Yesterday morning I took delivery of my shiny new MacBook. I opted for the low-end aluminium model, it was all I needed and was still an upgrade from my old laptop. The best thing was though, I got it for a mere €940 including shipping. This costs €1199 directly from Apple, so methinks I got a bargain.

As a Windows user all my life, and dabbling in Linux, I thought I’d get frustrated a lot, mainly because I have keyboard shortcuts hard-coded into my fingers. But surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. Yeah, I often hit Ctrl-T to open a new tab, or Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V to copy paste, but I was surprised at how quickly using Cmd instead became second nature. I knew using a Dock wouldn’t be a problem and neither would the menu bar, as I’ve used both in Linux, same goes for the Close, Minimize and Zoom buttons being on the left.

The Good

• Two finger scroll works brilliantly and is much better than a scroll wheel, or using the side of a track pad.
• The looks of course, both the laptop itself and the OS are beautiful.
• Finder’s column view.
• The fact that iTunes actually WORKS in Mac.
• As I’m typing this I realise I really like this keyboard.
• The menu bar and dock.
• The battery.
• Spotlight.
• Exposé
• Tweetie for Mac
• The way the Adium duck(?) flaps it’s wings more than makes up for the lack of custom emotes on MSN
• These speakers are pretty good and loud.
• CrossOver seems to run games pretty well (although I’ve only tried Counter Strike: Source. Next I shall try Team Fortress 2.

The bad

• Dragging. If you use the button, when you get to the edge it often depresses, if you use tapping, it holds on to the window/icon/whatever for a little bit after. (Is there anyway to make it let go as soon I let go?)
• Tied in with above, when you get to the edge of the trackpad, it just stops and doesn’t continue like pretty much every Windows trackpad does.
• The lack of sending custom emotes for Adium.
• That damn @ button and ” button!
• Why would I ever need to type §?
• I also don’t see myself using ± very much either.
• The eject button doesn’t seem to very responsive. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably a feature so that you don’t accidentally eject it.
• Enter renames instead of opening.

Overall

I love this thing. A lot of things just work, and so fluidly. I do believe I have been converted. I’m gonna try my best to not install Windows, although I think I might need to for college, since we’ll be using Visual Studio to code C#. But if anyone has any suggestions for this, please leave a comment. And to think, I used to always dismiss Mac, and now this looks like it’s gonna be the start of a beautiful relationship.