Macbook Pro impressions

Last Friday, my Macbook Pro arrived through FedEx.  The package shipped from Shanghai, China to Indianapolis to Ontario, then Goleta.  The Apple website predicted the arrival date more accurately.  They said Friday, while FedEx’s site said Monday.  Therefore, I picked it up directly from the FedEx location on Fairview (it use to be right next to me).

It came in a brown box, inside of which was the Macbook Pro box, which is so incredibly sleek.  There are laptop cases that are larger than the box the laptop came in.  Of course, opening that box, I was greeted with the silver top of a shiny new Macbook Pro in clear plastic covering.  Underneath it was the power supply and manuals/CDs and a bag that contained the remote and DisplayPort to VGA connector.  I’m very surprised that they put that in the box, as most other companies would probably have shipped it separately.

Removing the MBP, I was really struck by its size.  It seem much larger sitting on my desk than it did at the store.  The jump from 12″ to 15″ is massive.  Probably the 13″ is a more reasonable size for a laptop.  However, I probably can’t complain as much about the small size.

The magnetic latch is amazing, much better than the physical latch.  However, the outer aluminum has a slight lip inside of which is the screen, and right where you open the screen, if your finger falls to the screen, it covers the camera.

The screen is incredible.  Everything on it seems so bright and vibrant.  I kinda want to look at everything through this screen.  Glare can be issue, but usually tilting it down gets rid of it.

The chicklet keyboard definitely feels different.  But it doesn’t really affect my typing.  I use so many different keyboards that they all take a little getting use to.

Now, the big change is that the complete trackpad has become the button.  The best place to click is still on the bottom, so you’re still aiming for the same part.  The initial difference was that the button use to be raised, and I would look for it.  But on a laptop, I don’t use the hard click that often because of soft clicking.  On the MBP is makes a lot of sense, since it’s you can “left click” and “right click” through the multi-touch trackpad anyway.  The additional multi-touch commands are great as well.  They really make browsing through the internet or files faster.  However, the different multi-touch commands can’t be changed (maybe through some internal code somewhere?).  In the end, big trackpad great, and trackpad click works fine, after a period of adjustment.

Also of note is that this laptop runs much cooler than my Powerbook.  It still get warm, but it’s not the scalding heat that the Powerbook could generate.

Transferring data from my old Powerbook was a little more troublesome than I thought it would be.  Since I had not yet pulled everything off of my old computer yet, I decided to setup my MBP with an account and wait to migrate data, that was the same account name, etc.  However, the Migration Assistant did not like that and would not transfer the account information.  It would add other accounts, and but creating a different account and trying to modify the native account just wouldn’t work.  Eventually, I followed an Apple help forum and copied over relevant data by hand, like pictures and music and documents, and decided to reinstall most programs, since the majority of the programs I used are free and legal.

So I’m still settling into my new laptop.  The next project are finding out how to develop with the iPhone SDK and setting up Time Machine.