- Right click incompetence. The right-click is a widely accepted standard, but besides attaching an external mouse to one of the ports, all the right-click "workarounds" that the Macbook provides are either slow, awkward, or inconvenient (or any combination of the above). No, clicking the Control button AND clicking the trackpad is not convenient for the user. No, having to click a small invisible rectangle boundary in the bottom right corner of the trackpad is not intuitive, and makes it very easy for clicks to be confused as what it was not supposed to be. And no, double tapping the trackpad is not easy either. Double-tapping is not reliably recognized on the trackpad, and even if it were, the time it waits to make sure the user is not going to drag his fingers around is way longer than I am willing to wait for a single right click.
- While we're on the input matter, I'd like to point out its Caps Lock incompetence. Yes, I know a lot of people will say "just use the Shift key!" Well, it is NOT the same as using the Shift key! If it is to capitalize a sentence, then sure, but when I want to write a LONG STRING OF CAPITALIZED LETTERS, I'd much rather enable Caps Lock. So you might ask "what is wrong with Caps Lock?" Slow activation. Say I'm writing my password, which is all caps, so I start typing, in this order: "Caps Lock", "p", "r"... you know what I get on my screen? "pR", or sometimes "pr", and if I'm REALLY slow, "PR". Very unreliable. If I press the Caps Lock key BEFORE a letter, I expect the key to BE capitalized, not only the letters after it. Annoying detail.
- No Home/End/Delete keys! (Yes, I realize I'm highly biased because my main background comes from typing on standard IBM 101 keyboards, but since I'm ranting, I might as well). When doing quick & dirty text editing, we need quick & dirty shortcuts to get around the text... quickly. And the lack of these keys can make some tasks significantly slower.
- No hardware audio control. I didn't mind this much until just a few days ago. I was in class and I heard some technical term that I can't remember now... say it was "digamma distribution". I wanted to know more about it, so I took out my laptop to google it, right? I open it up and press the power button... the screen lights up... APPLE CHIME AT LOUDEST VOLUME! The whole class turns to look at me, I look down at my keyboard and almost implode with an apologetic feeling of "oops...". Now see, first of all, that starting chime is unnecessary. It's a nice touch sometimes, but what do you do if you want to open the computer discretely? It's midnight and you want to check your email but don't want to wake up nearby people - what do you do? So, like with other laptops, I thought if I connected some earphones to the computer, the audio will be routed through them and the noise will be much softer, right? WRONG! It doesn't route! The audio output detection must happen sometime after that initial chime, because even with earphones connected, the chime is output through the speakers. And not having control over whether your computer makes a very loud noise when you turn it on can be very annoying.
- Inability to close the lid without the laptop going to sleep! Now this is a very big turnoff. Just because I want to go the bathroom and I want some screen privacy while I'm gone doesn't mean that my code should stop compiling, or my programs stop running, or that my files should stop downloading! I understand that it's not a good idea to keep the hard disk rotating if you're packing it up to go somewhere, but shouldn't the option at least be available for someone who knows what he's doing? I'm sure it can't be THAT hard to keep programs running if the lid is closed...
- This one may sound super picky, but it still annoys me. The keys are too far away from each other. This is an advantage for some, a disadvantage for me. Tactile feedback and shortcuts are very important for a typer, and spreading out the keys hinders both of them. On my other laptop, keys touch each other, so when I want to type two keys that happen to be adjacent to each other (say, D and E), it is very easy to immediately feel the other keys around my finger and, while typing D, simply "scroll" the typing finger to the front to type two keys with one single thrust. This is not as doable on the Macbook, as the keys are spread too far apart to feel several of them at once while typing. It's cumbersome and requires much intentional effort to type on the Macbook, that's all.
- Only two USB ports... I'm used to at least three. Not a killer, but slightly annoying. No, Apple Inc, Firewire is not a replacement for USB.
- HUGE trackpad. So now I can't type without risking accidentally clicking or dragging the cursor unless my arms approach the keyboard at a wide angle. Initially irrelevant, but eventually uncomfortable.
- Moving on... file management. Why the heck can't we delete files on a single step?? I always have to move my unnecessary files into the trash bin FIRST, and only THEN can I go ahead and do an inconvenient RIGHT-CLICK on the trash bin, and then CONFIRM my decision on the annoying slow dialog that appears. WTH, Apple people? Give us a Shift-Delete!
- No NTFS write support (No, I don't trust third-party software with my hard drives' souls). It really should NOT be that hard to enable NTFS support. I know, I know, you want your dear HFS+ to become more widely used. Standards war, I understand. But it sucks... if I have both a Windows laptop and a Macbook and a couple of backup external hard drives I connect to both of them, which file system am I supposed to format them as? If I make them HFS, my Lenovo won't read them. If I make them NTFS, my Mac won't write them! But it can still read them, so I'm using NTFS anyway. So there.
- .DS_Store. Huh? Hidden files that are hard to get to see on the GUI, and when you do find the option to see them and enable it, they're annoying because they're EVERYWHERE. Everywhere, I don't know what's it for, but they can be quite annoying. I want to rmdir a directory... "Directory not empty". Dang it, I go into it and list the files... nothing. And THEN I remember... ahhh... .DS_Store. So I have to manually say "rm .DS_Store" or do a full "rm -r" on the directory, in which case I risk deleting something important I had left in the folder. Or say I'm doing a full big folder backup or duplicate from my PC to my Mac. So after the couple of hours it took to move the files, with possibly a few unplanned interruptions, I want to check if the backup was made correctly. So I compare the folder sizes. If the number of bytes matches, I'm done. But I check and... the duplicate folder on the Mac is BIGGER? A few moments later I remember "ohhh... .DS_Store", and now I have no reliable, easy way of knowing whether the backup was performed perfectly or not. (Yes, small files matter to me too).
- I have to BUY a video output adapter? $29.00?? The manufacturing cost of those things shouldn't be more than $5 a piece! Yes, compared to the actual laptop the price is quite low, but it's still a rip-off. Now that I think of it though, it does reduce the amount of laptop area it needs for the port. However, they should be nice and include the adapter (or a coupon to get the exact one you need) with the purchase of the laptop. That courtesy alone would win them more favorable opinions. Mine, at least.
This entry is about dislikes, but to be fair, I'll post the things I like about it too:
- Webcam! The webcam is awesome: unnoticeable, adds no volume to the laptop, and has excellent resolution and image quality. 5/5, and it would get a 6 if only it also had an infrared mode. 7 for a Kirlian mode too. 8 if it were detachable and usable as a regular hand-held camera. 9 if it folded my laundry too.
- Audio input is ALSO excellent. I don't know about audio technicalities, but the recordings sound great.
- The power cord is pretty cool. I like the extensible option (although I never retract it to the shorter length), and being able to detach the magnetically-attached power cord from any direction feels pretty nice. I also like the orange/green indicator of whether the battery's fully charged or not.
- Outer smoothness. If I want to slide it quickly into my backpack... *slide*, and done! It has no bumps or pointy edges it can get stuck with the backpack or the other things inside it on. The feel of the aluminum material is nice too, although it can get pretty cold if you just walked with it outside in a chilly winter morning.
- Bash shell. YEAH!!! I honestly don't use its full capabilities that much, but I know some of the power of Bash. And respect it.
I guess that's it.
No comments:
Post a Comment