I’ve had the Macbook Pro for a week or two now, but I’ve really only been using it when I travel. That said, here are three minor annoyances.
#1 – Power Corner is already gone
The cover that protects the extender on the power cube is gone. It was destined from day 1 to be gone, but it was gone by day 2. If a small plastic part comes off on its own, it needs a leash. I’ll let you know as soon as I lose the VGA dongle as well. I’ve seen at least one left behind at every conference I’ve gone to. It would be worth the extra couple of cubic centimeters (brain by Montessori!) of case space to include a VGA-out as well. To be honest, I’d rather have this in the case than the DVD burner. It’s already the heaviest laptop I’ve ever carried, it wouldn’t add to much to throw in a VGA plug. By the time most projectors I use have a DVI plug–or a cable on site for the plug–I will have moved on to my next laptop. But I got a little off track there–had I known that it would disappear so quickly, I would have super-glued a little plastic leash to that plastic corner.
#2 – PNG should be portable
This is going to be the first of many hassles with switching between Mac and Windows. I dropped a Powerpoint presentation from the Mac to a PC without having “exported” it properly, I guess. As a result, I stood in front of a crowd of people with empty slides because the PNG files wouldn’t render properly on the PC, and it claimed it needed a Quicktime update. Yes, yes, I know: this could just as easily be a Windows annoyance, but the whole idea is that these are supposed to be Portable Network Graphics. And had I done the presentation on a Windows laptop in the first place, it would have worked. Why should Quicktime have ever come into play? Anyway, the suck.
#3 – Keynote click to the end
In the second of two presentations, I was smart enough to swap out the presentation machine, and used Keynote, hoping to distract my audience with pretty transitions. Unfortunately, I got over-eager in clicking forward on the remote, and ended up at the end of the presentation. Double clicks during a slide render should not take you to the end of the presentation. I’m sure there is a way (I hope there is) to fix this in the preferences, but it is *bad* to be half-way through your show and have the presentation decide to skip to the end for you.
To defend against the Mac goon squad… I love the Mac: it’s quick, works well, good battery life. I haven’t yet installed XP (using either method), but I’m not sure I will. I wonder just how often I will want to switch over while on the road. At home, I’ve got XP on my main machine already. I am very happy with the machine, but these are just three of what I assume will be more minor annoyances.
3 Macbook Pro annoyances
I’ve had the Macbook Pro for a week or two now, but I’ve really only been using it when I travel. That said, here are three minor annoyances.
#1 – Power Corner is already gone
The cover that protects the extender on the power cube is gone. It was destined from day 1 to be gone, but it was gone by day 2. If a small plastic part comes off on its own, it needs a leash. I’ll let you know as soon as I lose the VGA dongle as well. I’ve seen at least one left behind at every conference I’ve gone to. It would be worth the extra couple of cubic centimeters (brain by Montessori!) of case space to include a VGA-out as well. To be honest, I’d rather have this in the case than the DVD burner. It’s already the heaviest laptop I’ve ever carried, it wouldn’t add to much to throw in a VGA plug. By the time most projectors I use have a DVI plug–or a cable on site for the plug–I will have moved on to my next laptop. But I got a little off track there–had I known that it would disappear so quickly, I would have super-glued a little plastic leash to that plastic corner.
#2 – PNG should be portable
This is going to be the first of many hassles with switching between Mac and Windows. I dropped a Powerpoint presentation from the Mac to a PC without having “exported” it properly, I guess. As a result, I stood in front of a crowd of people with empty slides because the PNG files wouldn’t render properly on the PC, and it claimed it needed a Quicktime update. Yes, yes, I know: this could just as easily be a Windows annoyance, but the whole idea is that these are supposed to be Portable Network Graphics. And had I done the presentation on a Windows laptop in the first place, it would have worked. Why should Quicktime have ever come into play? Anyway, the suck.
#3 – Keynote click to the end
In the second of two presentations, I was smart enough to swap out the presentation machine, and used Keynote, hoping to distract my audience with pretty transitions. Unfortunately, I got over-eager in clicking forward on the remote, and ended up at the end of the presentation. Double clicks during a slide render should not take you to the end of the presentation. I’m sure there is a way (I hope there is) to fix this in the preferences, but it is *bad* to be half-way through your show and have the presentation decide to skip to the end for you.
To defend against the Mac goon squad… I love the Mac: it’s quick, works well, good battery life. I haven’t yet installed XP (using either method), but I’m not sure I will. I wonder just how often I will want to switch over while on the road. At home, I’ve got XP on my main machine already. I am very happy with the machine, but these are just three of what I assume will be more minor annoyances.
Share this: