Switchers' Blog

MacBook Pro: Be quiet or go home!

I’m relatively happy with my new MacBook Pro. I haven’t upgraded from the standard 512MB of RAM yet, so it is actually quite slow; the 2GB of RAM should be here soon and I expect that to allow the 4X performance increase to shine…

My first impression of the MacBook Pro, however, is that it makes way too much noise. I am one of those guys that can hear mechanical clocks tick and it drives me nuts, so I am very unhappy with the constant whining noise made by the machine.

The QuietMBP process helps (http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/105/all-work-and-no-play-makes-a-quiet-macbook-pro), but I am not happy about wasting battery on a mindless spin-loop just to quite the processors. Currently I start this automatically upon login, so at least it is not a manual process…

The jury is still out on this noise. I’ll see what Apple says; if they give me the run-around, I will likely return it in favor of an iMac.

Detecting PowerPC applications on Intel Macs

I just found that Activity Monitor is showing the Kind column in the list of currently running processes:

This makes it easy to detect all applications currently running under Rosetta emulator:

• Open Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities)
• Sort by Kind column

Intel iMac — First Impressions

After a few weeks of waiting for MacBook Pro, I decided to cancel the order and go with the new iMac instead. I will still use the PowerBook G4 on the road but iMac is becoming my primary computer now. Intel iMac is my first desktop in 5 years and the first impressions are positive so far:

• Fantastic, very bright 20” monitor
• Comfortable full-size keyboard
• 4-button Mighty Mouse

The pre-installed software now includes Comic Life and Big Bang Board Games. Unfortunately, my favorite PowerBook G4 applications Art Directors Toolkit and OmniGraffle are not included.

Kids had fun with the built-in camera and the Photo Booth. I liked Apple Remote and Front Row.