Time for a switch?
Thursday, October 4, 2007Since last Thursday (that’s exactly one week ago) I’m the proud (half) owner of a 13” white MacBook.
I know the above declaration will make some people reading this blog “proud” of me but believe me, I’m really proud of myself too. I’ve been wanting a Mac as a gadget the moment I discovered Macs and even more so since they switched to Intel. And later when I saw all those yummy screencasts of Ruby on Rails and PHP development with TextMate the real craving started… So when my good friend Luci offered his mostly unused Mac as part of a deal I didn’t hesitate for a moment. And there I was a few days later, the proud owner of a barely used laptop.
Apart from being gorgeous, the “wow” provoking design and that screen (even with that one annoying dead / stuck pixel) the first impressions are obviously partly influenced by new OS and generally by the new look and feel. After 10+ years of Windows I need some time to adapt but it looks like it’ll happen much quicker than I actually anticipated. Otherwise I can say it just works. For example I took it out to the terrace at Ioana’s house and in no time I was surfing the Web thanks to a nearby hotspot (thanks Green IT for the free hour, hehe). No configuration whatsoever. The same happened at home (I had to type in one of my router’s WEP keys though) and back at Ioana’s house after I initiated Internet connection sharing on her brother’s PC, plugged the cable in and… bam, I was on the Net again. No configuration or fiddling whatsoever.
The first apps I installed were (obviously) the aforementioned TextMate (developer’s editor), MAMP Pro (MAMP stands for Mac Apache MySQL PHP) and Transmit (FTP client and more). Plus Firefox because I can’t live without Firebug nowadays, Adium because chatting is a lifesaver, Perian because movies are good for my health and Azureus because torrents are like air.
The development is going well but I’m finding the keyboard / trackpad a bit tiring to use on the long run. Read: my fingers hurt after about an hour of typing / tapping around. The mouse problem should be solved today (thanks you know who) but the keyboard problem is a bit more delicate. I’m really curious if I can use a standard USB PC keyboard and if the Windows key is equivalent with the Mac key. Calm down purists, I do intend to get at least a Mac keyboard but for the moment the funds are critically low. But I found half of a solution today, as I noticed many USB keyboards are exposed at DOMO so I guess I could sneak in with the laptop and ask if I can try one. Tomorrow. That is if I don’t get a firm response to this blog entry…
Well, that’s it for the moment, I’ll probably return with more Mac impressions later. Plus the obligatory photo.