NuclearDonkey.net

Due to my previously trusty Dell crapping its pants, it recently became time for a new laptop. Sadly, I couldn't find anyone other than Apple who makes a sturdy laptop that's reasonably light and has a decent video card. So I tried to put out of my mind how much I hated Mac OS last time I used it, and a refurbished 15" MacBook Pro arrived yesterday. Well...

Installing applications in Mac OS is just stupid. Instead of downloading, clicking, and installing a program, you have to download it, mount the downloaded file as a disk image (who knows why), run the installer from that mount point, then click and drag an icon off the application over an icon of your hard drive from within the installer. This is completely pointless and not at all intuitive if you've never used OS X before (or if you haven't used it in several years and have forgotten everything about it.

Adium is a reasonable substitute for Pidgin, but iChat (comes with the OS) is worthless and won't even connect to multiple IM accounts at once. There is a build of Pidgin available for Mac, but it's not supported. I don't like how Adium doesn't distinguish between a buddy being away and away+idle -- both display as a red icon and that's it.

Why are all the expansion ports on the left side of the laptop and the CD drive on the right? Do other people find that more convenient? Personally, I'd much rather have power and USB connectors on the right.

Even without the optional SSD, the MBP is almost silent -- way quieter than the Dell was. It's also impressively compact for a 15" notebook. Compared to my 12" Dell, the MBP is thinner, about 1.5" wider, and just about as deep (though that's due to the extended life battery sticking out the back of the Dell). The size difference is hardly even noticeable until I look at the screen itself and see how much more desktop space there is.

It definitely feels sturdy. The Dell had a noticeable flex to it. I don't know if this caused its video card to start dying, but constant bending of the motherboard certainly couldn't have helped. The unibody construction on the Mac is pretty damn impressive, and will hopefully lead to it lasting longer than the Dell.

I feel a lot better about the dock bar than I used to. My biggest complaint previously was the lack of any equivalent to the Windows start menu or Linux applications menu, where you can see all the applications you have installed. Adding the Applications folder to the dock as a stack (drag and drop the folder to the dock) fixes this.

I am having trouble finding a good music player for Mac OS. iTunes has no directory browser (all my music is organized by directory and a lot of the older stuff has no ID3 tags for iTunes to read) and, like most database-driven music players, crashes when trying to load my entire library. Songbird does run on the Mac, but the directory browser plugin is pretty sluggish.

MLB.com has a $10 iPhone app that gives you video highlights, live game stats, and Gameday Audio (streams of the radio broadcasts for both the home and away teams) that all work over both wi-fi and EDGE (I assume 3G as well, but I still have the original iPhone).

The only down-side, as with any iPhone app, is that you're at the mercy of AT&T's substandard network. But, if you're in an area with a good signal, then this is pretty neat. While I won't lose too much sleep over $10, it would be nice if they included the iPhone app when you pay ~$100 for MLB.tv.

They should put sensor tags on each player's cap/uniform/shoes/whatever to track their exact positions on the field. Then, use the readings from that to generate a live view at the top of your screen of where all the fielders and runners are. This would be way cooler than the standard static image of the diamond, indicating which bases have runners on. Instead of just knowing that there's a runner on first, you could actually see how much of a lead he's taking, where the first-baseman is in relation to him, and what positions the outfielders are in for the person at bat.

The Evolution of Pantsilious Gigantus

I'm still a little embarrassed about the one with the crotch mouth. Yes, I'm one of the most mature people you'll ever meet.