Top 5 Annoying things about my MacBook Pro

I just started a new job and they offered me a choice of a Mac or a PC. I’ve always been too cheap to buy one myself so I was excited to get one for work to give it a try. I’ve had this new MacBook for a couple months now and just needed to vent some of the annoying things I’ve found.

Overall the Mac OS 10 is pretty impressive. Being a Linux guy, it’s nice to be able to get into the guts of the OS and have familiar Linux like tools. But with any system there are positives and negatives. So to get on with it here are the:

Top 5 Annoying things about my MacBook Pro

#5 No right click

I don’t know what the Mac fascination is with a one-button mouse, but this gets old real quick. You can use the keyboard key “cntrl” in combination with a mouse click, but that’s pretty annoying.
It’s a easy fix to get around, the Mac OS has supported every USB mouse or keyboard I’ve tried to use, and the “right-click” on every mouse I’ve tried works as expected.

#4 No Number keypad

I’m looking at this keyboard as I type this article and there is 2 1/4 inches to the left and right of the keyboard. It’s being used for speakers, but there is plenty of real estate to allow for a number pad.

Mac’s I’ve noticed are the “pretty boys” of the computer world and I think the MacBook Pro didn’t have the right look with a keyboard that included a number pad.
It’s easy enough to plug in a USB keyboard or number pad, it’s just annoying to have to carry that crap around.

#3 Not ergonomic

The MacBook is beautiful, Apple has always done a great job of making some of the best looking laptops out there. But ergonomics is one of those things that takes a back seat to looks for Apple.

I’m at a computer almost every waking hour and have carpal tunnel type problems so I’m sensitive to the ergonomics of the machines I use. They keyboard and touchpad are very high up on the MacBook Pro putting your wrists in a very bad position if you like to rest them on the laptop while you type or use the touchpad.

If the keyboard and touchpad were located lower on the laptop your wrists would be able to bend in a more natural position. To get around this I find I have to hold my hands and wrists hovering over the keyboard, this works nice but it’s tiring to do for very long.

#2 No docking station

Most major notebook manufactures have docking stations you can use. Mac doesn’t offer one. You can get a USB docking station, but that doesn’t help you with video, sound or power.

My guess is Apple hasn’t been able to make one that’s pretty enough or they don’t have enough corporate type customers making requests for them.

So the end result is I have to plug in a bunch (Power, DVI, Ethernet, USB Devices) of stuff every time I go somewhere with my MacBook. Livable but annoying.

#1 Can’t operate MacBook with lid shut

This is absolutely maddening. You shut the lid, MacBook goes to sleep. Period. There doesn’t seem to be any way around this.

Alright, the MacBook I have has a very nice screen, but I have a better screen at work. I don’t have the desktop real estate to have two side-by-side screens. Sense I can’t operate the MacBook with the lid shut (like you can with every other laptop on the planet), I’m stuck with the MacBook screen instead of the nice big screen I could use at work.

With most laptops you can keep the laptop closed and plug in an external monitor, but there is no way you can do that with the MacBook. Very very annoying, epically sense there is no workaround.

In Conclusion

Overall I like my MacBook Pro. It’s a solid sleek machine, but it’s got it’s own set of flaws. If I was on a budget and needed to buy a personal laptop for myself, I’m not sure if I would get a MacBook or not. If it was 20-30% cheaper it would be worth it, but given the cost combined with the annoying things I’ve discovered I’m not sure if I would get a MacBook or not.

Overall with a MacBook your paying for hardware that is allowed to run the Mac OSX operating system, so if you prefer OS X there really isn’t a option. I’ve only been using OS X as my primary OS for a couple months so I haven’t made up mind on that one yet. I’ll put out another article when I do.

GoGrid hosting review

“Cloud Computing” is a new buzz word floating around the computer world. The basic idea is you worry only about your OS or your application, not the hardware.

In my case I wanted something similar to a co-located server, but I didn’t want to worry about hardware anymore. There are lots of Cloud services out there, most of them seem to go for the “Cloud Application” approach. Which basically means you host your App on their Cloud and they give you all the distributed Cloud resources you need. But in my case I needed entire Linux and Windows systems, not just a application hosted.

Enter GoGrid. GoGrid from what I understand uses Xen, they have a dozen or so OS Images in certain configuration and through the web interface you basically pick your IP, how much RAM, the OS, and the Image of that OS you want.

Why I choose WordPress

After co-locating a server for a few years and getting tired of the cost as well as the time managing the thing. I starting looking for services that would do what I want. At the time I was hosting my own website blog/wiki as well as doing other basic internet services for family and friends.

Most of my web services (email, docs, web) I was able to host on Google Sites, they let me use my domain name for site localized versions of Gmail, Google Start Page, and Google Docs. But their Google Sites service dosen’t have a blog service, or at least one that is easy to use.

My blog requirements were as follows:

• Easy to use – Pretty obvious but allot of the blog tools out there are fairly complicated for doing something like a simple blog
• Good web editor and decent third-party blog editors (ScribeFire for example). The web is great, but sometimes it’s nice to have a real program to do the work for you. Some of the blog tools out there make life alot easier.
• Easy to export – I like to try new things out and I may switch blog services, so I wanted something that’s easy to export. This is good for keeping a personal archive/backup, as well as giving you something to import into a new service.
• Free – Ok I’m cheap, but there are tons of free blog services out there so this seemed like a decent enough requirement.

WordPress was the only application that I was able to find that meet all my requirements. Not to mention WordPress offers the WordPress code itself as a Open Source application. So if I get a wild hair and decide to use a hosting service or get my own server again I can download and install my own version of WordPress.

My Favorite Free Internet Radio Service

Shoutcast has been around for awhile and it’s a great service. They are basically a listing of free internet radio streams. Shoutcast doesn’t provide the music, they just list the services that do.

When you go to their website it defaults by listing the top stations, but you can also search for particular genre or a specific station. They have by far the largest list of streams I’ve seen on the net, and it’s quick and easy to find and listen to a stream without having to register or pay a fee.

To play Shoutcast you can use any of a host of different players out there, but for Windows and Linux I’d suggest the following:

Linux:

• xmms
• songbird
• kaffeine

Windows:

• songbird
• winamp
• Anything but Windows Media Player (It really seems to suck for streams)

SHOUTcast | Free internet radio!

Test from ScribeFire

For my first blog post ever on WordPress I decided to try the ScribFire Firefox add-on.

Overall I’ve been looking for a Blog service and tool that I could use from Linux and Windows that would allow me to get my thoughts out in a minimum amount of technical effort. There are, of course tons of tools out there. But there aren’t that many that work in Linux and Windows and work with various blog sites.

From that point of view ScribeFire was the best tool I’ve been able to find so far.

ScreenShot:

RHEL4 Linux, Firefox 2.x, ScribeFire 2.0.2