Re: [MLUG] macbook observations

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 1/5/07, Mark Rages <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> I've had this Macbook for a week now.  Here are my impressions:
>
> The black case is a fingerprint magnet.  I have never seen it clean of
> fingerprints.  This is because it was tightly packed in a Tyvek
> sleeve, and I had to grab it with my hand to remove it.  Instant
> handprint.  Apple should include a pair of latex gloves in the box.
>
> The matte finish on the case is not terribly durable.  Underneath,
> large scratches have already formed from small bits of swarf on my
> desk.

Yeah, I was wondering about that. The first generation white iBooks
had a pretty indestructible and finger-print-resistant (or at least
inivisible) surface. I don't know why they got rid of that.

> The PCjr keyboard is just OK.  It doesn't feel mushy, which is good,

I sort of know what you mean, but I actually thought the keyboard was
pretty decent, although I haven't typed on one for an extended period.

>  but my typo rate has doubled.

I'm willing to bet that will pass. When I first landed at the NIH, the
keyboard they gave me sucked (in my opinion), but now I can't honestly
say it's any worse than anything else.

> The mousepad button is a little firm.  My right wrist hurts when I click.

I'm not a fan of any mousepads other than the IBM trackpad device.


> The built-in camera is brilliant.  If I want to take a picture of
> something on my desk, I can do it without hunting down my digital
> camera and its attendant batteries and memory and cables.

Yeah, the camera is cool. Some Sony Vaio models have had this for some
time. I predict it will be universal inside two years.

> fink is annoying and cowardly.  It wants to compile from source, which
> seems pointless for a closed platform like the Mac.

You can easily tell it to use binaries using fink commander. That
said, there are now four different processor types you might want to
optimize for at this moment (G3, G4, G5, and the current Intel). I
don't think it's a useful default, but there you go.

>  It defaults to an
> interactive mode, where it will compile for fifteen minutes, then ask
> me to choose between several nearly-identical choices, then continue
> on compiling.  Worse, the defaults are not sensibly chosen, so I can't
> just run in non-interactive mode.  I miss Yum.

Fink Commander.

> Overall, the desktop is easier to work with than Windows, but not as
> productive as FC6 (although prettier).  This may change as I learn
> things about the system.   I'll give it another month to convince me
> to keep OS X.

Highlights of OS X include Preview (my favorite PDF display utility,
bar none), Expose, Spotlight, dead-easy wireless networking, seemless
PDF generation, iPhoto, overall prettiness, and a file selector box
that usually knows where I want to read from or save to. Plus, of
course, the Unix goodness you can also get with a Linux or BSD box.
I've sort of made my peace with XP at work, but I still get really
annoyed at some of its dorkiness compared to Mac OSX. I haven't used
FC6 enough to say anything much about it.

jking

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