Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Live with the new Macbook Pro

I had a plan. I took a detour. I now own a Macbook Pro. (Macbook Pro 15″ 2.66GHz i7 with 4GB RAM)

First impressions:

  • Love the way it looks and feels
  • Keyboard is marvelous. Soft and yet gives really good feedback. The backlight works great as well
  • After initial reservation, I love the new trackpad. The smooth iphone like scrolling is just fantastic!
  • Not sure about the glossy screen. I end up turning up the brightness in order to see past the reflections
  • Battery life hasn’t been that impressive. Gives me about 4-5hrs I think. It hasn’t given me the “ph, wow! you still have some juice left” moment, yet.
  • Performance has been fine, again, don’t feel like there’s a big jump from the old Macbook Pro I was using. Don’t feel any difference in the app launch times, or data transfer. I haven’t run any CPU intensive apps yet though.
  • The base gets really heated sometimes. Way more than the older Macbook Pro. Especially on the left side. I hate this about laptops.

Macbook Pro 15" i7

When I say, I don’t feel a big difference what I mean is that although it might be a faster when you measure using a stop watch, but it doesn’t make me feel so. It’s too early to complain about it though. I should say, it hasn’t given me any kind of problems whatsoever. But, it definitely hasn’t made me feel like, lets say, how I felt when I first installed 2GB of memory after using 512MB, back in 2004.

Happy with it. Hope it can work as a desktop machine for my photo-editing needs when I need it to. Looking at my current plans and some new developments, that won’t happen anytime soon. I might be city hopping for a fair bit of this year – hence the decision to buy a laptop, instead of the iMac.

So, in reply to mi amigo, Roberto Mateu, this won’t change the initial plan to use specialized tools for specific tasks. The Macbook Pro is solving my new-big problem (a portable workstation), which is what a laptop is supposed to do. As for the iPad, lets see how this changes things and we’ll get back to that in a bit.

Apple makes me drink beer

After much deliberation, with fellow geeks and myself, I had decided that it is a good thing that the iPad will not be launching soon in Norway (or Singapore, where I’m moving to). This gave me time to decide wether I really need it (ofcourse, I am just trying to fool myself here). At the same time, it did not take long to figure out how exactly it would fit into my daily workflow. Yes, this is based on the intelligently worked out assumption*, that the iPad, will indeed work exactly the way I think it will. My current setup is something like this:

  1. 15” Macbook Pro: This is where I spend most of the time – work, emails, mindless browsing, rss consumption, development stuff and the occasional video editting.
  2. 13 “Macbook: This is basically my media center connected to the TV & acts as the home music system as well.
  3. iPhone: This spends most time with me – phone, alarm clock, twitter, rss, emails, calendar, camera, music. Basically the swiss knife in my pocket which provides when I ask for. (except for opening beer bottles)

The problem that I have started to see after it became obvious that iPad would solve all problems, is that my main machine, the Macbook pro is underpowered for things like post processing of photographs (which I have not been able to do at all, as every attempt to launch Lightroom leaves me feeling the laptop is literally going to take off and fly away to Cuba). Also, it gets too hot when I’m just lounging on the couch and I am a very paranoid sort of person when it comes to the future of my yet unborn children. And simply put, it’s too heavy to lug around, even within the confines of my living room estate. So, that covers the excuses problems, lets move on to the expenses solution.

My ingenious plan, for the perfect home setup is as follows:

  1. iMac: Post processing photographs, writing (updating blogs, personal stuff), web development, occasional video editting/graphics work
  2. 13” Macbook: Media Center
  3. iPad: Couch browsing (mail, facebook, twitter, RSS feeds), serious reading,
  4. iPhone: Stays the same loyal companion

wpid-homesetup.VWqoq6wdYM0x.jpg
So now, in the next 5 hours, one of two things will happen:

  1. I shall order the iPad and get frustrated waiting for it ..
  2. I shall not order the iPad and get frustrated debating the above scenario in my head again ..

I’m just glad Friday beer is just a day away .. I’ll need that beer in any case.

Update: In a twist of fate, the tax officer called last night. The case is closed until future inflow of funds … ( … warranting that beer even more now … )

Navjot Pawera (aka Nav)

UX, UI, Product design guy. These days, I'm working on creating new stuff at Bubble Motion. I am a silent partner at ExtraThought - a user experience design consultancy. I also curate the IXD Sessions in Singapore.

You should follow me on Twitter here.

Powered by Google
Archives RSS Feed