To all techies/Mac lovers, this post is for you:
Alright, so I bought an iBook not too long ago and, well, we fell in love. Truly, madly, deeply… and now, I think I want to buy the Macbook. I’m tired of having an HP desktop, Dell laptop, and a G4 iBook and having to maneuver between the three of them, depending on what I want to do. Therefore, I think I want the Macbook (or the Macbook Pro).
So, here are my questions:
- Should I buy now or wait until Apple has had the chance to tweak and fix problems? Please keep in mind that the Macbook would be my only computer, so I need things to work well at all times.
- I have heard that Applecare is a must for laptops. Correct or not?
- What is the deal with this apps-not-running-natively/Rosetta stuff? I don’t understand.
- Macbook, or Macbook Pro? I honestly don’t see much of a difference except in processor speed (1.83 ghz is fast enough for me) and screen size (I would want no larger than 15.4″ no matter what, and 13.3″ would probably be fine for me). So enlighten me, please.
- If you could build the ideal computer for me, what would it be? I will basically use it to surf the Internet, blog, chat (video & audio, too), and run Adobe CS2. I am constantly on the Internet (for my job), so if that matters at all, well, there you have it.
Please help. Everyone. Yes, that means you! So let’s have at it, please. 
1. From what I’ve been hearing around the innernet a lot of the main problems have been cleared up. Of course, I don’t own a MacBook so I don’t know firsthand, but I’ve heard the processor noise has been fixed.
2. Applecare is definitely a good time. It’s saved my ass on my iBook twice.
3. Basically, Apple’s computers used to run on a PowerPC processor originally built by Motorola, as opposed to most PCs that run on Intel processors (or AMD). Because the PowerPC chips use a different architecture (bonus reading) all Mac programs had to be re-written to use the new chips. Programs that have been rewritten to run on both PowerPC and Intel chips are called “Universal”. However, some programs such as Microsoft Office, Adobe CS, and my favorite, URLWell, have yet to be rewritten and only run on PowerPC environments. So that’s where Rosetta comes in. Rosetta is basically an emulation mode to simulate a PowerPC chip. Sort of like if you’ve ever used a Super Nintendo/MAME/whatever else emulator to play classic video games on your computer (I do all the time. Mario Kart forever!) It does this all pretty much invisibly, so that the user doesn’t know they are in the emulation environment and doesn’t notice it switch on or off. Because it uses that much more work, it does require more memory, however, with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM in my iMac I really haven’t had any slowdowns with Rosetta applications. And hopefully Office and Creative Suites will have a Universal build by Q1 of next year.
4. Get a MacBook. Unless you’re doing professional work (i.e. music editing in a studio environment, high end video editing, etc.) a Pro is a little overkill.
5. Macbook, 2.0 Ghz (unless you can upgrade to the Superdrive with the 1.83 Ghz processor), hard drive upgrade to your needs/tastes, and definitely upgrade the RAM, but definitely don’t buy your RAM for Apple, unless you want to pay 500 bucks for what you can get for around 200 in stores (for 2 Gigabytes. 1.5 or maybe even 1 Gig may be good enough for your needs.)
Joshua! My hero. Thank you. Will do.
p.s. Do I have to buy RAM special for a Mac/Macbook, or will any laptop RAM do?
No you do have to get a certain kind of SO-DIMM RAM. I don’t know about the MacBook, but on my iMac the RAM slot was so narrow that I couldn’t fit my somewhat older RAM stick. I’m not sure of the specs off the top of my head, but when you’re at that buying point I can get ya in the right direction.
When the MacBook first came out a did some research on the differences between them and the MacBook Pro, the main difference is price! The other differences(at the time) were processor speed, video card, and display size. The only selling point on the MacBook Pro are the display size, and the video card. You mentioned display size not being much of an issue. The video card on the MacBook is pretty awful by todays standards with only 64MB of shared memory. If you do anything with graphics or video, or perhaps gaming … I would definately look into making sure your apps will run smoothly on the MacBook before buying it. You can read my write-up on the differences here. Good luck in your decision! =)
I wish I could help, but I have yet to receive a lobotomy, therefore, cannot bring myself near anything mac. :p