{"id":6477,"date":"2009-10-30T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T10:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=6477"},"modified":"2018-07-13T15:22:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T07:22:56","slug":"i-was-busy-looking-for-a-explode-macbook-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/10\/30\/i-was-busy-looking-for-a-explode-macbook-button\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI was busy looking for a \u2018explode macbook\u2019 button.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, no one can now say \u2013 hopefully – that I didn\u2019t give MacBooks a chance. My NEC Versa E6310 has undergone abuse. It\u2019s switched on at least 10 hours a day, everyday at work for 2 years now, it goes with me whenever I do a public presentation or talk, and I use it as a scratch notebook i.e. I use the notebook to try out all kinds of demo ware that I wouldn’t dare try on my home PC. The screen has now lost perhaps about a quarter of its brightness, and the track pad has a mind of its own i.e. it never does anything I want it to.<\/p>\n

I was initially intending to get another Wintel notebook \u2013 one of those 11.6\u201d LCD CULV netbooks in fact \u2013 soon to replace the aging Versa when a revelation struck me. Why was I coughing up more money to buy another Windows notebook, when I could use that money to buy something that could at least also provide me some learning value? I mean, for all purposes, my productivity level on a Windows machine is operating at peak relative to my ability to work the machine, and as useful as another Windows notebook would be, I wasn\u2019t going to learn anything new with it by way of working in new operating environments.<\/p>\n

\"blog-macbook\" That\u2019s essentially the reason why I ordered a MacBook Pro late last night, and am expecting delivery of the unit later today or tomorrow. There\u2019re two 13\u201d MacBooks that are priced quite affordably. One\u2019s simply called the MacBook, the other the MacBook Pro<\/strong><\/em>. The former is their cheapest Apple OS notebook now, and in terms of computing specification is equivalent to, and in one spot at least, better than its more expensive by $400 brethren. However, the MacBook has a cheaper body \u2013 which doesn\u2019t bother me \u2013 and a poorer screen \u2013 which I disliked after checking it out at Compass Point\u2019s Denki. The limited color gamut and lower contrast doesn\u2019t matter if you don\u2019t do photo-editing, but I do a lot of that. So, I went with the cheapest MacBook Pro model listed.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting now to see my friends, colleagues and students respond to my Facebook status update. I meant it when I reflected in February this year<\/a> a sentiment that exists among many of us who\u2019re (supposedly?) experts in the use of technology \u2013 that many of us dislike Apple OSes as it forces a person to operate at a level of abstraction that, frankly, is both limiting and mildly condescending. For all the hardware weaknesses, vulnerabilities and general all-round ugliness of Windows up to Vista, there\u2019s a lot more potential by way of software range, hardware variety, and enterprise-level development tools that we use that’s only available for Windows machines and not Apple OS ones, bootcamp or virtualization not withstanding.<\/p>\n

And many of us have learned to work round the many Windows flaws. Viruses on Windows? I\u2019ve rarely had anything more serious than a virus warning popping up on my Windows notebooks when I stick one of my student\u2019s thumb drives in, and that\u2019s because I know how to arm and properly defend my Windows environment. And it\u2019s far less of a hassle than the Apple faithful would insist \u2013 I actually like the sense of empowerment and ability to install, tweak, and customize all those tools. And between a sanitized environment with a limited outlay of toys versus a sandbox with some risk but I have access to a far greater array of toys that can provide better learning opportunities albeit amidst adversity, I\u2019d always prefer the latter.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s basically why I can empathize with some of my colleagues when they write a comment that\u2019s the title of this post. They don\u2019t like Macs. Me though, with this purchase of a MacBook \u2013 no one can say I didn\u2019t at least try. I\u2019m pretty certain I\u2019ll like its colorful and unified interface a lot at least. As for productivity, I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n

Either way, I can still always leave the MacBook at home to keep Ling occupied while I go back to my NEC Versa dinosaur \u2013 which while is rapidly losing its color and is getting crankier by the day from overuse, I still can get it to dance a trick and do what I ultimately need it to help me do \u2013 i.e. be more productive.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, no one can now say \u2013 hopefully – that I didn\u2019t give MacBooks a chance. My NEC Versa E6310 has undergone abuse. It\u2019s switched on at least 10 hours a day, everyday at work for 2 years now, it<\/p>\n

Read More \u201cI was busy looking for a \u2018explode macbook\u2019 button.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[643],"class_list":["post-6477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-toys-technology","tag-laptops","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}