbook-pro-17-inch.php) costing $54.00. Now this IS money well spent as all the areas that you WILL damage, or discolour are now safe, the mouse pad, the mouse button, the wrist rests, the lid and even the entire underside. The underside bit doubles as an anti skid system too. This baby is now rock solid on the train to work whilst sitting on a table. Its fairly easy to install until you come to the big piece for the lid. It is a pain to fit, but, as long as you keep it moist it will go on.

I have installed Surplus Meter to monitor my mobile broadband bandwidth as I am limited to 3GIG a month. Surplus Meter is great as it allows you to monitor individual network devices, so when I transfer between PC’s or use the Mac at home on my "proper" broadband it does not count the bandwidth.

I have installed Omniweb, it’s a pay for web browser, the thing that attracted me to it most was the ability to have graphical tabs to show you what windows you have open. Still undecided between that and Camino. Firefox is a big no no on a Mac. It’s just not stable enough.

World of Warcraft continues to run like a dream. The more I play it on the MAC the more I want to get rid of my PC

I was introduced to right clicking yesterday by enable the two finger gizmo on the mouse pad. This has given the Mac yet another new lease of life. Its so much easier with the right click function enabled.

The blackberry is still syncing with my Mac, using the Missing Sync. Great utility.

I got remote buddy too. Now that is a gadget. You can remotely open nearly anything on the MAC, making it great for hotels when your just being lazy and don’t want to move from your bed.

"Welcome to Miami"

Its been nearly 2 months now since I purchased the Macbook Pro. The Mac has become more like a friend now than a piece of machinery. It actually become part of my daily life. I use it, without fail, every day.

Train journeys are now more pleasurable as I can either work, or play on the train. WOW using Vodafone mobile Internet is not a problem, I also have all the tools I need to work. MS Office, Adobe CS3 etc.

I continue to sync both my Blackberry and Nokia 95 (soon to be an iPhone) using Sync and the Missing Sync. iCal faultlessly updates and is a great help whilst I am away to view the meetings I have in more detail. I have also added NetNewsWire, an RSS application that has its own web browser built in. This is a fantastic little app and would recommend it to anyone.

Obviously Leopard has been released. I had this on pre-order and installed it with no problems. Key points for me on this are, Stacks, Coverflow (especially like the fact I can use cover flow when browsing my windows PC’s), improved Apple Mail seems a lot faster. The issue I had with the waking up the Mac seems to have disappeared with Leopard. Time Machine, I actually hated this but have grown to love it as I have used it in anger a few times. I hate the load splash screen when you first turn the machine on, you can change this though. Spaces is great, makes life a whole lot easier, I have set up a hot corner for it which makes it even better. I have probably missed a whole lot more…

The iLife ‘08 suite of apps continues to impress. I use iPhoto to death and have just started to use iWeb. I am using iChat a lot more but am limited to only a few Mac friends.

I have had no issues in terms of hardware as of yet. The Mac is running well. It continues to do all that I ask of it.

I have Officially Gone Mac Mad

Do you know when was the last time I used my Gaming PC? Nope? Nor do I. It gets switched on every now and then when I fancy a game of WOW on a big screen, but that’s it. £3000 worth of gaming machine made obsolete by my MacBook Pro. Fantastic.

I speak to my family now. I actually use the Wireless capabilities of the Mac and use it downstairs. My living room has become my new computer room, the MacBook Pro has truly become my ultimate mobile device. I am truly in love with it.

Just recently a UK magazine has asked me to write for them. Shooting Sports. I do all my reviews and articles from downstairs with the family. It’s great.

As I use it more and more there are a few little niggles raising their heads. Firstly, I find the keyboard a pain in the ass sometimes. You really have to beat down on the keys or else you risk missing out letters. Its not all that bad because everything on a Mac has a spell check. It is my most annoying part of the Mac though.

Time Machine had been giving me some issues. It would not back up incrementally, this was due to a user error. I had changed some of the settings on a file and forgot to set the attribs back. After 3 weeks I realized what the problem was and fixed it. And by product of this error though was that I learnt about console, which I never knew existed.

I have just bought Candybar. An amazing bit of software that allows you to change icons and docks with no risk. Superb. Check it out.

I have installed Adium which enables me to have my iChat contacts and MSN contacts all in one app.

Continue to adore this piece of kit. Oh, and I bought an iPhone too

The honeymoon period is now over

The honeymoon period is now over. One thing that remains unlike most marriages after the first few months, we still love each other

More little “features” have been popping their ugly heads up.

1. The most annoying is the keyboard. I write loads, but it seems you have to almost have fingers with the power of a jack hammer to ensure all the letters that you are striking actually appear on the screen. Most annoying. I seem to spend a huge amount of time running a spell checker. I don’t have issues with the external keyboard or my work IBM laptop.

2. Time Machine is a fickle little so and so. I constantly have to check if its running a backup before I turn it off, what would be good is if there was a nice easy graphical display of its next backup, like a digital countdown on the tool bar. There are more issues I am sure that are related to TM. I just cant prove it yet.

3. You can’t safely (IMHO) run an external monitor and then shut the lid using something like insomnia. Have you felt the heat? I ran this way all day not so long ago and you could have cooked eggs on the keyboard. So I now run with the lid up whilst using an external monitor.

Good things

Just last night I began to download the new updates, the Laptop wanted to reboot, then hung, I had to manually reboot it. Not normally an issue, this time though, when I got to the logon screen and entered my password it just took me to the setup screen, as if I had just bought the MAC. It then consistently hung. Although Time Machine is fickle, it restored my system to the last hourly backup in about 40 mins. WOOT!!!! Love it.

So our happy relationship continues, although, since Leopard, we have needed a bit of counselling.

Last 2 Months

The Mac continues to be my computer of choice. I only use my Windows Machine to play games, namely World of Warcraft and EvE Online. I receive all my email on the Mac as well and keep all my reviews and documentation on here too. I do this because of stability and the fact that I have Time Machine backing everything up.

Talking of Time Machine, it seems to have settled down. Only occasionally does it get stuck. Still annoying, but not half as bad as it was.

I mentioned I run EvE online on my Mac. I do, and I do it often. I can sit at work and mine asteroids to my hearts content using my mobile broadband connection. I do worry about heat though, and EvE has more of an effect on the Mac than WOW. Almost immediately after starting Eve the Mac's fans will start. I have a little desk fan I shine over the keyboard area when I play EvE at work as it takes away the hit, which in turn stops the fans, which in turn makes it less noisy.

I am still having issues with the keys. I really don't know if it's the Mac or me or what. I will give you an example:

This sentence was written by me on the way into work. Wht I have done is kept typig to try and give you an idea of what I mean by the keyoard having to be pressed more firmly than any other laptop I have used. I have made sure that I have pressed each key so we can discount that I am spelling the wods wrongly, I guess you will ust have to take my word for it.

The paragraph above gives a true representation of my tying life with the Mac. If there was one annoyance that I could choose to be take away, this would be it.

Something else of note. Within the last 2 months I have purchased Apple's word processing suite, iWork. I still have Microsoft Office installed as we live in a Microsoft dominated world, having said that I can open word documents, excel spreadsheet and PPT's in iWork, I can also export the same types of documents so friends can use them within the MS Office apps.

Given the small issues I have had, I can still say that I am glad that I decided to buy a Mac rather than a windows Laptop. Moreover, I can still say that once my Windows PC gives up the ghost, I will replace that with a Mac Pro.

The Mac experience continues to be a good one for me. The MacBook Pro accompanies me everywhere on my travels. The most apt saying I have heard along the way from another Mac fan was. "Apple make things simple, not simpler"

Some parts have previously been published on: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=173244, 26/09/2007

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Author

Switcher: Lee "Shaggy" Shand
Website: http://shaggyworld.com/
Profession: Global Disaster Recovery Manager For a Top 5 Bank
Location: UK, Kent

Switch

Category: Operating Systems
From: Windows XP
To: MacOS X
Switch Date: September 2007

Usage type: Home
Used for: photography editing, watching movies, listening to the music, playing World of Warcraft, playing EvE Online, writing reviews, email

Computer configuration:
MacBook Pro
17 Inch 2.4Ghz
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1900 x 1200 pixels
4GB Crucial memory
160GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

Previous computer:
Overclockers Athlon Extreme 3.2GHhz Athlon 2 ATI X19000 SLI 4GB Crucial memory 160GB Raid 0 SATA Disk 8 x DVD Drive

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