Friday: First week with a MacBook Pro. |
14 April 2006 |
First week with a MacBook Pro.
When I bought the MacBook Pro I received it with 512MB of RAM and ordered a 512MB upgrade at the time. On Thursday I went back to Maccentric to pick up the RAM upgrade and instead of a 512MB (which seems to be very hard to get) I went for an extra 1GB instead. The machine was fast before the RAM upgrade but with all my multitasking I was consistently hitting the RAM limit and having applications swap out to disk which was a little annoying when switching from, say, Xcode to iTunes to NewsFire to Cyberduck to Safari and back to Xcode again! The extra 1GB really adds to the performance of the machine, nothing seems to swap out anymore and the RAM is usually half used. The new MacBook Pro with 1.5GB of RAM is very impressive.
My Dock is usually filled with active applications, and with the load in the Dock image above the Activity monitor shows a relatively large percentage of RAM as free (green).
Boot Camp and Windows XP.
I also installed Windows using Boot Camp. I installed this for 2 reasons: compiling for Windows and playing games. Boot Camp mean I don't have to upgrade my aging AMD box.
I played Half-Life 2 when it first came out on an IBM Thinkpad A31 with a Radeon 7500 with 32MB of video RAM, definitely a very low end games machine. Half-Life 2 played well enough at 640x480 and occasionally 800x600 with most special features turned off.
This is how I play it now on my MacBook Pro...
Amazing, I never thought I would be able to play Half-Life 2 at such a resolution, it has become a totally different game. Far Cry plays smooth at a resultion of 1280x768 with everything turned up.
Applications I still use.
Two years ago when I started my switch to Apple I also started a search for handy quality applications to help me do what I wanted to do.
Some of the Applications I started using in 2004 I am still using, here's a list of what I still use and what I don't, and sometimes also why.
Application |
Universal |
Still in use? |
| Cyberduck |
Yes |
Yes. It's a great, simple and often updated FTP client.
|
| NewsFire |
Yes |
Yes. Simple RSS reader that does what I want (NetNewsWire is more complicated).
|
| Pathfinder |
Yes |
Sometimes. The intel binary is great and fast, but not being able to make it a Finder window replacement is what stops me from using it a lot, currently in demo, I did buy version 3, waiting a bit before buying the upgrade.
|
| Taco HTML Edit |
Yes |
No. Just started using TextWrangler and my own templates for HTML editing.
|
| TextWrangler |
Yes |
Yes, free and has some (though flawed) column selecting abilities.
|
| SubEthaEdit |
Yes |
No. TextWrangler took over as my editor of choice when it became free.
|
| Adium |
Yes |
Yes. I use it for all my chat needs, originally used iChat.
|
| OmniOutliner |
Yes |
Yes. I didn't see the point of this app at first, but after using it occasionally it has now become a daily program for organisation and even design(!!!). I purchased the Professional version about 6 month ago.
|
| iPhoto |
Yes |
Yes. The only app we use for photo organisation, not editing. Originally I found it lacking in features, but it's great for what it is meant to do: photo organisation.
|
| Graphic Converter |
Yes |
No. Well, not anymore since the MacBook Pro did not come with a Graphic Convertor license. Big shame.
|
| Automator |
Yes |
Yes. This wasn't around when we first switched but it has certainly become one of the favourites! See our Image Colour Metadata action.
|
| Firefox |
Yes |
Sometimes. Safari is my main browser, I use Firefox as a secondary, but mainly to check that my HTML looks right in it. If you want a more "Mac" firefox look at Camino (The Camino icon looks like on of the alien ships from the first game I worked on).
|
| Opera |
No |
Rarely, only to check my HTML. It's also not a very Mac looking application.
|
| Temperature Monitor |
Yes. |
No. Since I got the MacBook Pro Temperature MOnitor only monitors the harddrive temperature, making it almost useless. I originally started using this to keep a watch on my Powerbook G4's temperatures - it got hot!
|
| iStumbler |
Yes |
Sometimes. I use this only when I am in a strange location and am trying to figure out which of the numerous wirelss network I should use!
|
| BitTorrent |
No |
Sometimes. This is how I downloaded episodes from Star Trek New Voyages!
|
| VLC |
Yes |
Yes. Often plays better then Apple's Quicktime and DVD Player.
|
| Minuteur |
No. |
Sometimes. This is a great eggtimer program.
|
Other Apple Applications in use are Xcode, iTunes, Safari, Mail, Terminal, Activity Monitor, Address Book, PacketLogger (Bluetooth), Calculator, Preview, iCal and of course Spotlight.
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