Let me start off by saying, I hate laptops. A lot. I despise the cost. I hate the small keyboard. I loath the tiny screens. I can never get the mouse touch pad to work. The processors are slow. The memory is cramped. The drive space is too small. Devices don’t work with them. The graphics drivers have problems. The battery life is limited. They’re fragile. They are uncomfortable. They get too hot. And you end up needing a whole docking station, external screen, external keyboard, and external mouse just to use one. Plus, the way machines advance these days, I couldn’t envision myself having to commit to that upgrade path.
So, when I wanted to do remote computing, have a portable working environment, and be able to give presentations, I scoffed at my wife’s suggestion of getting a laptop. She darn near twisted my arm and enlisted the help of a few friends to eventually convinced me just to reconsider and be open to the idea.
As I write this while sitting on my sofa in our family room using my new MacBook Pro, I have to say that every single one of my fears and concerns has totally been mitigated or removed by Apple. Every. Single. One.
That brings the official count of Mac machines over the machines running XP for me personally.
I justified the purpose by saying I’d at least have an Intel machine, so I could try the new applications. I had to convince myself that a laptop was going to be primarily for portablity and that it was just simply going to lack the power of a desktop. Whoa, was I wrong. What’s even more surprising was that when I opened up the box, I saw what I thought was a free Mini iPod thrown in. It wasn’t. It was a remote control.
“Remote control?” I thought to myself, “What is this? A marketing joke? Why would I need a remote control for a computer?” I pressed Menu on the remote, and my jaw hit the floor.
The OS X operating system’s desktop recessed back into the screen, with reflections, and became shadowed. Spinning icons swept in showing me all the media applications. Pressing the direction buttons on the remote, selected different applications, and pressing select started the application in kind of a multi-media mode. It was breath taking. I had never seen this before, and it floored me. If you’re running Windows, there’s nothing to compare it to. Apple had thought this though amazingly well.
What you are about to see is a live, uncut
screen capture, not an edited movie!
[QUICKTIME http://www.wwco.com/~wls/livejournal/RemoteControl.m4v 320 240]
I simply can not believe how comfortable it is to recline, sit back and type with ease, and be able to see in perfect clarity the project I’m working on. Given that I can now take my computing environment with me, this is going to totally change the way I approach computing. Apple is changing my life the way that TiVo did, allowing me to do more in less time with higher quality where and when I want.
So when are you going to get the docking station, the external screen, and the keyboard? Many smaller laptops don’t generate much heat and are very ergonomic. Media centre PCs have remote controls, and can play CDs and DVDs without loading windows. You stated this thing off opposed to laptops then turned it into an advertisment for Apple and how it changed your life? WTF?
Don’t need a docking station. Can use existing screens, though the laptop is large enough not to -need- one. And, oddly enough, I’ve gotten used to the keyboard.
My prior experience with laptops was long ago and very, very bad. I had given up on them until my wife and friends suggested I give it a whirl. Admittedly, I was skeptical.
Even now as I show off the MacBook Pro to knowledgeable technical friends, it has numerous features that other laptops don’t seem to have. It’s not the fact that disc media can be played on a laptop without starting an OS, but rather the tight intergration with the OS ability to access /all/ media that’s on the machine or connected to it.
What gives is that Apple’s design and features changed my opinion that laptops are cramped, uncomfortable, limited deviced to quite usuable workstations. For someone who’s just had this misconception corrected and benefit from the portability of having your environment follow you around, the experience is eye opening. Simply put, I wish I had been more open to the idea years eariler.