First MacBook Impressions

My new MacBook finally arrived yesterday. As expected, the packaging is very slick and organized, and getting everything up and running was a breeze.

The hardware is very well designed, everything is easily accessible. I find myself just holding and admiring this piece of technology. The magnetic MagSafe power connector allows you to just move the plug next to the connector and it would magnetically snap; very cool. The screen is bright and easy to read, not bad for a laptop LCD. And you barely notice the built in camera and microphone above the screen. Accessable and non intrusive.

I only have a couple of complaints with the hardware. The top surface of the laptop has sharp edges and can get quite uncomfortable when you have your hands rested on the keyboard while typing or using the touchpad; very frustraiting. The second issue is that it gets hot fast even when it's not using much CPU power. I haven't used a laptop for a while so maybe that's normal.

Now comes the software. The initial setup was straight forward with standard questions and procedures. It was all done and I was at the desktop in 10 - 15 minutes. Mac OSX is pretty and simple to use. So simple I think it's sort of shallow; there isn't much depth to it. It seems like it was designed for people who don't know much about computers. There isn't much to customize and configure compared to Windows. You can do what you can with other operating systems, but it seems like they want you to do it their way. I guess typical Apple businness model.

I've only used it for few hours yesterday and today. So maybe my opinion would change after a couple of weeks. But for now, I'll sum up my thoughts in few words. It's very cool and sexy on the outside, but once I started using it, I was a little disappointed.