The MacBook From a Purely Consumerist Perspective
May 17th, 2006
fun with PhotoBooth
Had lunch with colleagues near the Apple store today. Couldn’t resist checking out the new MacBook.
The problems:
- The matte black finish must cost Apple a lot of money. As others have pointed out, $149 for a different color laptop is bullshit.
- Not sure I’m digging on the glossy screen. It’s nice and bright, but at certain angles, super reflective. The matte border helped some.
- No dedicated video card. It has a chip on the motherboard that uses available RAM. Not good for the Apple Pro apps and I wonder how good it’s going to be for iLife.
The not problems at all:
- The MacBook will drive larger monitors and does screen-splitting. It will also drive an external monitor in the shut position. Looks like the 2 gig of RAM the MacBook holds will come in handy driving an external monitor.
- The widescreen is shorter than the 14″ iBook and about the same width. It’s 1280 width means more room for palettes and such.
- Digital audio ins and outs. Not sure if it’s TOSLink or what, but it’s a nice touch.
- The price points seem a tad high, but the processor speed is surprising for the money.
- Felt sturdier than my iBook.
I really like having an Apple store nearby for new product launches. o
…as the “voice of apple” who has to deal with all the questions after the launch, i’m having a hard time explaining the “exclusivity” benefit of black. i’ve taken to shrugging my shoulders and saying “dude, it’s black. so worth it.”
Many thanks Blurb for your offer to explain the mysteries of Apple Mac to me. If you don’t mind I’ll send you an email shortly asking some questions. I am keen to get a Mac laptop as I have heard that there is a brilliant new Stopmotion software for the Mac that has come out that allows you to do camera moves and lipsync (!)
My boyfriend just picked up a MacBook Pro. I have to say I LOVE IT. Granted, I’m not a really techie type and I definitely do not use it to it’s full potential. He’s got a G4 as well that I use and he just picked up the MacBook to use for work. He does web design stuff and wanted something that would be better for some of the more advanced software etc. He really enjoys the MacBook and now I’m generally relegated to the G4, but hey, he didn’t take the MacBook to work today so I’m using it now. I actually prefer the keyboard – it’s much nicer for typing. And hey, it’s the only one that I can watch the adorable Leta videos on. For some reason on the G4 I only get the audio and not the video – I’m assuming that’s due to the software needing an update, but frankly I’ve been scared to attempt that myself since I’m afraid I’ll bugger it up.
TK
After seeing this post, I was even more excited for my MacBook to arrive (got here on 5/22). I found the photo booth application a major distraction from getting my studying done.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krisnake/sets/72057594142881131/with/151729810/
It does run hot, but I’ve never had a laptop that didn’t run hot.