H50.NET

Review: MacBook Pro

2008-12-01T20:48:00.003-05:00

Well, I went out and bought myself a completely unnecessary piece of computer hardware: Apple's new 15" MacBook Pro. This was the thought process that led me to unload $2,000 on a laptop:

I haven't bought myself anything in a while
I've been using the same computer since 2006
I live in a smallish New York apartment, and I have a huge gaming rig taking up valuable real estate
I'm tired of how much Vista cranks my hard drive
This thing is ridiculously beautiful

So I bought it.

First Impressions

The first thing you notice when you get your hands on the MacBook Pro is that it feels like something organic. It's smooth and the fit and finish is incredible. Most pieces of electronics have loose fitting parts that you can manipulate even when they're brand new. This thing feels like it has been through millions of years of evolution before it hit your desktop. It's not really carved out of a single piece of aluminum-- there are a few pieces of aluminum-- but it feels great and I know it will last me a long time.

Nice Details

The hard drive is user-serviceable
The headphone jack has the same functionality as your iPhone headphone jack: it will use the iPhone headset's microphone and button
Software turns screen white when it takes your account's photo
The new multi-touch track pad isn't that big a deal, and it's not a mouse replacement, but it is a nice incremental improvement, and I was using it like a pro after about 20 minutes.
It has two video cards: a low power integrated card and a performance-oriented discrete card. Great idea.

Software / OS

The new MacBooks come with Mac OS X Leopard pre-installed, and when you start it up for the first time, the first thing you'll notice is that nothing happens. It just starts you up at the desktop and no craplets open. No Anti-Virus upsale opens. The desktop isn't littered with ISP offers. Nothing. Happens. This is really refreshing for anyone that's bought a pre-built machine from Dell or HP in the past couple years.

I won't make this a review of Mac OS X vs Vista, but let me tell you that the hard drive doesn't crank nearly as much. The computer sits still when it's not being used.

As you get more into the software, you'll fine my favorite new feature in Leopard: spaces. The idea is that you have multiple desktops to place applications. The new feature here is that you can assign an app to a particular "space" in perpetuity. I arranged my spaces as follows:

Adium IM Client and Firefox
Mail and Skype
iTunes and iPhoto
Terminal, Remote Desktop and System Preferences

I show the finder and any video game on all "spaces". The great thing about this usage paradigm is that you don't have to minimize all the time and applications start to have very defined locations (much like the dock vs the windows task bar: Firefox is always in the same spot regardless of when I started it), and this leads to better muscle-memory for repetitive tasks as the expected location of each application integrates with your subconscious work flow.

Complaints on the software side:

Flash 9 is dog slow. Upgrade to Flash 10 right away
Installing Warcraft 3 is a pain and VERY slow since the installer and the original software was built for PowerPC. It took way to long to get the patched Universal Binary that doesn't need to be translated.
No Google Chrome, but Firefox works well
The dashboard just feels like bloatware to me, and it's yet another thing to configure. I prefer my iGoogle page that is the same at work and at home.
I had to pay $20 for Connect360 to get this thing to stream to my XBox; this is free in Windows (obviously)
It's just difficult to get things like your Company's SSL VPN working in Mac OS X. Much of this software is biased to IE or Windows. I got it to work, but it was a project.
Lack of remote desktop. VNC is slow. There are non-free alternatives.
Keyboard is tough for gaming

Gaming

The only game I've tried on the system is Warcraft 3. As I mention earlier, it was a bit of a pain to install, but once you get it installed, it does run very smoothly and at the native, wide-screen resolution. All is not perfect, though:

Blizzard has done a terrible job adapting the keyboard commands to Macs, and I'm not sure some of the remappings I want to do are even possible without changing keys system-wide, which is possible.
The Mighty Mouse is not a gaming mouse. The little ball in the middle gets moved every time you attempt to right-click, which is about a 85% success rate, by the way.
It was / is not obvious how to minimize a game once it's full-screen. You hit Command-M, but it's not documented at all

That's about it for complaints in Warcraft 3, but I imagine I'd face similar problems with other games. Performance-wise, it's very good. Fram rates start at 120 when configured for the absolute best possible graphics and degrade only into the 70s in a heated battle. I was very impressed.

Hardware Cons

Well, there have to be a few negatives about this luscious hardware, right? Here are a few things I don't like:

It gets hot, especially when gaming
The battery life is OK, but not great. About 3+ hours in low power mode and about 45 minutes if you're playing a processor intensive video game at full speed.
The glossy screen seems a little Best Buy, but I'm getting used to it. At least it's glass, not plastic.
It's a little heavy for travel

Final Thoughts:

This really is a great piece of hardware. If you're a hardcore Windows user, I think you'll be surprised at the usability and stability this thing offers. It's also not your old, slow Mac. This computer is fast. It's a little overpriced, but it's built to a level of precision and detail that I've never really experienced in a piece of consumer electronics.

BUY

OIL

2008-08-15T13:06:00.001-04:00

It's all Bush's fault!

Giambi flips the bird!

2008-07-29T20:51:00.000-04:00

Alert

2008-07-29T17:46:00.000-04:00

Wrinkle

2008-07-28T16:40:00.000-04:00

Wrinkles

2008-07-24T16:37:00.000-04:00

Shirt

2008-07-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

Shirt

2008-07-22T16:58:00.000-04:00

Gravity

2008-07-21T16:36:00.000-04:00

I love booze

2008-07-18T23:40:00.000-04:00

Tshirt

2008-07-18T17:04:00.000-04:00

This is day one in an ongoing effort to use gravity to unwrinkle this
block alert t-shirt. Should take about a year.

These are my new skis

2007-11-24T20:51:00.001-05:00

Did it work?

LAX Players Didn't Rape Stripper

2007-04-11T16:16:00.001-04:00

Now we can get back to the real story:

New IPCC Report

2007-04-11T10:45:00.000-04:00

AP (BRUSSELS) -
The newest IPCC report reflects the scientific consensus that there will be significant global warming over the next four months. According to the IPCC panel, the warming can only be reversed by turning the United States into a socialist police state. The good news is that if we start now, we can completely reverse the warming by October.

Al Gore was available for comment:

This is within our reach. With innovative, centralized thinking, we have the opportunity, and the moral duty, to reduce global warming by October of this year. It just takes sacrifice.

Surrender: LOL

2007-03-28T00:10:00.000-04:00

That's all I have to say.

Happy Days!

2007-03-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

The US is developing a new H-Bomb. This is like Christmas morning. Good morning Iran!

DeathSpa

2007-02-19T21:15:00.002-05:00

LOL

Misery

2007-02-14T14:53:00.000-05:00

Urban winters are not fun.

Jennifer Hudson: Fugly

2007-02-14T13:56:00.000-05:00

J-Hud Strikes a "Pose"

While I was waiting in line for a government sponsored free copy of "An Inconvenient Truth"...

2007-02-14T09:50:00.000-05:00

I realized that global warming sounds like a dream come true.

Bleecker Street this morning

Socialism: Crushing Industry and Spirit Worldwide!

2007-02-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

From an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

The values that might impact dynamism are of special interest here. Relatively few in the Big Three report that they want:
jobs offering opportunities for achievement (42% in France and 54% in Italy, versus an average of 73% in Canada and the U.S.);
chances for initiative in the job (38% in France and 47% in Italy, as against an average of 53% in Canada and the U.S.),
and even interesting work (59% in France and Italy, versus an average of 71.5% in Canada and the U.K).
Relatively few are keen on taking responsibility, or freedom (57% in Germany and 58% in France as against 61% in the U.S. and 65% in Canada)....

How depressing is that?

The Polidore Curve

2007-02-10T12:25:00.000-05:00

Inspired by my co-author, this is the Polidore curve:
Here is Tim's satirical version:

G-7 Officials Recommend Vigilance on Hedge Funds

2007-02-10T12:06:00.000-05:00

Of course they do!

Given the strong growth of the hedge fund industry and the instruments they trade, we [governments] need to be vigilant.

I love how these jet-setting socialists worry more about economic growth than Islamic terrorism. What exactly do they fear from hedge funds? Hedge funds make markets more efficient and rational. In the United States, we don't need market regulations like price caps and trading halts because our sell-side traders are able to detect and profit from irrational market changes. Asian and European markets are far less efficient because of their costs and regulation. But it's the hedge funds that we should fear.

Some other G7 concerns:

Dwindline energy supplies

Not in China where they're building thousands of coal power plants.
Also, get used to dwindling energy supplies: the greens won't let us build nuclear power plants or burn fossil fuels, aka the substances that have saved more lives than any other in human experience.

Foreign exchange fluctuations

These just expose the failure of statist economic policies. Time to have a fixed FX rate and maybe some tariffs or a wall too.

Just another anti-globalism globalist club.

Milton Friedman on Legalizing Drugs

2007-02-09T17:18:00.000-05:00

I've always been an advocate of legalizing drugs, since I think enforcement and black market activities cause more problems than the drugs themselves. Friedman does a better job stating a similar opinion:

Milton Friedman on Limited Government

2007-02-09T17:12:00.000-05:00

The best argument I've ever heard for limited government.