MacBook Pro Update: 3 months later

Well, its been over 3 months since my MacBook Pro entered my life. Do I think I made the right decision? Fo' sho. Here's what I like:

• Beautiful screen. Bright, wide, 1440x900 resolution. And mine is the non-glossy version.
• General build quality. You just feel that it is well-made, from the keyboard to the chassis, everything is solid.
• Design. This thing was designed to be used. Everything is in the right place, and you get the impression that Apple took the time to figure out how best to construct a usable machine. Even the glowing keys and the logo on the lid are nice touches. It's just damn sexy.
• Size and weight. This thing is thin and light. Easy to pick up, fits nicely in my case.
• Interface. Ok, this was probably the biggest thing to learn, although OSX makes it pretty easy. Everything is intuitive, from the common menu bar at the top, to the consistent look and feel of pretty much every element, regardless of application. Exposé? Hit F11 and all windows appear on the screen - select the window to make it active. Dashboard? Hit F12 and a bunch of widgets (that are actually useful) are there at your disposal.
• Quicksilver. I've been using an app called, "Quicksilver" more and more, and have been able to take a good chunk of the icons off of my dock. With QS, to launch an app, all I do is hit ctrl+space, type in a few letters of the app, and hit enter. Want to send an e-mail? Ctrl+space, start typing the contact's name, tab to the actions, and hit enter. Mail pops open a new message with the contact already there. URLs work almost the same. Its worth getting use to this app - I probably only know about 10% of how to use it.
  
• Stability. This thing almost never crashes. On the odd occasion where an application craps out (usually an MS Office app), its easy to relaunch the app, and I don't think I have ever lost any work.
• Compatibility. The only peripheral that I haven't been able to use has been an old HP Laserjet 1100 that was connected to a Windows machine on my home network. It doesn't have Mac drivers. I was still able to reach it and print, it just didn't come out right. What has worked? Other printers, cameras, external HDDs, LCD projectors, secondary monitors, external speakers, network linking to Windows PCs, SMB (samba) access to file servers at my client location, etc. Compatibility was an issue I thought would be much bigger for me coming from a Windows world, but it turns out that wasn't much of an issue at all.

Ok, so that was a pretty long list of good stuff. So, what don't I like?

• MS Office for Mac. I am going to throw this one down first to get it out of the way. The MS Office that is built for the Mac is pretty and has some nice functionality, but it is slow. It slows down a 2.16GHz (with 2GB RAM) MacBook Pro. In Entourage (the Outlook substitute), switching between the mail view and the calendar view can take 3+ seconds. Contrast that with Mail and iCal, with zero delay. PowerPoint is a bit of a disappointment as well. The delay between slide switching can be 1+ seconds, which may not sound like much, but is a major annoyance. As well, the outline view only shows text instead of thumbnails of the slides, which is how it works in the XP version. Considering I use this app the most, I have been pretty disappointed. As for Excel, I am used to hitting F2 to edit a formula, and it also highlights cells used in that formula. It doesn't work in the Mac version. Major pain in ass. The other BIG issue? I have had numerous problems with Windows users accessing my office files created on the Mac. I don't understand why there should be compatibility issues considering the software is made by the same company, and it should have been a major drive in the development phase... Conspiracy theories start to open up in my head at this point, so I'll leave it at that. Soooooo, all this being said, I downloaded a copy of OpenOffice, the open source office substitute, and found it to be quite a decent substitute. I am probably going to have to consider a tool such as CrossOver (if they can get it working consistently) in the future so that I can maintain compatibility.
• No right mouse button. The context-sensitive menu that I used regularly on the PC is still available on the Mac, it just takes more work. You have to hold down the ctrl button when you click for it to simulate the right mouse button. I understand the Mac philosophy around simplicity, but this is one area where an extra button would make a big difference. That being said, I have easily plugged in my regular USB mouse and it works seamlessly, with a right mouse button (and a scroll wheel and two more buttons...). I like mouse buttons.
• Shortcut keys. The Mac seems to be built around shortcut keys, and I haven't picked them up as quickly as I did with Windows. Maybe because some of the symbols (are they Klingon or hieroglyphics?) they use for shortcuts aren't even on my keyboard (e.g. ⎋ or ⌥). I still don't even remember which is ctrl and which is option (or alt). At least this one, "⌘", is on my keyboard. Its probably just going to take some more time to get used to.
• Hidden files. Whenever I connect to a Windows drive, Mac seems to add some funky folders and files that are hidden to the Windows file structure. Stuff like, ".trashes". Weird.
• App installation and removal. When you add a Mac app, it usually gets dropped into your Applications folder, but often adds files to other folders. There is rarely an "uninstall" feature, so to remove an app, you often have to go on a hunt to find other files. They often end up in subfolders of the "Library" folder, but I have found that I often have to do a Spotlight search, and even at that, will only find files by keyword. You can buy apps that help uninstall apps, but that seems a little superfluous.

That's probably enough reading material for y'all for now. Conclusion? Mac good.