MacBook Pro With Retina Display (MBPr)
When the new MacBook Pros were released, I bought one with the retina display. I have a variety of reasons, but for now I want to capture some of my first impressions.
I have used Linux (usually Ubuntu) at home exclusively for the last sevenish years. Before that I used Windows for as long as I can remember. I used a Mac at church for a few years, but my experience was limited by the one or two programs I needed to used. For the past two years and a half, I have worked in an all-Apple office (usually pairing on somebody else's computer).
Good
Anything optimized for retina display looks amazing
I was editing a bulletin for church the other day, and the text was so beautiful I wanted to cry.
Cool apps
Living exclusively in Linux means living without many of the hip, fun apps that look great and fill certain niches. For instance in Ubuntu I had to use Gwibber to follow my Twitter feed. Now I can use the official Twitter app. The difference between the two is night and day. Another app I am excited about is Numbers.
Zero driver issues
My last laptop was from Sony, and the Linux support was worse than non-existent.
Bad
Apple is trying to blind me
Everytime I plug in the power cord, my screen brightness gets set to eleven. And everytime I have to set the brightness back to the midway point. Really this setting should be saved for each power source.
Printer (Brother HL-4600) was not usable until I installed drivers
I had to search the Brother website for the correct driver to install, then I had to setup the printer and restart my application before I could print. This is what I had to do last year in Ubuntu. (Windows installed the printer just fine when I plugged in.) More recently in Ubuntu, everything just worked.
Finding, installing and maintaining software
Installing software on OS X feels like installing software on Windows 95, 98, XP et cetera. Where is the progress?
Firewall off by default
