Six Months of MacBook and Me
Back in January, I got my MacBook. We’ve lived a happy life together since then, but I was apprehensive before I got it. Would I get on with Mac OS X? Surely no one could live with just one mouse button?
The actual experience has been… great. Sure, there is just the one mouse button, but there is also Exposé, Dashboard, and iLife. Using Mac OS X has been like an epiphany. Microsoft products have been “adequate” for so long. They do the job, but there’s nothing special in the user experience. No joy, no fun. In fact, with things like Word they’ve been positively frustrating. Apple products all seem to be a joy to use. Things like iMovie just work as I expect them to. That’s not to say they are perfect, but they don’t have those moments you get with Microsoft products where you’ve just got everything perfect and then suddenly everything changes for no apparent reason.
Of course, there is baggage attached to owning a MacBook. That is, the MacBook is the “junior” model in the Apple laptop range. Do I think I should have gone for a MacBook Pro? There are a few features that the Pro has that the MacBook doesn’t.
I think the main ones are a proper 3D graphics processor, a metal case and most tempting of all, a backlit keyboard. On the otherside though, the MacBook does have a couple of things in it’s favour over the Pro though. First off, it’s smaller and therefore slightly more portable. The smallest size you can get a Pro in is 15.4″, whereas a MacBook is a lightweight 13.3″. The second thing is price. It’s a lot cheaper than the Pro model. I haven’t really missed the 3D graphics because the only games I’ve played on here are Civ 4 and Chess. I would love to have a backlit keyboard though and that is perhaps the only thing I envy about the MacBook Pro. I wanted to find the extra few hundred pounds just to have one, but in the end I couldn’t justify the extra cost. After all, most of the time I’m listening to music, writing stuff on my blog or in Pages (the word processor in iWork) or doing some web development, all of which the MacBook does perfectly. So yeah, I’m glad I made the switch to a Mac, and I’m very happy with my MacBook.
Regular readers at a certain Herefordshire based bill payments company may wish to note that my comments about Microsoft products aren’t defamatory 
Tags: allpay.net, Apple, MacBook
Thanks for the well written article sharing your MacBook experience. It was very refreshing to read an intelligently written piece that did not contain any Microsoft Bashing. I work in both environments (PC & Mac) and greatly prefer the Mac PowerBook G4 Ti as my main, albeit aging personal laptop.
I have been sitting on the fence regarding what to purchase to replace my PowerBook with, MacBook or MacBook Pro. Your insight has helped me tremendously, and as of this moment I am now leaning towards a MacBook. I enjoyed your contributions here and thank you.
Leonard
California, USA
You’re most welcome Leonard, glad I could help!
Another thing we share in common. Whilst I’m still a junior mac user (9 months with work, maybe 6 weeks with my own black macbook) my experience is roughly comparible to your own. A co-worker has the pro model and i’m actually glad I went for the base model. I for one do not like the metal exterior, and I don’t miss a backlit keyboard because I usually decide when I can’t see the keys, enough is probably enough and I should go to bed!
darwinports for mac os x has saved me so much time. I don’t need to go into the pro’s and con’s with you as I’m sure you know. If I wasn’t such an avid gamer I’d switch to linux on my PC (the OS is one of the main things with Mac… really. Remove the OS and the hardware is pretty much the same). One of those catch22’s – you play games? you need windows. So I didn’t miss the lack of GPU in macbook.
@ Leonard: Get the Macbook. I too uhm-ed and ahh-ed over which to get, settled for a macbook (albeit with a 2Gb RAM upgrade) and I wouldn’t swap it even if someone paid me. It’s great
I’ve had my Macbook now since May 2006 when they were announced (yeah, I clicked the button on the first day). I forget what it was like switching to OS X as I did that in May 2004 with a 12″ Powerbook – but I love the flexibility of the new Intel Macs.
I do like my (1.83GHz, 1GB, White) Macbook a lot. Even after using it every day for 15 months it still feels fresh, the battery still lasts a decent while and it still looks like new. The advantages I see of the Macbook Pro is better keyboard (don’t care so much about backlighting), and a bigger screen – but I’m really not bothered enough to pay that much extra for it. It was an easy decision.
Got bored of OS X at the beginning of the year and ran Ubuntu + Beryl on my Macbook for a few months. It was fun, but the poor power management annoyed me (lack of sleep, poor battery life). Now I’m triple booting OS X (40GB), Win XP (10GB) and Ubuntu(10GB), and boot whatever depending on whatever software I want to use today. I can also get quite a lot of work done using VMWare Fusion too.
I’m guessing I’ll still have this laptop in another couple of years time.
Saw this and thought of you Alex
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/28/bofh_episode_33/