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Now, almost none of you guys know what I did two weeks ago: I bought a new machine for daily use. And while I pondered the opportunities back and forth, in the end the decision was pretty easy actually. I bought a MacBook.

I mean, try to find something as sturdy, well-built, feature thriving and good looking as the new MacBooks. You're going to fail .. miserably. At least in the price range we're talking about. And thats 1000 - 1100 Euros, considering the student discount I got from Apple's 'AOC' ("Apple On Campus") program. The version I bought comes with a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, way enough horsepower to do all the regular tasks (even compiling applications), 2GB of RAM (which sure isn't a standard today .. although it should be), 160GB of storage (which is well enough now that I own an external harddrive to keep all my por^h^h^hvaluable documents), a Geforce 9400M (whose performance is just plain out amazing), WIFI, Bluetooth, a 13.3" LED-backlid 1280x800 screen (it is glossy though), a pretty neat keyboard, an exceptional trackpad (Apple, you guys outdid yourself on that one), a "SuperDrive" slot-in-DVD-burner combo and of course MacOS 10.5.x, codenamed "Leopard".

I've been using the MacBook for over two weeks now and I felt like writing down what I thought as it might be of interest to other users, especially die hard PC fans (like I was .. before I bought this bundle of joy ;-) and anti-Apple fanatics. I'm not a strong Apple supporter. I've never been and I never will be. But credit is due where it is indeed deserved. So here we go:

• The Good:
  • The Trackpad: Okay, forget what you know about trackpads. Forget how easy they just get in your way or your intentions to disable them right away and use a separate mouse. Truth be told, I was thinking about buying a snazzy bluetooth mouse right after I bought the MacBook since I just couldn't stand the thought of having to deal with a trackpad on a daily basis. Boy, do I stand corrected after two weeks. Not only is the trackpad on the MacBook the best I've ever come across (and I've come across A LOT .. I still do every day; which makes appreciating the Apple trackpad even easier) it has become THE ONLY device I use to interact with my computer. Yes, I do no longer use a mouse. I only use the trackpad. And for me, who has been using mice ever since there were any (DOH Amiga!) that is a huge leap. The agility, responsiveness and overall feeling of the pad are straight out exceptional. It is like touching the screen directly with your fingertips. I guess the next step in trackpad evolution would actually be touching the windows with your fingertips. It has no buttons, yes .. but you don't need any. Just use two fingers to "right-click" on anything. Use three fingers to middle click. And of course, you can also swipe the pad in order to do a multitude of other things in different applications. All in all, its just outstanding.
  • The Screen: As I said: LED-backlight. 13.3 inches. 1280x800. And while I heard a couple of users demanding a higher resolution I have to say I'm perfectly okay with what I have. It makes for a pretty good combination. Everything is readable and well spaced. I wouldn't say the screen stands as far out from the competition as the trackpad does. But it does it's job very well and without annoyances with the exemption that it is glossy. Now, that might become a problem once the sunny days start kicking in in April .. right now, together with the light sensor ontop of the screen (why is there no other manufacturer offering the very same option? Its brilliant!) the screen brightness has always been well enough to read the screen at any given angle or lighting. Well done.
  • The Power-Adapter: I know, who would think about a power-adapter, come awn! But wait, Apple's MagSafe concept and the pretty good power utilization are standing out from the crowd. Integrated into the power outlet is a tiny magnet that clings to the MacBook whenever its plugged in. Now, should you trap over the cord at any given moment it releases without ever getting the chance of damaging any components or cables in the process. Remarkable idea and very well implemented. Also, there are two extendable latches at the power-adapter where you can wrap the cables around. Neat.
  • The UI: You gotta give it to Apple: MacOS X "Leopard" is outstandingly well built. The concepts behind it are straight out amazingly good implemented. Simplicity without letting your stand in the rain whenever an umbrella is needed I'd say. Just a short illustration of what I mean: Over the years I've met many different approaches to application launchers. Menus, bars, icons .. even shouting commands into a microphone. Apple's dock is a kinda of mixture between a couple of these concepts. While it does hold application launchers, it also serves as a taskbar, folder haven and autostart handler. Starting an application from the dock makes it's icon bounce until the application is started and a tiny glowing circle appears beneath it (which ultimately indicates: Hey, I'm done starting you can use me now). Right clicking any given icon on that dock and selecting 'Quit' is going to take away the glowing dot while obviously quitting the said application. At the same time you can also select 'Open at login' from the very same menu which (you guessed it) starts the given application whenever the system boots. In the system preferences there's also a menu where you can tell MacOS to start said application in the background so it doesn't clutter up your precious screen. And of course it serves as a notification area as well displaying new email counts or other useful data right next to the application icon.

    I discovered all this while skimming though the preferences and dialogs. Now, I am an apt learner and experienced computer user. But I got stuck while trying to figure out how to add new items to the dock or any other Finder (Finder is the equivalent of MS Explorer or Thunar if you will) related window. So I went online in need for an answer. I found it right away. And it pretty much made me slap my own forehead: All I had to do was to DRAG THE THING I wanted in place B from place A to place B. Documents, applications, folders .. you name it. Now, having to deal with literally decades of menus, preference dialogs, menu editors or even plain text configuration files sort of clouded my go for the imminent: Just do the simplest thing you are able do. So, from now on, whenever I came across a "problem" I was trying to sort out I just went and thought "Okay, what would you mother do?" (to be fair: My mother is pretty tech-savvy considering she is 65 years old and a woman. I mean, she is using Linux!). It hasn't led me wrong a single instance thus far.

    So overall: Yes, MacOS is shiny, it looks intriguingly good. But I hardly ever cared for looks .. I care about functionality. And so far it has proven to be straight out amazing in that department (except for the Window manager. Olivier, if you read this, your work, xfwm4, is straight out the best window manager around EVAR. Period.).

  • The Keyboard: Coming from an IBM Model-M any other keyboard feels like a toy. Something that you play with for a couple of minutes and then let it rest. I didn't expect the Apple keyboard on the MacBook to appear any different to my spoiled fingertips. On the contrary though: It has proven to be a viable alternative. Actually, I quit looking for a PS2-to-USB connector altogether (since I was planning on keeping my Model-M as a primary keyboard). I'm writing this article on the MacBook keyboard. It has a comfortable feedback, well spaced keys and lets you type at a pretty decent rate. It doesn't quite match the Model-M in every category .. but seriously, whose average mobile keyboard does? Overall, a pleasant surprise. The only downside really being that some keys are only accessible via Fn key-combination. But I guess that's what every notebook user has to deal with.
  • The Battery Life: It takes the MacBook approximately 3 seconds to wake up from sleep. I'm not kidding. 3 seconds and you're good to go. Its pretty astounding. And when you disable Bluetooth, WIFI and turn down the screen brightness (which is perfectly possible in a well-lid room) it can last over 6 hours while you're surfing the web or writing documents. Try that on a Windows or Linux driven notebook (with the same price tag attached to it!).
  • The Speakers: Formidable. Of course, they lack bass .. hugely, I'd have to add. But they're built right into the chassis. There are no holes in the computer's hull. Instead the hull itself is utilized for dishing out the noise. That's a brilliant idea and I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before
  • Installing applications: I've never heard anybody talking about installing or reinstalling applications on MacOS. Maybe because its so fucking easy. Basically, you're downloading self-contained packages whom you just drag into a certain "Applications" folder. Done. To remove said application and all its references (including file binding) just drag it from said application folder to the trash. Done. A concept as easy as it is brilliant.
• The Bad:
  • Mail.app/Thunderbird/Claws-Mail: Right now, I haven't found a suitable replacement for claws-mail on MacOS yet. Considering that Mail.app (Apple's approach to a mail client) misses pretty basic functionality such as 'Mark All Mail As Read' or 'SMTP only' accounts (is there any solution to this? I'd love to be able to just send email for a certain account!) its pretty plain and without the snazz I'm used to coming from claws-mail. Thunderbird does come with all the bells and whistles. But, its Thunderbird. It and me never got along quite well .. and we still don't. It just find it to be a horrible mail client producing frequent errors, timeouts and losing my email. Then there's claws-mail's port to MacOS .. which is basically claws-mail bundled with a barely working MacOS version of GTK+-2. And I mean barely. Focus settings are completely messed up, the colors are off and of course, there is no interface integration into Finder.
    So, right now I'm using Mail.app. But I'm still looking for alternatives since Apple is hardly going to care about my feedback.
  • iTunes, iChat, iWhatever: iTunes, Apple's success story over the past decade, has become THE application for playing, storing and buying music, video and numerous other stuff you can find on the net on MacOS (and for some users even on Windows). And while the interface is pretty decent and the playback quality is okay, format support is only mediocre. Seriously Apple, neither OGG nor FLAC support? I mean, they're both open formats. The specifications are freely available for anyone to lay hands on. Even more so, both developer communities have expressed and continue to express interest in adding their respected formats for the iTunes lineup .. even free of charge and under NDA! Whats the holdup?

    iChat is Apple's angle t'ward chatting on MacOS. Its neat, well integrated and even supports video chatting. But, DOH, only .mac, MobileMe, AIM and Jabber support? Come on. Yahoo has had its messenger out for quite some time now. And most people tend to use MSN Messenger as well these days given that Microsoft bundles it with Windows. And its not like you're an open source community which has to delve into binary code and reverse engineer protocol specifications in order to get protocol A or B implemented. iChat pretty much went down the drain in an instant and got replaced by Adium. Problem solved. And an flattering E- for Apple in this department.

  • Applications for money .. whaaaa?: Coming from Linux, I'm used to applications being one command line away, free of charge and with a decent, quality feature set. Obviously, that isn't the case with MacOS. Of course, there is Fink. But I was told its mostly for PPC based builds and hardly anyone cares about Intel-based Mac computers. I might be wrong on that though.
    But having to look for certain applications on the net is kind of frustrating as most of them also cost money. I haven't worked with Shareware for quite some time (actually, I think it was 1995) and now having to deal with it again is a downer. I did buy a VPN client for $6, which .. as the price suggests .. is dead cheap .. especially concerning the pretty good software quality. Sadly though, not every company, especially not Apple, sells in that very same price range.
  • QuickTime: Apple's own movie player comes at a steep price: The quality of its playback is mediocre at best. And its straight out losing (without even trying) to VLC or MPlayer in terms of quality, speed and reliability. I've read on the web that its in fact the worst software driven movie player out there. And so far, I tend to agree. I mean, even though its supposedly well integrated with Apple's architecture it doesn't even play X.264 encoded HD Matroska files properly .. a field where VLC doesn't even begin to sweat. Shame on you Apple. Where's all that HD and codec acceleration NVIDIA promises with its 9400 series GPU chipsets?
• The Ugly:
  • Filesystem support: You know, there is (or was. Amy Poehler is gone. Sniff) a segment on SNL's News called 'Really?! - With Seth and Amy' where Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers are ripping on the most ridiculous expressions and wrongdoings of the week be it from politicians, celebrities or sport stars alike. Apple's approach to filesystem support kind of reminds me of that segment:
    Really Apple? REALLY? No ext3 filesystem support? In fact, no read/write support for anything but HFS+? Poor NTFS read-only support? People having to use MacFuse in order to gain additonal support? FUCKING REALLY? Seriously, from my point of view there is absolutely NO excuse for not including at least the very basic of linux filesystems in the support lineup. I mean, as far as I understand it, MacOS is UNIX-based and thus perfectly capable of supporting a HUGE variety of filesystems. But no, MacOS only recognizes HFS+ or NTFS volumes. So I had to take my external harddrive to work, scrap all the data from it on our SAN, reformat it with NTFS (!!!) in order to get it supported properly under Linux and MacOS alike (I don't care much about Windows; HFS+ also is not an option since the Linux implementation for it is supposed to be even worse than the one for NTFS). Really, Apple. REALLY?! I just don't get it.
  • Apple's "convenient" Apple Care Protection Plan: Now, when I bought the MacBook the store clerk told me to get a so called "Warranty extension" for it since the regular warranty only lasted a year. So, to get things straight: You're saying your product is the best on the market. Its well built and surpasses any expectations laid in it. But you're not confident enough to hand it out with a warranty that goes at least two years?! Instead you're letting your customers pay EXTRA for an extension to something that should be the usual case with products that COST A FUCKING FORTUNE. I paid 209 Euros for said extension. I'm not sure whether I'll be needing it. But its comfortable to know that I'm covered for at least three years now. The price though remains outrageously high and unacceptable per se. BOH!
  • DRM and user data: Digital rights management is the cane people are forced on by an industry that criminalizes it's customers and users. I strongly oppose anything and anyone that supports it. Unfortunately, Apple is no exception. Although they mean to drop DRM from their iTunes sales they are far away from being committed to dropping DRM as a whole or even the idea behind it. On the contrary. Their continued investment in DRM and companies developing DRM technology has made the situation far worse than it was a couple of years ago (Trusted Computing anyone?). I cannot condone Apple's stand and I will strongly oppose anything Apple throws at me that is infested with DRM or any other "property protection". I'm not using iTunes .. and I won't. At least not for buying content.

    DRM, in the end, is also about user data. Without data of what the user does, what he plays or what he doesn't play, DRM ultimately is useless. Now, you can only get a faint understanding of how much data Apple actually gathers from what you do on your Mac. They're never going to let you look into their rabbit hole. Not in a world where user information is as valuable a market share as it is today. When I started this MacBook for the first time the first thing I had to do was to create an Apple Account. Why? How does that "improve" my user experience? What good does it give me? In the end, it only gives good to Apple.
    Whenever you do something on MacOS .. be it using "iDisk" or "MobileMe" .. or all the other web-based gadgets Apple has built into their operating system you should always consider that you're not the only one able to read through your contact lists, files and behavioral data. Apple is reading your email. Literally. And while that's hardly news in the 21st century (Good one Google), it still is disturbing with Apple making it so easy to give up anything about your identity .. even without you noticing most of the time. Be careful.

Now, I didn't mention a lot of stuff that is going through my mind. Things that are mostly on the verge between The Good and The Bad like the built-in camera or the microphone, the MacBook's resistance to scratches (no, I haven't tried) .. or even the two only USB ports (which, surprisingly, tends to be enough for me) or the mini-displayport connector (for whom you need to buy additional accessories in order for getting it to work with "regular" equipment). Then there is the pretty good yet not extraordinary sound output. In the end it boils down to a couple of simple questions:

Are you satisfied? Yes, absolutely. The MacBook is what I expected with loads of surprisingly good features. Obviously, there are a few downsides most of which I mentioned earlier. I'll try to keep this article updated about my findings.

Would you buy it again? Yes. As I said before, I do not regret having bought a MacBook. For that particular price it was the perfect choice.

Would you recommend it to anyone? Yes. Well. Not anyone. I wouldn't recommend it to my mom. She is so used to one UI concept .. she'd only get confused. Also, the really die hard UNIX freaks aren't served well. MacOS does have UNIX under the hood. But, for the good or worse, its hardly recognizable. Yes, there is a terminal and you can do all sorts of shenanigans with it .. but the feeling of having "lost control" somehow isn't going to abandon you. However, if you're a UI designer, a regular linux user or just a curious being .. Yes, go and give it a try. I know people tend to make fun of MacOS users and of Apple's design philosophy. But take this from a die hard linux user and developer of over 14 years: Its a refreshing new start.

Applications I'm using that aren't shipping with MacOS:

• uTorrent: Beta is out for MacOS. Its free and tiny compared to other clients. And it gets the job done amazingly well.
• Firefox: Ditching Safari was a no-brainer.
• Skype: Yes, Skype does come in MacOS-flavour. Its well integrated and easy to use.
• VLC: If you intend to play any kind of media content on MacOS VLC is going to be the first application you're going to install
• Adium: Adium is the quasi standard for chatting. iChat can barely suck it's balls.
• NetNewsWire: Basically, liferea on drugs and for MacOS. Its the RSS reader I've always been looking for under Linux
• The Unarchiver: The archiving application that comes with MacOS only knows a couple of formats. The Unarchiver brings in the rest .. including RAR!
• Viscosity: The best OpenVPN VPN client I could find. It comes with a very small price tag and is fully integrated into MacOS. Good software for a very fair price.
• Musorg: An ID tag editor. Supports all formats iTunes does not support. And it lets you get rid of the pesky comment marking iTunes leaves on all the files it touches.
• OpenOffice: iWork of MS Office come with a hefty price tag. No thank you. I'm running free.
• Vox: Exceptional music player. Tiny, well integrated and free!

Oh, and .. yes, I installed Linux the very first day I got the MacBook. Bootcamp made it pretty easy. But I haven't booted it ever since I installed it. Go figure ;-)

Cheers, Moritz