iMSISS

On Friday my new MacBook arrived courtesy of ByteSurgery Ltd.

Apple’s shipping information put the delivery date “on or before” the 5th November, so I wasn’t expecting to see it before Monday. UPS’ online package tracking showed that in the 3 days it was in shipment it had been in Shanghai, China; Apeldoorn, Netherlands; Cologne, Germany; Warsaw, Poland and finally Dublin, Ireland.

The MacBook was in a large brown box, inside was the simple Apple-designed box holding the MacBook. The picture below shows the packaging; inside was the MacBook, a power lead and a small documentation booklet. That was all.

Setting up the MacBook took no time, a few simple clicks to select country, time and WiFi settings and I found myself with not much more to tinker with. Other than adding some essential applications (and games), changing the desktop wallpaper and turning the menu bar translucency off all that was left was to marvel at the MacBook and discover some Touch gestures.

Some of the best I’ve found are in Safari. Often browsing websites we simply use the mouse and this is where multi-touch shines. To move the mouse one uses a single finger, to scroll up/down/left/right we use two fingers and to go back/forward through history we use three fingers in a left- or right-swipe. All this saves looking for the scrollbar or back/forward buttons when browsing.

The screen, as others have said is very bright. It is easy to be amazing by its clarity at less than full brightness, and kicking it up gives a real “wow” factor. Facing the screen head-on I haven’t found any problem with the glossy screen, from large angles there is alot of reflection but at these angles you wouldn’t be using it.

Posted on November 2nd, 2008 by David
Filed under: college, mac, msiss, technology