11:30 PM

October 20, 2008

I think my well-documented love affair with Apple might be coming to an end. Or at the very least it's at a low point. What's the problem, you ask. Certainly not the iPhone or the hot pink nano I just acquired (best iPod ever). No I'm talking about the MacBook Pro that's been stealthily taunting and subtly torturing me for 361 days now. It's failed outright once already. Even after being "fixed" it still seems to delight in frustrating me with recalcitrant and unpredictable, meaning impossible to replicate at the Genius Bar, behaviors.

With a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB RAM, it should scream. Day-to-day, it doesn't. It feels maybe 10% faster than the PowerBook G4 it supposedly replaced. For some specialty video tasks, the 2002-vintage Power Mac G4 dual 1GHz is significantly faster.

Asking the MBP to switch apps or do almost anything in a heavyweight program such as Photoshop or Aperture practically guarantees appearances from the spinning beach balls.

Worst of all, I find myself more and more reluctant to move it from the desk. It seems to really hate my style of portable computing. Meaning using it on my lap for a task. Then shutting the lid to put it to sleep. Then opening it for the next task. After a few cycles of use/sleep, it will get flaky and have to be restarted. Of course, it never displays the same weird behavior twice so again I'm out of luck asking for a fix.

Lately, I've been toying with alternatives. But before you go there, let me stop you. This isn't Mark trying to justify one of the new MacBooks. I find the design kind of ugly. And the glossy displays are a complete deal breaker for me.

I got a new 24" iMac in my office at school last month; its glossy display makes me crazy. I went so far as to rearrange the workspace so no lights are behind me. However, it does scream. Exactly the kind of performance I expected from the MBP but haven't seen.

So I'm thinking seriously about moving on from this MacBook Pro. I should be able to sell it since it's got two years of AppleCare still to go and there's probably nothing really wrong with it. Any problems are likely all in my head.

A Mac Pro is tempting since I've already got the Cinema Display. But do I buy now while discounts are around or wait for the refresh that's due around the New Year?

And to show you just how desperate I've been feeling, I even briefly toyed with the notion of PC laptop running a Linux distro. Briefly.