I bought a MacBook last night. I am a laptop person; I fought it when I bought a 20" iMac last year and I always end up carting it around the house. I just hate having to do all my computing at my desk.
As is custom, the first order of business was to christen it. (My iMac is called Moby, my iBook G4 is Whitey, and my non-functioning Titanium PowerBook was Thor. My original Bondi Blue iMac was Secret Agent Cat but I can't recall what I named my first Macintosh—a Performa 575.) For some reason, I named it Scabby and used the icon on the left to represent it. It's kind of a weird choice but that's the way naming goes.
My initial thoughts after a day's use and setting up with the experience of having had two other laptops and a few desktop Macintoshes:
- This thing is small!. It's got a 13.3" screen but it looks like a shadow compared to my 14" iBook G4—like half as thick, maybe 2/3 as heavy.
- It feels just as responsive as the 20" Intel iMac.
- The most memory I've ever had in a computer was 768 MB prior to this laptop's 1 GB but it sure doesn't feel any better or roomier.
- It's so nice starting fresh with a new computer even though it's a hassle reinstalling all the software.
- Apple's Migration Assistant really makes switching to a new computer such a trifle. I've never seen an equivalent in the Windows world. That's a good thing!
- 60 GB in storage is such a bad idea. I've got 15 GB free right now after one day of use. Looking over the hard drive's contents and there's 14 GB in Pictures, 17 GB in Music, and 7.73 GB in Documents. That's right, 65% of my hard drive is taken up by just those three folders!
- The keyboard is horrible. The gaps between the keys are so weird looking and the keys seem smaller to boot. So I'm constantly conscious of being precise when I'm typing. The touch response is pretty decent, though, so I might grow to love this keyboard as I get accustomed to it.
- I finally hit the iTunes authorized computer limit. Apparently, I never deauthorized the Titanium PowerBook and the iBook G4 counts as two computers since it had its motherboard replaced last year. I had to deauthorize all my computers in order to authorize this one. Not a big deal and definitely less of one than I thought it'd be.
But I feel good about my computer situation again. I wanted to sell the iMac to mostly pay for the MacBook but Sandi talked me out of it. Not that that was a hard sell.
[UPDATE (2/23/2007): I can't believe I didn't mention the MagSafe power adapter. That thing is genius!]