Positive experiences with MacBooks?

[Preston Crawford]

I'm trying to get more into iPhone development in addition to Android. I picked up a MacBook and something about the display feels "off". Fuzzy, the whites are too white. Something. I can't put my finger on it. So to the iPhone and iPad devs on the list, what do you develop on? This is really bugging me and I don't know what to do. I need to be able to shuttle this between home and work.

[Elia Freedman]

I have a 13" MacBook Pro that straps perfectly to the back of my bike. Display seems fine to me. Is your MacBook different than others? Maybe there actually is something wrong with the display? Shouldn't look different than the ones in the store.

Elia

On Jun 16, 2010, at 4:30 AM, Preston Crawford <preston....@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to get more into iPhone development in addition to Android. I picked up a MacBook and something about the display feels "off". Fuzzy, the whites are too white. Something. I can't put my finger on it. So to the iPhone and iPad devs on the list, what do you develop on? This is really bugging me and I don't know what to do. I need to be able to shuttle this between home and work.

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[Christopher Gassib]

At least in the past Macs' used a lower gamma setting than Windows machines. I thought they just changed that though. Does your MacBook have the latest OS?

-Chris

[Jason Grigsby]

That reminds me that if you haven't done so already, you should go into the display preferences and calibrate your display. It will allow you to adjust gamma and other settings.

Your display may still be messed up as Elia suggests, but if you haven't tried calibration yet, it is worth a try.

-Jason

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Jason Grigsby
+1 (503) 477-5340 o
+1 (503) 502-7211 m
ja...@cloudfour.com
http://cloudfour.com

[Preston Crawford]

I'll try calibration and I'll hook it up to an external monitor later today (as I planned on doing anyway). 

Thanks. Mostly I wanted to see if there were other people that had the difficulty I did as, given that I'm learning iPhone dev in part to pick up new skills while I'm unemployed, a MacBook is an investment, but an investment I need to work well for the money I'm paying.

Preston

[Preston Crawford]

I'll try calibrating it. Either myself or by taking it to the Genius bar. It could just be I'm not used to it.

I read this thread and got concerned, though.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1677617&start=45&tstart=0

Seemed like some people who have been at this far longer than me were having a problem so I wanted to sample a group I assumed had Macs and make sure they were doing okay with heavy MacBook use as that's what I'm going to be using as I dive deeper into iPhone development and work on my startup.

Preston

[Jeff Siler]

Preston,

It may be how OSX does anti aliasing of fonts. This is something that
took me awhile to get used to.

Jeff

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Preston Crawford

[Preston Crawford]

This might be the case. Worked on it all day yesterday on an external monitor and it was fine. A little funky last night and this AM on the laptop, but better.

Preston

[Preston Crawford]

My last thought on this is the size. I got the 13inch MacBook because the 15" MacBook Pro felt like it was cutting into my wrists with the metal and the keyboard felt like it was causing finger pain (maybe due to the aluminum not being as forgiving overall?).

Could part of my difficulty simply be small fonts as well. I feel like I have to keep upsizing fonts on this monitor (when it allows me to). Does anyone have experience with both MacBooks and what became a bigger impediment? The size of the monitor being too small or the build of the Pro being problematic as I described?

Preston

On Jun 16, 2010, at 5:20 PM, Jeff Siler wrote:

[Preston Crawford]

Figured it out in case anyone else ever runs into this. It was the combination of the LED backlight and the glossy screen. I ended up with a MacBook Pro 15" anti-glare and things are much better. The screen difference is night and day.

Unfortunately, while doing that they bumped the resolution up. Ugh. So now I'm having to size all the fonts I can to be readable. This is really a pain. And at the cost ($2400) I'm wondering if maybe I just should have stuck with the 13" MacBook ($1200 with 4GB Ram) and suffered with the display when using it like a laptop. In the past I was on my laptop monitor exclusively. In the future I plan to split that time something like 70% external monitor, 30% laptop monitor.

What does everyone else use? What do you find ideal for getting work done in XCode + having a browser around + the iPhone VM?

Preston

[Preston Crawford]

The other reason I'm curious is that, aside from the temperature, I find the 15" to be significantly less handy to carry around as a portable. Between the weight and the slippery aluminum casing.

Preston

[Mike Coleman]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Preston Crawford <preston....@gmail.com> wrote:

What does everyone else use? What do you find ideal for getting work done in XCode + having a browser around + the iPhone VM?

My main development system is Mac Pro (2009) + Apple Cinema HD display (2004?).

I knew I had to do some iPhone development at WWDC, so I got a new 15" MacBook Pro a few weeks ago. I got it with the high resolution glossy display. I wasn't happy with the color until I ran the display calibrator in "expert" mode. The glossy bit doesn't bother me, and I think the machine looks nicer with it because they remove the black border with the matte display. Even with high resolution I don't find things to be too small (I'm 53 and I do use reading glasses). I didn't find the slippery feel or weight to be a problem during the week I was carrying it around at WWDC. (I didn't bring any kind of case because I expected Apple to give us a case as SWAG, like they usually do, but it didn't happen this year.)

One thing I highly recommend: Install a SSD. It is really fast. Now I will have to add an SSD to my desktop machine!

I think a 15" MacBook Pro with high resolution display and SSD is a great system for iPhone development. I've continued to use it a lot since returning from WWDC. I don't feel like I need to connect another display or anything. Put your extra $$ into an SSD instead of a display ;-)

-mc

-- 

Mike Coleman

Five Bats Inc, Portland Oregon

[Preston Crawford]

Thought I'd close the loop where. The first machine I got was a MacBook 13" polycarbonate. It gave me headaches because of the display. I then tried the 15" MBP and found it more bulky (for me at least) and I think I was still suffering from the effects of the first MacBook because my headaches didn't go away. I then tried a matte finished MacBook Pro 15", but there the fonts were way too small because they up-rezzed it. 

Finally I took a look at the MacBook Pro 13". Not as bulky, screen better than the MacBook poly and much cheaper. So I'm a happy camper now. It runs Ubuntu under VMWare at full screen and feels native. Putting XCode into single window mode (this was a huge help) makes it fit great on the 13". And no headaches, etc. So I'm a happy camper. Thanks for all the tips, advice, etc. I found something that works and didn't have to resort to shuttling a Linux laptop AND a mac mini back and forth.

Preston