David Emery Online

Macbook Notes

26 June 2006

I’ve now had my shiny new MacBook for about a week and a half, and for the benefit of Google et al here are some notes:

Firstly, it’s great. I’ve read a lot of comments on the internet that seem to be having all sorts of problems with their MacBooks, but either there was a batch of them with major problems or the echo chamber is getting really echoey.

Secondly, boy – these intel Macs sure love ram! I struggled with the stock 512mb for almost a week and was quite disappointed with the overall performance. It’d run quick for a a little bit, then whenever you’d switch programs it would slow to a crawl. While over in New York, however, I picked up 2 1GB sticks and now it flies.

It feels easily like the fastest mac I’ve used, and this is the stock 1.83Ghz model.

Even using Rosetta, it flies. Also, before I forget – Rosetta is amazing. It could be the most amazing piece of software I’ve ever used.

It just works.

Perfectly. Every time.

Some of the other gripes I’ve read have been with the possible discolouration of the case, which I haven’t seen any trace of yet; the screen, which I think is one of nicest I’ve used (although I can’t stand PC glossy screens; this is nothing like them); and the keyboard, which I think is great – bar a very slightly lazy down arrow key, which takes a little more pressure then the others to register (it’s not a problem at all, though).

The only problem I’ve had so far is with a “mushy” trackpad button, as described at MacFixIt. When I first got it, only the very centre of the button would register, so clicking near the sides wouldn’t work and drags were very difficult.

However, following some of the advice on MacFixIt and the Apple Discussion forums I applied a small amount of pressure to the underneath of the button (by taking the battery out) and the button is now working perfectly. It hasn’t bent anything in any visible way, so the tolerances for the moulding of the upper section of the MacBook must be pretty tight with any slight error causing the button to become a bit useless.

Other then that though, it’s great! Now to install Windows…