But I did just buy my first one. After a lifetime spent mastering windows, I never had a desire for a mac, and the fact that all the cool kids were getting them, made one even less desirable.
But lately I’ve wanted to get into some iphone development, and a mac is required. Also, I’ve really needed to purchase a new laptop. I’ve been using my work laptop as a personal computer for years, but it always feels borrowed.
So, given that the new intel based macs do a great job of running windows as well, I swallowed my pride and bought a macbook pro.

Now, I’m not going to get all fanboy about this. They do have a great aesthetic and its a pretty tight user experience, but in reality, as much as Vista has been bashed, the UI experiences aren’t that far apart. This isn’t some mystical new experience in computing. But I’ll save final judgment until I’ve really used it for awhile.

The first thing I really like about it, is that the terminal is a bash shell, no crappy ms-dos prompt. Plus 100 for the mac. The other thing I really love is that it seems to run MUCH cooler than my Dell, which would be burning up my lap in about an hour (yes I use a laptop on my lap).
But for all the talk about how great the design and UI is, I find that I don’t like the fact that every application looks like iTunes. It just gives it this rigid cold feeling, where every single app has to comply with the “apple way”. No individuals in this world.
I’m having a hard time adjusting to the command key vs ctrl on windows. Also, Apple provides a Control key as well, but I don’t know what it does. So far I use it just to control-click the track pad to enable “right-click” type features. Also, the mac keyboard has the “fn” key where the ctrl key is on windows, so I’m constantly hitting that by mistake. And I don’t like the key spacing on cut/paste which is cmd-c/cmd-v. I’m just so used to doing with my pinky and index finger on windows, the cmd and c/v keys are too close together. So I just have to get used to that I guess.
But my biggest beef is the menu bar. I’m not used to looking to the top of the screen to see the application controls, I expect them to be at the top of the application’s window. So I find myself constantly clicking around and application, trying to find a menu I’m looking for, until I final remember, “oh yeah, it’s up there”.
I’m not bashing it though, just the initial perspective of new user, coming from an alternate system.
We’ll see how it goes.

BTW – This mac does not make me cool. I was cool long before it kids.

-HB