Hey guys, guess where I’m typing this new post on!
17 May was the big day, my final exams started and when I came home, I was silently hoping that UPS would stop by to deliver my ordered MacBook Pro 13″ 2010, which I had ordered roughly two weeks earlier. And yes, they did!
The UPS guy brought me two packages:
- INCASE 13″ Neoprene MacBook Pro sleeve (gray)
- MacBook Pro 13″ box
So I immediately started unboxing the whole stuff as I had waited for it so long. I promised to make pictures but I don’t have a camera… (except for my Samsung U600 which doesn’t make good pics) When I get my hands on my dads cam I’ll make some pictures.
First impressions: this thing is awesome. You just open the box, take out the laptop and press the little power button on the right. You’ll hear some ‘zoooooom’ sounds, 15 seconds of booting and then the Setup Assistant starts up with a cool video. Within 10 minutes from unboxing I was already connected to WiFi. I am fairly new to OS X, Apple’s operating system, so it was all very exciting and stuff.
Things that you notice when you pickup the laptop is how solid it feels, there are no screws, removable parts or whatever on it. The display is a GORGEOUS glossy 13.3″ widescreen LED display (1280 x 800 native), the screen is really bright and colors look vivid thanks to the glossyness. Even the keyboard is backlit and automatically dims itself to the environment thanks to the built-in ambient light censor, which is next to the built in iSight webcam. On the left side of the notebook there’s a:
- MagSafe power connector where you connect the power cord to, it’s magnetic so when someone trips over the power cord, it just snaps out. Prevents getting your laptop pulled from teh table!
- Ethernet port
- Firewire 800 port
- Mini Display Port for connecting the laptop to an external display
- 2x USB 2.0
- SD card slot
- Audio in / out for connecting line in / headphones / external sound system
- A very cool button, when you push it, leds show up on the side of the notebook showing how much battery juice there is left
Right side is very sleek and only has:
- Slotloading DVD drive (burning + doublelayer) that Apple calls a ‘SuperDrive’
- Something for connecting a laptop lock to
The keyboard is, as I said, backlit and types awesome. I did some coding on it and was surprised by how pleasant this is. However, probably my favorite feature of this machine is the Trackpad. It’s a large glassy area below the keyboard, where you can put your finger on to move the mouse cursor, perform clicking and multi-touch gestures such as rotating, zooming, scrolling, swiping etc. Similar to the iPhone / iPod touch. Cool thing: when you put four fingers on the Trackpad and swipe up, you go to desktop. Swipe back, and the windows restore to their position. Very handy!
When you close the lid of the laptop, the illuminated Apple logo on the top fades out, and when you put the notebook in SleepMode (it wakes really fast by the way!), a small other led flashes on the side of the laptop. That’s awesome!
Then, OS X. Probably the main reason that made me buy this notebook. This OS is epic, it’s based on UNIX (FreeBSD), so it has alot of similarities. It looks gorgeous GUI-wise, with sparkling icons, animations etc. It’s also very easy in use, for example, installing/removing apps is as simple as downloading it, dragging the icon to the ‘Applications’ folder on the Dock = app installed! Removing an app = drag it’s icon to the trashcan and it will remove it + associated data.
This laptop is really snappy by the way, it feels snappier than my Windows 7 desktop (freshly installed), which is odd, as my desktop is obviously better-specced.
Main things that make me love this notebook so much:
- Mac OS X, I really start to love this operating system. It’s so seamless and snappy and easy to use, everything explains itself lol
- The display, it’s really shiny, vivid & bright. In combination with OS X’s Spaces + Expose (swipe @ trackpad), you have virtually unlimited space for windows etc. When I need more screen estate (Photoshop?) -> hook it up to external display
- Trackpad, I haven’t connected a mouse so far and I doubt that I’ll need/want it!
- Battery, I’ve been using it all over the house with all kinds of stuff (videos/word processing/ playing Portal in Steam) and it lasts me like 6 hours on one single charge. I think that most energy was consumed because of me playing Portal lol
- The hardware. The notebook just looks so sexy with it’s aluminium and illuminated Apple logo, sleek solid industrial design, black bezel around the screen and backlit keyboard, Sleep indicator, battery status button and so on <3
Guys, I REALLY love this thing. I haven’t touched my Windows PC since Monday haha. I hope to write some more about it soon, but I’m currently studying for my History finals that take place Friday (21th). Until then: cya and thanks for reading!