A couple of months ago, I got a new Apple 15" notebook (Macbook Pro). The trackpad's size is nice and the screen looks good, but everything else has been quite horrific.
- Double-click to drag doesn't work properly.
- I get significantly less battery life in Windows than in OS X because Apple doesn't bother exposing the Intel graphics to non-OS X installs, just the AMD ones.
These weren't big concerns to me, though. Where things seriously took a turn for the worse is when I decided to get a solid-state drive for the notebook to make Mozilla builds (and everything else) faster.
- The screws to open up the notebook were so tight that I stripped them in the process of opening them. I had to go to the nearest Apple store to get them opened up. Turns out they use some sort of blue-coloured adhesive to hold the screws in place. (WTF?)
- According to the support rep who helped me out (no, I'm not going to call him a "genius"), installing the SSD technically voids the warranty. It's not a big deal because easy to put the original hard drive back in, but it's just wrong to void the warranty for that.
- Once I installed Windows onto the SSD, I benchmarked it. To my surprise, reads were only 180 MB/s or so and 4K random reads and writes were only happening at roughly 4000/second, several times less than they should be. Turns out non-OS X installs don't get AHCI (WTF?!?!?!), which means they don't get native command queueing, which is rather essential for a high random IOPS rate.
Now there is an MBR hack available to turn AHCI on, but the hack breaks sleep. So now I'm faced with the absolutely ridiculous choice between working sleep and getting the full value out of my SSD. (I'll probably turn AHCI on, simply because I don't put my notebook to sleep *that* often and can wait the 30 or so seconds it would take to come out of hibernate.)
This is the first time I've had an Apple notebook, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be the last.
12 comments:
It's sad that nobody told you not to get Apple hardware if your preferred OS is Windows. Apple's bootcamp approach is quite minimalistic, i.e. it just kinda works enough to do stuff once in a while and play some games. Apple's laptops shine under OS X (touchpad functions, battery life, etc.) and perhaps work OK with Linux (never tried that, just knowing that some people do it). Of course your finding are nevertheless valid but there's a reason macbooks are nowhere advertised as good windows laptops.
I don't like my macbook pro all that much as well. i've a 13" so far, but OSX is not very convenient with most unix/linux software, even if you can eventually make stuff work, and software ported from Windows is usually subpar (exception being MS Office, but that's not really a port)
Installing Linux on it is also not all fun, but it does mostly work in the end. (EFI native, does not - only BIOS emulation)
Finally, the dock takes all the space on the screen - that's why so many set it as auto hide I would guess - but auto-hide is very annoying. Reducing the dock size makes the icons much smaller than various Linux or Windows taskbars for the same screen space taken, so in the end, that's the reason why the dock is so big.
For the hardware, the trackpad 2nd button trick does not work well (left click often registers as right click), and the laptop is quite heavy compared to the competition.
Finally, I though the battery life would be good in OSX, but its equivalent to similar Windows laptops in fact.
All in all it's not a terribly bad laptop - but I seriously prefer my Vaio - and I don't especially like Sony ;-)
Using grub2 with setpci to enable AHCI may not have problems with sleep. I'd suggest giving that a shot. :)
The tap-and-a-half drag option in Mac OS X is so broken I don't know why they even have the option. The three-finger drag option works better.
Is it really Apple's fault that Windows doesn't know how to take advantage of its hardware?
TheLink: The new ones currently suck with Linux too, because wireless doesn't work.
mjc: From posts on insanelymac it seems that it's a problem with the EFI, and only
Jesse: The double-click to drag feature is really minor. What really pissed me off was the lack of AHCI on BIOS installs, and that's 100% Apple's fault. There's also the fact that Windows actually supports EFI 2.x, but Apple's still stuck with 1.x on its machines.
Apparently I won't get TRIM either, which means I should turn AHCI on as soon as possible.
mjc: ... and only Apple can fix it. I'll try it out though.
Don't most computer manufacturers void your warenty as soon as you replace anything? I've certainly owned more than one non-Apple computer that came with seals that made it obvious if you had opened the case.
Ian: No, not the ones I've owned. All of them came with service manuals containing instructions on how to replace anything, from the RAM to the processor heatsink.
And these were notebooks, not desktop computers.
Services Manual to replace Heatsink? I can definitely say Heat sink is part of the warranty for notebook. As a matter of fact even HDD are. But most notebook maker normally dont care if you replace HDD with HDD, and they advise you to actually replace the HDD or RAM yourself before you go to services center. SSD is different because it causes all other sort of problem and therefore it will actually void your warranty, or they could refuse to repair it for you. Although 99% of time they will simply install your original HDD and proceed with Warranty. You just didn't know about it.
And those complain about Windows / Linux not working on your Notebook, i mean it was never tuned for Windows in the first place. The Windows or Bootcamp option is merely used for backup when you do need something in Windows. This is like complaining Windows 7 doesn't work on my old Notebook when it was perfectly capable of doing so.
Every laptop I've owned or serviced, Apple or not, has had that "blue colored adhesive" (occasionally red) to prevent the screws from vibrating loose. It's called Loctite, and it's standard practice in industries ranging from aerospace to automotive to consumer appliances and electronics.
That may be the case, but those were still the tightest screws on a computer case I've ever seen, and the only ones I've ever managed to actually strip.
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