It’s now have been a couple of days since I’ve started playing with a Mac. There are both positives and negatives that I’ve run across. For me something new is always interesting, and considering that I’ve been using DOS, Linux and Windows for decades now — Mac OS I’ve only seen from a far.

I’ll start with specs of our machine — MacBook Pro.

• 2.4GHz Intel Penryn Core 2 Duo
• 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM — 2×1GB
• 200GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB
• 15-inch Glossy LED Widescreen Display
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
• Multi-touch Trackpad

Apple is a master of the eye-candy. Everything looks nice and clean with nifty animations all over the place. Some “conventions” act totally different on Mac from what I would expect coming over from Windows, but everything make sense, and it just takes time getting used to.

I like the fact that the current iteration of Mac OS has its roots in FreeBSD. I can basically SSH to any of my Linux boxes right from the native terminal.

Installing and looking around the iPhone SDK was a pleasure too. The tools are all there, including a nice iPhone simulator.

I tried loading a movie from our HD camcorder into iMovie via FireWire. Software identified the cam without any issues and was able to capture the video from the tape on the very first try. Cutting and putting the video together is a pleasure in a new iMovie’08 interface.

However this is where I’ve ran into my first serious disappointment. I tried to speed up one of the clips in my movie project and discovered that I can’t find that functionality. After doing a quick search I discovered that features like these were readily available in iMovie’06, but were all gone with the release of 08. No speed adjustments, no DVD scene marks, no plug-in support. All gone.

What really pisses me off is that Apple would do something like that while running around like crazy with their “make movies easy” mantra. So yeah, you can cut a movie, but that’s where it stops. Want more? Buy more software from us. Complete and utter bullshit. I’m not asking for some profession video editing software, but the lack of the very basic functionality sure is disappointing. In fact Apple is admitting that they screwed up by allowing the owners of 08 suite to get iMovie’06 for free. They really should address all these problems in the current version to make it right though.

Hopefully I won’t run into more of these. Overall I’m still glad that we’ve bought the laptop. Traveling with it is going to be easier as well for it is quite a bit lighter then my other laptop and has a smaller, slicker form factor. And as I said, new stuff is always interesting.