I've purchased myself a little 13" Macbook Pro Retina. As expected, I've received some banter from friends on facebook, most particularly those with IT backgrounds. The thing is though, most of them have never had quality time with a Mac. I used to be rather anti-Mac myself. But after playing with them enough and just being around them, I decided I wanted to try one for myself. If I didn't like it, I could take it back within a few days, or just never purchase one again.
While no experience in life seems to go exactly the same as it plays over in dreams, my transition into the Apple world has been a rather positive one. It could also be that I came from a 20 pound 17" beast of a computer, which had all the power I wanted, just in way too heavy and bulky a form. The eight hour battery life on this laptop is awesome too! Last night something happened after I used it in the cafe I was at, and it didn't go to sleep... (everything's gonna have some bugs) When I got to work the next morning, it still had 10% battery life, and wasn't on fire (thank goodness). All in all, the Macbook Pro is a sturdy little laptop. Expensive, yes. But durable and very high quality. I'm still kind of debating returning it to get the 15", but in reality the 13" is doing great for what I need. The main thing I expect from screen size is more pixel space. That's why I had the 17" before. It was a 1080p screen. This one is much greater than 1080p. In a way it's 1600p, and in a smaller "per inch" size. The only downfall is no built in disc drive or LAN port... I've already bought myself the thunderbolt ethernet adapter, which really isn't too bad. And I honestly disc drives aren't used too much anymore. Not enough to make them worth the extra size and weight to put into a laptop. For the occasion I need to use a disc, I have a ghetto rigged usb DVD drive I've been using. Eventually I'll get a fancy blu-ray drive. It would be nice to be able to burn blu-rays for file keeping sake. Or watching/copying movies. I was pondering getting an internal blu-ray drive for my server. But if I had a USB drive I'll use it just as much as I would the internal, with the benefit of using it on either my server or my laptop.
"You can get so much more power for cheaper if you got a windows laptop." In terms of raw power, I could most definitely get more power for cheaper. However, the quality of the laptop is still a key factor... Getting a windows laptop with the same Ram, processor and hard drive space as my mac would run me less than $800 (vs $2000 for this one). But, It would be made out of plastic vs. aluminum. The screen resolution would be about 190% smaller, and the hard drive would most likely be 5400rpm (rather slow). My Macbook has what's called "PCIe" memory. A hard drive at 5400rpm has a transfer rate around 50-70 Megabits per second. A Solid State Hard drive is capable of 300-500Megabits per second. The Macbook's PCIe hard drive is capable of 700-1200
I just feel legit sometimes! I've got myself a server which I'm saving up to add a few hard drives to for a raid array, and I've got my little portable laptop, and all my devices are synced together in one way or another. All I need now is to jail-break my phone so I can use it as a hotspot on the go...
To sum it all up. The Apple laptop has been a good investment so far. For the most part it's been easier for me to configure and use than it was to fight my windows 8 laptop to do what I wanted it do. Windows 8 (especially 8.1) has put a very sour taste in my mouth towards windows. I still love windows 7. I have it installed on my apple as well for the few programs I need that I can't use on mac. (some networking tools, educational programs, HTML editing program, Quicken without paying for another license...). It's all working out quite well for me. I am a happy camper thus far. Maybe my standards have lowered? Maybe my previous laptop was a worse experience than I thought. Or maybe I'm being fooled. If I am apple is sure doing a good job. The next time my moms office needs a new desktop I'll most likely be getting a Mac Mini to replace the massive PC.
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