created: 1251370839|%e %B %Y, %H:%M
tags: air apple logitech mac macbook os photoshop revolution x
Since some time I started - step-by-step - to convince myself to the Apple products. iPhone was the first thing from Apple I started to experience with (you can read about it here).
Then, some time ago, I went on a vacation. Michal gave me his no longer used MacBook (white, 2,16 GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, Intel graphic card). Now I'm using it until I'll get the MB Air. Well, Mac OS X is different from any other operating systems I was using (Windows XP, Vista, testing Windows 7, Gentoo, Ubuntu etc.), but I was surprised that it took me few minutes to get familiar with it. Everything is simple (sometimes just too simple), is working out of the box, is stable as hell and — what's the most important for me — is fast as hell. MacBook is afaik more than two years old and it's still fast as hell.
Of course it's not as fast as Michal's new MacBook Alu (comparing Photoshop CS4 start time: 30s vs ca. 5s !), but is almost powerful enough to fit my needs. Nevertheless often there's a lack of memory and processor power when I work with Inkscape, GIMP, Photoshop and Illustrator at one time, but I just can't do nothing with that.
Another thing I like in Apple computers is the way the handle color profiles. It's really a great feature, I don't have to worry that the colors look different no my external display at work and at home. It all looks the same (except MacBook built-in display, which is horrible).
Someone says that I have been caught and strangled in Jobs' death of Apple's power. Maybe it's true, I don't mind. I want to USE computers and devices, not to struggle with them to make it work. Of course, I can configure linux to work JUST AS I WANT, not how the designers wanted to do it, but it takes ages to make everything work, often sometimes is not compatible, is crashing etc. My time is precious, time is money, I cannot afford myself to spend time for unproductive things. I want to sit down, get the mouse and start working, designing, writing and so on, not browsing through the net and googling: "ubuntu ati drivers error" whole day to make this shit working properly.
The one thing I don't like in Mac OS X is the way it handles mice. The white Mighty Mouse is simply terrible. I had an impression that I move the pointer in the mud. It's better a little bit with my Logitech MX Revolution, but still it's very imprecise and lazy. I could turn the acceleration off by changing the settings from the console: defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1 but still it's far from being perfect. I wonder how most of the graphic designers, video editors etc. can be not pissed off with this lack of mouse precision. Maybe I'm doing something wrong and someone knows the solution?
My plan is to move to Apple: buy new MacBook for portability, maybe Mac Pro for work (whoah, they're fxxxxn' expensive) or an iMac. iPhone is ok, no need to change to GS now. Two ext. displays (nevertheless not from Apple) and voila. My workspace will be good enough for my needs. We'll see.
For now, Apple is ok. Not perfect, not even very good, but ok. More ok than linux.
