First Impressions

First and foremost I feel I must do a general "first impression" brain dump before moving onto specifics:

The MacBook Pro was ordered, processed for four days, then shipped from Shanghai, China, went through Alaska, and arrived in one day's time. In the end the thing cost about $3200. It's widely considered that Apple products are more expensive than their competitors, but I think this has changed for their laptops with regard to the price to earnings ratio now that they're Intel-based. A fellow co-worker ordered himself a $2600 Dell laptop, and my MacBook Pro outperforms it and is better engineered (the Dell is quite thick). Not a big price difference, especially when it's for work.

It arrived in a square, ~18" X 2" black box. Everything, from the box that contains the power supply, to the laptop itself seems to slide open with just a little bit of pressure applied to just the right area, and that area is always obvious. This is some nice engineering; from the outside, this svelte laptop is so sexy.


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Upon hitting the power button I was greeted with what I now call the "heavenly choir" startup chime. I'm sure many Mac users love and hear this chime in their dreams, but I find it jarring to my ears since it starts and ends so abruptly. A nice fade in and out would fix this, and would fit in with the overall style of OS X (everything seems to visually fade in and out beautifully on start and exit).

Anyway, this chime can't be disabled without installing some third party hacks which I'm leary of trying, especially since these Intel-based systems are so cutting edge at the moment. The last thing I want to do is disable the chime along with the rest of the system.

The volume button doesn't seem to have any effect either. This isn't that big a deal, I know, but at some point this will embarrass me when I'm in a quiet situation (like a meeting or on a plane) and I boot the laptop. It won't happen that often; I almost always just "sleep" it instead of shutting down.

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During initial setup (OS X (10.4 "Tiger") was pre-installed) I was asked for the usual credentials and then, at the end, it took a picture of me: 3...2...1... and the screen flashes white and snap. Nice. I need to get more sleep according to the picture...



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Without a doubt the biggest iPain when making the switch is the keyboard layout. It's subtle; almost all of the keys are the same. However, certain key commands in Windows such as copy (ctrl-c), paste (ctrl-v), cut (ctrl-x), undo (ctrl-z), and redo (ctrl-y) are now command-c, command-v, command-x, command-z, and shift-command-z. (The command key is the Apple key, by the way, and the Windows key is replaced with the "option" key.) Due to the arrangement of these keys I must use my thumb to hit the command key instead of my pinky to hit the ctrl key. In other words, I must relearn the power-user keys that are so ingrained from my using Windows operating systems for 14+ years. This is quite maddening at first.

The "Home" and "End" keys are also driving me nuts in OS X; I'm so used to hitting them to go to the beginning and end of a line/sentence. On a Mac, though, it scrolls to the top or bottom of the window. Even worse, the MacBook Pro laptop keyboard doesn't even have the home/end/insert/delete/page up/page down keys, unlike the ol' ThinkPad. Well, at least not all of them, and they're not at all arranged like the standard PC keyboard. So, instead it's command-leftarrow and command-rightarrow to move to the beginning or end of a line. Argh! Must...re-learn!



Now you might be thinking: "Dude, why don't you just remap your keyboard to work like it did in Windows?" Yes, this is an option, but currently I'm against it; I'm dealing with the Mac standard, and if I'm going to be using a Mac, I should adjust to these recommended standards. I'd rather suffer for a week learning new habits than have to adjust every Mac I sit down to use, in order to use it. This would happen often enough at work when I "drive" someone else's Mac when troubleshooting or whatever.

Update: I'm starting to lean towards remapping the home and end keys to work like a PC. Since these keys don't exist (or, at least don't exist in the same place) on the laptop keyboard I'll just resort to the Mac standard when using the laptop keyboard. Any "real" keyboard I choose to use will have those keys. We'll see...

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When setting up my wireless access to work's wireless access point I was only prompted for a "password" field. Unlike Windows, I didn't have to specify that it's 128-bit hex passphrase or anything like that, it just took what I gave it (which happened to be 128-bit hex). That's a good abstraction; why should I be required to tell the computer which kind I'm using when it can figure this out on its own? I was able to connect (wirelessly) without any issues at home as well.

OS X is relatively silent about its network status when things are fine. Windows XP is fairly noisy about it, and is often popping up notification bubbles in my system tray whenever anything slightly changes. Not a criticism of either, just an observation. I think I prefer the OS X methodology more, though.

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Everything hardware-wise really does just seem to work as promised, and flawlessly. I plugged in my 22" NEC CRT (yeah, no LCD yet) and I immediately had a dual-monitor shared desktop, and somehow it knew the NEC was on the right side (it was just luck). It was easy to hunt down the settings that configure the resolution and refresh rate on the monitor; it knew what model it was too (not that Windows XP can't do this accordingly, I'm just sayin'). USB Hub, USB HDD, and other various peripherals all recognized perfectly.

OS X recognized my Microsoft Explorer 4.0 mouse as well, but I installed the OS X drivers Microsoft makes available (does that seem kinda odd? Maybe not...) so I can get thumb button support. The wireless Microsoft keyboard I currently use seemed to work fine too, but I also installed the official drivers to be complete. In a future post I (or Ryan) will discuss the status/situation with Bluetooth keyboards and mice that are available in the market currently. In a nutshell, don't buy anything yet.

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OS X provides many nice, high-res backgrounds for the desktop. One can assign different backgrounds to each display. Currently I'm using "Zen Garden" and "Tiger."

When arranging how my dual displays are positioned, I can fine tune the vertical location of each display in relation to each other. My laptop lies on a lower plane than the monitor and I was able to specify this. Very smart, and I don't think Windows XP provides this.

In situations when the lights are dim or there is no light, a white light under the keyboard will glow accordingly. The LCD will also dim and brighten when needed as well. So cool.

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Adium is the best instant messaging client I have ever used, and it's free. It's a lot like Trillian but easier to manage, and doesn't cost me $25 every time a new version comes out. The encryption support has a much better design, the UI for chats is superior, tabbed windows function better (by default, anyway), and the list goes on and on.


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OS X handles application "activity" in a cool way. For example, when an application is loading it hops up and down in the "Dock" (the Dock is similar to the Start bar in Windows) until it's loaded. When an application that doesn't have focus requires attention from the user, it will hop up and down until the user tends to it. Adium will do this if someone IMs me while another application has focus. The icons will hop high enough to be noticed if the Dock is hidden, which I prefer (though I never hide the Start bar in Windows since it does not notify me). I really like this notification feature; for some reason an occasionally hopping icon doesn't bother me as much as a flashing tab in the Start bar.



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The minimize/maximize window animations rock. Functionality like this is provided through Apple's Exposé window management tool, built into OS X. The next version of Windows (Windows Vista) will have similar capabilities.

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Another cool Exposé feature is seen when I hit F9. It toggles an "All Windows" view where all applications currently running are tiled on the desktop and resized accordingly so the user can see everything at once. Hitting it again returns things back to normal. Wow, so useful; now my Windows XP brain just need to remember to use it.


The equivalent to the Windows "show desktop" (Windows -D) is F10. The result is the same, but all visible windows will slide out of the way with a very smooth animated effect, with only their edges showing around the sides.

Try holding down shift when hitting these function keys for a completely useless slow-motion version of the same effect (though it allowed me to screen cap them more easily).

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I can have the Mac announce what time it is on the hour, half hour, quarter hour, whatever, in a variety of different voices. "It is 10 o'clock." Useful for me, but definitely not for everybody.



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When in sleep mode, a small white light on the front of the machine slowly fades in and out, at a perfect "snoring" pace. Kinda stupid, kinda cool. It's nice to know that the laptop is asleep just by looking at it, but I have to look longer than a glance to see if it is indeed "snoring" or not.

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OS X Tiger has extensive support for screen capture: Hitting Command+Shift+4 then the space bar pops up a small camera icon for my mouse. I can then choose to capture a window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar and it's automatically saved as a PNG to the desktop. This is just one of many alternative keyboard shortcuts, as well as a fully-featured "Grab" application. Unfortunately I can't screen cap a screen cap in progress. :)

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There is no shortcut key (hotkey) for quickly locking the laptop or putting it in screensaver mode, allowing me to securely leave the machine on when I leave my desk. This is important, otherwise pesky co-workers might change my homepage to that Peter Pan guy's site or worse when I'm using the whizzery.

In Windows, to lock the machine one simply types windows-L. The closest thing OS X provides is a "hot corner" option, where I can move the mouse to, say, the lower-left corner of my screen and the screensaver will start. As I think this sucks, I will discuss in a future post an AppleScript (which can be mapped to a hotkey, such as option-L) that will start the screensaver.

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This is pretty well known, but there is no concept of "Add/Remove Programs" on a Mac. One just selects the application (most installed under the "Applications" folder by convention), and hits Command-Backspace (move to trash). Removed. Hard to beat that...

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One can move parent-modal windows around. This is best shown with a screen capture:



The window on the right is the modal window, and while the window on the left is "disabled" I can still move it around, unlike in Windows. This occasionally is useful when one wants to see something underneath the disabled window to aid in responding to the modal window.

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One problem with these MacBook Pro laptops is they're so bleeding edge. Not all software available for Macs will work on them (yet), as the underlying architecture of the computer is Intel based as opposed to their PowerPC predecessors. For example, I can't friggin' sync my Blackberry with Address Book.app because:

1. iSync doesn't support it
2. PocketMac intended to support it, but can't due to some Intel-based issues.

Oh well, it'll get fixed in time, and all of these problems will disappear. Software compiled to work on either architecture involves what is known as a "Universal Binary." A lot of software that is compiled for only PowerPC architectures will often still work, transparent to the user, via Apple's Rosetta software, which translates it at noticeable speed reduction. One can tell how an application will run (Intel/Universal vs. Rosetta) by selecting the application and typing command-I.




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The Activity Monitor is equivalent to the Windows Task Manager (ctrl-shift-esc in Windows), but it's a lot better. Just having a monitor of HDD usage puts the Task Manager to shame.


One can kill frozen applications here, or use an alternative, less heavy-weight approach: Force Quit (command-option-esc):


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Lots more to write about as I find the time: Terminal & DarwinPorts, Quicksilver, "focus" issues, Keyboards & Mice, Desktop Manager. A buddy of mine, Ryan MacG, might chip in as well.