Macbook Pro first impressions

Mercutio said:
In my experience, Lenovo sends a DHL van that brings me a box to put the impacted notebook in. The van arrives within a couple hours of the support call unless I tell them to wait on it. The DHL van takes away the notebook. Three to five business days later, the repaired notebook is back.
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In my experience, they dispatch a contract repair man to my location the next day. Getting the on-site warranty pays.
 
I figure that I can either do the work myself or I'd rather have a depot tech with every part in the freaking universe at his fingertips doing it. U

Apparently my MBP will be back Friday. So that's something. I guess.
 
Their tech has to do it to keep the warranty valid. Since Thinkpad manuals are freely available, there's really nothing that I could not do on one. It's parts that can be problematic.

Personally, I'm a little skittish to send my personal information off to who-knows-where.
 
sechs said:
Personally, I'm a little skittish to send my personal information off to who-knows-where.
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Send it back with a different hard drive?

That's an interesting point, our in-house repair people are Dell certified but Panasonic won't let them touch their computers, so now all the tough books that we have been converted to for field guys need to go back to Panasonic for repair. Today we have full disk encryption required for all of our machines, so maybe it isn't an issue?

They say the repair amounts are 10% of what they were previously for the non rugged dells so that's a plus.
 
So apparently the new Macbook ditches the ethernet port entirely. Who the hell thinks that's a good idea? On a "business" machine? Really?
 
Mercutio said:
You clearly never had to support end users in the days of PCMCIA NICs.
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Clearly. :roll: I worked in my college's help desk for 4 years supporting students and staff. This change is not as big a deal as you make it out to be. I'm indifferent in the change, but understand that thunderbolt was built to handle this. It's hardly even close to those huge and clunky PCMCIA cards sticking several inches out side of a laptop.
 
timwhit said:
It's just one more stupid accessory you have to carry around with you.
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Only if you even need it. The majority of places while traveling give wifi access only. If you need a hard connection, that component would just remain at work or at home.
 
Handruin said:
Only if you even need it. The majority of places while traveling give wifi access only. If you need a hard connection, that component would just remain at work or at home.
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Sure, you say that. Until you're in a place that doesn't have 802.11. Some of my customers don't.

They really can't be doing it because of any serious cost savings. They aren't doing it to improve reliability. In the end I suspect they're doing it to drive the sale of a $30 accessory and to make their laptop a little bit prettier at the expense of a shit-ton of convenience and reliable network performance.

Christ. The very first thing I did when I got my MBP back on Monday was copy a virtual machine we've been using for classroom demonstrations onto it. Should I be thanking Apple for graciously allowing me to do that using patch cable instead of a ~20 times slower wireless connection?
 
I'm not agreeing that their choice is right, I just don't find it anywhere near as annoying as you and I fail to see why you get in such a mood over this shit. I honestly don't care what Apple does with their Macbooks because I'm not in the market to own one (probably ever). Why would I waste energy bitching about it so vehemently like you do? My point is, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Most places I travel, I have a proper laptop bag. If I had to have that laptop because it was forced on me, I'd carry the stupid dongle in the bag. Otherwise, I'd not buy their laptop because of its inconvenient nature. :roll::roll:

Why the hell are you even using a Macbook with virtual machines if you hate it so much? Demonstrate on a Thinkpad. You make no sense. You hate their products, yet you continue to use it. Next you're going to tell me you have to because it's for work. When did anything in your life stop you from putting aside your values of hatred towards inanimate objects?
 
I stuck the MBP in one of my classrooms to use for presentation since I'm not using it otherwise and it annoys me because people buy these things and then expect me to support them. I can tell them all day long that I don't want to deal with Apple shit but the same people who whine about blowing $700 on a Thinkpad will happily plop down the same $700 for an ipad or $1500 for a Macbook. It's ridiculous.
 
Mercutio said:
I stuck the MBP in one of my classrooms to use for presentation since I'm not using it otherwise and it annoys me because people buy these things and then expect me to support them. I can tell them all day long that I don't want to deal with Apple shit but the same people who whine about blowing $700 on a Thinkpad will happily plop down the same $700 for an ipad or $1500 for a Macbook. It's ridiculous.
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When Apple Care exists, why are you supporting them? Shouldn't they be paying for the Apple Care support? Next time you need to support someone, send it to Apple, get it fixed, pass along the bill + your standard fee. They'll get the hint, you make cash, and don't have to deal with supporting their products. Win/Win
 
Handruin said:
When Apple Care exists, why are you supporting them?
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I still have to manage access to networks and to data. Usually that means setting up Parallels or VMware Fusion for one thing or other. And then that's a hassle to manage. As far as I know there's no good tool for administering VMs that are on individual workstations. Which is a different reason for irritation.
 
Stereodude said:
What happens if you need to plug something else into the Thunderbolt port? I guess you don't need Ethernet at the same time as any other Thunderbolt peripheral.
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Unless I missed something, you could use the second thunderbolt port. :scratch: If that's not enough, Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock is a staggering $300 if you want additional portage, but hey, what's that when your base macbook pro is only $2200. Again, I don't agree with it, I just don't see it as a big deal. How many thunderbolt items are out there anyway that don't cost as much as the laptop itself? This laptop isn't for practical thinking.
 
As I've said before, MBPs are "supposed" to fall into the same broad category as what I typically think of as "business class" products from other manufacturers. They have support offerings that are similar-ish to Dell and Lenovo business products, demand premium pricing and at one time they offered a more consumer-friendly iBook as an alternative... which I think they killed at about the same time that Apple started to become a lifestyle brand six or seven years ago. You certainly can make the case that Apple is ditching non-lifestyle users with the lack of utility in the new MBP, lack of server hardware and the infrequency of product refreshes on Mac Pros, but as a hybrid of consumer and professional needs I'd say the new MBP is a pretty ugly duckling.
 
Oh, and apparently the new MBPs have all their RAM soldered in.
How is this thing anything but an insult to everyone other than Apple shareholders?
 
Mercutio said:
As I've said before, MBPs are "supposed" to fall into the same broad category as what I typically think of as "business class" products from other manufacturers. They have support offerings that are similar-ish to Dell and Lenovo business products, demand premium pricing and at one time they offered a more consumer-friendly iBook as an alternative... which I think they killed at about the same time that Apple started to become a lifestyle brand six or seven years ago. You certainly can make the case that Apple is ditching non-lifestyle users with the lack of utility in the new MBP, lack of server hardware and the infrequency of product refreshes on Mac Pros, but as a hybrid of consumer and professional needs I'd say the new MBP is a pretty ugly duckling.
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This is no real surprise to me because their focus has changed long ago. The trends of tablets and smartphones are the shift they are hoping for even if you and I are not. What I'm actually surprised they put such a nice display into the MBP for a new release. I would have expected them to move away from an upper-end laptop and try to switch people into their iPad line.
 
I suspect that they're leveraging the logistics chain they've built on the back of the ipad parts supply to beat everyone else about the scrotum with a product that Apple and Apple alone can sell for a ridiculous markup. No one else can get away with the same shit now that Apple is the closest thing to a religion.
 
Mercutio said:
Oh, and apparently the new MBPs have all their RAM soldered in.
How is this thing anything but an insult to everyone other than Apple shareholders?
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That is really bad. I accept some of that BS in phones and tablets but I would not accept that in a proper computer device.
 
Apparently they glue in the battery too, on top of requiring almost complete disassembly of the notebook with security screws to get at it.
The end result is something that's almost completely non-serviceable.
 
Mercutio said:
In my experience, Lenovo sends a DHL van that brings me a box to put the impacted notebook in. The van arrives within a couple hours of the support call unless I tell them to wait on it. The DHL van takes away the notebook. Three to five business days later, the repaired notebook is back.
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Called Lenovo on Tuesday.
Box arrived Wednesday. Missed a day getting stuff off the laptop.
Shipped the laptop Thursday (courier pickup). Service Center is interstate, so they would have received it Friday.
Repaired laptop arrived back Monday morning.

There are no weekend pickups here, so without the interstate shipping delays, that's same-day turnaround. That's obviously perfect service and Lenovo just went up several notches in my estimation. :)
 
For a "Chinese" company, I guess they're continuing the hallowed traditions of IBM. The latter's support when I owned a Thinkpad in the early 2000's was impressive indeed.
 
I just ran in to my first OS X system with a malware problem. The machine had a memory-resident program called Genieo installed which hijacked both Home Page and Search settings for all installed browsers and seems to have been displaying ads in spite of adblock+ for Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
The user was flummoxed as to how to remove it, though doing so really wasn't any more work than the state of Windows Spyware Removal in, oh, 1999 or so (stop the application, uninstall it, change browser settings back).

The computer in question had both an outdated version of Java and Frostwire installed, either of which could have been the initial infection source. Frostwire appears to be the primary function of the computer as far as I can tell. I'm sure if she'd had a Windows PC, it would've been the Whore of Babylon as far as Internet Herpes go.
 
Wow. Yeah, anyway. So it lacks delete and insert keys? Holy crap, they do not have the power user's best interests at heart here... I use the delete key constantly, and while I honestly have no idea what Insert is really used for...

If they'd done that to the Home/End keys I wouldn't have bought it. I only started using these keys recently but my god they are convenient.
 
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