So I got out this past weekend and toyed around with the black macbook. I must say, the Apple glossy isn't as horrid as the HP/Toshiba/Dell glossy. In the well-lit store it wasn't obnoxious like soooo many other 'glossy' monitors.

The keyboard wasn't half bad either. Decent feel and nice spacing despite the awkward look to it. My biggest beef continues to be the touchpad. Now, I'm not a fan of them to begin with but the better ones can be liveable. The mac, however... grrrr.. why, OH WHY MR. JOBS in the FREAKING YEAR of 2007 can I NOT TAP THE PAD TO SIGNIFY A CLICK?!! Seriously, I thought these damn things are supposed to be easy? Let me click on the touchpad dammit!!

I think my MacBook dream is all but dead. I got my "work" T60 loaded up with Vista Business, Office Pro, CS2 Std, Opera, and stuffed my Gadget sidebar full of goodies. Also pulling down Avid *shudders* FreeDV for giggles. Vista is really growing on me after I tweaked it a little.

I'll wait until I get my PowerMac in my office to dermine if a MacBook is worth the dough...

 

You can, you just need to change the preferences . . .

Also, you can do two finger scrolling on the track, vertical only or both horizontal and vertical. At first I thought "useless" but it turns out it's pretty cool. It's like having the "hand" icon in Photoshop to move the image around anywhere - up, down, sideways, at angle . . .

As for the tapping on the track pad to click . . . I never got that and don't understand why people like it. If you can tap on the pad it's no different than tapping on the button a whole 2 centimeters below that spot.

The thing that's dumb about the mac is one button. to right click you gotta hold down the option key while clicking. If you have a two or more button mouse Mac does support that, but their insistence on building one button mouse and one button laptop is just stupid.

 

Yeah, one button is lame, but the can't tap the pad is lame-er. Anything that makes me move my hands more then they have to off the keyboard is bad. Thus, the awesome-ness of the pointing stick. Heck, I can even give the pointing stick a quick tab on my Thinkpad to signify a click. It is the ultimate in efficiency.

I'll poke around the preferences with the dude's Powerbook at work. Why the hell isn't that on by default?!

The scrolly thing is cool.

 

Gonna depend on how old the powerbook is . . .

Two fingered "Scrolly Thing" started recently (I think on MacBook and MacBookPro) the trackpad tap uselessness started about half way thru the powerbook cycle if I'm not mistaken.

 

Hey D -

Here's the preference that shows you can "click" on the pad.



If I had checked "clicking" it would operate that way . . . you can also see other options for clicking there too.

I didn't know this till now, but below that is an option to do the secon button thing while holding two fingers on the pad and then clicking. (whiich beats holding down the "ctrl" key and clicking. I tried it and it works very nicely. Cool! An easier way to do the second button option.

So, go get that black MacBook and be cool like me.



:santa:

 

Hmmm, very interesting! Thanks for doing the legwork!

I will someday be cool like you Kobster... in the meantime I'm blissfully in Windoze-ville on my T60. It still needs to be de-stickered but this is how I roll...

 

*Dons a Vader mask, nods head, and in his best James Earl Jones voice sez*

I sense a level of sarcasm I have not detected since . . .

 

Nicely done....I'm impressed you knew the line...

 

Honestly I'm thinking about that 24" iMac for home. That might be hella cool.

 

I just built two comparable macbooks on their website and amazingly, the white one comparably equipped costs more than the black one. Of course the black one is so much sexier than the white one and is probably worth more because of that, but seriously... shouldn't they be the same price?

 

The black one should be more than the white one . . . not the other way around.

If you equipped the white one to match the base black one, the black one would be 50 bucks more. Why? Becuase it's the black one. It's 50 dollars cooler, that's why.

 

My mistake, I meant that the black one costs more than an equally equipped white one.

Two questions:

1GB ram or 2GB ram?

Get one now or wait til October for Leopard?

 

First, you can never have too much RAM. 2GB is a no-brainer.

Get it now, upgrade later. Otherwise you'll always be waiting for the next new thing...

 

do Mac mice still only have one button????

 

I went to my neighbors house to check out his new Macbook to see how easy it is to use. It is a lot different than Windows for sure.

Yes, the touchpad on the macbook only had one button.

I am still trying to decide if I should go for the largely unproven Vista in a new Windows machine, try to order a machine with XP, or order a new macbook.

Decisions, decisions...