Bagel Belly Blog

MacBook Woe

I bought a MacBook Pro last week, on my way back from Oxford. If you've been wondering why I've been kinda quiet, it's because I've been coming to terms with what a disaster this laptop is.

So, first impressions, roughly transcribed from iChat conversations with others while I set it up:

• Big battery and big PSU on this thing. Both are significantly bigger than on the Powerbook.
• The remote reminds me of a cigarette lighter, or an iPod Shuffle that was stamped on.
• Speakers are much different to the Powerbook - richer sound, more spatial.
• It vibrates (more on this later).
• Nice big touchpad, much larger than on the Powerbook.
• Photo booth: genius.
• Spotlight is usable! (When compared to the type-n-wait disaster it was on the Powerbook)
• I wonder how much money Apple are going to make on lost remotes?
• There's a bug: Frontrow hangs if you run it without having run iTunes, because iTunes shows a software license agreement prompt the first time it runs.
• 15 minutes in and I got the pizza wheel of death :-( iTunes won't quit, and "Force Quit" won't display.
• It doesn't seem significantly faster, but then it's a clean install with nothing to test yet.
• Photobooth is genius. Laugh-out-loud genius. Too much fun.

On Friday, I nuked the Macbook's disk and did a clean reinstall (to omit various extraneous software packages I didn't need (printer drivers, language packs, Garageband, iMovie), saving disk space). I then migrated my data from the old Powerbook, and was impressed with how smoothly it went. After copying, I logged in, and my Powerbook's desktop was there, running on the new machine. All my data and most of my applications had made it across, too.

After further investigation, however, it appears the migration tool is patchy and misses some crucial data. For example, NetInfo Manager is missing a number of custom-defined machine details. Internet Connect no longer has any of my VPN details. This is a bit annoying, as most of those details on the Powerbook are now separated from me by about 100 miles of sea.

I spent the weekend on and off doing stuff on the laptop. By Monday, I'd come to the conclusion that my laptop was slow, buggy, hot, laggy, and vibrating permanently.

Slow: in the speed test with Paul's laptop, he got 1 minute 21 seconds to do a clean build of Cocoon. For me, it takes anywhere from 1 minute 52 seconds to 2 minutes 39 seconds.

Buggy: some programs are exhibiting weird behaviour: for example, I can't drag and drop photos into new albums in iPhoto, menumeters has a habit of dying quietly. From time to time, the Superdrive arbitrarily decides to try and eject, even if there's nothing in there. Path Finder is hopelessly slow. And yes, wherever possible or available I am running Universal Binary versions of these applications.

Hot: it becomes uncomfortable to rest my hands on the laptop, and the rear left corner of the laptop gets painfully hot to touch. There doesn't appear to be anything using excessive amounts of CPU, so there's no obvious reason for lots of heat to be generated.

Laggy: using option-tab to change applications often results in a very noticeable pause. At random intervals I get the pizza wheel. Sometimes I can be typing into Adium, and I have to pause to wait for my words to appear.

Vibrating: the vibration is the sort of low, constant, unpleasant vibration that leads to numb, painful fingers. No-one else I've spoken to has seen anything like it, so I'll be popping to one of the Apple shops in Amsterdam this week to see if it's even remotely normal.

I spoke to Apple support, and they got me to power-cycle and then hold the power button down for 5 seconds, presumably to reset something in the firmware. It didn't make much difference. Apple want me to send the machine back to them, with at least one week turnaround time - not really an option as I don't have the old Powerbook with me.

Tonight I'm going to try doing a clean install, and migrate my data across by hand, rather than trusting the Apple migration tool. I should at least be able to reclaim some disk space this way.