THEBILNS

Thu 31 May
2007

SWITCHED

Becoming a Mac

You know, it just isn’t fun anymore to work in front of a computer all day and then come home only to sit in front of one again. But with the MacBook thinks have changed.

So, why the switch from a PC to a Mac? Well, let’s face it, Windows has it’s issues and I’ve grown quite tired of them. It was high time to give the Mac a try, but not without some safety nets. You’ll see what I mean.

I just wanted to work in an environment that was easy. I wanted to work on machine that I felt was made for me. And believe me, MacBooks are out there to be had by everyone, but they come very personalized, very fast.

First impressions:

The packaging. OH. MY. GOD. The packaging. It’s as simple and as well organized as the machine itself. I opened the box and there was absolutely no fidgeting about to find out where things were. The cords were nicely packaged and arranged. Underneath the MacBook was the simple documentation and installation CD/DVD’s.

The Boot Up. Now normally I’d spend time reading a quickstart manual or some form of documentation. Just to get a heads up, but this time, to test just how easy it was to do things on a Mac, I just fired it up and followed along.

The first time boot up was a cinch. I was prompted with some easy to read and easy to fill out dialog boxes, all set in place to acquaint the user with the machine and start the process of personalizing it.

It took no more than five minutes to do.

Five minutes … and I was up and running.

I hadn’t anticipated this, so I twiddled my thumbs.

What was I to do next? Now, I was doing this all at Harp’s sisters place, where there was no wireless internet connection to be had. So, I’d normally have tried to set up a connection and browse around. Perhaps even set up email, download Firefox, and look up some of the online info on just how I was going to be able to do stuff on this thing.

But with no connection, and Tiia on my lap, I decided to familiarize myself with the applications and the machine itself. So, just for curiosity’s sake I started looking at the apps already set in the dock, which runs along the bottom of the desktop. And there I found, Photo Booth. Tiia and I had an easy amount of fun taking shots of ourselves with various facial expressions.

MacBook Pro

With iSight, the built in camera that the MacBook Pro comes with, it was snap. We brought the images into iPhoto and started to play around with them, doing basic manipulations like adding special effects and cropping. It was all so easy to do. There were no manuals for me to look up. No F1 key for me to press to call up the “help” dialog box. It was grand.

I played around with several of the other apps that make up the iLife suite. All are so simple to use and to my surprise , very powerful. You can produce some really high quality stuff with these apps.

But the one thing that really blew me away, and this will led to my safety net I mentioned earlier, was the shear ease involved with installing Parallels, an application that allows you to run other operating systems virtually on the Mac! I had it installed in a snap, and then promptly installed Windows XP. Within a half hour, I had a MacBook Pro running Mac OSX, set up with a Virtual Machine that allowed me to run Windows XP!

And it was fast! And yes, you can install Linux too. As a designer/developer I have the machine that fits my style! I can now design on a Mac and run apps virtually off of Windows XP or Vista.

But it doesn’t end there. It gets better. Apple is releasing Boot Camp, it’s in beta right now, software that allows you to set up your Mac with a dual boot option. Since the machines use Intel processors, you can freely run Windows and Mac. The choice is yours on boot up!

So, that made the decision to buy the MacBook Pro a no brainer.

There are other bonuses to this. It’s thin, lightweight, and sleek looking. The cords are made with material that resist tangling, although with enough time, I’m sure they will.

The machine detects ambient light and adjusts screen brightness accordingly. The same applies to the keypad, which becomes under lit in low light, revealing the keys. I plug in a camera via a USB port and it’s instantly recognized and ready to be used. It just works. Everything just works.

I suppose to some degree, many avid PC users would find software they use very hard to get on a Mac. To some degree this is true. I use SEPY, an Actionscript editor, which allows me to author Actionscript files when developing Flash games and applications.

There isn’t a comparable editor for the Mac, at least not that I’m aware of, but my research has pointed to BBEdit. It seems a lot of developers using Macs like this, and apparently it supports syntax for Actionscript 3.0 … a big plus with the release of Flash Professional CS3.

I’ll write more on my experiences with this again, but for now I have to close this entry off. And see what to do about not having an INSERT key … ugh, this is getting way too long … : )

*Update:

INSert key --> fn+delete on a Mac ... phew

Comments  [1]

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