Macbook Pro 1st Impressions

I have now had my new 15″ Macbook Pro for about 4 days now.  I wrote about me ordering it in a post a few days ago.  As I said then, its my first ever Apple product, and thus first real experience with a Mac.  Just wanted to write really fast here my first impressions so far.

Firstly, its a nice looking laptop.  It just looks sexy, like most Apple products are.  They are just good at making their products look nice and sleek physically, and this laptop is no exception.  The screen looks nice too.  And I really like how the keyboard is backlit.  I don’t really need it to be as I don’t look at my keyboard when I type, but it just adds to that sexiness.

What about the actual Mac OS?  Its not as completely different as some would make you believe, at least that’s what I think so far.  I was reading how people need to just use their Mac for a good 2 weeks straight before they get used to it and such.  I don’t necessarily disagree, but when I read that, I figured it would be totally different and there would be a steep learning curve.  But, its not too difficult.  When I first started my laptop, it asks for my name, couple simple questions, it automatically searched for my wireless router and then asked for my password, and just like that I was connected to the internet.  Rather simple.

The printer was a little more complicated, but I figured it out.  Our printer is connected to our router and so we need to know our IP address to connect to it.  I thought that the laptop would just search for it and then let me choose that printer like my Windows desktop did.  However, it didn’t work that way.  I actually had to enter the IP address in and then it found my printer.  Not as simple as Apple says all their stuff is.  Also, my driver wasn’t installed even though Apple always has those commercials of “It just works.”  I have a Canon printer so its not a small printer company.  Not upset or anything, just observing.  I just went to the Canon website, downloaded the Mac driver and then that was it.  No big deal.

I have a gmail account and when I opened up Apple Mail, it was easy to enter my gmail address and password and I was set email wise.  The calendar was just as easy, entering my google account and password and it synced with my Google calendar just like that.  The address book took an extra step in that I had to export my Google contacts and then import them into the Address Book.

Installing things on a Mac takes a little bit getting used to only because it is difficult.  Everything has to be mounted before it can be run.  Once you install it, you just put it in the trash and then your stuff is installed.  I have 3 or  4 applications installed that I got for free from a promo that ran last week.  One of them is a game, an Ogre Tower Defense game that’s pretty fun.  Not great, but addicting as all Tower Defense games are.  I have not really use any of the iLife products like iPhoto.  I still don’t know how I will handle that.  I may or may not set up some hard drives that are connected to a router or something and then my laptop can just access that stuff there instead of actually putting it all on my hard drive here since I only have 250 gb.  Not sure yet, so we’ll see.

Overall, I’m having fun with my new toy.  I think I got most of the stuff I want transferred already transferred over.  I still need some type of financial program as I use Microsoft Money on my desktop.  Other than that, I think I’m set.  Some things that still need to be addressed or worked on: what to do with my photos and mp3′s (as discussed above), learning the keyboard shortcuts (for one thing, I need to find out how to get to the beginning and end of a line.  In Windows, there is a Home and End key that I always use), and last, buy definitely not least, learn some Objective C so that I can do what I got this laptop for, and that is to attempt to do some iPhone stuff!  I’ll continue to let you guys know what I think of this Mac as I use it more.