A PC Veteran's First Two Weeks With A MacBook Pro

After a couple of months of deliberation, and a brief, ill fated experiment with Xubuntu Linux, I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro to replace my ageing ThinkPad. As this is my first Mac, I thought I'd share the differences I've found, and some pros and cons compared to Windows based PC's, which I've used extensively for the last 15 years or so.

First, the bad points. I'm entirely willing to accept that some of these issues are just due to my lack of knowledge, so if anyone has any answers, then please leave a comment.

Cons:

  1. The @ sign key and the double quote key are the opposite way around. Why? I have a UK Mac: why doesn't it have a UK keyboard?
  2. I don't know if this is a Mac issue generally, or just that they couldn't fit them on to the Macbook Pro, but I really miss my Home, End, Delete and Print Screen keys. There are shortcuts, which I'll get used to soon enough, but it's not the same as having a dedicated key. I suspect that I notice this a lot more than most would, due to the fact that I'm a developer, but it's still an issue.
  3. The big, no-button touchpad is generally excellent, and multitouch is very clever; however, there are a few annoyances: like the fact that accidentally brushing two fingers across it in a certain way when using a web browser zooms the text in or out. I don't want it to do that—ever. But I can't turn it off.
  4. The arrow key behaviour is a bit inconsistent: in a browser, the down arrow will scroll down the web page, but in iTunes you can't scroll down through the songs using the same key.
  5. Why isn't there a button to maximise a window? On a small laptop like the MacBook, the first thing I do every time I open an application is drag the window to fit the whole screen (to maximise my working area), which gets old, quickly. Not only that, but you can only resize the window from the bottom right corner, so you have to position the top left at the very edge of the screen, then drag out the bottom... basically, it's an annoyance that doesn't need to be there.
  6. There should be an auto-hide option for the top menu bar. It takes up valuable pixels on the screen, and I hardly ever use it anyway, now that I'm used to the shortcuts.

Now for the good stuff:

Pros:

  1. Starting up and shutting down are extremely quick and painless. I can usually switch my Windows XP machine on, go and make a coffee, and it still isn't quite ready to use by the time I come back. And shutting down is basically a lottery depending on what the machine feels like that day; sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes 10 minutes.
  2. Expose is a brilliant task switcher. Especially as there's a dedicated key for it.
  3. Wireless internet works. Properly. AT LAST. No disconnections, no dropouts, instant connection.
  4. Spotlight is great: type something in, and it's instantly found. Conversely, Windows Search (at least on XP) completely fails on pretty much every level.
  5. The battery life (at least compared to my ThinkPad) is incredible. Even when the IBM was new, I'd get about 2 hours usage on battery power. With the MacBook, it's more like 6 or 7 hours.
  6. It goes without saying really, but the sheer engineering and design quality of the machine compared to a PC laptop is a massive plus. It all feels very solid, the keyboard is great, the screen is great, it stays cool and makes virtually no sound when in use.

I've diplomatically come up with 6 of each, but obviously there are a lot more differences; overall though, the pros definitely outweigh the cons. In fact, I'm typing this very article on the shiny new MacBook.

I give it two months before the novelty wears off and I'm cursing it's very existence, just like I do all computers...