Canary>Safari

Normally I use Firefox on the various computers I use. For the time being I’m stuck using a different browser as Firefox has yet to be optimized for use on the rMBP. At first I was content using Safari which was preferable to Chrome. There has always been something about chrome that bothered me, mainly I think it was the attitude it carried be it vie its advertising and by those who used and preached about it. Yes on several occasions I have had to endure conversation of people declaring why Chrome was superior. The final thing that kept me from using Chrome was the combined search and url entry field. I like being able to just type in “facebook” and being taken directly to the website vs on chrome getting search results if “.com” is not typed in. Secondly I don’t like have my window being taken up by a giant list of search result suggestions when I am typing in the url for the website I want to go to.

The first couple days or so of Safari were all right, I was actually thinking it was as bad as the mental image of Safari and the corresponding gag reflex that hits me when I hear or think about it. There were some things I even liked, such as the little square in the top right corner that shows the status of downloads sort of lie the indicator found on iOS devices and when clicked it has a drop-down recent downloads list. This disillusionment and possible newfound love quickly evaporated after two things happened. One was that over the days of use my amount of tabs slowly climbed and after maybe 12 tabs were opened any new tabs would not appear and the only way to access them is to click on a button and select the one you want to browse or use a keyboard shortcut to scroll left or right through the tabs (Shift+Command+Arrow) this was slightly annoying as with in Firefox you can scroll the list of tabs left or right by using the track pad and just moving two fingers. The final straw was that with the updated 6.0 build of Safari the separate url and search boxes were merged.

Hello Google Canary

 In comes Google Canary which still has the obnoxious search url setup but it has a much better setup for managing open tabs. Just to show how obnoxious Safari is in the 6.0 build along with almost every build I have had the unfortunate experience of using  is is the fact that I would take this beta version of Chrome over a final build of Safari. With the current version of this beta that I have installed right now anytime I type in a field or scroll it looks like I’m at a club or a concert with bright strobes flashing all over the screen. Or in the case of Canary white boxes that randomly   

                                                                                    appear on screen. This is still better than Safari.

Hopefully Mozilla hurries up with their release of a retina Firefox browser

Retina MacbookPro

First off the screen is amazing and overall with the computer there are almost no gripes about it. Honestly there  are only two incredibly minor things that I feel like are lacking. One is the missing battery status indicator that used to be on the left side of the unibody MacBookPro and on the battery itself on the pre-unibody MacBookPro and on the standard MacBook. Its just nice to be able to know if the charger should be grabbed when pulling the computer out of the bag  the other incredibly minor complaint is that it no longer says MacBook Pro under the screen on the bezel as it did previously, it just seems like something is missing.

Applications look stunning on the screen, those that have been optimized for the new resolution at least. Applications such as Microsoft word make me feel like I’m wearing someone’s prescription glasses that are just slightly too strong so there is a slight blur.

The glorious fans, which Apple advertises ever so much really are not that revolutionary. More what is revolutionary is the lack of need for the fans.  Previous computers would always have the fans startup very quickly if the computer was sitting on a bed or on the sofa. The fan only consistently comes on so far when playing Call of Duty on the highest resolution settings. (2880x1800) When the fans do come on it does sound much more white noise esq vs. the normal whirring fan sound. The sound it does make is slightly reminiscent of hearing the wind blowing during a storm from inside of a house.

Editing photos and videos are great, and yet at the same time bad. I have horrible  OCD, hence the always wanting to know the battery level. First thing I have to mention is that the computer is fast. In the time it takes the computer I used to edit with to get to the Opening Aperture Library” dialogue box aperture has fully loaded on the rMBP.  The second great thing is that it can run several apps all at once without added lag. Previously if Aperture and Final Cut were both open it was mind numbingly slow. On this computer I just plugged in the camera and opened aperture without closing any of the previously running apps and I didn’t notice any speed loss, I’m not saying it wasn’t slower than when only Aperture is running it just was not noticeable. For reference the apps that were also running were, Final Cut Pro, Safari, Sparrow, Reeder, and Call of Duty 4. Once uploaded the photos looked amazing. One photo in particular did not look as good as expected. When I had looked at the back of the camera of taken photos it looked great, in the preview window to select images to upload it looked great. When opened full size in the editor it was incredibly obvious it was out of focus. Normally this would not be so antagonizing as when uploaded onto flickr, Facebook the image looked perfectly fine. So only when I see the image I know in the back of my mind that it is in fact out of focus but to the outside world it is not.

The rMBP is an incredibly fast and amazing to use, opening apps within seconds and booting up sometime between 15-26 seconds. Its fast enough so there is not a waiting period to think about how long it’s taking. Running applications is blazing fast, although I am using the 16gb model so it may be able to handle more applications at once than the 8gb. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone I know or don’t know.