MacBook Black - first few days

[jbee]

Firstly i'm a pro user and got my Black MacBook to replace a 15" Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz.

I installed my own 2GB ram and my first thoughts on the Macbook - brilliant!

I miss the backlit keyboard of my powerbook but the MacBook does so many things better. The scrolling / right click enabled trackpad is brilliant BUT has presented to me my first MacBook failing - the plastic seems to have been chipped away after only a few days of use on the trackpad button - has anyone else had this problem? Additionally the trackpad button is very mushy and has an appalling action to it. After reading some forum comments on this i've decided to return to the Apple Store Regent St. London for a replacement (hopefully!).

The MacBook runs extremely hot - worse than my Powerbook which is incredible.

The keyboard is brilliant - MUCH better than the Powerbook and MacBook Pro.

The screen is incredible - i've not had ANY problems with reflectivity and am on this in an airport lounge in Poland with flourescent tube lighting and have NO problems at all.

Battery life is impressive - MUCH better than G4 Powerbook.

RAM - You MUST get 2GB if you want to run pro apps. Running Ableton LIVE (Native) at 512 just didn't work well. Running it now at 2GB Ram it flies. Running Logic Pro is faster by miles compared to my Dual 2GHz G5 with 6 GB ram!!!

Portability - MUCH more portable than MacBook Pro. Why on earth would you want a MacBook Pro? I use the following software: Adobe CS Suite, All Dreamweaver Apps, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Final Cut Express. The MacBook thunders through ALL of them with no problems whatsoever. Oddly i've noticed no problems in Final Cut but some little glitches in iMovie.

Latch: Sounds like a small thing but my stupid horrible aluminium G4 Powerbook always popped open and was so annoying. I hate the aluminium design which is what put me off the MacBook Pro - the invisible magnet latch of my MacBook is amazing! You simply fold the lid down, the thing goes to sleep...it's perfect.

iSight - I didn't imagine what fun Photo Booth would be...but I lament iChat, it's bloody useless. No one uses it and MSN / Skype would do well to get their asses in gear to allow use of the iSight within their apps for mac...imagine how sweet that would be?!

Airport - MUCH stronger signal than Powerbook G4...by miles.

What else can i say...the MacBook reminds me of my much missed Wallstreet powerbook, i love plastic, i love black...it's a great and powerful machine and unless you're dead set on the bigger screen I don't see the need to buy the Pro. Another very important thing to remember is the ability to change the hard drive in the MacBook! It's easy and i'm going to be adding a 7200 rpm 100 GB drive for less than £100.

Lovely!

 

[timswim78]

Thanks for the write-up. Please let us know what happens with the trackpad issue.

 

[williamh]

Thanx for sharing!!

I'm also a musician who is deciding whether going for Macbook or Macbook Pro.

How's Logic Pro running on Macbook with 2G of ram when running some plug-ins like reverb, matching EQ...and so on?

Becuase I use Logic Pro for mixing also and I hope the shared Vram won't really slow down any of my work

 

[mattcube64]

If you could...

... could you post some pics from different angles of the MB w/o wipping it clean. I'd love to see how it handles smudges during average use.

Thanks.

 

[comictimes]

smudges where exactly? If you EVER touch the screen with your fingers it smudges instantly and you need one of the glasses cleaning cloths to make it look good again... Other than that the only smudges I've found to appear on mine are very faint ones on the keys.

 

[Killyp]

Glad you like it.

MacBook Pro is very portable actually, I carry it to every lesson with me, the other laptop I have to compare it to is a Dell Inspiron 510m (15" 4:3 screen). It's MUCH more portable than the Dell, and I never have problems with it taking up too much space. In fact when I took it into school first, all my mates said "It's tiny!". The fact that it's widescreen actually saves a lot of space.

Photo Booth is a hoot isn't it? I have spent many lunchtimes with loads of people crowded behind the laptop taking stupid pictures...

iChat is largely useless, unless you are on another network with no internet connection and other people in other lessons using macs too. Then the bonjour chat is great.


The dedicated video card on the MBP actually makes a pretty large difference to the performance of the machine. I took mine into the Apple store and compared it to a 2.0 GHz Duo MacBook (mine's a 1.83 GHz Duo) and when you export one of the demo songs in garage band, the MBP is quite a bit quicker! I'm guessing this was because of the VRAM issue on the MacBook.

I had a go with the MacBook keyboard, and I just couldn't get along with it. I prefer the action on the MBP keyboard.

Battery life is amazing isn't it!

You'll miss the Alu as soon as yours starts gathering dust. It doesn't show up as easily on the Alu as it does on the white/black plastic. Alu looks way cooler too IMO.

Isn't the hard disk easy to change in the MacBook Pro too? I've already almost filled up my 80gb, and I'm thinking of changing it with a bigger/faster one. I hope I don't have to send mine in to Apple to have a hard disk upgrade...