appleRetina MacBook Pro
Well I've finally been dragged kicking and screaming into the new Mac era - I've gone and bought myself a 15" Retina Macbook Pro! A whole world of Intel only software is now available for me, not to mention the fact that I'm now getting security updates again for the first time since 2011 :-)
The biggest first impression (coming from a 12" PowerBook here remember!) is the size of the thing - it is super thin, yet very wide and deep when closed. Luckily my courier bag just fits it (it is designed for a 13" MacBook but the retina one is so slim it just squeaks in). The next thing you notice is how well made it is - a single smooth chunk of aluminium milled out with a glass fronted screen, this thing screams quality (and well it should for the price I paid...). Once powered on the thing that really jumps out at you is the font quality - that retina screen is *so crisp* the fonts seem to float on the surface. Seriously, I've never seen typography look so stunning! I've been using it now for about 10 hours and it still amazes me how good fonts look. Going back to anything else after this is gonna be really hard.
Mountain Lion will take a bit of getting used to after using Leopard for so many years, but I already love the gestures built into it, it actually reminds me a lot of using a cell phone swiping apps from screen to screen. Not sure I'm totally sold on the new "Mission Control" way of doing desktops in a row (I liked the old cube set up from Leopard) but it is easy enough to use so I'm sure I'll get used to it pretty quickly. Plus, with such a massive screen resolution I don't need so many virtual desktops anyway!
Anyway, I'm off to play BioShock now (been waiting a few years for this as I've not had a computer capable of running it!) so I'll report back after a few days of using it. So far I love it!
UPDATE: After using this for a few days every other monitor is now ruined for me - all font looks blocky and and you can clearly see the antialiasing. I now need to buy a thunderbolt cinema display I guess...