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As the Macworld Expo is winding down today it looks like Apple fans have some good news. While there weren’t many exciting new hardware announcements (I was hoping for a Mini update) the update to iLife, especially the features in iMovie and iPhoto, are welcome news. And now that iTunes has evolved into a DRM-free store I’m tempted to try it again after having moved over to Amazon’s MP3 store.

In lieu of upgrading to one of the new Macbook pros that recently came out I opted for an upgrade of my existing notebook. I purchased a Hitachi 320GB 7200rpm drive and had it installed by Mac Fusion in Long Beach, CA. The Hitachi drives have had consistently great reviews and so far it has performed flawlessly. It’s quiet, a lot roomier than the 120GB drive that came with the notebook, and slightly faster since it’s 7200rpm vs. the original 5400rpm Fujitsu. I would highly recommend the upgrade to anyone who does a lot of multimedia work on their Macbook Pro, but you do need to find an authorized Apple service provider to install it to avoid violating your warranty. Thankfully the new MBP’s have user-upgradable drives, so going forward it will be easier to get more space.

Lifehacker is reporting that Google Calendar now supports CalDAV, allowing you to sync iCal with GCal. This was already possible, but only via paid 3rd party tools from what I could determine.

I really like Google Calendars, since it’s available online and lets you create multiple shared calendars. However, while it may be a bit old-school I prefer a desktop client to the web interface, and like to have a local copy when I’m offline. I’ve been using Thunderbird’s Lightning extension, which is OK, but I really need to be on iCal so that my blackberry will sync appointments.

I just set up the sync on my macbook pro and it seems to work great. I’ll update with another post once the blackberry is brought into the mix.

So after a few weeks with the new MBP here are some thoughts:

Pros:

1. It’s nice to have a machine that will run OS X, various flavors of Windows, and has a Unix core. This is particularly attractive to me as a tech consultant, although I’d hazard a guess that a very large percentage of Apple fans have never seen the command line.
2. Great build quality; things just work. Solid feel to the hardware.
3. Aesthetics are great, but you already knew that. Isn’t that why we buy Apple stuff in the first place?

However, IMHO the machines don’t live up to the unbelievable amount of hype surrounding them, largely for the following reasons:

1. While many non-technical Apple fans may be surprised at this, the core of these machines are identical to their PC brethren. Intel core-duo processors, Nvidia graphics, commodity RAM and hard drives, etc. In other words, nothing special. Dell Latitudes and Lenovo Thinkpads are just as powerful.
2. Upgrade-ability isn’t really there for the pro series. You can add more RAM pretty easily (which I did – I can’t imagine paying Apple $400 for a 2GB RAM upgrade) but upgrading the hard drive voids the warranty, involves completely disassembling the computer, and doesn’t appear to be something that Apple is anxious to do for you. I’ve got a 120GB drive in this machine that I’d like to upgrade, but it looks like I’ll be waiting for the warranty to run out and then doing it myself. The macbooks have user-upgradeable hard drives; why in the world wouldn’t they offer this to the people who spent $$$ to buy the pro series? So what if there’s an extra bay on the bottom of the damn machine?
3. It’s nice to have Apple stores if you’re a consumer, but there’s nothing like the next-business-day onsite support that ALL the other major manufacturers offer. Dell will show up at your office with parts and a certified tech to fix your machine. No such luck with Apple. Proceed directly to the “Genius Bar”…
4. This was really surprising: I can’ find any good free image editing programs for the Mac. There is nothing like Paint.net, and the GIMP doesn’t run natively on OS X even though it’s Unix / BSD. Huh??? I thought this was THE platform for image editing – I guess you’re just expected to shell out another $600 for Photoshop immediately after buying a Mac. Photoshop Elements is only $100 but has received very mixed reviews. Hard to believe your options on the PC are so much better…this was a real shocker.
5. Office 2008 is OK, but inferior to Office 2007. Perhaps the black turtleneck crowd eschews M$FT products, but it’s an absolute requirement for anyone who wants to do real actual work in a corporate environment. I realize this is Microsoft’s issue, not Apple’s, but either way it impacts users who need to work with others in a corporate environment. You can run VMWare Fusion (which I do) or Parallels, etc. to get Windows + software running, but at that point you’re just over-paying for a Windows laptop. Save some $$ and buy a Dell.
6. From my initial research it appears that you can’t natively sync blackberries with the Mac. Huh!? Unless I’m crazy it doesn’t appear that there is a good way to sync what’s possibly the world’s most popular smart phone with Leopard. iPhones are great but I’d like to have some alternatives.
7. Some of the “little things” you just expect to see on a PC aren’t there. E.g: no hard-drive activity light; Mac fans say “you don’t need one” – I beg to differ. No ethernet connectivity light – why is this?? Perhaps it offends Steve Jobs’ sense of aesthetics? Only 2 USB ports, one of which is rumored to cause issues with things like headsets and external drives. The list goes on…

At the end of the day I do like the new Macbook Pro and will continue to stick with the platform, but it’s hard for me to understand the amount of hype / fan-boy behavior around the product.

In other, non-Apple news, Dell is supposed to launch their new Latitude E-Series next month. I’ll be waiting in line to get one as soon as they ship.

I’m the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro. I went for the more portable 15″ version and so far it has been great. Leopard’s underpinnings are very familiar to anyone who is coming from a Linux or Unix background and as usual the Apple build quality is exceptional. Although I have to say I’m now eyeballing a RAM upgrade and a new larger/faster hard drive to speed things up a bit, esp. when running Windows apps under VMWare Fusion. Tip: if you’re in the market, check Apple’s refurbished deals. That’s what I ended up doing with this machine and I got a great deal on it.

Apple just introduced updated models for the MacBook and MacBook Pro.