Macbook, final conclusions

I was using macbook for 3 weeks intensely and I came to some final conclusions after the first impressions subsided.


Hardware

As I said many times, display is not that great but it is acceptable for editing photographs on the go which for me is the most important thing. It would be great if the screen could be tilted more to the back though.

Keyboard is good and comfortable, but lacks useful keys like page down/up, home/end, delete etc. I'm still not comfortable with using fn modifier key and I still can't understand why there is a command key on the right side of space bar.

Laptop itself proved to be light enough so you can carry it around effortlessly which is important and that is even more pronounced with the long lasting battery which really is a highlight of this laptop. When asked how much the battery lasts, and to my answer it is almost 5 hours with semi-light usage people generally look astonished. «But, but, my laptop lasts only for a hour and a half when I write mails».

Touchpad is good enough, but still have occasional problem with sudden activation when typing.


Software

Lets talk about Leopard. I'm still not used to «enter renames the file» , «command-d to hide all windows, click on the desktop, and finally command-n for new finder window». Everyone boasts how os x is easy and fast to use but I just find it completely opposite. There are still problems with getting some windows to be displayed. For example, you command-q a program who has unsaved data, switch to another virtual desktop and when you return to the first program, you'll have a hard time finding that message box which asks you if you want to save the document or not. Everything will be disabled (because there is an active message box but not displayed) and you have to use expose and other techniques to get the message box in front of other windows. That never happens in windows. I could understand that the message box could go to the background but why would the main window still be disabled?

No window maximization button still bothers me to no end. Why does apple hate maximized windows so much? I can understand that maximizing a firefox window on a 32'' screen doesn't make much sense, but for the love of god, it does make much more sense when you have a 13'' screen. No, I don't want to look at my pretty background picture which takes 1/3 of the screen while firefox window is open. I want it all used for browsing. My iphone has bigger screen when surfing than firefox default window size (and that's not firefox's fault). They could make that maximize button to truly maximize the window by default and add command-maximize button for "apple" functionality.

Still that command-q to quit the program is bothering me to no end. That red X button in the top left corner of the windows should close the window, but it's the last instance/window of the program, it should quit the program at the same time. Using mouse to do close programs and do other window management is really unwieldy. For example, if you want to close the window in windows, you can just flick the mouse in the corner of the screen and just click (in top right corner) or double click (in top left corner). Or you can alt-f4 or in most of the cases just ctrl-q. Then, I'm still bothered because a lot of the key shortcuts can't be reconfigured. I can't reassign command-tab to ctrl-tab and vice versa. Function keys are pathetic to use (they are used for copy/paste etc.) and nope, I can't reassign them either. There are just tons of things which are carved in stone and can't be modified which is just a shame because everyone is boasting how advanced and user-friendly mac os x is.

Finder window is rubbish. Just lacks basic functionality and some of it looks like it was hastily hacked together (breadcrumb "navigation", or a weak attempt at it). No buttons to go up a directory, back/forward buttons are sometimes are sometimes disabled. To little information in general about directories, files etc. Why there isn't a quick info when mouse overing a file? That is just bad design. There is just no proper tree view of folders. Hello?! What is this, DOS? Even windows 3.1 had it.

Dock still sucks and it is almost useless because you can launch every program using keyboard/spotlight and it just to large screen-wise. It is just a windows start menu positioned horizontally instead of vertically. But this one takes more screen space.

Spotlight is ok and well integrated. But it still has problems. For example, as you can see on the next image, I have Opera browser installed somewhere on the disk. As they say for os x, you can just drag the application straight to the trash to uninstall it. So I tried to find Opera using spotlight, but judging from the search results opera isn't in the index (or for that matter installed). That problem could be easily rectified if you could be allowed to manually add additional folders to index. But you can't. You can only remove some folders, but you cannot add them. Which leads one to conclusion that spotlight indexes all the folders on the disk. Which just isn't the case. All of spotlight’s functionality a windows user can have is with windows desktop search or some other indexed search. I do admit that wds is not that tightly integrated in the os, but it has same functionality and it is much more configurable.

Spotlight can't find installed opera.

I almost forgot the the dock which as I said earlier is a crap. And I can only affirm that. I still haven't found some decent replacement for it. Disk Copy is clone of a norton commander -> windows commander -> total commander but has almost all keyboard shortcuts wrong and lacks many shortcuts anyway.

There just isn't a photo quick view program as fast stone viewer or irfanview (and both are excellent and free) on windows. You can use that preview or quick view which are just a load of crap. Even an awful windows picture and fax viewer is better. And this is saying much.

Office:mac 2008 is generally ok, but has some seriously unpolished edges. For example, you can't remove elements gallery bar (or whatever it is called) from the screen which just eats your already cramped screen space. Toolbox is just awful to use as a current (windows) office user. It is just to bloated, has tools on wrong places etc. As I started to write this document in word, I could choose the document theme, but now as this document is complete, I cannot find that tool anymore even it is set to appear there. Word lacks that quick styles or whatever they are called which are easy to use and can get your document to look attractive. Excel is ok, but those hardcoded keybinding really kill it. Ctrl-u for editing a cell. What the fuck is this? emacs?

Gallery toolbar just gets in the way. No way to remove it.

General conclusion

If you are long time windows user, I just cannot recommend a mac. It is just a pain to readjust to all the keyboard shortcuts and it is difficult to use both systems at the same time. Mac OS X doesn't get in the way most of the time which is a good thing. But still, OS itself doesn't bring food to the table. Those are the tools you are using. Also known as program or applications. Windows user has much more applications at his disposal and many of the most powerful applications are made for windows too. For example Photoshop, Office, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, Firefox etc. I'm not talking here about programs which only 0.1% of computer users use. I'm talking about tools which 90% of people use. I do recognise that windows xp is designed by a committee and has many flaws. For whatever its flaws I'm just more comfortable with windows. There is a less number of general key shortcuts but they are more powerful. And keyboards don't lack extremely useful keys. True, there are much more viruses, spyware, crapware on windows, but unless you are just completely naïve retard who clicks on every porn link and downloads trojans, you won't have much sympathy from me.

Completely another thing is hardware. As they advertise, you can run windows xp on a mac but I still have to try it though. I have tons of photos on this laptop which aren’t copied to another disk yet. So I don’t want to experiment just yet. But I will though. Macbook itself is attractive because of its lightness, and small footprint so some people might want to buy apple hardware and run windows on it. But I’m not really sure about that anymore though. You can get comparative Dell XPS for same money as a macbook and that laptop looks at least as attractive and it is even more lighter. As a macbook pro replacement you have plenty to choose from though. Lenovo Thinkpad T61p series is probably even better than macbook pros because you can get higher resolution screens – 1920*1200 (at 15’’ models) and they are build more robust and I’m sure can take much more rough handling.

But contrary to many people reading this would believe that I hate my macbook, they just are so wrong. I do love working on it and most especially, I like it because it is has a small footprint. I just don’t like those os x problems which just slow me down and make doing stuff at macbook just more difficult. Ah, did I mentioned that this laptop is the only one which could find and connect to a free wi-fi internet connection in the office of 10 laptops? 2 of those are latest macbook pros and other were random windows laptops. Sometimes plastic cases do have advantages it seems.

Macbook, first few days.

This is a separate update to the post below. After spending few days getting to know the laptop, I have few more insights to share with you my dear reader.

I'm learning more about OS X as we speak but let me tell you that I had smooth sailing all this time.

I'll try to sum up what I have done/learned already. So in no particular order:



Finder as I hinted in my previous post is not that good. It is just unwieldy, clunky, almost like trying to tune a watch with a lawn mower. I can't drag & drop Applications to the dock, create shortcut to it. I did found out some roundabout way to do it but I'm amazed how some simple, and obvious operation won't work.



There are other problems as well. There is no easy way to launch finder window by keyboard. This seems odd because there are around 987 different keyboard shortcuts concerning finder/dock/etc but no keyboard shortcut to run finder. I actually do find it convenient to just press win-e and windows explorer shows up. So far I have managed to do launch finder by using two keyboard shortcuts (all of those are custom) and a click: command (in my case control)-D, then click on the desktop (to show finder menu) and then command-E. First command shows the desktop, the other one launches the new finder window. It is a bit inconvenient but I'm searching for a better solution. I could write a book about finder but let me just add some other annoyances. Keyboard navigation in finder is a like walking with one crutch but missing both legs. Opening of the folders and navigation is completely unintuitive, and I have no idea why would anyone think that enter/return key would be best suited for renaming files. I mean, there are like 3 ways to rename a file and there is only one way to launch it (command-down). I'm so used to launching files with enter (when browsing files with keyboard) that I searched the net and found a little program at returnopen.com which assigns enter for launching.

Display as I said in my previous post is not great. And I can only confirm it here. The vertical viewing angle is just horrible, not to mention inverse hinge which limits the movement of display, and have a nasty habit of trying to squeeze any cable you have behind your display. Font smoothing is not as bad as I may suggested at first and generally looks ok. But on some web pages text looks awful. I'll try other settings and report here but I seem to have little luck because I have trouble telling the difference.

Speaking of hardware, I did say that laptop is quiet, and I can only reaffirm it here. It really is extremely quiet, HDD is barely audible if you lean your head against the keyboard and cpu fan can't be heard when normally using the laptop. It can be heard when you play a game (wow for example), but it is anything but loud and comes silent very soon after you close the game. I have never heard it ramp up the speed while doing normal applications (photoshop, web, etc) which is excellent.

One (or is it like 10th?) more thing that bothers me about hardware is no hardware shock protection. Every manufacturer now includes disks on their laptops with sudden acceleration detection to park heads and prevent them from hitting the platters. This would be minor thing if there is some quick standby option. But frankly there isn't. When you close the lid or select stand by from the Apple menu, you have to wait at least 15 seconds (I need to time it though, but seems like ages) for the LED in the corner to start flashing (and the laptop is ready to be moved). I have no windows laptop to compare it to, but it seems that time can be shorter. Also lacking is hibernation as normal standby does waste power, and you can hear components whirring, and buzzing when you crane your neck to the keyboard.

Touchpad is a bit better as I firstly thought, probably as I get used to it though. But there is problem nonetheless. The touchpad is actually rather large and when you are typing my thumbs are touching the touchpad in the upper corners. This I'm afraid cannot be avoided because keyboard is leveled with touch pad. This contact is bad because my cursor then has a habit of running around the screen, and sometimes activating the dock. The option for detection of accidental mouse input is turned off, but I do think it needs a bit more tweaking.


Ctrl-w Ctrl-q shortcuts are somewhat confusing. Why is this that I can close every window in the program with ctrl-w, but I need ctrl-q to actually shut down the application itself? I can understand the inclusion of ctrl-q if say you have multiple open pictures in photoshop and you want to exit the program at once, but what is wrong with closing the program with ctrl-w if I'm closing the last window in the application?. Another "excellent" thing is that you can't close finder with ctrl-q. So you definitely have to use ctrl-w. All in all, you have to pay attention what program are you using, how many windows does it have open to decide to use ctrl-q or ctrl-w. This is just time wasting bullshit.

There is more bullshit when handling applications. Lets say you have firefox window minimized and then you switch focus to ms word by command-tab.Then after you are finished with word, you command-tab to firefox. But firefox won't maximize/restore automatically. You have to do it manually. This was even more confusing at first with that "red x on the window corner doesn't actually close the application" (or CRAP for short) policy. I can already see my old man freaking out when he sees it.

And there is this thing when ctrl-tabing there are occasions when you switch to your application but the main window doesn't have focus. I need to reproduce this problem more and see whats the problem though.

Sharing music with itunes is good, but somewhat disappointing because you can only listen to that shared music, nothing else really. Which is a shame. Even though you own the music it still isn't yours. And too bad I can't remotely sync my ipod.

Keyboard has music control shortcuts but they don't work always unfortunately. Volume shortcuts do work ok but it would be much better to have a different icon when the volume is muted or completely down. I'll do this more graphically if I have more time.

Speaking of keyboard, I'm completely dumbfounded why there are no alt key shortcuts. Something like alt-f to open file menu etc. Or there aren't any underlined menu choices. Is that so fucking hard to do?




I was amazed that apache web server is included by default which is great news and it is activated by literally 3 clicks. PHP is included too, but you have to edit the .conf file by removing a comment from one line. If you don't know how to do it by following instructions on the web, you don't even know what programming is. So don't bother to criticize this.

Two days ago I was amazed by iWeb application. I thought it was just a crap web editor, but even though it is a crap web editor it is still amazing. Why for the name of baby jesus is that? It has great templates for your web site. It is extremely easy to just fill out the template pages and voila, you have professional looking website. There aren't like 10K templates though so I can imagine your site will look like other thousand's sites, but I still have to see a site made in iweb. And yes I have surfed a long time. So this is not really a problem. I think one can go even further and after creating your site with some iweb template, to manually edit/photoshop images associated with the pages so they can look almost completely different than the template. So yes, next time when somebody asks me to make a website about X, I'll just take a template, enter the text, remove or add an element here and there and presto, in 1h time I'll have a great looking web site which would take me like 2 weeks to do in dreamweaver. (and leaning much on csszengarden.com for inspriation). It is just a bit too bad that there aren't like 100 more templates;) There are sites who create templates just for iweb but they are not free unfortunately. Actually they are quite expensive and crappy looking.

I forgot to mention in my first post about this macbook that there is no mini-dvi to dvi (or at least vga) adapter included in the box. This makes me a bit sad because I'll have to order at least dvi adapter because I have external monitors for macbook waiting to be used. I'm not sure I could use (mini-dvi -> dvi) -> (dvi->vga) adapter but if it works I'll make sure to write about it (update: doesn't work).


Images of the laptop are arriving sooner rather than later. (and I have to test out lightroom workflow. God I hate those buzzwords.

Switch to the mac. First 24 hours

As the title suggests I got a Mac. It is a mid range Macbook (2.4 core 2 duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, dvd burner). First I'll explain more about laptop itself then give first impressions on Mac OS X Leopard.

Macbook hardware

Even though I prefer black notebooks, white macbook does have something distinct which potential buyers surely appreciate. The glossy casing and display are eye catching as is somewhat unusual keyboard. While the bottom part of the laptop is sturdy and well built, I cannot say the same for the upper part containing the display. There is a great flex (more than a few millimeters) of the display case when subjected to torsion. You can easily see how the lcd panel is bending under force. When you press the closed lid from the top there is very little flexing which is much more realistic and important test though. But in any case, I've seen many laptops who don't have this kind of problem or have the reverse problem. But in my opinion, I don't think that torsion flexing of the display is that great of the problem. I was wandering if the logo glows when the mac is on, and to answer it, yes it does glow.

I have a bit of mixed feelings about the display itself. Even though this is a TN display it just doesn't leave a good impression. Color at maximum brightness look a bit overexposed in a way or washed out. This doesn't have anything with LED/CFL difference. I'm even more surprised by slightly mediocre colors and contrast because the screen does have a glossy glass panel which by many accounts (mine too) does give the screen a better picture. But don't despair, the screen is not that bad though. One slight problem with the display is the relatively low resolution of 1280 x 800. True, this is standard resolution for the display of this size, but combining this resolution with Mac OS X, there is a tendency to have a cluttered desktop. One thing to note that viewing angles are not that good too. There is a great vertical color shift, but not that much when viewing from the sides. I had Dell inspiron 9400 (17'', ips screen, 1920x1200) and the difference is night and day. True, these computers are totally different class, but I did expect a bit more from Apple.

The lid is made in standard "macbook style" but there are positive and negative sides to it. First the positive. Cooling of the laptop is nicely done by this trick. I'm not really certain by now where does cool air enter and where does the hot air exit but there are two side wents and one central. I'll explain with the pictures so I'll not waste any words here. The negative part is that you can open the screen just to some angle. And that angle is not that great though. If you have macbook on your lap and your legs are a bit pointed upward you'll have a hard time adjusting your display.

Temperature of the laptop is not that great actually. I've read some reports about macbook fried eggs etc but in my case this is very far from reality. The reality is that the macbook comes just moderately warm (not hot), and that in my opinion is acceptable. Of course it would be even more better that there is no heat at all, but this result is good enough. Fan is most of the time very silent, and you can actually hear processor working louder than the fan. To hear any of this you have to press your ear to the case, so this laptop really is silent and that is great thing for any user. I did hear fan ramp up the speed once, it was probably because of some program using 100% processor time. But I had to restart OS X because of some installation anyway. I'll keep a close eye, or should I say ear on the fan situation in future. But so far, it is doing great.

Hard disk is not slow as I thought it could be. I actually found it to be very fast for general tasks. I have no tests to show you, but don't even ask, I won't be bothered because as I said, the disk is acceptable for what this laptop is made for. This is only supplemented by 2GB of RAM. People who bitch and moan about hard drive speed should invest more into their RAM. Much more concerned about drive speed is the sound the drive is producing. Or lack of it. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned but I do like when I can hear drive working or there is a very small LED for signalization. But thinking now about it, I do feel that most of the time that sound or blinking LED is just there to unnecessary grab your attention. So I'll reserve my judgment on this issue.

Battery life so far is excellent. Even though this computer is new so the battery is not yet completely "formed" (I'll say thats 1/4 of capacity) I can get at 5 hours of writing at minimal brightness (if you have good eyes this isn't a problem at all). I'll try other brightness settings and report back. I usually see people doing wild stuff to test the battery, but I can only accept very few of them. I do not accept tests where they run down battery as fast as they can. That just shows nothing really. Or when they "test" the battery by doing some other weird stuff. I prefer tests when testers actually want to conserve battery time as much as they can. That is a good indicator how much you can get from the laptop. I don't care if you can watch a 2h movie on your laptop or write for 2:15. I want to see how much you can get just by writing and conserving the battery. To cut this rant short, I'm very impressed by the battery so far.

The keyboard as unusally looking but typing on it is as any other laptop keyboard. Buttons look strange just because they are not built like pyramids. They don't have large base and smaller top, but this keys have same base and same top. That is why the keyboard looks a bit strange. In my opinion it is a bit better than the average keyboard. And that is saying a lot because cheap laptops can have horrible keyboards. The keyboard is not cramp which is a good thing but I do have some issues with function/modifier keys but I'll talk about that later. The croatian layout is a bit awkward so the enter key is a bit of the wrong shape as you can see on the comparative pictures. Hand rest plastic is coarse and almost have a thinkpad quality to it. One thing I do not like much is the sharp edge just at your wrists. This could be a problem to people who use macbook at the place which is a bit elevated.

Trackpad is large as you can see on the pictures but I'm not really satisfied by it. Aside from missing a button, it just feels a bit odd. Top speed is fine but when you need a precision, there just isn't much of it. I do admit I need to get used to it then I'll report back.

Software

I'm a first time Mac user so don't mind if I compare some software (OS X) elements/features with windows xp.

Boot time is great. I haven't measured it yet but I'll do it sometime. I do not consider boot time much of an issue here because many people say that you can put your macbook to sleep most of the time. We'll see how this fares in the future.

I'm not really sure how to approach my description of the OS X. I can understand that there are many differences between os x and windows os. I don't mind that at all. But at the same time I must point out some problems I had with adjusting to os x and the "mac way" to do things. I don't mind learning anything new so here it goes.

Lets start with the desktop first. Dock is a new thing for me and it acts as a start menu and taskbar. I'm still trying to decide which one is better though. Or at least strengths and weaknesses of each. Dock is just to big by default so I had tone it down a little. One more problem is the inability to automatically maximize the window of a program. Example: when you open firefox (yes, it is better than safari, there is no question about it), it is automatically sized so firefox windows is little larger than a iphone screen. This is a slight exaggeration but not too far from truth. The only way to get around this limitation is to manually resize the window to as much as full screen you can get. But then the dock gets in the way, so I've put it on auto hide. It is not as responsive as windows taskbar but it is good enough. One just needs a big resolution to get acceptable window sizes. Unfortunately as I said before, macbook doesn't have this resolution so you have to have to make do with less. One thing I find badly designed is the case when you shut down the application by clicking on its red x button and miraculously the application actually stays active. I don't understand it though. Why is this a feature? If I wanted to close Word, I want it to be closed. No, I'm not going to write a single document until the next restart. Somebody might say that this is feature but it just clearly isn't. Windows can reopen Word in a matter of second if you have large enough RAM (as this computer has). So there is no need to have all the applications open.

There were a lot of discussions around slashdot.org crowd on how macs are more mouse oriented and windows are more keyboard oriented. Now, as I see it, it is the other way around. I was simply astonished when I saw that there are so many special key shortcuts just for desktop. I'll try to summarize my knowledge about windows and the difference I saw.

In windows there are 3 modifier keys. Ctrl,alt, and start/windows button. Key shortcuts in windows are generally used for applications, not much for general desktop control.

1. Ctrl shortcuts are shortcuts for inside applications.
   
2. Alt shortcuts are slow shortcuts for menus i.e. alt+f-s
   
3. Start/windows key shortcuts are desktop shortcuts (show desktop/minimize windows, run windows explorer, there aren't many of them).

Note 1: Many shortcuts are the same between applications so they are easy to learn.

I was kinda surprised when I saw that so many of them in the System Preferences sub window. All of them are for desktop control and I'll learn them all in time. I'm still learning how to effectively use the desktop as I could in windows, but I'll get there sometime I hope. One problem I seem to have is that there is a bit of inconsistency between application shortcuts. Another problem is that many of the shortcuts employ pressing at least 2 modifier keys (say control+command+some_other_key). I can even manage that though. I did switch functionality command and control key just to be more windows like. And as the main modifier key is command on mac systems, I do prefer it to push it with my pinky than with thumb.

Lets talk about applications now. All of the applications you get with this macbook are simple but not basic (or is it another way around?). What I mean to say is that all the applications are simple to use and do stuff. I'll write more about them a bit later. Info from the future: don't like finder much.

I got Office:Mac 2008 (standard version) with this and I was a little puzzled with the gui. Coming from a user of office 2007 for windows, this is saying much. Some of the menu is on the upper part of the screen, some of it is floating left or right of the document. I was at first puzzled why they did it that way, but I figured it made for the smaller screens so you can use more vertical space for the document and the other space is used for the floating toolbox. On pictures you'll see what I mean. I haven't used office programs much at the time of the writing but updates will soon to follow.

I almost forgot about some things which are noticeable so I'll just write them down quickly and not in some special order.

Font smoothing is not as good as cleartype for windows (even though I don't use it on my desktop screens (22in and 17in) because it looks horrible, but on the 17in screen of the dell laptop looks absolutely fantastic). Characters just look a bit blotchy, and as you can see from the pictures not all that perfect. But, they are better than non aliased fonts any time.

Widgets are somewhat cool, but we'll see how useful are they in the future. Expose is good too, but I haven't used it that much because I command-tab most of the time. And as I can see, it is more suited for mouse oriented users.

Keyboard layout almost gave me a headache. I got this macbook with "croatian" layout and all would be fine and well (aside from z-y shift and oddly shaped enter key) until I tried to enter "@" symbol. I did look at the those keyboard layouts and whatnot but the only way was to change layout to US, shift-2, change layout to Croatian. But I said to myself, this is so stupid I won't put up with this shit. I mean, apple is in Croatia for at least 10 years. I just cannot fathom how they screwed this up with keyboard layout. So internet ahoy and found my solution in Ukelele. Thank goodness the program was free and good. Even though it was a bit confusing for a mac first timer to get what should I do, I finally managed to get optimal croatian keyboard layout. I would be mad as a balloon if I couldn't solve that problem.

Integrated speakers are good actually. Not something extraordinary but good nevertheless. Web camera is fine too.

Too bad that mini-dvi to dvi adapter isn't included in the box.

Front row is ok, and inclusion of a remote is a nice touch. Too bad that macbook can't be turned off by remote too.

Spotlight is ok, but not that much better than windows/msn desktop search. I know people were praising it like a second coming but I'll try it out more in the coming days.

So, enough for today.

Update 2: Too lazy to add another images. Tough luck.