Congrats! I’d highly recommend reinstalling OSX without all that junk - additional language support (do you really need to ability to run OSX in Danish?), printer drivers, Garage Band and other programs you might never use, and all the other trial softwares. It saves you TONS of hard drive space.

You’re going to love it. 2.2 or 2.4?

yo yo yo! congrats! welcome to the mac-cult. thankfully, you’ve joined an exclusive club with great benefits and with fellow members who are here to help you with support and any questions you might have.

tell me more about unix! hahaha also, how do i do that thing that billy just mentioned?

@Billy
I didn’t reinstall the entire operating system, but I did find a program for removing the language support from programs. Additionally, I found a program to properly uninstall applications so I removed things like iWeb and GarageBand. Stay tuned for more info on those programs that I found. In any case, thanks for the suggestion. It saved me a few GB. Oh and it’s the 2.2GHz model. I didn’t know that you have one. Do you?

@Vanessa
Haha thanks for the welcome. I think it’s rather interesting to see what people think when someone else gets an Apple computer. It’s…interesting. I will likely post about that later as well. And I’m sure you want to hear ALL ABOUT Unix because you love that kind of stuff.
I’ll post a number of things that might be interesting to someone getting setup very soon so watch out for them.

congrats Derek. It has been a long time coming. Back when we were in college you were talking getting one of these. I’m glad you finally did it.

i like how apple’s box has seemingly superfluous circles of styrofoam built into the lid. i guess some structural engineering might’ve gone into that. that or it’s just cooler looking than a sheet of foam. reminds me of this article about designing the iphone.

when do we get to see you give a macbook-ubuntu tutorial?

@daniel
Thanks, Daniel. Yeah seriously I’ve spent hours I’m sure researching and following the MBP’s development. I’m hoping all of that paid off for me in the form of a stable version. By now so many people have got one of these, it’s not even different. But perhaps what I do with it will be.

@william
Yeah their packaging, while nice, is a little bit over the top. Oh well, they do what they do because it wins them fans and ultimately money.

You totally got sent to the spam box for your link. I’m not even sure why, I think that’s strange. I couldn’t at first tell that you left a comment until I searched through the rest of that rubbish that is validly marked as spam.

Well I’m actually thinking that there’s a very good chance that I’m going to triple boot. I need to call Microsoft to see if I can transfer my OEM license for Windows XP to my MBP. If I can, then I’m golden. I’m going to take my time, though, because I want to make sure I do it right. Plus if I do indeed transfer my license, I’ll need to wipe my desktop hard drive. That means backing things up. And if I’m doing that I might as well reconfigure my entire desktop. You see where this is going and why it might not be for a little while. :PHow’s your setup working out? Or is there no time for it.

maybe your spam filter doesn’t like the fake steve jobs. he is a little rough around the edges, i must admit.

no time for linux lately, i’m afraid maybe if someone comes out some must-have (and free!) Bible software for linux

i got one back in april (2.13 in the house!), started piling on programs without knowing how the folder structure and program installs work. a few months later after i figure it out (somewhat), i decided to reformat it before it becomes too much work to backup my hd.

i think i saved close to 7 or 8 gbs after removing garabge band, idvd, garage band sound effects, office 04 test drive, language support and printer drivers.

what program do you use to uninstall language support and programs?

@william
Haha well maybe you should look it up to see if they have created Bible software for Linux. They might very well have!

@Billy
Oh nice, I had no idea that you had gotten a MBP. What do you mean you didn’t know how the folder structure and program installs work? Do you know it now? I’d be surprised if very many people that I know really understand how their packaging works (I don’t really, but I’m gonna work on that). But I guess that’s the beauty of it, that they want it to be so simple.

7 or 8 GBs? That’s pretty good. I haven’t taken out the Office Test Drive yet, though. Or the extra printer drivers. Or iDVDHm, we’ll see about those.

Check out my next post to see what programs I used to get set up.

It looks like a long way from the edge of the computer to the keyboard. Any ergonomic issues there?

[...] Sep, 2007  Geek Mac SoftwareWell after Unboxing My MacBook Pro, I got right on getting my new computer setup the way that I wanted it. A big part of this is [...]

@HMKTSteve
That’s an interesting question. I know that the thought has flitted through my mind on occasion, but I’ve never thought about it in depth. The worst part of that setup seems to be the tendency for people to see a blank spot and want to rest their palms. That’s definitely an ergonomic issue. However, if one is conscious of what they’re doing (as in all cases of using computers nowadays) then it’s not too hard to be ergonomically correct. Did you consider this much when you (I believe) recently got some new computers?

No I did not, I went by price.

Currently the mouse pad on my laptop has given me no end of trouble. I have not gotten into its particular “groove” yet and it has a habbit of sending the cursor into the four corners of the screen and I do not know why.

The scroll feature is on the bottom and right side but does not always work the way I think it should.

I also occasionly find myself hitting my wrist on the alt/ctrl/

i don’t understand the conversations going on here. it feels like nerd central to me! hahaha.

@HMTKSteve
I don’t think many people go by ergonomics. Although I, and other people I’m sure, do put a good deal of value on a keyboard that feels good. That was a big positive for me with the MBP. So the choices I was down to when I was deciding were this and the (now Lenovo) Thinkpad. Both have excellent input devices in my opinion.

A very useful feature of the MBP (and other laptops that have it) is the two-finger scrolling. Compared to having special areas for scrolling, I think it’s much more intuitive. On the other hand, I’m not really fond of the fact that operating systems have their own specialized keys on their keyboards. The Windows key and the Apple key are not really my favorites (even though I’ll use them and their shortcuts). I find that rather annoying when I’m using keyboard-input intensive applications (i.e. Emacs) because it changes the button sizes, layouts, etc.

I have every intention of buying an external keyboard. An ergonomic one. Have you heard of the keyboards sold by SafeType or Kinesis? Both are interesting to me at this point, but they’re rather pricey at hundreds of dollars! What, if any, steps do you take for a more ergonomic computing experience?

@tiff
I’m sure you could understand it if you read it. You’re probably glossing over everything and only seeing words that seem nerdy to you! However, I’m sure you could understand. Although I guess all of the part specifics to Apple computers might be slightly foreign to you if you’ve never used an Apple computer. But in terms of what it’s actually about, it’s easy enough to understand.