The new Mac Book Pros are out. Which means the old ones are cheaper! A perfect time to buy. Which I did, for about a thousand and some less than what I would have paid the day before. Thanks not only to the new version, but also Cole's student discount, and the BYU bookstore's sale. Yeah! And to tell you the truth, I much prefer the old one to the new, for a few reasons.
First the new ones only come with a glossy screen, which to me is very annoying. I like to sit in sunny places.
I'm not that into the black. I like the Chiclet keys alright, but I'm betting the next generation with look better.
I don't like that there is only one firewire port and it isn't the one you'd regularly use (400) it's the 800. Which has it's advantages for speed, granted, but it makes your current cables, and some hardware incompatible, and those weren't cheap. They invented firewire, they can do what they like. I suppose it isn't that big a deal, but I'd rather wait 'till the next generation to deal with it.
It has that wonderful solid body, and the display is LCD and glass which is great. The track pad is also very cool. All glass and the entire pad is the button. Wonderful stuff that I will enjoy someday, but the guts are about the same. Not any faster.
For my applications the computer I bought is the better one I think. The only thing I can complain about is the disappearance of a the numeric keypad that used to be on the UIO JKL M keys. I know most people, especially the casual mac users, don't use them, but for some of my applications, especially Reason 4 (big angry blog to come), I very much need them. I spent a good part of my day today trying to figure a way around this, searching blogs, FAQ's on both Reason's, and Apple's sites, then even more on the phone with apples "geniuses", but there apparently is no way around it. It's just gone. What's that you say? Just go get a numeric keypad USB thingy? You would have thought I'd thought of that. NO! The whole point of having the lappy is to be portable. I can't go lugging around more and more stuff that should already be at my finger tips. Besides the only two USB ports are already being used by my midi key board (blog to come) and the Mbox2 Micro (blog also to come). But I'm not licked yet. I still have some exploring to do yet in Reason.
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2 comments:
I didn't realize that the newer (but now old) models were missing the number keys. I bought my MacBook Pro in September of 2007, and mine still has the numbers on the right side of the keyboard. I will say that I, too, would struggle without them as they are quite indispensable in Sibelius. I don't use Reason any more, though I used to be a big fan. Its all about Ableton and Logic for me now.
Believe me I've been tempted to turn. Have you seen pro tools 8 yet? Looks badical. Good to hear from you.
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