I got a beautiful new MacBook Pro delivered to the house via FedEx last Thursday, and I’ve been spending most of my free time migrating all of my important data over without crufting up the OS with years of legacy gunk. It’s light, it’s fast, it feels solid, it’s not blisteringly hot, it doesn’t feature the whine of cooling fans, and it’s paid for. The trackpad is an absolute joy to use; whatever Apple did to improve the sensor, it’s a magnitude of difference better than the old style (which, admittedly, was getting wonkier in part due to the battery swelling) and ten times more precise. The keyboard is solid and I appreciate the addition of volume and playback controls in the top Function keys (where the old model had brightness controls and two unused keys), although I miss the monitor switching key, forfeited to a Dashboard hotkey (ecch). I got the model with a glossy display, and it’s not as distracting as I thought it might be. The display itself is bright and even, and has a slight bluish tint out of the box. I’m going to use the calibrator on it tomorrow to warm things up and build a profile.

Next on the to-do list will be taking IdiotCentral down to a bare shell in order to swap out the inverter board cable, and see if that will solve the screen issues once and for all. If it works, I may consider selling her to recoup some of the money spent on IdiotCommand here, and if it doesn’t, she’ll become a production machine relegated to my desk.