I sold my MacBook Pro
Goodbye Apple, we had a terrible relationship from the start, so I won't be sad to see you go. Maybe I'll try again a year from now.
Making the switch to Apple
I finally sold out and bought a MacBook Pro the other day to see what all the hype was about. I am coming from three years of exclusively using IBM ThinkPads (well, Lenovo now). I haven't used a tower computer since 10th grade so I think it's safe to say that I'm going to be using laptops/tablets for the foreseeable future. Coming from a ThinkPad is hard -- my ThinkPad crashed only once, when I accidentally deleted a hidden 13KB file in the root C directory that deemed the machine useless. I took it to the Geek Squad and they were able to fix it, which is cool cause those guys are completely useless. I've been using the MB Pro for the last two days, so here are my initial thoughts on it.
This review is really critical because I'm going through withdrawls from my ThinkPad.
The first thing I will bring up is the fact that this thing gets so hot I could make breakfast on top of it if I flipped it over. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable, I can't believe the FCC (or whatever body governs products here in the US) let Apple release a computer that could get to the temperatures that mine has already gotten to in the last few days. It has gotten so hot that I can't even type on the keyboard, which ruins my entire experience with the machine. I've talked to a few friends and they tell me to put it on a desk, so I'm trying that out now (was on my lap on top of the Lapinator before). My three year old ThinkPad still has a longer battery life and has never gotten half as hot. I also think it's weird that this flaw didn't get much bashing in the media, if a Windows laptop had the problem it would be all over the place. SO besides that rant, here is what I think about the rest of it. Probably the worst part, since I am already a pretty sweaty person, IT MAKES MY PALMS SWEAT. Up there on the annoying scale with babies crying on airplanes right before they land.
The computer is extremely fast, has slowed down in Photoshop editing some photos (I shoot in RAW). I have never cared much about speed because I don't edit movies/audio, and I don't mind waiting a few seconds for PS to render things. The hard drive is 250GB so I'll probably have to get an external drive pretty soon - when are they going to have TB drives in laptops? Better be soon.
The mousepad on the MB Pro is a piece of CRAP, I'll take the ThinkPad's one any day. And it doesn't have the little track ball that the ThinkPad had, I'm already missing that a ton. Also, the Apple mouses are the worst designed products I've EVER used. Sure they look nice, but coming from a Logitech mouse that is made for *human hands*, this thing is like using a horse vs a Lamborghini.
Ok. Take a deep breath. My positive review begins here.
The software. Easiest installations I've ever run through (literally, I ran through them). It takes a good 15 seconds to install anything (unless you're installing Creative Suite). I love the dock at the bottom because I really only use 3-4 programs heavily, so I can bring those up any time. I am in love with WriteRoom, this software that lets you turn the screen black and gives you the entire screen to write. Really liberating.
AThe software runs so smoothly, it's kind of weird. In Windows you're used to things crashing every few hours, you kind of expect it. I become addicted to pressing CTRL+S (save shortcut) on everything I worked on in fear of a APPLICATION NOT RESPONDING error. Still haven't hit that on this machine, and I've had a lot of apps open at once. Also really liberating.
Everything looks so much prettier. Aesthetically this whole experience is beautiful, and I'm sure that's what Jobs set out to do with OSX. Job well done.
Overall this thing is awesome, very glad that I got it. This review does a lot more bashing than it should, but I promise you I really like this thing. But for the record: I'm not buying into the Apple hype at ALL. It's just a computer at the end of the day, and someone is going to come along pretty soon and out-innovate Apple's OS and all the fanboys will jump on that bus. Congratulations.
Conclusion: I can finally say I'm a Mac user, but will probably never say I'm a Fanboy.
P.S.: I still love you ThinkPad. No really, I'm still going to use you when I get tired of my fingers getting singed.
UPDATE: Thanks to Dustin Curtis, I was able to find smcFanControl 2.1.2 which allows me to set the minimum speed of the fans. Already works, so no problems with the heat anymore, yay!
Smart people can be so irrational sometimes…
I like reading Dave Winer's blog, but today he announced that he bought 300 shares of Apple (AAPL) stock (approx. $50k). I rarely ever click through to the sites from Google Reader, but this was the only one I clicked through today to see if I could comment on it. Let me quote what he says about the stock:
I decided, after giving it much thought, to buy 300 shares of Apple. I think it's a good long-term investment.
The only thing I had to look at was their P/E of 47.42. Ok you could go over hundreds of future earning potential scenarios for Apple, but it is SO ridiculous to justify a PE of 47.42 for a company that is already HUGE.
But then again, maybe everybody sees something that I don't? I'm just not buying into all this BS hype; MS is trading at a steady P/E of around 21, seems like a much better buy than Apple. Apple is a great company, they make awesome products, but the irrationality of the market seems so absurd to me.
Google's P/E of 52 doesn't look as bad to me, because I think Google is about to become the biggest telecom and ISP the world has ever seen, so they still a massive market to capture.
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Ahh! All this stock market BS is making my brain hurt, people are just a bit crazy sometimes when it comes to the whole castle-in-the-air hype. Bleh.
Oh by the way... having a great time in SF, moved into my apartment and living on my own. More on that at a later time, I'm just mad at the market right now.
Help me get an iMac!
I'm saving all my money up right now to move to San Francisco, so I'm sort of low on the expendable cash side of things... So, I've decided to start a campaign to raise money for an iMac through this new site called PeerDreams, a website by my friends over at MonVia.
I will write thank you notes to every single one of you that donates... Thanks!
I helped build the Flash application that you see on the site, so always a good feeling when something like that goes live :-).
Also... that post I promised two weeks ago regarding what I am doing for this year is still coming. I have to finish up the legal work before I say anything.
iTunes 7.0 is beautiful
iTunes 7.0 is turning the knife sideways in Windows Media Players heart with this one... This version of iTunes makes me want to go out and buy a shiny new iMac... which I might be doing sometime this week. I'll keep you posted.
Just like Live.com, Microsoft is way too late on the Zune
I've already predicted that the Zune is going to be a terrible failure for Microsoft. I have been reading a lot of news about it, and I came across this article at Forbes. So, the features that the Zune will have on the iPod is wireless song sharing and a subscription based music download service (instead of the pay per song model by Apple).
There have been quite a few companies that have tried to go with the subscription model; Napster being one of the most noteable. According to this article, "Apple's iTunes has maintained more than 70 percent of the PC-based digital music download market throughout 2005." As far as MP3 players, the iPod has an 83% market share.
This is starting to sound similar to something else... Um... Oh yeah! Microsoft Live vs Google. By the time MS realized that you could actually make a lot of money in the internet search business, it was way too late for them.
And the same is true with the Zune. When it comes out, if anyone at my school or church buys it, I'm going to personally make a point to clown them. No, the Zune is NOT cool. It's NOT hip. It's NOT sexy. It's not an iPod. People walking around with the Zune will feel inferior to iPod carriers. That's my prediction.
:)
Eric Schmidt… Google + Apple soon ?
Eric Schmidt join's Apple's iPod board of directors. Not only does this bring ties between Google and Apple much closer, but it's also a great move benefitting Apple customers. Right now, there are quite a few Google desktop applications that are made solely for Windows and Linux (Google Talk being the big one). With Google's CEO inside at Apple now, there will be even more thought given to developing apps for OSX.
Yet another genius move by Google.