Over the past 10 years, I have owned/used a dozen computers, but none were a mac. And, of course I always obsessed owning one, but refrained of having it as my primary computer due to lack of knowledge about Macs. The price of Apple computers didnt help it either. Anyway, now that I have one, I thought this deserved an entry in my blog since its one of the long-awaited things...
The Hardware:
The first impressions - The part where people fall in love with it - When you have an ugly grey-silver-black Dell 14" laptop in one hand and a sleek-aluminum-sexy 17" inch mac in the other, its a no contest. All my life, I never "cared" for any of my PCs (I used to run my first desktop without covers, any problem would be faced with an immediate reinstall, if I ran out of patience to shutdown I would just pull the plug, the keyboards couldnt face my wrath and would sometimes have some keys broken, and the list goes on...), but the moment I held this MacBook Pro, I had already given it a higher status in life - something say closer to my cherished possessions like bikes or my car. Of course, (emotionally) a computer would never come close to something more substantial (and materialistic) as engines or something, but you get the idea.
I suddenly felt proud having an aluminium laptop v/s a cheap plastic box, started walking straight as if I just graduated in style, held the mac slightly to the right so that the now-corrected apple logo on the screen cover is visible, the whole lot... As human beings go, I just felt I was in a better place than the 'normal' pc owners, thanks to the incessant mac ads and the decades of hype created by generations of mac aficionados.
I came back home, threw my Dell aside (since I still had to copy some stuff from that to the new one), and then laid my hands on the mac... Before I turned it on, I think I spent a good hour just observing the design, finish and the style with which this mac is built. It felt as if genuine people who really cared about building something memorable, something nice, something that reminds you of how far in human evolution we have come across to reach this phase, have put all their time on it to make the best they can.
After just gazing and running my fingers along the edge of the laptop to find a single imperfection (which I failed), I pressed the door-open button (now idea what you call that). The dell laptop was simple to open - A big-ass, shiny, fake-steel latch on a plastic door, which always reminded me on the slightly-torn apart lavatory door in my grandma's house in the 80s - I had to use brute force to lock the door or else it wouldnt lock the door completely and would surprise you when you are having a happy time (I mean, it was really a "happy" moment per-say, compared to the later years). Anyway, the point is that the latch made me feel that it was a product done by someone who was quitting Dell that week, and this one felt like it was designed by the husband of runway model who, instead of going home early to his beautiful wife, stayed the night at work and designed the button.
The next 15 mins or so was spent on how on earth the door "locked" when we close the laptop. If any of you do get a chance to hold a Macbook Pro, please skip reading this paragraph and go to your laptop and figure out how this works. There are 2 thin rectangular slots on the base, and 2 more slots on the screen that align with the slots on the base. And yet, when you close the screen, there's zero freeplay. Its like the difference between closing the door of an ambassador (or a Lada), v/s that of a well-made Mercedes (Of course not the ones made during '95-'05). I was genuinely stumped on how the laptop held so well when there was nothing mechanical holding the two... I knew the electric power chord was magnetic, and my initial thoughts were that this was somehow magnetic as well. But I tried bringing some other metallic object and nothing happened. Moreover to hold something like the screen, you would need an awfully powerful magnet. And, opening with a button didnt make sense. Anyway, after close observation, I figured that 2 metal latches deploy at the nth moment before closing the screen and they get retracted the moment you try to open your laptop. Does this strike any resemblance? May be wheels on an airplane? Simple genius. I wonder who was the person who came up with this(and what would be the pinup on his bedroom wall)!? I could probably go another paragraph on how great this idea is and how complicated it is (because giving the intelligence for a door latch to understand when its closing and opening is quite a complicated one - given that the screen almost occupies the entire width of the door).
Anyway, I was now confirmed that this belongs to a better place. Every single piece on a mac defines class. It defines style. It defined imagination. They way the hard drives increased the rpm sounded like an airplane take off (although I dont know if it was because there was some problem with it), the way the keyboard was laid out, the perfect edges on the keyboard bay and elsewhere, the auto-backlit keboard, the integrated video camera, the well crafted power button, the wide single button touchpad, the unassuming cd slot, the flat underside (immediately compares to an F1 flat underside that is designed in a wind tunnel to keep the drag to the minimum) - the whole lot.
Anyway, the point is I nick pick a lot and I generally manage to find something faulty in everything. This one, however, seemed perfect. At least so far.
Software:
This was the first time I ever used a mac. After 10 years of constant Windows, I felt I was institutionalized. Of course I have used Linux throughout as well, but not as a personal computer. I do remember the crazy dual boot days, when I used to spend a few days trying to fiddle with /etc/fstab to mount a simple cd or an external hard drive. Totally not worth it.
So, with Windows as benchmark and no-knowledge of mac whatsoever, I started browsing. Again, the graphics and the way the apps and windows are laid out and move about, makes you feel they are much closer to the real life than in windows.
I know I still have to 'break in' using a Mac, but from the past few days' experience, I did feel it isnt as divine as people claim it to be. Comparing it to an iPhone, this software somehow fails to bowl me over. When the first iPhone came out, I thought it was the most sensational product the Apple has ever come across... iPod might have resurrected Apple, but it was really nothing more than an mp3 player in a pretty frock. I felt the iPhone was as big a leap for smartphones as
Miura was for supercars or the Trinity for the Carnatic music.
It didnt take me long before I realized there were quite a few very annoying things in the mac. For starters, the login prompt - For apparently no reason, I get the login prompt, and it wouldnt allow me to login from then. It doesnt throw any error, nor does it log me back in. It just disables everything and then only thing I have to do from then on, is to shut my laptop and open it again. By then the "AirPort" wireless will have died and I will have to restart any work that I was unforeseen-ly paused. If I'm watching a video online, I will have to reload the video from beginning. And then Safari - How can Safari become *completely* unusable in a mac!! Its not like IE crashing in Windows where it will be okay when you restart it. Safari would just hang everytime you try to start it. Later I found out it was some stupid preference file that I had to move to trash. Good that I had Firefox as well.
And then, general usability - Windows keyboard has more keys than a mac and obviously they have tried to stick to their usual philosophy of less is more. But I dont understand why they
have tried to cut down on separate keys for home, end, pg up/down etc., In Windows (or Linux), it is very simple - You have a key specific for a purpose. And, you have "Ctrl" to extend its functionality. So, you use the right cursor to move a letter to the right, Ctrl
+Right key to move to the end of the word. You have End to move to the end of the line, Ctrl+End to move to the end of the page. You have click to open a link, -click to open in a new tab. So, everytime you want to extend some functionality, just use Ctrl. Its not so in the Mac.
Similarly, Alt in Windows always takes to Window level activities. I'm so confused in the Mac - with Ctrl, Option, Alt, and the Apple keys, its very hard to get the right key without thinking or getting used to it. I also hate the way they have done away with the right click. I have to use track pad and the Click to do that. Why? And the battery power sucks. I think there's some problem with my battery pack (max 1 hour!), but still the claimed ~2 hours is puny compared to my old 4.5 hour Dell.
I think its like the Lamborghini of the olden days - It needs an Audi to put some sensible things into it and yet preserve all its beauty. All this reminds me of yet another Jeremy Clarkson's videos/philosophies - that "for something to be called as an 'art', it can have no purpose other than itself". This macbook sometimes feels that way. I feel sometimes they have tried to oversimplify things. Or over-complicate in some other situations. May be my thinking is still Windows-like. May be I'm still breaking in.
