I’ve been looking at Apple’s Mac range for sometime. Every opportunity i had to go up to London, i would be sure to stop by the Regent Street Store and play around with the Mac’s on display, trying to spot things i didn’t like, something that would categorically stop me from buying one. In the end i never found that something, and rather than torment myself anymore, i simple stopped going to the store, in the knoweldge that it wasn’t anymore a decision of if i should buy a Mac, but when. In June 2007 after months and months of waiting for leopard’s delayed october release, my wife’s Compaq PC breathed its last breath, and our hand was forced. We chose a Macbook 2.16 White, partly for the price, and partly because my wife doesn’t need the graphics power of a Macbook Pro.
What will follow over the coming months is a detailed review of our experieces as first time Mac user. Each category will recieve updates.
Unpacking the product
Unpacking any new gadget is great, but Apple seems to have refined it. Your not overloaded with manuals and documentation, instead its all packaged lightly and efficiently giving you access to the Macbook first, the power adaptor and finally the remote control, setup disks and two small manuals. You will also notice how light it is (officially 2.31 kg). This makes it comfortable to take with you on long journeys.
Booting up for the first time.
When you boot the Macbook for the first time it walks you through the setup process. This is a straight forward process of connecting to your home network, and creating administrator access. Apple uses different terminology to distinguish wireless encryption from the Netgear modem i have, so it took a little trial and error before I got the wireless connection up and running.
I haven’t had a new pc for 3 years so I’m impressed by the speed of the machine. Average boot times are around 15-20seconds from powering on to a completed login. Also shutting down takes about 10 seconds. Closing the lid powers the computer down, similar to hybernation in a pc. Lift the lid and slide you finger accross the trackpad and it bounces back to life. If you add additional users later on then before you login just like Windows XP you will see a list of users select one, type in the associated password and login. The really cool thing is that if i logoff of as me, without closing applications, windows etc, the next time i log on even after a shutdown the windows will open in exactly the same place i left them. Thats nice.
No right Click!!! (Update - Sep 07 - see Serpent _Guard’s comments - right click does exist in the preferences…. nice one).
I did know about this feature before purchasing the laptop, but it has surprised me how much i missed this when i started using the Mac OS. I still think it would be more efficient to have a right click button on the track pad, but I’ve since been using the Ctrl click and hold click down features which are working just as well. The only time i miss the right click now, is when surfing a web page where i need to save an image. You can drag any image to the desktop, but I’d rather drag it to a folder of choice, and although there are obvious work arounds, I still would prefer to right click over and image and select the destination folder. I’m hoping leopard the next version of the Mac OS will bring some changes in this area. Although i’ve not tried it, i’ve heard that if you plug in a (for example) Logitech mouse the right click works, ill update this once i’ve found out if thats true.
Copy and Paste etc.
No, its not ctrl c or ctrl x, its apple key + c. Just a minor difference, which takes a couple of days before you no longer click ctrl.
Scrolling up and down
Scrolling with a Mac is superior to a PC, in my opinion at least, just place two fingers on the track pad and either with both fingers drag down or up, or with one finger down, use the other to scroll up and down. This is a nice touch, and i use it a lot, since it saves time.
Included Software
iLife
iLife isn’t bad, if a little limited. I’ve only just started to play around with the features, and I’m sure its capable of more, but i get the sense these applications are relatively simple. They are much better than the included software in Windows XP. The iLife suit includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. I guess the iLife suit is the perfect compainion to the average user, although professionals will need to go elsewhere.
iMovie is proving very addictive, as its very easy to make a short movie or add a touch of class to your home movies through the use of transition effects, titles etc. iDVD looks like it could be good but i’ve yet to spend any serious time with it, my first impression is that its makes adding dvd titles and menus childs play. More indepth reviews will come in time.
iTunes
iTunes fades in and out when you open and close the application, which is a great touch, other than that I’ve not seen much of a difference. I’ve tried to link iTunes to my PC hard drive where my music is stored, and although it works some of the time, I’ve been having trouble with the network not auto connecting on start-up. I’ve heard there are some great visualization plugins, which I hope to try in the near future.
Email
Email includes walkthroughs to import existing settings from other applications, including outlook, but I couldn’t get them to work with outlook express. There is no easy way of importing Microsoft outlook folders (DBX files). Although setting up pop accounts is easy, its not much different from Outlook. Automatic spam and junk mail filters are included. The interface is clean and simple to use. Importing data from an existing MS Windows outlook express is painful. Here is what i did .
1) Go to your pc, open outlook express and drag your emails into a folder on your desktop. (if you organise you emails into folders in outlook then create those folders on your desktop or any other location you plan on network sharing with your Mac).
2) once you’ve finished dragging the emails into their respective folders open up your 30 day trial of MS Entourage (Mac version of Outlook). Import the saved messages by dragging the emails from your PC (you must share the drive first) into pre created folders in Entourage.
3) open Mail and import from Entourage. Yeah i know not simple, but it gets the job done.
Address Book
I’ve not found any easy way of import .wab files from Microsoft Outlook Express into Mac Mail. The only way i found, which still doesn’t work great is to export the address book from Express into a CSV file, and then import it into the Mac Address Book, but for me personally it didn’t pickup all the information, so i’m still working on that.
Windows Media Player for Mac
You will have to install this inorder to use a lot of websites, so i’d recomend doing so; http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/mac/mp71/default.aspx
VLC
VLC will play almost anything. It is by far the best media player on the market, and its totally free. Its light, fast, full of options and available for mac here; http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
General
I’ve hooked up my PC to the network, but for some reason, i seem to have to connect through the network setting each time i want to access the drives, which is boring. I’m sure they must be a work around to this, but i haven’t found it yet. Having said that the connection to the wireless network is super fast, once the Mac has booted up i can connect to the internet without having to wait for any wireless authentication to catch up with me.
Looking at my images by browsing folders, doesn’t give you a preview (thumbnail) of the image. The only way of seeing the images you are browsing is by looking at them through iPhoto which isn’t efficient. But Leopard is still to fix this issue with quicklook and coverflow.
The most obvious difference is that when you click on the “x” to close an application, it doesn’t close the application merely the window. To view your open applications you can cycle through them by clicking on ctrl + tab keep. Jump to the application you want to close by pressing tab with the ctrl key pressed down, once your on the application, press the apple key + Q. Alternatively you can do it from the menu at the top, File -> Quit. This takes about two or three days to get used to. Now i don’t bother clicking on the “x”.. actually i don’t know why there is an “x” seems easier to just apple key + Q.
My wife has found the transition hard, she is not techy and although i’ve been impressed with the Macbook, my wife has been less so. She complained about the differences for about 2-3 weeks, but since finishing transfering the bulk of her data from the backup we made before the old compaq died, she’s been rather more silent. The important thing for all those of you planning to switch is how easy and quick it is to import data (emails, address details , documents etc) from the PC. The Macbook will only become useful when you’re fully setup on the email, address book , and your documents, images, and music have been transfered successfully.
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