I’ve been using a Mac for over a year now, until this point mainly on a Mac Mini. I’ve been blown away with Panther and Tiger, and am very impressed with Apple’s philosophy on the whole. I was more or less set on upgrading to a MacBook Pro, but upon hearing rumours of a the iBook successor being released I decided to hang on. I’m really glad I did.

I decided to go for a black one for several reasons. Although it is more expensive, I think there are quite a few distinct advantages. Firstly, and I think very importantly is the resale value. White ones, as with iPods, will be a lot more common, easy to come by and less popular. I’m hoping that in a few years time I will be able to sell the laptop on for a little more due to it’s colour. Also, it was worth paying the extra for the finish - I’m a fan of matt finishes as supposed to the easily scratched, easily dirtied gloss white.

I’m going to cover a few different areas and offer my thoughts:

Heat
Granted, this is the first laptop I’ve owned as a consumer, but I haven’t found the alleged heat issues to be a problem at all. Despite shying away from the term ‘Laptop’ in Apple’s literature, I don’t see any reason to worry about overheating. Sure, it’s warm, but most laptops always seem to be. I certainly don’t have any complaints in this area.

MagSafe
This is a fairly gimmicky feature, but it does work very well. You can literally just throw the power cable somewhere in the direction of the laptop port and the powerful magnet pulls it into the slot. It’s quite handy, and will indeed eliminate the problem of tripping over your power cable and wrecking your laptop.

Battery Life
I’ve been really pleased with the battery life on the laptop. It generally lasts around 3 to 4 hours on a full charge, which is more than enough for my needs. It’s great to be able to roam around wirelessly without being tied down - something I’ve been used to before. It lasts longer with bluetooth and airport turned off, and turning down the screen brightness works a dream. Brightness is something the screen has in bucket-loads, so turning it down really doesn’t cause a problem.

I wish it lasted that long!

Intel Schmintel
I wasn’t sure what to expect with the new Intel processors. First off the positives. It’s fast. Really fast. Despite at present the machine having less RAM than my Mac Mini (not for long, I’m upgrading to 2gb soon) it is really quick. Things like searching my iTunes library just happen, as does searching with Spotlight, something which was more or less unusable on my G4 Mini. There are a few downsides. Photoshop is a little bit slow, and for some reason I’m having problems running a few apps in Rosetta (which, by the way is great - completely transparent). Dreamweaver MX isn’t wanting to run, and some other older pieces of software for my scanner etc simply crash when launched. My Bit Torrent client, Azureus, also doesn’t work at all. Obviously I can’t put this down entirely to the Rosetta/Intel combination, it seems likely.

Boot Camp
It basically does what it says on the tin. It works fine, and I installed Windows XP without a hitch. It’s great to have on there, as I can now ditch my old big Windows machine, but it’s still not ideal for my purposes. I like to be able to test web development etc in IE as well as Firefox and Safari in one fell swoop - rebooting each time is hardly ideal (even with the MacBook’s sub 20 second boot times!). It’ll be great to have a machine that runs Vista too, whever it is (eventuallly!) released.

Screen
Put simply, wow. I’m quite a screen connoisseur, and the MacBook’s screen has blown me away. Unlike many people, I’m a huge fan of the reflective displays with the glossy finish - everything is clearer and more vivid. Apple have done it perfectly and I can’t fault the display at all. The resoltion is great too, and the ability to put a second output to my 19″ TFT, at full resolution, is simply fantastic. There’s so much space to work with!

Conclusion
I’m really impressed, and know this machine will fit my needs perfectly over the next few years. I’d recommend it to anyone really, consumer or pro. I will be fitting it out with additional RAM as the standard 512mb simply isn’t enough. Hopefully 2gb will allow me to run more of the professional apps I need on a day to day basis. I really can’t fault it, and I’d recommend the black one if you can afford to put out the extra money. It really is a great deal different to white. I’ve got a Mac to see me into the next operating systems both from Apple and Windows, and it’s a future proof machine.

I bought a new black, 2ghz MacBook from my local Apple store today, and have been completely blown away. It’s dead easy to use, built flawlessly and is incredibly impressive. There will be more information and a review style write-up coming soon!

Michael Jackson seemed to be of the opinion that ‘It doesn’t matter‘. All well and good I say, but he wasn’t dealing with the heart wrenching dilemma about which colour MacBook to purchase…

Black
Black is sleek. It’s got a professional quality which is matched only by brushed aluminium. It’s unique, original and won’t lose it’s value as much as the standard white over time. On the flip side, it’s more expensive, scratches easier than white and Apple or not, still has the potential to be confused with a Dell. Shock horror!

White
Ah, white. It’s the timeless Apple masterpiece, with an elegant and classic feel. It doesn’t come at a price, and would match my white iPod perfectly. However, it’s potentially nickable as it makes your beautiful laptop stick out a mile in a crowd.

Why upgrade?
I’ll be thinking about this for a while, but as far as I see it there are a couple of damned good reasons to sell my faithful Mac Mini and upgrade to a MacBook:

• Portability
• Dual Monitors
• Intel Speed
• Runs Windows (purely for testing websites in IE. promise.)

I’ll keep you posted!

Adobe have recently announced their Spry Framework for programming AJAX. This is their marketing theme:

The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library for web designers that provides functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to bring Ajax to the web design community who can benefit from Ajax, but are not well served by other frameworks.

It’s interesting to see a larger company move into the arena of Javascript frameworks, although it seems that Adobe are following very much in existing footsteps. Spry seems to offer very similar features to existing frameworks such as Prototype, Scriptaculous and Rico. They claim that it will integrate easily with software such as Dreamweaver, which I’d very much like to see in action.

Hopefully this venture from Adobe won’t cause any of the smaller providers to lose faith, and they won’t gain a monopoly in this new and rapidly changing area.