Last week, I received my MacBook Pro (running OS X Leopard) and have ‘enjoyed’ setting it up over the past few days. Below are my initial thoughts, both positive and negative:

• iTunes is more tolerable than I thought it would be. Whilst it did frustrate me initially by copying all my music, I managed to find the setting which stops it copying all music into the iTunes music folder (preferences>advanced>detick ‘Copy files to iTunes music folder…’)
• The Apple remote is amazing for productivity. I can continue typing/clicking but skip through a song. I wish more non-Apple applications, such as VLC, supported it though.
• My major frustration is with Boot Camp. Unless I format it with the Windows installer (and not Boot Camp Assistant) I get Disk error. Press any key to restart and in fact pressing any key besides the power button renders no effect. Then, when i format it with the Windows installer (as either FAT or NTFS) it says that hal.dll is missing. If anyone could tell me how to fix this I would be eternally grateful! Oh, and I can’t get into recovery console as I’m using a streamlined OEM version of XP Home.
• Parallels Desktop is great… at least for everything besides 3D graphics. It doesn’t support DirectX 9.0 and consequently most 3D games won’t work. I find it laggy even trying to handle the pre-2000 Theme Hospital! It does integrate remarkably well with OS X, though, and I’ve set Publisher files to open in MS Office Publisher through Parallels.
• I’m extremely challenged when it comes down to choosing a graphics program. For several years, I’ve been a PSP guy but the main OS X graphics program seems to be Photoshop. I dislike the idea of paying several hundred pounds for a licence and decided to give Seashore a shot which to be honest I’m very disappointed with… and The Gimp 2.0 doesn’t like my MacBook Pro much!
• Time Machine is great - really great - but is fairly demanding on disk space having used nearly 50GB on my external partition… and that’s after excluding folders like Movies!
• I’m also very impressed with the degree in which Adium, Mail and the Address Book integrate. The OS X address book is so far beyond Windows’ Address Book I’m amazed. I’m actually using my Mac Address Book whilst I didn’t ever bother with the Windows one!
• iDVD is very impressive and puts Nero 7.0 to shame. It did, however, take several hours to encode a 100 minute long film.
• I’m fairy disappointed with the DVD drive. The lack of a hardware eject button makes some situations hell and I find OS X is very fussy with optical media. Roxio Toast refused to write much onto some dual-layer DVDs I bought from eBuyer.
• Mac games are very expensive! Sims 2 for Mac costs about £30 whilst the PC version costs £10… hence my desperation to get Boot Camp functioning!
• Installing software is splendidly easy… twice as easy as installing software in Windows and infinite easier than under Linux.
• Skype seems buggy, refusing to open on the first boot after its installation (resulting in many reinstallations of it).
• Stacks and Exposè are awesome!
• I love the compose key (⌥)which allows me to easily add accented letters and other foreign/obscure characters. Ubuntu had a similar feature and both are about equally as efficient.
• The ambient keyboard provides hours of endless fun by covering up the sensors and watching the keyboard light up. The sensors are in the speakers
• Despite what most people say, Firefox runs smoothly
• Transmission is the coolest torrent client ever… beating μTorrent by far!
• Photobooth is cool too. I like the ‘flash’ it generates by making the screen go white for a short burst of time!
• The ease to add podcasts into iTunes has finally got me listening/watching them!
• Mail produces a lot of false positives for spam.

If someone could help me with my Boot Camp problem and my DVD writer one I would be REALLY grateful. Just comment or email me at computerjoe@gmail.com .

Tags: apple, os x, leopard