My MacBook Pro arrived a few hours ago and I have been bumbling along since. Mac OSX is a strange beast when you have spent 16 years using DOS/Windows systems. Thankfully I have a good friend on IM stepping me through bits of it. So far I have manged to freeze OSX twice (thanks to Front Row) and it has had to restart twice after downloading a bunch of updates. Strangely like Windows that. Haven’t had any virus or spyware installing itself though, refreshing after the terror that is connecting a fresh Windows XP install to the net. No maximised windows is very, very weird.
Mac OSX is super slick though. Expose has that refined edge the Windows Vista clone doesn’t. The way Front Row zooms in and out is something to behold. Super, super smooth on this hardware (2gig RAM, 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo etc. etc.) Love the little remote, hilarious controlling iTunes from across the room.
The whole DMG, installing applications thing was confusing at first but I’ve got the hang of it now. Leave my desktop alone damnit!
And the hardware. Oh man, the hardware. Even the packaging is beautiful. I don’t want to throw away the egg shell styrofoam or tuck the black box away in a cupboard next to my boring, carboard HP laptop box. The magnetic power connector is… you have to try it to believe it. Fiona let out a delighted laugh when she tried it and she isn’t even a nerd like me. Such a beautiful screen too, bright and clear, full of colour (not the glossy option). Keyboard works like a charm, typing away as if I’d been using it for years.
I did have hassles connecting to the office network over ethernet. My Windows HP laptop connects fine to it without any setup but the MacBook Pro refuses even when I enter in details manually. The IT guys say they have to allow it into the network but that seems strange to me when the HP laptop has no hassles. It is a Linux network by the way, not Windows.
Connecting to the net at home over WiFi was a doddle though.
Now onto getting Mac equivalent apps that I need, setting up Firefox with extensions, trying out TextMate and getting Ruby on Rails up and running along with Subversion and all that. Then I’ll give bootcamp and parallels a try as well as that new Windows-window-app thingy.
Should be a blast.
Oh, and Photobooth with the iSight is hilarious.
