Mac 1 - a new world
After a long wait, my journey into the world of Apple Macintosh began today when the agonizingly slow courier service delivered my MacBook Pro, which I ordered on eBay over 2 weeks ago, and which was shipped one week ago. But it’s finally mine. I’ll blog some of my experiences exploring this strange new world over the coming weeks, but first a few preliminary thoughts before I shut the lid for tonight and head to bed.Most of this is externals, concerning the computer itself rather than the OS for now.
Firstly, the packaging - like everything else from Apple, it’s sensible, minimalist, and cool. Unlike other computers I’ve bought which come in large brown cardboard boxes, this came in a cool box similiar to the iPod ones, with a handy carry handle.
Easy to open, unpack, and within a minute or so I was up and running.
The computer itself is beautiful to behold. It’s a MacBook Pro 2
.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2Gig of RAM, 160Gig 7200rpm hard drive, and a high res 1920 x 1200 17″ screen. And it looks cool from every angle - from the lit up Apple logo on the back, to the backlit keyboard with great sounding speakers alongside, even to the very thinness of it - the whole thing with the screen closed would only be around 2cm thick. Once its been switched on and booted up (which is nice and fast), the high res screen, which has a matte finish so there’s no glare, is stunning. Everything, even small fonts, is clear and easy to read. Photos and video look awesome. Websites render just so much better - it’s hard to believe just how much nicer the web looks when viewed from a Mac. It’s like transitioning from VHS to DVD.
So my first impressions are very good. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing but I haven’t had any errors, crashes or problems as such. The only difficulties I’ve had have stemmed from my unfamiliarity with the Mac Operating System. I’m still missing the windows taskbar and especially right-click context menus but it’s not taking me too long to discover how to get things done. Give me a week or two and I don’t think I’ll be looking back. One omission that surprised me is that of any sort of intro or tutorial to working with Mac OS. I never payed them much attention but Windows over the years has generally always had these “Getting Started” type tutorials. I’m surprised not to find something similar here. But there’s a few good websites to help make the transition easier.
Anyway time to close the lid and head to bed. I’ll blog more about my new toy soon :)
Categories : Apple, Personal, Technology | 8 Comments
And it’s at this point that I rummage around my hard drive for all my Christmas MP3s. For some people it’s putting up the tree, for others it’s lights on the house or a wreath on the door - for me it’s copying my Christmas songs into iTunes that marks the beginning of the festive season. Copied off CDs or downloaded from the net, I have accumulated a lot of Christmas music over the years - I’m now over 1,500 songs. I’ve got all sorts, from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Elvis (of course), through to Christina Aguleira and even David Hasselhoff! Christmas is the one time of year where kitsch is in, and no style of music is off limits - even Neil Diamond sounds cool when he’s doing a Christmas carol. This year I’ve been into country music all year, and so I’m working on finding a few more country Christmas songs for my collection.
