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April 27, 2006

Debating a MacBook Pro: Help Me Decide


Hot off my Adobe Messenger Bag purchase, I have a need (a real one, not a vanity one) for a new laptop to go in it. I've been a Windows user since 3.1 was out (OK, I technically used 3.1 to get into a DOS shell to play computer games but really didn't get into it as a useful system until Windows 95). I've spent thousands of hours on some sort of Windows operating system, both personally and professionally. It's what I know. If I did drugs, it would be my crack fix. I have to have it.

Then Apple came along and introduced a new drug called the MacBook Pro. This drug has the feeling of my usual crack but the payload of, say, heroin. It just feels better. (Note: I honestly have no idea how either feels, but if movies are any indication, heroin makes you feel better.) On top of it supposedly being a better drug, Apple offers a bonus transition drug called, say, crystal meth, to wean me off the crack and onto the heroin full-time. Apple has done everything possible to make me switch drugs. The question becomes: should I switch?

Seriously, I'm about 75% sure I'm going to switch (yes, there's still decent wiggle room in there). But I do need to ask those who have done so a few questions:

First, there are several applications that simply don't (and won't, in some cases) exist for the Mac. The 800 pound gorilla for me is Micosoft Office. I legitimately use most of its components at some level: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., plus apps like Visio and MS Project. In short, this is a must-have for me. I know there's OpenOffice.org, but does it suffice? If I'm going to make this investment, I don't want to run dual OS-es forever. While it's nice to have Boot Camp and Parallels Workstation as an option, I don't want it to be a long-term necessity (ideally). Further, I don't like the idea of shutting down my computer and re-booting into another OS entirely (Boot Camp) just for an application or two, and the idea of OS virtualization (Parallels Workstation) makes me pause. I'm just not sure how mature OS virtualization really is at the consumer level (I really don't...that's not a rhetorical statement).

Second, the price. The 17" MBP I'm looking at winds up being USD $3,448 (I'd go with 2GB RAM and the Apple Care package, which pushes the base price up). A comparable Dell Latitude D820 (same processor, RAM, hard drive, etc., but only a 15.4" widescreen) is USD $2,779 (due to a USD $400 instanct rebate they're offering). That's a USD $781 differential right there...certainly nothing to sneeze at! Is it really worth the difference?

Third, I'd have to re-format my iPod for use with a Mac, wouldn't I? I have things pretty well set up right now and I'd hate to have to re-format it and start from scratch. Am I correct on this assumption? Are there any tools around to bridge the Windows/Mac divide in this regard?

I hold no disdain for Microsoft, unlike a lot of people. I like their products. I've avoided all the horror stories I've read from (former) Windows users (knock on wood). Maybe I'm just lucky, but I also bang on my laptop considerably so I'm definitely a knowledgable source. But I have to say I'm blown away by the UI and feature set offered for the Mac. I know Vista is coming at some point this decade, but I'm not really sure what added value it's going to have other than the Aero GUI feature that Macs already seem to have. At the same time, it's not about the appearance; I need my critical applications to work. We are going to be getting into Flex in the near-term and, while I know Simeon has blogged about using Flex 2.0 on a Mac, there is currently no Flex Builder for it and there won't be for a while. I don't know if I want to worry about using ANT and the command-line just to do a basic compilation of my project.

What do you think? I was telling Sean Corfield that Mac users are the most loyal user base I've ever seen. I love their passion and I think that's what really draws me to the platform. But I'm a realist and have to be productive. I need to learn a whole new operating system. Even basic navigation and where to find things is going to be foreign to me. What resources are out there for this? Is it worth the switch?

Posted By Dave on April 27, 2006 at 1:45 PM
Related Categories: Apple, Personal, Technology
Comments (27) | Print | del.icio.us | Linking Blogs


Comments
ethan's Gravatar 1.well microsoft makes office for the mac.

2. price is price.

3.if your moving music over to your ipod only then you could simply copy your itunes library to the macbook. And inside itunes set the library to target that folder or just do a mass add to library. You can also export any song lists as xml to transfer over. If you bought itunes music just register the copy of itunes to your account and it'll play your drm'd music.
# Posted By ethan on 4/27/06 at 2:05 PM
Brian Klaas's Gravatar Office:Mac works just fine an includes Word, Excel, PPT and Entourage (the Mac equivalent of Outlook). Visio isn't available for the Mac, but there's a sweet, sweet diagramming app called OmniGraffle. I just can't imagine my Mac life without it. It doesn't do database creation from a diagram (that I know of), but it's really nice for diagramming and can import/export Visio XML. There is no MS-Project for the Mac, but there are a number of apps which import Project files (such as FastTrack) and offer feature equivalence, unless you use project server.

From what I've read on the Flexcoders list, FlexBuilder for the Mac is coming -- it's just not ready for beta yet.
# Posted By Brian Klaas on 4/27/06 at 2:10 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Ethan and Brian, thanks for the feedback. I was under the impression that MS stopped developing/supporting Office for the Mac. Therefore, I wasn't really relying on that version. However, if it still reads and writes the files in Office 2000 format, that should be OK. And thanks for the links to other resources, particularly for MS Project.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/27/06 at 2:25 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar PS -- What's the iWork software that they offer? Is that worth getting?
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/27/06 at 2:59 PM
John's Gravatar iWorks is their "office" suite. Still very green though. Right now it's Pages 2 and Keynote 3.

Keynote is power point, Pages is word. Some very nice features, but in no way as mature a feature set as Word, heck or even Open Office.

ie. No tracking changes, commenting was just added.
# Posted By John on 4/27/06 at 3:29 PM
Adrocknaphobia's Gravatar Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
# Posted By Adrocknaphobia on 4/27/06 at 3:31 PM
John's Gravatar Damn had a whole thing written up. hit cancel. grr.

I would vote MBP. having just moved all my non CF and Flex stuff to an iBook, I'm glad to be back to the Mac OS. you'll get the hang of it quick.

My one bit of advice. Don't upgrade the machine through the apple site. If you get your upgrades after the fact, you'll shave that price differential a lot. RAM in particular. Anything you can do yourself with tigerdirect, macmall, buy.com, etc. I recommend it. RAM at the least. Easy to install, inflated on apple.com/store

I've never used Office Mac, but have heard from several people it's pretty bad. Neo Office (openoffice.org for the mac) gets good reviews. I like it. I also use Pages 2 for most things, I had to get used to it's shortcomings.
# Posted By John on 4/27/06 at 3:33 PM
Richard's Gravatar iWork is Apple's word processor (Pages) and presentation program (Keynote). Pages really isn't worth much, it's a nice little app for doing basic documents, really good for something like a family Christmas newsletter, but probably not for serious business documents. Keynote is a very slick presentation program, but if you're a pro PowerPoint user, may not have every little option you're used to.

Past that, is a Mac really worth the extra expense? Overall, I'd say yes. They're put together really well, they retain their value for longer, and they have the "cool" factor that many PCs don't have.

One other sidenote on the MacBook though -- the DVD burner is only 4x, and doesn't burn dual layer DVDs.
# Posted By Richard on 4/27/06 at 3:33 PM
Richard's Gravatar Scratch that, the 17" DOES have dual layer burning. Sorry about that.
# Posted By Richard on 4/27/06 at 3:37 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Adrock, your comment is what keeps me grounded in my excitement.

John, thanks for the note about the inflated RAM prices. My boss went down to the Apple store in SoHo (I'm in New York City) to buy a MBP and they were such a pain about upgrading the RAM. I guess the case is specially closed to give it that sleek look, so the average person can't do it without Apple's help. I'll look around though.

Richard, thanks for the iWorks "tutorial." Yeah, the 17" now supports dual layer burning.

Overall, my money is about 84% in Apple's pockets (yes, I've gone up). I'm going to head down to the Apple store myself though this weekend to get a "hands-on" overview. Now that they've cut off MySpace.com access in the stores, I should be able to get to one a little easier!
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/27/06 at 3:56 PM
Jolyon's Gravatar Has anyone mentioned that Pages can read, edit and save to .doc?

Admittedly I only know this is theoretically correct and have no experience of using it in a "business situation".
# Posted By Jolyon on 4/27/06 at 4:01 PM
Lola Lee Beno's Gravatar Well, MS Office for Mac does have a few quirks, but I don't think it's nowwhere near as bad. The latest version is much, much better than the OS 9 version (and OS 8, and OS 7 as well). The Mac team at Microsoft actually does pretty good work; the MS Windows programmers should be taking lessons from the team. iWorks is lights year behind, and I didn't even bother to get it when it came out. I know abouth the open source Office equivalents, and I've tried these, but these just aren't as well-polished.
# Posted By Lola Lee Beno on 4/27/06 at 4:13 PM
orgreeno's Gravatar I think the decision should mainly be apps related. for you it is Office and Flex. So, like myself, you want a Mac but need a PC.

That said, when the Mac version of Flex is released I may be drawn into the light...

Also, I've seen a few reports about waiting until May 28 to buy anything. New Core Duo's are supposed to be released according to Intel.
# Posted By orgreeno on 4/27/06 at 4:42 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar orgreeno. Good hint about 5/28. I'll do some research and see if I turn anything up. I'm in the market for sure, but it's not overly pressing either.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/27/06 at 4:47 PM
John's Gravatar Dave, forums to the rescue :)

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categor...

Sounds like it's a pop this off upgrade. May be under the keyboard, that's where mine is on the iBook.
# Posted By John on 4/27/06 at 4:53 PM
Rick Curran's Gravatar Hi,
The MacBook Pro is awesome, I have the 15" and it's excellent, performance is pretty good even under Rosetta for non-intel native apps like Photoshop.

Mac Office is still under development and Microsoft recently agreed support / development for another 5 years so it's definitely got a future. NeoJOffice (OpenOffice but with Java wrapper instead of X11 based system) is quite good, a bit more like a Mac app than OpenOffice, but MS Office is still much better.

I agree about the ram upgrade, get the machine with the 1gb it comes with and by the other 1gb from Crucial or New Egg instead. Probably half the price. Upgrading the RAM is easy, you take the battery out and there's a panel there you take off. No problem.

Other cool stuff you get on Mac, Eclipse IDE is available and works well, SubEthaEdit is a great text editor (www.codingmonkeys.de), also TextMate is pretty cool too, both only available for Mac too ;)

Hope that helps your decision!
# Posted By Rick Curran on 4/27/06 at 5:26 PM
Adrocknaphobia's Gravatar You can get RAM for about 85/GB at newegg or another reputable online source.

However, you can be sure that the 1GB that is standard is actually 2x512MB (with only 2 slots). So you'll want to only buy the 512MB option rather than the 1GB. You are going to have to buy 2x1GB.

Rough Estimate
+$170 for 2x1GB
-$90 512MB option
-$30 sell the 512MB it ships with on eBay
-----
+$50 Cost of adding 2GB outside of Apple
-$276 Apple 2GB configuration
-----
$226 Savings!

There is just a bit of leg work with ordering the RAM online and selling the RAM you get on eBay.

I just ran through all this when I bought my _Dell_. Which is f#ckin awesome. I was skeptical at first about Media Center 2k5 as a general workstation OS, but it really should just be considered Windows XP 1.5 w/ an application you can optionaly launch called 'media center'. It's very polished. Teamed with VMWare workstation it's a powerhouse.

w00t!
# Posted By Adrocknaphobia on 4/27/06 at 7:09 PM
Sam Farmer's Gravatar Do it!

The Mac OS is awesome. Others have mentioned that Office runs on Mac and its true its works very well. Better than NeoOfficeJ IMO although that is also a nice package.

I also think as developers there is a big advantage in switching OS, IDEs, frameworks, even languages every now and then. Without switching we get stuck into thinking that a certain way is the best/only way. Breaking this up every now and then is good and only makes us better developers IMO. Not so often that we don't become masters/experts in something but often enough that we at least think in different ways.

At work I have Win XP and a 21" LCD screen, at home a 12" powerbook. Having the difference and seeing that something may work well in one but not the other is beneficial.
# Posted By Sam Farmer on 4/27/06 at 9:31 PM
Rick Curran's Gravatar Regarding the RAM, it does come as a single 1GB chip by default (although there is the option for 2 x 512mb for $100 less) so you'd only need to buy 1 x 1GB chip.
# Posted By Rick Curran on 4/28/06 at 4:52 AM
John's Gravatar You could mix and match the RAM too if I'm not mistaken.

Go for the 2 512, buy a 1gb, have a gb and a half. unload the 512 on ebay or something.
# Posted By John on 4/28/06 at 10:38 AM
Larry C. Lyons's Gravatar Dave,

FWIW, M$ recently released an updater for Office 2004. Its still in active development. They also have a FAQ on the MacTels machines and MS Office:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=macI...

hth,

larry
# Posted By Larry C. Lyons on 4/28/06 at 11:35 AM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Good tips on the RAM. I think I'm going to do it myself.

Larry, thanks for the link. That compatibility grid helps a lot. I didn't realize MS committed to 5 more years of Office for the Mac. That's really good to know.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/28/06 at 12:03 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar I've been doing a bit of perusing on the Apple discussion forums and there seems to be an awful lot of negative feedback regarding the persistent "whine" and the heat generated by the MBP. However, more alarming is that there never seems to be any response from Apple on the boards in any way. No "we hear you and are looking into it" or anything like that. Further, from the various threads, it sounds like the Apple Care people aren't helpful either. Granted, you'd likely find negative feedback about *any* product, Mac or PC, but it's still a curious observation.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 4/28/06 at 2:58 PM
Jon's Gravatar Speaking as a Macbook Pro owner running a dual boot system, I can say that I love my computer and feel good about my choice. I will say, however that if you plan to use OS X as a Coldfusion development environment, you are going to have to make some concessions: Databases being a big one. Obviously there are going to be problems with MSSQL and Access (if you absolutely have to use them). The MS Office thing isn't a concern, as stated before, but there are some differences there, as well.

Because the Intel architecture is so new, getting everything configured is a task in itself. You will have to use older version of the JRE, set up automators and Unix shell scripts to start your servers, etc. The latest stable build of Eclipse with CFEclipse runs like a scalded dog on OSX, but plug-ins seem to be buggy - FTP being one of them. Dreamweaver is so slow using Rosetta emulation and RDS, that it's not worth using for now. Photoshop and Flash are slow as well in Rosetta, so patience is a virtue there.

I love my Macbook and look forward to the time when I can easily develop in OS X as there are so many things which are just plain easier in that OS. For now, I'm doing my development work exclusively booted into Windows and I flip back to OSX when I'm doing personal stuff.
# Posted By Jon on 5/3/06 at 11:30 AM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Jon, thanks for the feedback. I went down to the Apple store the other day and all they had were the 15" MBP. All I can say is that I was floored. I want one. However, the big curve ball that has come by way since this post is the acceleration of the Merom chip from Intel (coming in June, supposedly) that Apple will eventually be using. It's their 64-bit chip and apparently runs much better than the current Core Duos while using the same power consumption (and less heat, to boot).

The Apple WWDC is in August and I have a sneaking suspicion that Merom-based MBPs will be announced then. I'm not entirely sure that I can wait that long (this is a need, after all, not just a desire), but I'm waiting as long as I can in the hopes that something leaks about timelines with this chip and Apple's plans for it. While Merom is pin-compatible with the current Core Duo processors, Apple soldered the chip to the motherboard, so you can't just swap chips down the road.

Man, this is agonizing!!
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 5/3/06 at 11:39 AM
Sam Farmer's Gravatar Regarding moving over iTunes library, I moved over my iTunes library today by following this:

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/tutorial/ip_gett...

You can't play any purchased music until you enter in your iTunes/Apple username/password. Then it all plays fine.

Should work out whichever new computer you buy!
# Posted By Sam Farmer on 8/6/06 at 8:40 PM
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