MacBook Pro review -13.3" June 2009 model

This is not the first review of the 13" MacBook Pro that has been published. It is probably not the best either. What it is is a review from someone who has made the decision to own an Apple computer for the first time, and run OS X on a regular basis for the first time.

The MacBook Pro in all it's glory

That is not to say that I have never used OS X before. I took several classes in school where I used OS X, and I have a few friends who have Apple laptops. Before buying the MacBook Pro, I would call myself an average OS X user. I'm still not proficient like I am with windows, but I've had my MacBook Pro for just over 2 weeks, and I've been using windows every day for nearly 15 years, so I think that is to be expected.

the MacBook Pro 13.3" was purchased to replace my netbook, an original Acer Aspire One, with an 8GB Solid State Drive(SSD) and an 8.9" screen. There are a lot of things to like about the netbook form factor. The size alone makes it a wonderful device to easily carry around with you, and travel with. However, as is the case with many of the early netbooks, my Aspire One did not hold up as well as I would like. The SSD in the drive is notoriously slow, and that has caused running anything that needs to access the drive to just kill the performance of the machine. I originally wanted to purchase another netbook. However, after beginning to shop for a netbook the ones I was looking to purchase were in the $500-$600 range, and that would have been my second netbook purchase in about 14 months. Another primary reason to keep me away was that while the netbook form factor is great for traveling, the machines are really under powered. A netbook is fine for about 60% of the tasks I would do on it, but there have been several occasions over the past year that I have found myself wishing for my netbook to have more power, and more capability. This is not because it is not capable of handling every day tasks, but because I am a very heavy power user, and there are times when my netbook simply could not keep up.

I decided to expand my search for a notebook to a full size notebook computer, one in the 13" size range. In early June, Apple announced a new revision to their notebook line, the biggest change coming in their 13" notebooks. The all aluminum MacBook, known as the unibody MacBook, gained an SD card slot, Firewire, longer battery life, a backlit keyboard and joined the MacBook Pro line. All while dropping the price by a couple hundred dollars. After this announcement I began to take a hard look at the new 13" MacBook Pro, and after careful consideration, placed the oder for it.

Hardware

I will go so far as to say this is the most beautiful computer I have ever used. the unibody enclosure means that the laptop is made only of 3 pieces of aluminum, and the glass screen. It feels solid, and seems quite durable durable. I'm not going to test to see if it can take a 4 foot fall onto a sidewalk, but when I carry it around I don't feel like I'm carrying something made of glass.

Keyboard

The black keyboard is a nice contrast to the aluminum case

I have been a fan of MacBook keyboard style since it was first introduced in the white macbook in 2006. I actually use an apple keyboard with my windows desktop PC. The keyboard here is no different, and having the backlit keyboard is nice in when in the dark.

Trackpad

The trackpad is massive

Anyone who has used a trackpad on a windows PC knows how difficult it can be. they are usually small, and difficult to navigate. The trackpad on the unibody MacBook is nothing short of brilliant. It is by far the largest trackpad I have ever seen on a laptop, the glass surface makes it very smooth to the finger, and the multi touch capabilities are a joy to use. It did take some getting used to having the entire trackpad function as one large button, but after about a week of use I adjusted well. The controls, once you learn them are quite intuitive. One finger to left click, two fingers to right click. 1 finger to move the mouse pointer, 2 fingers to scroll a document. In supported applications, you can pinch to zoom as with the display on the iPhone and iPod Touch, 3 finger swipes can also allow you to go back and forward in the Safari web browser. Usually on a windows laptop I carry a mouse with me, and if the computer is on a desk, I'm using a mouse. For the first time ever on a laptop, I have had no desire at all to use a mouse, and that's saying something.

Ports

All of the connection ports live on the left site of the computer

All of the ports can be found on the left side of the MacBook pro. on the 13" you will find the MagSafe power, gigabit ethernet port, Firewire 800, mini DisplayPort, 2 USB ports, an SD card slot(for the first time ever on an Apple computer), and a line in/line out port. Note that there is no seperate microphone port here. If you want to use headphones and a microphone, you either have to use a USB set, or use the iPhone earbuds with a microphone. The mini DisplayPort, while actually being a standard, is not used on a lot of hardware yet, and requires an adapter to connect to almost every monitor. On the right side you will find the SuperDrive and the security lock slot. On the front is the IR port and the standby light.

Screen

Glossy much?

The screen on the MacBook Pro is beautiful. The LED backlight makes for even backlighting, and a very bright screen. The colours are vibrant, the black levels are good, and everything I have thrown at it looks very nice so far. The screen has an ambient light sensor and will automatically adjust based on how bright the room is.

Where i have run into problems, is the high gloss of the screen. I am a fan of glossy screens. I think that in general glossy screens look better, and provide a better experience. However, the screen on the MacBook Pro borders on being *too* glossy. Since I am a fan of glossy screens, the fact that I am even mentioning that I think the screen borders on too glossy means that it could likely be a big issue for some.

Battery

One thing about all of the unibody MacBook Pro's now is that the battery is no longer user replaceable. Apple's claims are that by eliminating the need for a seperate compartment for the battery, they have been able to increase the size, and capacity of the battery, by about 20%. The battery is also a Lithium Polymer, which Apple claims will last for 1000 recharges, which is more than double the 400-500 reated recharge cycles of the standard lithium ion batteries found in most other notebooks. This has been a very controversial feature of the new MacBook Pro. Many frequent travelers have two batteries for their laptops, and with the MacBook Pro, you cannot have a second battery to change out on the go. Now, for some, this is a deal breaker, but for the vast majority of people, this will not be an issue.

Apple claims up to 7 hours of battery life on the 13" MacBook Pro, and astonishingly, it is not that far off. with brightness set to between 30 and 50%, doing basic internet and word processing, the MacBook Pro gets almost bang on 7 hours. Naturally, as more intensive applications are used, battery life goes down. But you can expect well over 3 hours of watching a DVD, and about 4.5-5 hours of watching a video file stored on the hard drive.

Other features

The model I bought has the base processor, a Core 2 Duo running at 2.66GHz. I had 4GB of ram installed at the factory, up from the standard 2GB. I found a better deal on a 320GB hard drive than what Apple had to offer, so the first thing when I got it was took the stock 160GB hard drive out and put in a 320GB. The rest of the features are stock. It comes with a nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics chipset, which will not blow anyone away, but will be able to handle most day to day tasks well, and allows for light gaming. Spore, which is the only game I own that I can install on OS X, runs adequately on this computer.

Other hardware features include the iSight camera, and microphone. I have also noticed that due to the one piece construction of the body, the edge at the front of the keyboard feels a little sharp, and I've definitely noticed it while typing this review.

Software

Although this is my first Apple computer, I am by no means a rookie when it comes to OS X. I have used it many times in the past, and as I have stated I feel myself to be competent. After a couple of weeks of using OS X, I find myself very used to OS X. I will be updating the "My Stuff" section of this website with the common software I am using for OS X. Most of it has come from friend recommendations, and searching on Google when I need s specific kind of application. Overall, except for a few odd circumstances, transitioning from Windows applications to an equivalent in OS X has not been an issue.

One thing that I have done, however, is used virtualization technology which allows me to run Windows within OS X. There are a few applications for Windows which do not have an OS X equivalent, or are otherwise better for me to use on Windows. the product I use is VMWare Fusion. I run virtual, and legal, copes of Windows Vista, and Windows XP. I use Vista for the day to day tasks, and Windows XP is only installed to facilitate easier troubleshooting/helping for me. VMWare fusion allows me to run Windows applications, such as Microsoft's excellent OneNote note taking program, within OS X. This allows me to have the best of both worlds. I have OS X, but also the windows apps that I need. I will be posting a more in depth article about virtualization in a different article.

Conclusion

After 2 weeks of use, I am very, very impressed with the 13" MacBook Pro. It is a solid, very capable machine. It has it's quirks, and to own an Apple machine you have to be willing to accept those. But overall I am very happy with this purchase. I personally do not believe there is a better notebook computer, PC or Mac, in the price range of the MacBook Pro. There are some things that will be deal breakers for some. The screen is the biggest one. If you do not like glossy screens, you will not like the screen on the MacBook Pro. Even if you're indifferent, it is still a cause for concern. I highly recommend that if you are considering buying this computer, that you go look at it in a store first, to see how glossy the screen is. The lack of a user replaceable battery will also be deal breaker for some, although that subset is a much smaller audience. Overall, the MacBook Pro June 2009 revision comes highly recommended, as long as you are comfortable with using, and learing, OS X.

You can find more pictures of the MacBook Pro, including the unboxing, on my flickr page here.

Windows Vista failed, and you have no one to blame but yourself – Part 2

This is part 2 of my article about Windows Vista, and why it failed, and why it shouldn’t have.  For part one, click Here.

Author’s note:  Part 2 had originally been intended to be an article about what makes Windows Vista a good operating system. That will now be featured in part 3.

there were nearly 4.5 years between the release of Windows XP and Windows Vista.  That is an eternity in the world of technology, and because of that, many things had changed.  Windows Vista is very much a reflection of that change.

Many of the changes going from Windows XP to Windows Vista are very technical, things I will not get into in this article.  But suffice it to say, that except for the name, and the mostly familiar feel, they are very different operating systems.  Windows XP was created in the age before most people had high speed internet, before twitter, before Facebook, before Myspace.  Windows XP comes from a time before Social networking.  When XP came out, Google was not the biggest search engine in the world.  It sat at least behind AOL search.  Windows XP launched within a month of the very first iPod. In 2001, fewer than 50% of the people in North America owned a cell phone.  The 5 most popular pop music artists/groups in 2001 were, in order:  Destiny’s Child, Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, ‘N Sync, and the Backstreet Boys.  America went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq between releases.  As you can see, XP seems to come from an era of our past.

In the time between Windows XP and windows Vista, many things changed.  Computers became infinitely more powerful, and less expensive.  The internet became almost as common of a utility as having a phone line.  People used their computers in an entirely different way in 2006 than they did in 2001.

With those differences, came the challenges.  With the proliferation of the internet, so too came the proliferation of security vulnerabilities.  Windows XP was actually designed in the late 1990’s.  XP was built off of Windows 2000, which actually came out in late 1999.  Windows 2000 and XP, by design, let the user do whatever they may want without their computer without any difficulty.  The reason for this is that the largest concept of security in the late 90’s revolved around someone gaining physical access to a computer to compromise it, so less attention was paid to security.  As the internet grew, more and more computers were connected.  XP’s mentality of giving a user full access to everything on the system was it’s largest downfall.  This meant that it was very, very easy for a program downloaded from the internet to compromise a computer, because it could run even without the user knowing.  There were little to no safeguards.  Windows XP, the most stable Microsoft operating system at the time, was severely vulnerable to attacks from the internet.  And despite all of Microsoft’s best efforts, to this day, that is still true.  It is simply the way the operating system was designed.

In the internet age, it became clear that Windows had to change.  Many of the technologies at the core of Windows XP were actually first designed in the early 1990’s.  That simply would not cut it anymore.  A newer, safer, and more secure Windows was needed.  Windows Vista was the result of that.  Microsoft nearly re-wrote the entire operating system.  Many, many elements were changed.  Many of the things that were done in Windows Vista were brand new to Windows, represented a radical change for Microsoft in not only how Windows worked, but how the company made windows.

In many ways, Windows Vista is the operating system that was a proof of concept for many new things, and because of that suffered many growing pains.  In many years when we look back at Windows, we will see Windows Vista as the beginning of a new type of operating system for Microsoft, and the release that began the transition of Windows from an operating system built for a personal computer, and an operating system built for the internet connected person.

In part 3, I will discuss what Vista actually brings to the table that is better than XP, and how it is the foundation for the upcoming Windows 7.

What a Storm

Last saturday an absolutely wicked storm blew through the Edmonton area. It was truly one of the most damaging storms I have ever seen. It was matched only by the massive storm that caused flooding few years ago. And while there was little to no rotation in the clouds, to many, the storm reminded them of Black Friday, when a Tornado touched down in the city in 1987.

The Clouds were easily the darkest I have ever seen. I had a wonderful view of the storm. I was over at a friend's condo that night. He lives in the river valley on the 7th floor of a condo building. He has a beautiful view of the river valley from which we could see the storm. The lightning was intense, and the wind was fierce. On the 7th floor balcony it was quite intense. I could feel the wind pushing me. I could see large tree limbs being pushed across the parking lots like they were pieces of paper. The first front passed by quickly.

The second front, about 45 minutes later, was not quite as windy, but it brought the rain. Easily the hardest rain I have seen in years. It came down very hard, very fast, and very large drops. Even with the patio doors closed while we were inside, we could hear the rain. That lasted for about 30 minutes. We never lost power there, but the lights flickered numerous times. While I was driving home, large portions of my trip home were dark, and without power. When I got home, it was obvious that the power had been out, probably for about 3 hours, and had just recently come on.

I did not take any really good pictures, however, many edmontonians did. Linked is the photo gallery from iNews880 of the damage that was done. Thousands of trees were destroyed, buildings damaged, the pictures really are amazing.

Once again, Twitter played a large role in this storm. There were many, many tweets during, and after the storm, pictures being relayed in real time, and first hand accounts being displayed in real time, as it was happening. This allowed coverage of the storm that simply would not have happened in the past, and is truly amazing. Also linked is Mack Male's blog where he talks more in depth about social media than I would. It's a must read.

[Read] - iNews880

[Read] - Mack Male's blog

Windows Vista failed, and you have no one to blame but yourself

As Microsoft prepares Windows 7 for release this October, I wanted to take a look back at Windows Vista. Windows Vista is the most stable, most secure, and has the most innovations of any operating system Microsoft has ever made. It is also their second biggest failure(the ill conceived Windows ME holds that distinction). The launch of Windows Vista was a Marketing disaster for Microsoft, and for the next year, it continued to receive bad PR. There are several reasons for this, some of which can be blamed on Microsoft, but the majority of which cannot. Instead of focusing on those points, I am going to focus on the complaints that I have heard over the years about Vista.

1. My Printer, scanner, or [insert other piece of hardware here] doesn't work in Vista.

This is, in my opinion, one of the top 2 reasons why people complained about Windows Vista. This, however, is something that is only partially Microsof's fault. Now, without getting too technical, the reason why this happened is that Microsoft changed the architecture for drivers in Windows. Now, a driver is essentially the software that allows your windows to work with the printer, scanner, mouse, iPod, anything. What this meant, was that for a lot of peripherals, the manufacturer, not Microsoft, was responsible for creating that driver. What many companies, printer companies especially, decided to do was not create those drivers for older printers. This was a business decision designed to get consumers to buy a new device.

The overall question though, is that is this a good thing? Again, without getting too technical, the changes that Microsoft made in the way drivers need to work were good changes. They unfortunately come with growing pains. Now, 2.5 years after Windows Vista launched, everything works just fine with it. And Windows 7 uses the same, improved driver model, so essentially everything that works with Windows Vista will also work with Windows 7.

The third party companies that make the hardware are the ones that are responsible for not supporting Windows Vista. Now, I fully admit that for them to support Windows Vista for devices that were, in some cases, 6-7 years old would have cost them a lot of money. They would have to allocate people and resources to create drivers for printers that no one in the company had supported for years. The return on investment for doing that likely would have been too small to justify the cost. However, that did not change the fact that when the average consumer bought a new computer with Windows Vista, and their printer did not work, they were un happy.

Overall, I'm going to call this a draw. Microsoft and the third parties were both justified in their decisions, and in the end, it did affect the customer. An unpleasant, but necessary growing pain for Windows.

2. Vista runs very slowly on my 4 year old computer, or the $800 computer I just bought runs vista very slowly

This issue has largely disappeared recently. Back in 2006, the consumer world had grown accustomed to a $700-$800 PC running Windows XP well. However, in early 2007, when Vista became available to consumers, windows XP was over 5 years old. even low end PC hardware in 2006 was significantly more powerful than what was a high end computer in 2001. Unfortunately, the consumer has been conditioned that they should be able to buy a computer for $700, and have it run well. In 2006, that was simply not the case, nor should it be. Windows Vista is a modern, advanced operating system that offered numerous improvements over XP. That's not to say it was perfect. It does have problems, even today. But to expect an new operating system to run on either hardware that was 4-5 years old, or on a computer made as cheaply as possible, is not fair to Microsoft.

Both of these reasons are the main contributors as to why Windows Vista received such a bad reputation at launch. There are other reasons, such as Apple's relentless ads against them, the emergence of netbooks, which Windows Vista does not run well on, and many businesses not moving to Vista. In part 2 of this article, I will discuss why people should be using Vista, and why it is so good.

My Stuff updated

For those of you who haven’t looked, I have a “My Stuff” page where I list the hardware and the software I use on an every day basis.  I updated it a bit today.  I plan on posting reviews or hands on impressions with some of my newer stuff in the coming days/weeks, but in the mean time, you can at least see what I do.  Look above this article on the website for “My Stuff”