.:macbook = rockstar technology:.

i love gadgets. i’m certainly not anywhere near as bad as some. i don’t own a smartphone or a blackberry. nor do i go out and purchase all of the latest and greatest stereo equipment or various other electronic wizardry. but i’ll be the first to admit that when i see a smart, sleek, sexy and seemingly useful piece of technology that i can make work for me, i find it hard to stop thinking about.

take for instance my brand new macbook pro. i had the opportunity to put my hands on one that i could not pass up. i was practically chomping at the bit when the idea came up. now, let’s take into consideration that this is a statement spewing forth from the fingers of a guy who wouldn’t have even had a second thought about this a couple years ago. i would have written it off like the most ridiculous idea ever. a lot of my friends come to me and ask me for computer hardware purchasing advice, and depending on what level of user they were, i’d refer them to dell or IBM…or maybe asus or sager. never once did i say, ‘you should consider a mac.’ i know a lot of hardcore hardware guys that are like this…and of course…it has been a point of contention for years and years and years. i’ve been solidly entrenched in the PC camp since i was 6 years old when pops brought home our first XT system with an amber monitor, and to even think of purchasing a product from apple was like a sin.

funny how times change.

after a couple of days of playing around with this thing, i’m having a hard time thinking about working with windows. don’t get me wrong; windows and the whole ‘pc camp’ has many, many merits, and i will always at least have one…but there is more than a touch of genius in the whole mac……………experience. and that’s the only way you can describe it…an experience. allow me to have my rosy shades on here for a little while, because i feel like i’ve found jesus. praise the lord. woohoo!

let’s start with the elementary here…the box…the packaging…the manuals. from the second you pick up the packaging, those marketing dudes at apple make you think you have just purchased one of the coolest, most innovative, sweet products you could ever buy. the box that the macbook pro comes in weighs about 8-10 lbs, is sleek, has a gorgeous color picture of what you’ve just bought on it, and looks like something that you must have. it even has a handy little plastic handle on it so you can carry it around like a briefcase. i challenge you to go purhcase a dell and feel the same. it cannot be done. dells come packed in a giant cardboard box with a ton of packing material and a confusing, mind-boggling array of manuals and software and unnecessary junk. yeah, you can argue that dell is mail order, and of course you’re not going to get the same mac experience. so go buy an HP laptop. or a gateway. it still doesn’t even come close. i would say the closest you’re going to get experience wise would be a sony…but sony laptops suck….and i’m digressing…

now you get this thing home and open it up, and you’re in complete awe at the fact that so much computer can fit in that small of an area. everything is packed into a perfectly shaped little compartment, perfectly matched to it’s size, and perfectly easy to understand what you’re supposed to do with it. there are two small manuals that are the approximate size and shape of a CD case…one about how to get started and one with general warranty info. there are two CDs which are both OSX install discs. there’s a remote, a power supply, a DVI cable and the computer. right off the bat, it’s almost impossible to be intimidated by what is laid out before you. i was sitting there thinking, ‘is this really it?!’

and then, the true glory…the mac…the system. i’m sure many of you have seen macbooks and macbook pros…and i’m telling you…they are really pieces of modern technological art. in my case, the system is all aluminum. there’s a big friendly glowing apple on the lid. there are ports on the left and the right side that are clearly marked as to what you’re supposed to do with them. and system feels…solid…quality…sleek…a complete and perfect reflection of everything you’ve just seen at the store and on the box. there’s a thin button on the top of the screen which you press to pop it up. it gives off a satisfying little click. raising the screen it feels like it’s sturdy, like it’s going to stay exactly where you position it. you know it’s simple…you know it’s really cool…and most importantly, you have a feeling that what you are holding in your hands is extremely, extremely powerful.

the keyboard glows…and that is freakin’ AWESOME. there’s a light sensor that senses when you’re in low light and automatically lights it up. the apple on the outside of the LCD glows. the screen is the best screen on a laptop i’ve ever seen. it’s got a slot-loading DVD player. there’s ONE button on it…the power button. everything else is controlled by keyboard shortcuts (volume, the eject key, etc.) there’s a tiny camera built into the top of the screen. there’s a HUGE sensitive touchpad with one giant button. it’s solid and tactile. everything feels good…just right…snappy and solid…like clockwork…like it all belongs together and built by one entity rather than a few parts from here, a piece from there. it’s quiet and humble but demands your attention because it’s just so damn nice to look at. it lures you into wanting to play with it, to figure out exactly what it can do.

even turning the system on and starting the system setup is a fun, really super-simple process. you’re greeted with the typical ‘apple startup’ sound, and within a few seconds, you’re setting up and registering the system. i would say the entire process take approximately 7 minutes if you’re fast at typing. maybe less.

but here’s the amazing thing. after setting everything up and you’re booted into the system…you’re greeted with the amazing (and very pretty) simplicity of aqua, or the OSX interface. you don’t have a bunch of useless crap on your desktop…like ’sign up for AOHELL’ or ‘join the MSN network’ or ‘dell technical support’ or any number of other completely useless things that you are immediately inclined to get rid of. you’ve got the menu, you’ve got your hard drive and you’ve got the dock at the bottom filled with just the right amount of stuff…and all of it is useful. there’s not one single thing you would think to get rid of. getting onto a wireless network? yep…you just click the little wireless icon, select what you want to connect to, and you’re on. you want to sync your bluetooth-tooth enabled phone? simple. click the bluetooth icon and follow the quick instructions. make system adjustments? click on the little system preferences icon in the dock and customize away. download and install firefox? go to mozilla.org, follow the links, download the program, double click on the .dmg file and follow the little icon prompt which basically tells you that in order to install it, all you have to do is drag the icon into the ‘applications’ folder. that’s it. end of story. done.

you would have to be complete and utter moron not to be able to do something right off the bat.

great…so everything is pretty, simple, fast, and cool looking. but is it really that big of a deal? i mean, come on, windows allows you to customize and customize and customize and has tons of stuff available for it and you can do whatever you want with it. right? OSX might be pretty, but is it a power user’s friend?

newsflash. OSX is based on the most powerful, most customizable operating system on the planet…UNIX. you don’t get more powerful and customizable than that. UNIX makes DOS and windows look like a kid’s toy. i know enough about UNIX to know that i’m not worthy. yet. but i’m on the path for sure.

what does that mean? well, that means all of your tech dork friends who used to tell you, ‘mac OS is great…for kids and girls’ can now kindly STFU. unless they are the hardest of the hardcore microsoft evangelists, you won’t hear them say a word about the raw computing power and endless computing possibilities available with OSX. and the even greater thing is that you can buy a mac, and if you’re still a little uncomfortable (like me) with phasing directly into the world of mac/OSX, you can just go ahead and install windows using a free piece of software called ‘bootcamp’ from apple. that’s possible through apple’s use of intel chips. smart move. now you can choose between OSX and windows whenever you like. all those pieces of software that you got some use out of on the PC you don’t just have to discard because you can still run them if you want. the difference is that now you have an amazing quality piece of equipment to run everything on.

can someone please tell me what’s bad about this? i’m waiting…still waiting…STILL………WAITING…

okay, yes…there is one bad thing. that is the fact that the price tag for a macbook pro can be a turn off, especially when compared to the price of a dell. you can get approximately the same (if not better-specc’d) computer from dell for about $300-$500 cheaper. and you’ve got quite a few commercial software choices. but i’m now a pretty big believer in the idea that more is just that….more. more does not mean quality. apple’s funny little commercials are reflectant of this philosophy. the whole apple experience, their philosphy, is built around the idea that they have their fingers on the pulse of exactly what people want to do immediatley, and they offer you a solution…for a little bit more cash…that empowers you to do just that. and what’s even better is that, being built on a powerful, customizable opensource operating system, you now have almost endless options in finding software that is going to accomplish exactly what you want. a lot of that software is free. and if the software doesn’t exist…well…you have the ability to build it pretty easily once you learn the workings of unix. pretty cool.

i’m so happy that i ‘made the switch’. i was pretty nervous at first; afterall, i have a lot of years experience hanging with the PC crowd. i bought a couple of books anticipating that i’d need to re-learn my entire computing world. as it were, it hasn’t been as dramatic as i thought. on the contrary, i’m just that much more excited. no, i’m not flying around the system using all of the keyboard shortcuts, and i don’t know all of the little nuances to make me that much more productive. but it doesn’t take a genius to start picking it up.

my apple experience has thusfar exceeded every expectation i had. i knew i was getting something cool…but i didn’t think it’d be this cool and easy and fun and totally enjoyable. i’m really excited to be a part of this computing revolution. i only wish i could’ve been smart enough to do it sooner…

p.s. haha! i just plugged in my USB mouse, and there was no ‘detecting USB receiver’…’detecting human interface device’…blah blah blah. no annoying pop-ups or hard drive cranking…it just works. oh my god…what have i been missing all these years?!?!!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 11:32 pm and is filed under General, Life, Cool thing of the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.