David Qiao's Blog

After waiting anxiously for several days, I finally got my first MacBook Pro (MBP). From the moment opening the box, I just kept wowing when I slowly uncover this beauty.

Wow #1: The box likes a briefcase v.s. all other PC laptops I got came in a cheap carton box.

Wow #2: There are not many things in the box. What’s funny are the two CD size booklets sitting side by side inside the box. One said “Everything Mac”, the other said “Everything else”. I wondered what the Everything else is so I opened it up. It is just Mac OSX installation CDs and two stickers. I still don’t understand why it is everything else. 

Wow #3: The power adapter is magnet. Very cool idea.

Wow #4: The whole body is one big piece of metal – so called unibody 

Wow #5: There are no home, end, page up, page down, delete, insert keys I used to have a G5 desktop and they still got those keys if I remember correctly. It took me a while to figure out all the equivalents

• Home = Fn + left
• End = Fn + right
• Page Down = Fn + down
• Page Up = Fn + up
• Delete = Fn + Backspace (it shows as delete on the keyboard but it is actually a backspace).

I still haven’t figure out insert key. People said it is Fn + enter but it doesn’t work as expected.

 Another important keystroke is Cmd + `. This is to switch the windows in the same application (compare with Cmd + tab to switch application). It took me a while to figure it out. 

Wow #6: The trackpad is way way cool. I finally felt no need to plug in a separate mouse anymore. The four finger swipe up to show the desktop – wow!

Of course, I still miss some features in PC world. 

1. The mail application is too primitive. I miss the grouping feature in Outlook
2. There is no JDKu10 porting on Mac. Hurry up, Apple!
3. The keyboard arrangement. Since I still have to switch between PC and Mac for different tasks, my brain is tired as I have to think about the correct keystrokes all the time which were no-brainers before

Anyway, after playing with it for several days, I got everything setup on this pretty. JIDE customers surely can expect a better support on Mac from now on