Hands-on with the new Apple laptops
I got to spend a few minutes with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro in the Oak Brook Apple Store on Saturday. Visually, the new laptops are stunning. When they are closed, they look sleek, yet rugged. When they are open, the screen is brilliant — crisp, with fantastic colors. The glass does have glare, but I was unable to gauge how bad it would be in practice. (In truth, I do very little work on my laptop outside of controlled — or controllable — environments, so the whole glare issue isn’t high on my list of concerns.)
My wife doesn’t like the black keyboard, but I pointed out that it matches the black border around the screen. I only performed a little typing on the keyboard, so I can’t report how well it would feel to use for extended coding or writing sessions.
The “trackpad-as-button” was far more intuitive to me than I expected. My reflex is still to press at the bottom of the trackpad where the button is located on my MBP. All of my existing mousing and clicking gestures worked flawlessly, so the migration would seem to be painless for existing Apple laptop users. I then played with clicking and click-dragging the new way, by just pressing my finger down in-place to click. This worked exactly as advertised and feels pretty natural. I believe that I would find it very intuitive if I were using an Apple laptop for the first time and did not have preexisting muscle memory for these operations. The new gestures enabled by the design feel far more ergonomic and comfortable, so I believe I will invest the time to retrain myself when I eventually get one of these laptops.
No firewire port is a dealbreaker for me. I use the Target disk feature exclusively since I have a network admin. I will not spend another $700 for a Macbook pro plus I also have too much vested on Firewire devices.
Roy
October 19, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Seems like a bit of an oversight without a FireWire port for power users. Having said that, I just placed an order for a 2.8GHz MacBook Pro. It has FireWire and more. :)
Partners in Grime
October 19, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I am disappointed by Apple’s stance that Firewire is no longer a consumer level technology. Still, it’s hard to argue with their thinking. I find it hard to imagine that most of the people who purchase a MacBook know anything about Firewire, have ever heard of (or will ever need) target disk mode, or are planning to shoot video on a camcorder that doesn’t provide USB.
People who know and care about Firewire and target disk mode are power users, or they are professionals or organizations that rely on their equipment to generate revenue and consequently view the expense of technology as an investment — either as the cost of doing business or as a potential competitive advantage.
Roy, I’m not sure that I follow how you can have “too much” vested in Firewire and yet not be willing to purchase a MBP. What is your alternative? Is your profession one that would allow to you adopt a PC laptop?
dlkinney
October 19, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Why can’t Apple update Leopard so that Target Disk mode works via the network cable or USB port?
All those MacBooks that will never go corporate because you can’t simply build a test MacBook with preconfiged O.S. & apps for users to try and approve then simply image it for mass roll outs and repairs. . .
Very stupid move. . . very.
Peter
November 5, 2008 at 10:05 am