MacBook Pro First Impressions

Well, its 7:30am on Saturday morning and my son refused to sleep in, so while he's enjoying his morning apple juice, I thought I would post my first impressions of my new acquisition.

First of all, I ordered this thing on Wednesday night around 9pm, and it showed up Friday at 3pm. Admittedly, I paid an extra $23 for expedited shipping, but I did not expect to receive it within 2 business days. It came in a slick black box, all wrapped up nicely in styrofoam for protection.

I got the machine out of the box, and plugged it in for a charge, but the battery was already full. I started it up, and the Mac began asking me some simple questions (e.g. region, language), and promptly found my wireless network and connected. I was beginning to get impressed, but I felt like it was saying to me, "dude, don't worry - this is the easy stuff". After registering my account with Mac and denying a few things like setting up a .Mac account, I was at the desktop. Immediately, a window popped up with software updates, 12 in total, so I let it do its thing while I started making dinner.



Everything updated just fine, so after the little monkey was put to bed, I got down to really checking it out. First of all, the finish is amazing. Brushed aluminum, translucent apple logo inset in lid, gently backlit keys. Then you look at the screen. This thing is breathtaking. Its HUGE compared to the screens I've been using in the past, its bright, crisp, and just a pleasure to gaze at. The laptop is light - less than 6 pounds - but it feels big. Fold it up, though, and it seems fairly compact. Probably because it is very thin, even though the footprint isn't so small. When this thing is plugged in, it runs hot. I don't mean warm, I mean HOT. Those online reviews were not lying. I do find that when just on batteries, it is considerably cooler, though.

I feel like I might be rambling a bit, but I am just throwing down things as they come to me. The backgrounds that come with the machine are a nice touch, and convey the quality of the screen nicely. I started checking out system preferences and some applications. Browser worked nicely, and did many of the applications. They all seem pretty basic, but I'll have to spend some more time with them to understand if I will use them. I found that most things were self-explanatory, but at times, I was left wondering how to do certain functions I would previously had done by clicking on the right mouse button.

One of the first things I did was to connect to the network, and grab an MP3 off of our desktop (Windows) computer. Found the machine just fine, got to my music, and selected, "By My Side". iTunes launched, and sweet music began to play. The sound was crisp, albeit a little tinny, but that might mean it needs a bit of adjustment. I checked out the trial versions of a few programs (MS Office for Mac, Keynote, Pages), then thought I would get down to business and try out WinXP. I decided to try Parallels, and downloaded the trial version.

I started a virtual machine and threw in my XP disk, but after considerable time, I realized it just wasn't installing. It "hung" while trying to "detect and install devices", so that didn't work. It may be because I used my OEM disk from my Dell, so I am going to have to try another version.

So, all round, my first impressions are about 90% positive. Can't wait to get more into this machine - still getting use to some of the OSX stuff!