After owning my previous PC for 10 years and performing countless "upgrades" it became bogged down and unable to process mundane tasks such as loading more than one program within the hour. It was then that I began the search for a new laptop as I wanted the flexibility of taking it wherever I went. I started my search in PC World and Tesco, however none of the laptops jumped out at me until I walked into my Local Apple Store...
The first thing that struck me when I saw the MacBook Pro was just how well it was crafted and how pretty it looked. The case is made from brushed aluminium with the iconic light-up Apple logo on the top. Each corner is smoothly curved and there are no un necessary stickers or wording to clutter up the style. The keyboard sits beautifully between two speakers lights up when it gets dark, sensing the ambient light in the room. You could frame it and put it in a gallery.
The feature which instantly blew me away was the revolutionary trackpad (similar to that of the MacBook Air) which has the capability of detecting up to three fingers for a variety of different commands and gestures. This appealed to me, as with previous trackpads I have always found it irritating to scroll through a page, this would no longer be the case. By using one finger you can move the mouse, two will let you scroll up, down, left and right while three can be used to go back and forwards between internet pages or for scrolling through your photo album. It also allows you to zoom and rotate using the pinch method demonstrated on the iPod touch and iPhone. I was in love. From then on, I saved all my earnings (£1,299 to be precise) and went in to purchase my
new Mac (thanks to the man at the Apple store in Bournemouth, he was a great help and didn't mind spending a bit of time with me discussing all of the features and giving me some handy tips!)
As a frequent PC user, I was instantly blown away with the ease of use of the MacBook Pro. Upon booting up it asked me what my name was and what the password to my router was, then, two or three minutes later I had a fully set up computer. No restarts, no discs and no clicking. It was a truly pleasant procedure. I instantly set about exploring the settings for my new computer and took the advice given to me by the Apple man by configuring the multi touch. Two seconds later and I was up and running.
Let me just say that OS X Leopard is beautiful, the dock looks amazing reflecting anything on the desktop while the semi-transparant menubar at the top stays out of the way whilst containing all of the information about all of the programmes you are running. The built in backgrounds and screensavers are all very high quality and help make your desktop a very welcome sight when you boot up each time.
The first programme I used was iTunes. I plugged in my MP3 player (an ancient Archos Gmini XS202 with a flickering screen) and dragged my entire collection over. I then went to play frisbee whilst that was going. About an hour later (there was a lot of music there) and everything was done and iTunes began to search for my album art. My music collection suddenly looked all the more impressive when I used the cover flow feature to preview my albums (in much the same was as the Windows version of iTunes).
The new OS X also uses cover flow for folders and files, open up your applications folder and you can neatly preview all of your programmes in the exact same way you would with albums on iTunes. Navigating through files on the MacBook Pro is more simple than ever with an extremely functional search feature called spotlight. Sitting in the top right hand corner of the screen, Spotlight provides a powerful search function. If, for instance, I typed "Ciao" into the search box and got a link to the website pop up, a dictionary definition, reviews I have typed up and saved and links I have previously visited. If I had songs/movies/other file types with the same name they would come up too, all cleanly annotated.
After updating my music collection and having a quick play with the new OS, I went to upload my photos. After plugging by camera in via usb iPhoto opened and asked if I would like to import all of my photos. I chose to say no and instead vetted them before adding them to my hard drive. iPhoto automatically created "events" for these photos, for instance, one event for my trip with my girlfriend to London, and another for our holidays in Crete and Lanzarote. Mouse over the icons for each event and you can quickly browse the content and choose a key photo for the icon to assume. One of the most powerful photo toys the Mac has is in its screensaver options. As simple as clicking two buttons, I had a photo which zoomed out and showed a mosaic of all the other photos on my hard drive, carefully arranged according to colour. The more it zoomed out the more I could see the image of the view from our balcony in Crete. I was blown away.
Safari is the Mac web browser which comes with OS X Leopard. Although quite basic it makes for simple web browsing, however, I am missing the functionality of Firefox and am contemplating installing it soon. Safari does however allow you to take "Web Clips" or widgets. I choose what I want to make into a widget (in my case the most emailed section on the BBC News website), click it and drag the selector to where I want it (most of the time it automatically detects what you want) then press "add". Now, anytime I want to catch up on the latest emailed news A simply press the dashboard button on my keyboard and there it is, constantly updated. I also made one for BBC iPlayer, PS3 Updates and Zero Punctuation.
iMovie is pre loaded with iLife 08 and is a simple movie editing programme. I have yet to use this on my MacBook Pro, however plan to edit together some music videos in the future. After using an iMac from my A-Level Media Studies I found that I really enjoyed making videos as it was something creative which I was passionate about. iMovie lets you import a single file, chop it into chinks, drag and drop, add filters, effects, transitions and subtitles making it easy to create something you can sit back and admire on YouTube. It also seamlessly incorporates iDVD which allows you to burn your newest creations to a DVD with a professional looking title screen.
One thing I noticed about my MacBook Pro is that when sitting with it on my lap it emitted quite a lot of heat. After searching forums and web pages it appears that it is well within safe tolerance however there was a programme I could install to remove the issue. Called SMCFanControl, it works by allowing the inbuilt fans in the MacBook Pro to spin a little bit quicker. This has reduced the overall temperature by over 20 degrees!
As a Windows convert, it took me a while to work out how to install a programme onto the hard drive and after a little playing I worked it out. Its a simple case of dragging an icon onto a folder. No installers, no loading bars, no random files scattered across my hard drive, just one file which I could move and delete with no fuss. My conversion to the Mac OS was becoming more and more apparent.
Stacks are another useful feature new to OS X. They provide a sleek and elegant way of viewing files and applications, a simple click opens the stack from the dock with all the files cascading out in an arc. I have a stack for my downloads, documents and have just created one for my applications by dragging them to a separate folder and dragging that to the dock. Easy.
This is the first review I have typed using my Macbook Pro for which I am using Pages, part of iWork 08. At first glance it doesn't seen as feature packed as Microsoft Word, however I have been using Word almost all my life and probably just haven't noticed the things I am missing. As far as the hardware goes, the keyboard is very easy to use, the buttons feel soft yet have a satisfying click to them whilst their positioning is perfect. The caps lock button has a small green LED to let you know that it is on built into the key, which is quite a nice touch!
I really could write for pages about what I love about the MacBook Pro. It is sleek, attractive, user friendly yet still powerful to the seasoned user. The usual complaint about Macs can't do everything a PC can, my answer to which would be another question; "what exactly can it not do?" There isn't anything. For every PC programme the Mac seems to have an equivalent, if not then there is Boot Camp which allows for running of Windows on any IntelMac (I am refusing to install this so can't comment on how it works.) The other point many people make is on the price. Yes £1,300 does seem a lot, however compared to a lot of other high-end laptops out there, the MacBook Pro fares very well and is still a competitive choice.
I can't see myself going back to Windows. I feel I have a lot to learn about my new Apple purchase, however from what I have experienced so far it will certainly be painless and intuitive.
Thanks for reading. - I also purchased a Golla Laptop Bag with my MacBook Pro which I shall be reviewing shortly.
*Update*
I recently caved and downloaded Firefox after finding Safari a little featureless. To my dismay, upon installation I noticed that the three finger multi-touch functions were not working and I was considering moving back to Safari until some internet research lead me to a programme called MultiClutch. It allows users to apply multi-touch gestures to the built in shortcuts of any programme, a very useful feature! Firefox now allows me to triple swipe to go back and forward and cycle through tabs by swiping up or down! I can even add more for the rotate gesture etc. Firefox > Safari? Yes.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
exceptional by (29%):
very helpful by (64%):
helpful by (7%):
