I finally pulled the trigger on getting a new laptop (haven't bought one for myself for about 10 years, all since then have been work provided). After agonizing and reevaluating and weighing options for about four months I finally decided on one of the new MacBook Pro 15"s.
I'm going to blog stream-of-consciousness on my impressions. First my background: My parents bought a Mac back when they first came out, and I grew up playing with it. I got myself a PC as soon as I could afford one (early in high school, I think) and ran a BBS, programmed PASCAL, etc. on it. I grew to dislike the Mac because it wasn't really something you tinkered with, and all the fun stuff was happening on the PC or the Commodore 64 or my brother's Amiga.
In college I went hardcore into the whole UNIX thing, and played around with Linux pre-1.0 kernel.
My first job out of college was at Quark, working on Quark Publishing System. I arrived there my first day and was informed I was a Mac programmer. Although I became quite good at using them, I grew to hate them as only a programmer back in those days could.
Alrighty, so, first the anticipation. I left work early and was absolutely giddy picking it up. I haven't looked forward to opening a toy this much in a long time. The packaging was very well done and solid, pulling it apart was like unwrapping a present. Very few components, which I think is genius. A couple cables, a small book, and the laptop. That's it. I don't feel like a packaging warehouse threw up in my office.
Booting it took a little longer than I expected, but once it got going... It makes the Windows OOBE experience look like a pile of puke someone has taken a little spritzer can of water to, to make it look shinier. Holy crap.
I'm at the Welcome screen, and it has: To begin, select the country or region you're in, then click Continue. And it only shows 6 countries, with a Show All check box. So much better than the standard Exhaustive List By Default.
The Wireless screen is similarly useful yet minimal. It just shows you the list of networks it finds (and Other Network), and asks for a Password. That said it did a horrible job with my very complex WSA2 key, and I had to join a WEP network first.
Can I skip the Apple ID/Registration crap? I don't see how to avoid it, even though it says on the screen that "The warranty for your Apple product does not require you to register the product." I can't find a way around this. Is Apple trying to piss me off?
Everything was incredible with the setup until they started pushing their services and registration and didn't give me a way out. Now I feel sleezed.
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