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May 24, 2006
macbook
so i got my new macbook today, and yes, this is sda-related, because i intend to process content as well as upload it using the new machine.
first of all, the pictures:
my first impressions:
May 24 09:45:20 jbg ok, here we go
May 24 09:45:23 jbg macbook coming out of box
May 24 09:45:28 SABERinPSYCHE go go go
May 24 09:45:36 jbg the box is extremely small
May 24 09:45:46 jbg like you think of a backpack's inside
May 24 09:48:16 jbg pics definitely going in blog
May 24 09:48:27 jbg this puppy is going to be producing runs, not just distributing them so
May 24 09:48:29 jbg it's appropriate :P
May 24 09:49:05 jbg and there it is
May 24 09:49:29 jbg feels smaller than my old one
May 24 09:49:39 jbg maybe 60-70% of the weight
May 24 09:50:45 jbg the battery has a full charge
May 24 09:50:47 SABERinPSYCHE thought you said "60-70% of my weight"
May 24 09:50:55 SABERinPSYCHE that's class
May 24 09:50:57 jbg the polycarbonate of the case is like a mirror
May 24 09:51:02 jbg like you think of the back of an ipod
May 24 09:51:16 SABERinPSYCHE hah
May 24 09:51:23 jbg it feels indestructible
May 24 09:51:23 SABERinPSYCHE mine was used
May 24 09:51:33 jbg but i guess we'll see about that won't we
May 24 09:51:44 SABERinPSYCHE looks like the Tails side of Two Face's coin
May 24 09:51:51 jbg ;-[
May 24 09:52:33 jbg keyboard feels almost identical to the old one (good)
May 24 09:53:02 jbg magnetic latch is excellent
May 24 09:53:24 jbg camera ran out of batteries ... oh well
May 24 09:53:42 jbg the feet are indeed part of the case
May 24 09:53:46 jbg time to boot up
May 24 09:53:50 SABERinPSYCHE yeah now how does that work
May 24 09:53:52 SABERinPSYCHE the latch
May 24 09:53:55 SABERinPSYCHE is it strong?
May 24 09:54:07 jbg the apple logo has appeared before the startup chime completed
May 24 09:54:23 jbg the machine is silent from a normal working distance
May 24 09:54:29 jbg i can't hear that the hard drive is there
May 24 09:54:38 jbg yeah it's quite strong
May 24 09:54:42 jbg won't come open accidentally
May 24 09:54:48 jbg have to jam your fingers in there and pull
May 24 09:55:06 jbg the machine feels small to me
May 24 09:55:15 jbg the screen aspect ratio is obvious
May 24 09:55:38 jbg language selection screen
May 24 09:55:49 jbg the computer just said "english" out loud
May 24 09:56:38 jbg english, japanese, french, german, spanish, italian, portuguese, dutch, swedish, danish, norwegian, finnish, simplified and traditional chinese, korean
May 24 09:57:16 jbg i just realized i didn't realize the screen is glossy ... good
May 24 09:59:16 Jimmy what's your blog?
May 24 09:59:43 Jimmy oh, incidentally, check out the 5th and final design for my website: http://www.exmembersof.com/
May 24 09:59:57 jbg i like how the trackpad is wide like the screen
May 24 10:00:03 jbg http://nate.metroid2002.com/blog
May 24 10:00:27 jbg looks sweet man
May 24 10:00:29 jbg good choice of color
May 24 10:01:44 jbg ah the command key on the right side of the spacebar is back
May 24 10:01:51 SABERinPSYCHE ugh
May 24 10:02:04 Jimmy do you use wordpress for your blog?
May 24 10:02:09 SABERinPSYCHE I mean I guess for versatility it's a good design call, but I'd never use that
May 24 10:02:17 SABERinPSYCHE meh on wordpress
May 24 10:02:28 SABERinPSYCHE it's good but cutenews just owns it
May 24 10:02:43 Jimmy well, I programmed my own database/php system
May 24 10:02:49 Jimmy I was just asking :P
May 24 10:02:56 Jimmy and what's wrong with my design?
May 24 10:02:56 jbg mt
May 24 10:03:34 SABERinPSYCHE no no
May 24 10:03:47 SABERinPSYCHE the cmd key being on the right side of the spacebar on nate's macbook
May 24 10:03:51 Jimmy oh
May 24 10:03:53 Jimmy :)
May 24 10:04:01 SABERinPSYCHE yeah yours looks fine
May 24 10:04:16 Jimmy I don't think I've _ever_ used the right command key
May 24 10:05:15 jbg it's for mac stuff like command period
May 24 10:05:30 jbg command comma etc
May 24 10:06:28 jbg i haven't noticed any dead pixels
May 24 10:06:48 jbg hahaha the snapshot it took of me is hilarious
May 24 10:06:50 jbg fakest of fake smiles
May 24 10:07:26 jbg go .mac ad
May 24 10:08:10 jbg haha
May 24 10:08:36 jbg ah and there's software update ;-[
May 24 10:08:53 jbg the smell is overwhelming
May 24 10:09:41 jbg easy to remember mac id
May 24 10:09:43 jbg on the wireless
May 24 10:10:53 jbg spotlight is much, much faster than on here
May 24 10:11:13 jbg hah you know i never thought of a name for it
May 24 10:11:58 jbg trackpad scrolling works great
May 24 10:12:02 jbg something i might actually use looks like
May 24 10:14:25 jbg 16.77 gig used, 54.44 gig available
May 24 10:14:33 jbg er oops that's the capacity sorry
May 24 10:14:39 jbg 38.68 gig available
May 24 10:14:45 jbg i got the smallest drive because it's so easy to upgrade ;-[
May 24 10:15:48 jbg the speakers are invisible
May 24 10:16:38 * inate (camera@reality.org) has joined
May 24 10:16:38 * Alizee sets modes [+oa inate inate]
May 24 10:16:56 inate the screen is very bright and clear ... i can read this even with my glasses on sitting from a normal distance
May 24 10:17:08 Jimmy all that video stuff is gibberish to me :\
May 24 10:17:18 inate heh yeah i get really technical
May 24 10:17:22 inate i'll post pics tonight
May 24 10:17:28 inate and then there can be something for you :P
May 24 10:17:40 Jimmy heh
May 24 10:17:50 inate i don't know why i'm running software update if i have to repartition to put doze on here
May 24 10:18:00 * inate goes to download bootcamp
May 24 10:18:23 inate applications open instantly
May 24 10:18:27 inate this is really bizarre
May 24 10:18:33 inate laptops are supposed to suck
May 24 10:18:43 Jimmy heh
May 24 10:19:07 inate safari reminds me of firefox on v5
May 24 10:19:16 inate which is good
May 24 10:20:29 inate Thank you for your interest in features of the next version of Mac OS X, Leopard. Donb
May 24 10:20:36 inate urg ircii
May 24 10:25:05 inate gmail works much better
May 24 10:28:33 inate insane
May 24 10:28:40 inate it says the existing mac os x partition remains intact
May 24 10:30:46 inate brb
May 24 10:34:55 * Jimmy awtches some muppet show before bed
May 24 10:34:59 Jimmy night guys
May 24 10:38:16 * Jimmy has quit (Connection reset by peer)
May 24 11:02:48 * inate has quit (Quit: Leaving)
May 24 11:14:46 jbg the magsafe power connector is genius
May 24 11:14:51 jbg i didn't realize that it's actually held in by the magnets
May 24 11:15:02 jbg so you can just kind of tug it and it comes "off"
May 24 11:15:03 jbg not "out"
May 24 11:15:26 jbg i guess what i mean is it's held on by the magnets
May 24 11:15:33 jbg like if you stick two magnets together
May 24 11:15:38 jbg that's what the power connector is like
May 24 11:16:16 jbg so this is how they solved the power adapter problems
May 24 11:23:17 * SABERinPSYCHE does the Protoman whistle
May 24 11:23:49 jbg :P
and finally, specs: 13" display, intel 2.0 ghz core duo cpu, 2x256 megs of ram (machine's achilles heel right now), dvd±rw (4x ±r write) optical drive, 60 gb 5400 rpm sata hard drive, white color.
Posted by njahnke at May 24, 2006 10:49 PM
Comments
omfg!!!!! o_O
this is just awesome *mewants*...
you lucky one.
Posted by: Michael Pölzl at May 25, 2006 4:57 AM
I'll have something for ya by the time you're done moving, I'm drooling now!
Posted by: MatrixTN at May 25, 2006 4:58 AM
I cannot wait to get mine.....
Posted by: Ifrit at May 25, 2006 10:14 PM
Congrats!
>> machine's achilles heel right now
That, and the graphics card :) I read on Apple's website it comes with 256x2 memory sticks, so how many memory slots are there? I thought there were 2, forcing you to replace the existing ones if you want to add more.
>> laptops are supposed to suck
Not really anymore, but they are still weaker at I/O due to their hard drives. That's the only significant difference remaining.
>> it says the existing mac os x partition remains intact
Are you talking about boot camp? How did that work? I mean, it has to create a partition for Windows, right? So it resizes (shrinks) the OSX one? And you must choose how much space to reserve for each one...? bad thing considering you'll be using as much as you can get your hands on :)
Out of curiosity, how do you (plan to) use it for encoding? Networked, sharing the files and encoding from the network? Or with external drives...? It's going to be rather fast, the CPU is very good :)
Posted by: - at May 26, 2006 8:38 PM
well, i don't care about the graphics, because i don't play pc games. the machine is almost totally unusable right now because of the lack of memory. itunes is such a ram hog and so if i have it open, things just grind to a halt. i'll be replacing one of the 256s with a 1 gig stick that i ordered here either tomorrow or monday, and then that will stop that. i've heard various things about not matching the chips, but most people who seem to know what they're talking about say that matching them has no perceptible benefit.
and yeah, i was surprised that you can resize the os x partition without losing data. i guess i'm used to fdisk and crap in doze installers and dos where you can't do crap without deleting everything. i'm sure if i wanted to i could resize the os x partition back to the full disk too (if i didn't want windoze anymore for some reason). could resize it again and put another *nix on there too. really neat.
yeah, going to take the raw stuff off of dvd using avisynth. that way i don't mess with the hard drive bandwidth and don't have to worry about the "raw" (really mpeg-2 from dvd) using space on the disk. this will be only for times when i have to be at work for hours and there's a run on dvd waiting to be processed, or it's just statids need appended, or something like that. otherwise it will be v5 doing the work as before (go 500 gig raid).
Posted by: nate 
at May 26, 2006 11:10 PM
Well, resizing partitions certainly isn't new :) PartitionMagic did that, but it was dangerous for NTFS partitions. Now, there's http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html which rocks. A lot. What's strange is a tool like Boot Camp supporting it. Great job, Apple!
About paired memory, in the MacBook Pro it didn't make a difference at all. It was believed it'd make a bigger impact with integrated graphics, but "bigger impact" in memory performance usually means 2-3%. You can always put in another GB though :) But what I don't like (I was in a similar situation) is having to get rid of the 256 sticks. It was easy for me a year ago, but nobody would want them now.
What I don't "get" about the MacBooks is that they are using a 32-bit processor. With Intel's awesome 64-bit Conroe coming out this year, what does Apple have in mind? Three versions of MaxOSX?
Posted by: - at May 27, 2006 8:32 AM
yeah, i used partitionmagic some back in the late 90s and it worked good. like you say though, putting something like that for free in boot camp is along the lines of giving every mac user a great free mp3 encoder (in the os 9 days before lame was more portable) in the form of itunes, or maybe even more dramatic than that.
and the open source people can resize ntfs partitions now, but still can't write to them? too amusing.
yeah, that 2-3% is what other people have been telling me too. probably not perceptible, cool. hope the memory comes monday because i am dying here. really sick what trying to price their machines competitively has done to apple in terms of ram shortage, especially when they are fighting a pr battle about their machines being slow.
and i don't think 64-bit computing is really a big deal to apple because they don't think it is for their customers. i guess what i'm saying is, there is little competitive advantage to 64-bit right now. if it makes sense for apple to incorporate a 64-bit chip, then they'll update the software accordingly, but until then i think we're stuck with all 32-bit for a while (with intel anyway). my experiences with 64-bit windoze seem to corroborate that - i couldn't do anything in it because there were no drivers, and the only 64-bit optimized app i used is vdub, and even then it wasn't vdub actually doing any of the processing, it was divx or avisynth. so unless itunes or something just screams with 64-bit enhancements then i won't be disappointed at all in this machine.
Posted by: nate at May 27, 2006 2:35 PM
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