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Apple Notebooks...

M

monk3y

Lifer
I've been considering buying a laptop and I realized that I know nothing about apple notebooks. I was wondering if anyone that knows anything on the subject would be able to give me some info on either what's good about it and what's bad.
 
Just a tip, don't listen to mac bashers. Many of them just hate macs in general and will say crap like "apple sux0rz" without any concrete reason.
 
Second tip: Read Anands Mac Weblog and all the comments that go with it. It's a lot of stuff but very interesting!
 
You really have to define what your primary goal for the computer will be. If it's gaming, forget it. I bought gaming-quality laptops from Toshiba 2 years in a row (and they primarily succeeded). Recently, I got back into the building your own desktop scene, and am putting together a fairly decent gaming desktop. I bought a new iBook (my first ever Apple) to stem my mobile needs, and it's performed quite well.

I would never, ever recommend a Mac for gaming, but it has its strong points. Macs make for solid internet browsing and have great creativity tools. Recently, they added a solid UNIX feel to the mix. The fact that Apple released a version of X11 sold me. Clearly, they're moving beyond their creative roots to some genuinely powerful applications (do a Google search for Apple xGrid). I grew up on UNIX throughout school and college, and being able to bring up a bash prompt and still have a good GUI (something I can't say for other *NIXes) has warmed my heart.
 
the thing about laptops is the fact that you probably wont want to do much gaming on a laptop anyways when you can have a high performance desktop system for gaming with all the extra gadgets like a nice suround speaker system, things like joysticks gamepads, etc. With a laptop it would be kind of hard to be caring that stuff around with you 😉

Anyways this is my opion but I think it would be best to have a desktop system at home for gaming. then a laptop you can use for other stuff like browsing the web, all that good stuff.

Apple definately has an advantage in terms of your systems security because you dont have to worry about spyware and viruses like you do with windows.
 
I really don't plan to use the computer for games at all... I was pretty much wondering about apple/windows compatibility issues or anything else of that sort...
 
well...i'm so fed up with my tablet i'm actually considering this as well. so i'm interested in much the same things, though I suppose running MS Office on both my windows based systems and the mac wouldn't have any significant compatibility issues.
 
Originally posted by: thraxes
Second tip: Read Anands Mac Weblog and all the comments that go with it. It's a lot of stuff but very interesting!
Click to expand...


searched around and didn't see it. link please?
 
Originally posted by: Dark54555
Originally posted by: thraxes
Second tip: Read Anands Mac Weblog and all the comments that go with it. It's a lot of stuff but very interesting!
Click to expand...


searched around and didn't see it. link please?
Click to expand...

Here it is

Anand puts some pretty interesting stuff in there. Before I start with my comments, I should mention that I plan to buy a new 12" Powerbook (both iBook and PowerBook lines were recently updated) in the very near feature. It will be my first Mac.

Why a Mac? I just think Mac OSX.3 rocks. Plain and simple. I've been using on G5 PowerMacs in a cluster at my school, and its just an enjoyable and pleasurable thing to work with. Both for entertainment and work (using Safari, Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc). I haven't delved into development on it, but since I'm used to developing in Linux, the Command Line + Emacs functionality is right there since its a BSD system. The fact that I can break into the bash shell whenever I want is a big plus. And Expose is the greatest utility yet to manage desktop windows (and I've tried virtual and scrollable desktops on Linux WMs). Anand mentions it in a blog entry.

Why a 12" Powerbook? I first thought the screen would be too small, but Expose takes care of that. I just want a nice accompaniment to my Desktop PC (Windows + Linux dual boot) and I feel a laptop should be like a cellphone or PDA - dependable and closed. I really don't want to tinker with it (thats what my tower at home is for).

The biggest downfall is software support. Not only will you have to pay for all of it, but you probably won't be able to get some niche software. For example, I use Visio often, but M$ makes no such version for the Mac. That's the only big thing I'll miss.
 
I have a PowerBook and I love it. I believe Apple makes the best notebooks out there. I would not, however, buy the newest revision of any of Apple's products. They tend to have lots of flaws and need to be sent back for fixing. At least that is my experience.
 
I've tried one and found it nice to work with once I got used to the different layout. BUT!!!! There was some problems getting it to work with windows files and the other way around. It gave us some headaches, but I managed to solve it. So just be prepared for some difficulties when moveing files from MAC to PC:
 
one thing that stop me from going to mac is the sony pda don't really support it. i will avoid all the hassles to find a way syncing it with my pda. it does works, but not smooth as with pc. the new Clie Organizer won't work with mac at all.
 
For example, I use Visio often, but M$ makes no such version for the Mac. That's the only big thing I'll miss.

The consensus is that OmniGraffle owns for diagramming. Free demo.
 
Originally posted by: DaWhim
one thing that stop me from going to mac is the sony pda don't really support it. i will avoid all the hassles to find a way syncing it with my pda. it does works, but not smooth as with pc. the new Clie Organizer won't work with mac at all.
Click to expand...

If you haven't already checkout Missing Sync. You'd think Palm and Apple would get together to provide a seamless PDA experience because of a large powerful competitor that have in common.
 
What do you mean by that?
Click to expand...

I largely concur. Expose is a super utility that minimizes all of your open windows to the desktop, but does it in such a way that you can still identify them. A little hard to explain, but once you use it a few times you will be hooked.

The advantage on a 12" powerbook is that even with that small screen, Expose makes it easy to have *many* windows open at once. In my case I just hit F9, everything shrinks and I can find the one I want. I now really miss it when I work on my PC.

I adore my 12" PB, my first Mac. It's a pleasure to use and I have had virtually no problems with migrating files back and forth.

fraz
 
There is just one major Problem that I see when I move to an Apple laptop sometime in the next 2 weeks (only just ordered mine 10 minutes ago - yaaay! 😀). I do video editing and I could see it being advantageuos doing some editing on the Apple if the need presents itself. Problem: Massive files that have to be transfered back and forth. I have an external HDD which i use for this and it is formatted in NTFS. OS-X can read NTFS volumes but can't write to them (in fact, OSx uses the same NTFS drivers that Linux does).

The only other way to write back finished projects would be to connect the Apple with Firewire to the PC (400MB/s) and send them over to the HDD that way.
 
if all you need to do is use word, view text webpages, and use apple-made programs, and you like paying double for the same speed, then they are a good choice.
 
Originally posted by: addragyn
Originally posted by: DaWhim
one thing that stop me from going to mac is the sony pda don't really support it. i will avoid all the hassles to find a way syncing it with my pda. it does works, but not smooth as with pc. the new Clie Organizer won't work with mac at all.
Click to expand...

If you haven't already checkout Missing Sync. You'd think Palm and Apple would get together to provide a seamless PDA experience because of a large powerful competitor that have in common.
Click to expand...

I have heard of the missing sync that will solve the problem. However, not with the clie organizer. it doesn't support with mac yet.
 
Originally posted by: thomsbrain
if all you need to do is use word, view text webpages, and use apple-made programs, and you like paying double for the same speed, then they are a good choice.
Click to expand...

Where can you find a 15" that is 1.1 inch thick, <6 lbs, ATI 9700 128, DVD burner, FW 400/800, 512 SDRAM, and backlit keyboard cheaper than $2600; it's even cheaper with with EDU discount. Just to add, I do not think a pc laptop can match the configuration or price of the PB 15"
 
get a 15" powerbook. you get the widescreen, without going to the oversized 17- which is way cool, but just too big to really be portable. spend the extra $100 to upgrade the hard drive and vid card, and youre good to go. if youre upgrading the ram, remember that apple charges obscene amounts for it, and that its usually better to get the cheapest ram option, and buy from someone else. also, one of the ram slots is marginally difficult to get to. youll get very good gaming, despite what others here have said, but dont expect performance anywhere near an a64 or a p4EE, since apples laptops are still using the 32 bit motorola g4, and will be for the foreseeable future.
 
Apple forums is a pretty good resource for information about Apple laptops. While it is (obviously) occupied mostly by Apple fans, I guess it doesn't hurt to get an idea of what kind of problems plague the Powerbooks/iBooks.

From personal experience, the Powerbook 12" is a little beauty. You definitely wouldn't be doing gaming on it but it's pretty good for mobility (although I've yet to play around with the IBM X series, so perhaps I shouldn't speak so quickly).

I didn't buy the Powerbook because it's perfect. If I wanted a "perfect" laptop that really suited my needs, I would've saved more for an IBM T41 (or I guess the T42... but patience only lasts so long!) just because it can probably better handle whatever I need to do with computers (casual gaming, maybe, and other things).

One thing about the 12" is that it's got some warpage issues because aluminum tends to expand at a different rate than plastic (I think? I guess that would make sense...). I don't know. I'm still reading up on that issue. From what I've read about other people's warpage problems, Applecare doesn't seem to care about that too much. Hopefully with the next revision comes better case structure. I don't know if there are warpage problems with the other Powerbook models.

As mentioned before, software tends to be a little more expensive. You can get a nice variety of open source software though. I think MS Office compatibility between Windows and Mac has been pretty good - but then again, I'm a very light user of MS Office so I wouldn't be able to comment on the more fancy things.

Expose is very cool.
 
Originally posted by: addragyn
Originally posted by: DaWhim
I have heard of the missing sync that will solve the problem. However, not with the clie organizer. it doesn't support with mac yet.
Click to expand...


That's the point of the program. To provide support for devices that didn't get it from the OEM.

Your TH55 is definitely on the list. It's the first line!

http://www.markspace.com/clie_devs.html
Click to expand...

missing the point here. clie organizer is the core application and selling point for TH55. the missing sync doesn't support it from what I heard. they may support it now, I don't know.
 
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