Last night I realized that my Windows partition on the MacBook really didn't need to be more than 20 gigs, so I started over since I didn't do much to install various applications. I had a weird thing where pci.sys disappeared, no idea how, so I had to do a repair install, which wasted about 45 minutes.
Avid Xpress Pro HD, not surprisingly, wouldn't edit HD. I could see stills, but it wouldn't let me scrub through the video. Not that it matters I guess, since Final Cut is in the mail, but it's almost like I'm glad because I can move on. On the plus side in Windows, Visual Studio 2005 and Photoshop absolutely scream. In fact, reading some of the benchmarks that are starting to appear, the MacBook out performs most Windows laptops period, even with similar configurations. Well done, Apple.
What I'm really having the most fun with though is the Mac side of things. For all of the crap Microsoft gets for bundling stuff, the critics fail to mention that the bundled stuff is generally crap.
I started to play with iPhoto, and imported about 750 photos. It has camera raw support right out of the box, and does some light editing. And as Jobs said, it really is "like butter" in terms of quickly scanning through the library. I love the way it organizes to, a la iTunes with albums instead of physical folders. I may actually make this my dedicated repository for photos.
I played with iMovie and iDVD as well. Windows Movie Maker is a joke by comparison, and there is no Windows DVD maker. PhotoBooth is mostly useless, but it sure is neat. There are so many cool things right out of the box that an average person can do with a Mac that you just can't do in Windows.
Alex suggested a great IM client that I played with a bit last night. I'm really digging that even more than Trillian on Windows. Burning stuff is faster and more straight forward. Front Row is a very neat app, and I suspect I'll use it in the hotel (with remote) on my travel the next few weeks.
More than anything, it's just so much more responsive than any computer I've ever used. I mean, the thing boots in a dozen seconds after POST (to OS X, Windows takes longer).
I'm still happy to report that no Dell or HP with similar specs costs less, so all of the haters, take note. This is much better hardware, it costs less (for now) and you can run OS X. Did I mention the power connector is the coolest thing ever?
It's time for me to get a new computer this summer. Forgive me for not being up on this whole Mac issue, but is this a viable option for a home setup? Is there a desktop version I should look at?
I have a lot of the same issues that you do. Photoshop crawls and I have yet to find a solution to keeping track of 10,000+ photos that doesn't bring my system to a halt.
Yeah, after I wrote that I started poking around on the Apple site and saw the new iMac.
It's very tempting with the dual boot option. All I know is that I'm sick of hearing my hard drive spin when I try to look through some photos in PSA 2.0. I need a machine that can handle the work I do and maybe the iMac is it. I was actually considering a workstation, but maybe I can get what I need and more if I just give in to the Mac-side :)
Walt, have you tried Google's Picasa yet? I have 25+ gig of photos and it performs really well even with the photos on an external drive.