So… after waiting patiently for a long time — I finally upgraded to a new Macintosh just recently. I’m happy with it, but in a way it’s a bit anti-climatic. It should be noted that Ubuntu 7.1 looks awfully good running under VMWare.
After weeks and weeks and weeks of back-and-forth with myself trying to decide whether to go with an iMac or a Macintosh Pro — I went with the iMac. I had a perfectly good 20in. cinema display — but after pricing the iMac — and finally going with third-party ram — the price difference was too much to justify the Macintosh Pro to myself. I can’t emphasize enough how going with third-party RAM was the best decision I made in the whole deal. It was a $600+ savings to do that — and upgrading ram is something that even Uncle Milhouse can do.
Some off-the-top-of-the-head observations:
- The 24 inch monitor was HUGE at first. And now I’m used to it and never want to go back to a 20 inch monitor again.
- Time Machine is really, really convenient. Hope it works if I ever need it
- There’s a lot of little bugs I’ve noticed in 10.5.0 — nothing I really can describe well — mostly more funny than annoying
- VMWare fusion is not as user friendly as Parallels, but I like how VM’s seem to perform better under it
- It completely stunk that my Macintosh ordered on Nov. 1 and shipped on Nov. 3 came with Tiger — and I had to spend 2 hours upgrading it to Leopard. Oh well. Early adoption does that sometimes
- I like Safari 3. Firefox is still my default
- There’s lots of little improvements, X11 is improved, Console.app is improved. All my software seems to work. There’s problems with Quicken, but that’s my karmic punishment for using Quicken in the first place
- It should be noted that Ubuntu 7.1 looks awfully good running under VMWare. I may have mentioned this already
- Wireless coverage seems really good — I don’t use the wireless because of where it’s located, but man oh man do my neighbors have lots of access points that I can see — that I’ve never seen with the laptop (and I’m in a neighborhood where the smallest lots are half an acre)
It’ll be interesting to see where things are at 5 years from now. I don’t think this computer will last as long as the venerable dual-G4 did for me as a primary computer. But I can run Lightroom and do all my work, and keep all my software for now. I’m not sure that the next computer will be a Mac. I’m not sure that the next computer will be anything we consider a desktop/laptop today.
The best part of the story though is that when it shipped, I was at home and had put off walking the dog because of some deployment details for one of our applications that had to be fixed in the morning. So it’s mid-morning — and I finally go to walk the dog, thinking that there was no way FedEx would be coming yet — and also knowing that by thinking that, they’d be there. I couldn’t pre-sign for the shipment because the Apple Order Status site was down with all the details I failed to print out. So, I looked at dog and told him that it was his fault if we walked down the street and we missed the delivery (and the dog wagged his tail).
We got about a quarter mile down the neighborhood — just to the edge of where I could see our cul-de-sac, and sure enough, right at that edge — I hear a diesel engine and turn, figuring it was just a construction truck. Nope. FedEx. I haven’t run a Quarter Mile that fast in well, ever.
The dog thought it was fabulous. He hadn’t run that fast, in well, since the evening prior. Honestly, that was probably more fun than actually getting the computer.