Friday, June 23, 2006
Tech: MacBook Gripes
We just got our new MacBooks a couple of weeks ago, and for the most part they're a huge step up from the old PowerBooks. I was moving from a 867 MHz 12" PowerBook, so just about everything was bigger and better. Speed is excellent, larger screen, more disk space, etc.However it seems that certain things have not improved. Heat is still an issue, and in some cases worse than before. I would consider this a hardware issue. Two other hardware issues I don't like is the speakers and the lcd hinge. The speakers seem worse than my old PowerBook, which were suprisingly good. The speakers on the MacBook does poorly with low and mid range sound, and causes just about everything sound like a crappy radio. There also seems to be a little electronic noise coming through if you listen very closely in a quiet room. As for the display, it's gorgeous and I wasn't bothered by the glossy screen as I thought I would be. It actually looks quite nice. But the display doesn't open up as far as the old PowerBook. It's not a big deal, but it is a little annoying when you're using the 'laptop' on your lap and looking down at the screen.
Software is stil Mac OS X Tiger, not much difference here. Rosetta works really nice for me. Perhaps because I'm moving up from an 867 MHz PPC machine, so even apps running under Rosetta seem faster. It's really amazing, and seemless. I think Apple did a really good job this time with integrating legacy code. Classic was good, but still too annoying to use often for me. There does seem to be a software issue related to the Intel architecture. Occasionaly I seem to catch the mouse cursor napping. You click a button and then move the mouse, but the cursor is stuck. It recovers when you try again, but there is a noticeable pause. Perhaps this issue can be resolved by some driver updates.
Considering what I was using before, the MacBook is amazing. I love the larger screen, and exrta speed. Being able to easily upgrade ram and most of the harddrive is a huge improvement over the old laptops. Some changes I hope will be incorporated in the next revision would be:
a) Shrink the dimensions of the MacBook. There's a lot of space around the 13 inch screen, hopefully they can figure out a way to cut an inch or two from the overall dimensions of the MacBook.
b) Fix the crappy speakers. I don't know if they're using the same speakers as the old PowerBooks, but they sure sound worse.
c) Fix the heat issue. I'm not sure if this is possible considering performance issues, but I sure hope they can make the MacBook run cooler.
Article Link posted by Jambo Consulting at 2:16 PM
