I have completed my first full week using my brand new 15” MacBookPro. I participated in my first major “Black Friday” purchase and bought (among other things) my beautiful new laptop. I wanted to write a post about the experience and what I thought on the weekend I got it, but I thought it would be better to wait until after the “honeymoon” phase of people in the Apple Store high-fiving me (which did happen by the way) and that intoxicating scent of an aluminum unibody (which now has an ever so slight scent of hot sauce and pizza) wore off.

Some things that I value the most about this machine are the little touches. The fact that the iSight camera is behind the glass makes cleaning worry free, the little light-up battery life indicator on the side is very useful when the laptop is on its side in my backpack, and the backlit keyboard is a gift from heaven. The most notable thing about the laptop for me (beyond the internal hardware specs) is the battery. The battery is amazing. I love that I can put my machine to sleep and wake it back up all throughout the day for word processing and web-surfing and not have to plug-in once.

This is definitely the most sturdy and well-built laptop I have ever used. The aluminum unibody gives the whole laptop such a classy touch. The wide spaces to rest your palms on each side of the trackpad make typing for long periods of time less painful. O yeah… the trackpad. When I bought this machine I was positive the trackpad was going to be my biggest complaint. The trackpad has changed the way that I use my computer entirely. The gestures are incredible. My favorite gesture is easily Expose’s, or as my friends and I like to call it, “FOUR FINGER DOOWN!” The trackpad makes all the difference. And when I use a laptop without that kind of trackpad; I know I will be hopelessly swiping my fingers across it to try to switch between applications to no avail.

But enough about the machine itself, the real fun part is what I did in OS X. Oddly enough, when I opened the laptop for the first time Leopard 10.5.7 was installed instead of Snow Leopard. However there was an included Snow Leopard disk so I just popped it in and Snow Leopard installed in about 40 minutes.

I was nervous that some of my favorite 3rd party apps wouldn’t work in Snow Leopard. So far the only thing that I can’t seem to get working is a plugin called Safari140 that gives support for link posting to twitter within Safari. Snow Leopard is definitely worth the upgrade. The slight changes and improvements of the GUI really make OS X better. Snow Leopard is now 64bit instead of Leopard being 32bit. If you don’t know what that technically means, know this: it’s a lot faster. It recognizes more than 4GBs of RAM and 64bit apps operate much quicker and more effectively. You can also use 64bit versions of Windows in Bootcamp which improves the Windows experience considerably. The Snow Leopard install will also free up to about 6GBs of space on your hardrive, which is really nice. I recommend running Monolingual. It is an app that will remove all the extra language packs that you will never use (unless you are fluent in multiple languages) and it ends up freeing about 2GBs of space.

There are several 3rd party apps I can’t live without on my new machine (all of which run in 64bit mode) : Quicksilver, Adium (don’t use it without visiting the xtras page too), Skype, Transmission, Cloud (it’s in private beta though, sorry :( ) and Tweetie. I recently stumbled on an app called Socialite. Socialite is meant to be an app to irrigate all of your social networks, but it has a Google RSS reader as well. It is fantastic. I turn off all the other features and just use the RSS reader.

If you’re like me, you’re into minimal workspaces and aesthetics. Frankly, the default OS X icons just don’t cut it for me. I use an app called Candybar to changed app icons, system icons, and dock for my system. The app has a sleek, intuitive, and easy to use look and feel to it. I get most of my icons from a site called Iconpaper. I like to have my icon’s color scale match my current desktop wallpaper. If you want some really nice, minimal, hi-res wallpapers- head over to SimpleDesktops.

So there ya go, a brief look at my new MacBookPro. Hope it was helpful and insightful.

Bassjump, subwoofer for your MacBook.

The most popularized reason for the disliking of the Apple community as a whole is the notion that it is overwhelmingly elitist and full of bigotry. In any type of community there are always the vocal few. Unfortunately, these overwhelmingly vocal few always seem to effect the opinion of a bystander looking in on the Apple ecosystem. The attitudes of these vocal few do not in any way reflect the entire Apple community, or even a majority of it. Windows users seem to commonly mistake an Apple fan’s love for their Mac as elitism and snobbery. Simply put, we just love our Macs.

One of the biggest problems with the Mac to a buyer is the pricing. The hardware is seen as a niche’ market (which it is) and overpriced, but that is because Apple Mac’s have quality beyond anything else in the market. The operating system, file system, graphical user interface, ease-of-use, beautiful craftsmanship, and durability make the Mac a top notch product that deserves a top notch price.

Another false fact that still seems to be etched into the Windows user’s mind is that the Mac is hard to learn to use. This could not be anything but farther than the truth. The Mac was designed with the idea of ease-of-use in mind, while Windows was designed as a filesystem with a focus on infrastructure. For the most part you will never hear of a Windows user switching to the Mac and having to go back to Windows because he could not learn how to use it. The genius behind Apple’s products is that they intuitively make sense. This comes from Apple’s main focus from the beginning of it’s conception- to make a computer that is fun and easy to use.

The biggest fault with Windows versus the Mac is Window’s need for constant user management to keep it maintained. The Mac is designed to be more self-reliant and not call for the user to have to know how to do things that someone without any computer experience does not know how to do. The constant need for security to be managed by the user through an anti-virus, the need to defragment the hardrive, and the need for filesystem and core fixes with weekly patches and updates makes Windows impose more on the common user than need should have it.

The Apple Magic Mouse is the world’s first Multi-Touch mouse—meaning, in addition to detecting left and right clicks, the device also accepts an array of finger gestures on it’s surface, for features like 360° scrolling, zooming, and page navigation. The new mouse works wirelessly with any Bluetooth-enabled computer and features a powerful laser-tracking engine. I personally found the previous wireless Mighty Mouse a disappointment—in tracking response and weight—here’s hoping this one delivers.

shutupinternet:

Steve Jobs said people don’t read any more. But Apple is talks with several media companies rooted in print, negotiating content for a “new device.” And they’re not just going for e-books and mags. They’re aiming to redefine print.

Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question of “what would people do with this?” couldn’t be answered, they shelved it. Long having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing houses across several media.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” (via Gizmodo)

hunsonisgroovy:

Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet (via Wired)

fiveoclockninja:

Mac Vs. PC: Mr Bean

(via starquant)

kevin:

minimalmac:

davidkaneda:

Make your Dock list view look like this with this quick terminal command (via usingmac.com):

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack

 -bool YES && killall Dock

Every kind of awesome.

davidkaneda:

ZipCar has released their iPhone app, which they demoed at WWDC in April:

Now Zipcar members can find and book a Zipcar, honk the horn, even lock and unlock the doors—all from their iPhone.

davidkaneda:

Geoff Teehan proposes a new iPhone home screen — “A scrollable screen of the stuff that matters to me.” (via tmblg)

If you’re an OS X user such as myself you most likely also LOVE the built-in e-mail client- Apple Mail.

I use Mail everyday and I couldn’t live without. I’ve tried Thunderbird, Eudora, and Outlook; Mail crushes them all. The app really lacks nearly nothing. However, I was thinking last week about how nice it would be if during the day while I’m causally on my machine; Mail could have a growl like notification window pop-up on my screen when I get a new e-mail.

I did a quick google search and I found my new favorite part of Mail- the plug-in Mail Appetizer.

This bundle (as the screenshot above shows) basically gives Mail access to display incoming e-mails and RSS feeds as growl-style notifications on your desktop. I think this little bundle is pretty robust and eloquent after using it for a few days, and I would definitely recommend you try it. It has built in options to mark the message as viewed, delete, etc…

• give Mail Appetizer a try

the incredible, amazing, awesome, great, and beautiful Apple Keynote