The Mac went back!

Hello, I'm a PC.
I wanted to be a Mac -- and I tried -- I really, really tried.

But it didn't work out.

My MacBook Pro went on eBay -- along with all of the nice accessories I'd purchased for it.
Why you might ask? We'll I'll tell you... let me preface -- for any Apple fanboy that might find this -- this is not intended to be a scentific endeavour. Just one guy's experience the Mac.

The Background
I received my MacBook Pro in late October 2008.

Here are the specs:
- 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 4GB 1066Mz DDR3 SDRM-2x2GB
- 250GB Serial ATA @ 7200
- SuperDrive 8X DL
- iWork '08 Preinstalled

Price paid: $2.326.00

I later ordered a number of accessories, including:
- Apple Wireless Might Mouse: $70.00
- Griffin Elevator Laptop Stand: $39.95
- Apple Wireless Keyboard: $79.00
- Apple LED Cinema Display: $899.00

The Bad:

Mac design is overrated

I found two glaring issues with my MacBook Pro design:

First, the lack of an SD card slot

Even my POS corporate-assigned laptop has an SD card slot! And now that I see an SD card slot is included in newer MacBooks, it is clear to me that Apple was simply late to market on this feature.

Secondy, lousy USB support

1. There are only two USB ports.

Again, my POS corporate-assigned laptop has 4. Admittedly,

my new personal laptop, an HP Pavilion dv3t (see below) also

only has 2, but it qualifies as an ultraportable, the MacBook Pro does not.

2. The USB ports are too close together.

It is almost impossible to have two devices 
plugged in simultaneously:

Only the lowest profile USB sticks could be plugged in next to, for example, an iPod charging cable. In the example above, you see a Lexar JumpDrive wedged in next to a iPod charging cable. If either item is jostled, you run the risk of losing the connection. It is almost as if Apple begrudgingly included USB support at all (c'mon, the USB / Firewire wars are over!)

I understand the beautiful one piece aluminum case is great, but how could Apple not get these basics correct?

It would seem to me they get a bit too much of a "free pass" from the technical press.

The Apple software stack doesn't always know best

iTunes is a bloated slug on PC

Fortunately, iTunes is much better on the Mac, so I did use it as my music player. Nonetheless, just like on the PC, all of your music metadata (including rating) is stored in iTunes proprietary database.

By contrast, on the PC, I used Windows Media Player -- and spent a considerable amount of time tweaking my ID3 tags and assigning ratings to my music files in order to be able to create dynamic playlists of my "favorite" tracks easily. Since Windows Media Player wrote the ID3 tags and the ratings to the file itself, it persisted through PC rebuilds and I was able to copy the the tracks to other computers (and still have my ratings).

No such luck with iTunes. Now the rating metadata is admittedly non-standard, so I didn't expect iTunes to pick up my WMP ratings. But it doesn't even write iTunes-based ratings to the files. And iTunes didn't always write the standard ID3 tags to my files, either.

iPhoto is a no-no

I didn't use iPhoto at all. I didn't like where it moved my photos, but more importantly, it didn't store the photo metadata I created in the photo file itself. Therefore, all of my important photo data is wrapped up in iPhoto's proprietary database. So if I were to upload my photos to Flickr, share them with someone on e-mail or move to a PC, the metadata would be unavailable!

On the PC, I had been a Google Picasa user -- by comparison to iPhoto, a tremendously transparent piece of software: It manages your photos where they live, not requiring you to move them (or move them for you). And all of the metadata you create about a photo (captions, tags, etc.) is stored in the photo file itself according to widely accepted standards such as IPTC and XMP.

Google ultimately released a version of Picasa for the Mac. I was ecstatic and began using it immediately. But it wasn't until I returned to the PC that I realized how far behind the Mac version of Picasa drags behind it's PC cousin. 
When I loaded the latest PC version of Picasa on my new HP Pavilion Laptop and it accurately indexed people's faces across my entire photo collection, I once again felt like I had been bamboozled by the Mac software stack.


The not-so-Mighty Mouse
I found the Bluetooth wireless Mighty Mouse a flimsy, plastic piece of junk. Every time I popped the battery cover, it felt like it would break. It's wireless performance was atrocious. More on that below..

Poor Wireless network performance (at home)

I have run a pretty standard Linksys-based 802.11g network for many years now. Apparently Macs don't like Linksys. Or 802.11g. Or my house? I don't know!  But Macs consistently had "start-stop" problems with the wireless network.  The wireless conneciton would appear to "stall" for a few seconds and then pick up again.

First, my brother complained when he was here about the wireless performance.  At the time, I had a horrible Verizon DSL 1.5Mb DSL line in place.  I didn't experience the same connection problems with my corporate Windows XP-based laptop.  And my own Mac was typically plugged into a  wired connection in my office.

Later, I upgraded the Internet access to 6Mbps Comcast cable modem service.  And I streamlined the wireless access points, giving both the same SSID.  My Mac continued to behave squirrelly when on wireless.  My Windows-based laptops did not experience any problems.


Poor Bluetooth performance (mostly mouse)

I had a couple of problems with Bluetooth on the Mac:

The tracking on my wireless Mighty Mouse was adequate when the mouse was placed next to  the laptop.  

But when I placed the laptop on its home on my desk (on top of a laptop stand) -- now a few feet, rather than a few inches from the mouse -- tracking performance became unbearable.  

I later tried other Bluetooth mice (ironically, a Microsoft-branded mouse) -- performance was slightly better, but still not acceptable.  I ultimately ended up using a wireless USB mouse when I worked from my desk.  My Bluetooth keyboard fared better, though.  With the exception of the occasional reset, Mac Bluetooth wireless keyboard worked just fine.

Quirky behavior over the network

I've had a Netgear (Infrant) ReadyNAS for many years.  This thing is the center of my home network -- all photos, videos, documents and files are either accessed directly from it or backed up to it regularly.  

With the Mac, I elected to leave all of the photos on the network and access via Picasa through a file share.  I'd enabled CIFS networking on the ReadyNAS (for the previous years of Windows-based use).  I realize CIFS is a Microsoft standard... but it is fairly ubiquitous.  

The Mac frequently dropped connections to the ReadyNAS, requiring numerous resets of Picasa's folder tracking.  Also, in browsing folders through the Finder, the Mac was incapable of memorizing my settings (for example, display photos as thumbnails, sort alphabetically).  

Other Hardware Failures
My USB and Bluetooth performance seemed to get worse over time.  The LED Cinema display relies on a USB connection to play sound from the Mac... this failed regularly and had to be reset by removing the USB connection and plugging it back in.

Ultimately, I brought my Mac into an Apple Store and a fault was found on one of the boards.  The Mac was left at the Apple store for repairs.  It was subsequently shipped to Texas where it was repaired and returned to me in two days.  My data was completely unharmed.  This was excellent service.  
Nonetheless, I was disappointed that a laptop that almost cost $2500 would have such a fault.  For years, the argument I heard against cheaper, but comparably equipped PC laptops (by Dell, for example) was they used sub-standard parts and therefore failed more often.  
I will also note that by the time the hardware fault was found, I had already decided to move on from the Mac.

Other Annoyances

Spotlight sucks

I swear Spotlight would randomize the search results it returned. If I typed a contact's first name (such as "Jay"), I would get the matching contacts returned in a different order (and some contacts not found at all)!

Also, if you did not move your mouse/pointer directly downwards on a Spotlight list, you lost it (the list disappeared). Now I'm not new to the mouse. I used the first Mac ever and have used a mouse on PC since Windows 3.0, so I consider this behavior to be a bit squirrelly.

Insufficient Office Replacement

I ordered iWork along with my Mac -- if I was going Mac, I was going to go all the way! I was once again disappointed. They're not terrible apps, but I use Microsoft Office all day long at the office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). I have used these apps in every job I have EVER had. Today, in Office apps, I know a gazillion tricks, back doors, etc. Why would I want to re-learn those skills to work with Apple's office suite? Other than beautiful templates for various document types, none of the iWork applications provided anything ground-breaking, so they gathered dust on my hard drive.  I found myself launching VMWare Fusion to use my old Office apps whenever I had to do something important.

The "Device Removal" warning

Now this is just plain annoying. 
How could anyone say it is intuitive to drag USB drives (or cameras, etc.) to the trash receptacle before removing from the computer?!?
This isn't a problem on a PC, why would it be a problem on the Mac?

Photo by respres.


My New World (much like my old world)

I am now the happy owner of an HP Pavilion dv3t laptop. 
I love this laptop -- my wife and I each have one. I fully loaded mine and configured my wife's very nicely.  


The total price for both laptops together was $2496.03 -- about $150 more than the single MacBook Pro.

Now Windows Vista is not all roses.  Upon logging into the new laptops I was immediately reminded of one the things I hated most about Windows -- the constant patching! A little research indicated HP's build for these laptops was created in February of 2009, so I had almost 8 months of patches to apply on each computer! Yech!

What I'll Miss About My Mac

Video. I must admit I'm a bit afraid to begin working with video on my PC. Once I understood how to ingest video using iMovie from my Canon HDCam, it was incredibly easy to create simple clips. My Canon included some video editing software, but I imagine I'll have to invest in something additional here -- perhaps Adobe Premier Elements.

Garage Band. I know it's a simple program, but it got my creative juices flowing. I recalled being a teenager and hours spent programming loops with a sequencer to create quality backing tracks to play guitar to. With Garage Band, I could set up great sounding loops in minutes and jam away on the guitar. I haven't even begun my research on replacing this on the PC.

The webcam. The webcam in the MacBook Pro blows away the webcam in my HP Pavilion. The Mac webcam could do 30fps -- and do it well. The HP craps out at 10fps!!! Silly, really. I picked up a Microsoft HD Lifecam for $80. This is a fantastic camera -- actually better than the built-in MacBook Pro webcam... but it, of course, isn't integrated.

The Multi-Touch Trackpad. I generally hate all pointing devices on all laptops -- especially trackpads and that pointer thing that IBM uses. I carry a small, USB mouse for almost all laptop use. But the Mac TrackPad was extremely usable. I could get by using it without an outboard mouse quite happily.

LED Monitor. The matching LED monitor for the MacBook pro is to die for. It is truly an amazing display. I'm the kind of guy that typically cranks brightness to max on display devices -- and would still find myself wanting more. The Mac LED was actually TOO bright and I tuned it down unless I needed tremendous brightness for a task. And the picture was beautiful and crystal clear. The integration between the monitor and the MacBook Pro is also very slick -- with just a few tethered cables.  My new HP LCD isn't nearly as nice. Then again, the Mac LED cost $900, my HP LCD cost $270!  
Nonetheless, if I could have kept the Apple LED to work with my new HP, I would have -- but Apple makes that impossible with the reliance on the Mini DisplayPort adapter (not yet used anywhere but in Apple products).

Footnote

The Mac and all accessories went on eBay in December of 2009.  Including all of the accessories listed above -- and an extended warranty I added at the last minute -- I had spent almost $4,000 on my Mac and its accessories over the past 14 months.  


The package sold for $2,435.  I had hoped for a little bit more, but in the end, I was only $60 away from covering the price of the two new HP laptops.  


I have since added additional accessories, including an HP 2509m full HD widescreen LCD monitor and a Microsoft wireless keyboard & mouse.  Next, I will try upgrading my HP dv3t to Windows 7.  So far, so good!