My new Penryn Mac Book Pro
After much deliberation I finally bought the top of the line Penryn MacBook Pro
I very nearly bought the SSD MacBook Air, but I guess sense entered my head when they released new MacBook Pro’s last week and I ordered it that same morning.
So far I’ve been very happy with it. My unscientific tests say that it’s about 7 times faster than my old 1.5GHz PowerBook in running RSpec, which is where most of my CPU is used normally. It also does it without my CPU meter going crazy.
Other nice things is the updated keyboard layout. It is now the same as my beloved Apple USB Keyboard. I would have liked it to use the new style keyboard though like the MacBook Air. But it’s still a very nice keyboard.
The new multitouch pad is nice. I’m not too convinced I will be using Zoom and Rotate a lot, but the 3 finger swipe is great. I’m using MultiClutch in TextMate to swipe between tabs thanks to Alex Payne.
Most importantly I feel kind of free and unburdened with it. During Rails development autotest tells growl pops up almost immediately to tell me about an error within a few seconds of hitting Command S on a source file.
NewsFire is finally usable again with my millions of feeds. Seesmic seems to work rather than bring my computer to a halt.
Basically I’m a happy guy. My conclusion is, if you are still on a PowerBook or maybe even on a first generation MacBook Pro, now is the time to upgrade. If you have a year old model, wait a bit.
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Wow. I want to jump up and down for you. I have been drooling for a MacBook Pro for the longest time. But, Im still saving up for one. It’s a good buy, no doubt about it!
Congrats on the new laptop. You deserve it, and it was overdue. You
might have mentioned the massively painless Mac migration system. Of
that alone I am very jealous.
On the other hand, I just can’t help but ask why Apple thinks a multi-finger touchpad is useful, while a two button mouse is not? ;-)
As the owner of a new Macbook Pro Penryn with the multi-touch trackpad, I am not too happy. My MBP misses keystrokes at random, one in every 10 or 15 keystrokes is missed. The issue is documented on Apple Defects at:
http://appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook_Pro#Faulty_keyboard
More keyboard issues are on
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7023574
It seems Apple released a firmware update for the MBPs recently, but it doesnt apply to the Penryn models. I do hope Apple fixes this glitch soon. Having a new computer malfunction from day one, and then attempt to take it back to applecare and find out that the parts to be replaced are out of stock isnt fun.