I’ve been using a 13 inch macintel macbook for a while now, and while it’s a very nice little machine (her name is Tomoyo, btw, and yes it’s one of the black ones) there is one problem with her - she really don’t run non-universal programs very well (for those of you who aren’t mac-heads, the switch to intel based chips in the new macs means that in order to run optimally, programs need to be revised and made ‘universal‘ to run well in the Macintel environment) Yes, they run, but once you start a non-universal program on your system, there is a very, very noticeable ‘hang’ that happens quite often when you are using various programs.
Lucilly, most of what i use (BBedit, Omni Outliner, Mail, FireFox, etc) have long been converted. Other programs like Photoshop, Excel, etc, have yet to be converted. Photoshop makes the machine incredibly sluggish (especially when switching between programs) but Excel runs ok and doesn’t seem to cause the same hang problems. I don’t use Photoshop much on my laptop, so its not a huge deal. There is one program i do use a lot and it seems to make things as sluggish as photoshop: Ecto, my favortiest blogging software ever.
I know that Aadrian is working on it, and i am looking forward to the completely re-vamped version, but I’ve come to the point that i am going to have to use something else until the universal version is done. After beating my head on the table (and getting some help from Hawk this morning) i was able to get MarsEdit up and running (in fact, this is kind of a test post to make sure that it doesn’t blow up my site). It’s definitely not as nice as ecto, but it will do the job until the Ecto team finishes up that universal version. Please hurry guys, i miss Ecto already 
w00t!
Took some tweaking, but i did finally manage to figure out how to get it to post properly. Whee.
Looks like the site didn’t crash or anything… that’s always a good thing.
Still looks good as always!
I know the feeling, sort of, i’m a windows user and for many years i used w.bloggar as a posting tool. Now though the programmer has given up and support for some of it’s best features are disappearing (old plugins arn’t getting updated etc.) so now i am looking for a switch. ecto seems to be the way to go, but i sure am going to mis w.bloggar. Good luck to you, i hop your fixes come soon
I’m still tolerant of ecto’s performance under Rosetta, for the moment. (When you’ve been working for the government for almost 3/4 of a decade, patience is not a virtue, it’s a *must*.) Besides, I usually have several apps running at any given time anyway, so I just do something else while ecto launches. That being said, I’m looking forward to the next release as much as anyone.
Once I’ve got that, all I need to be completely happy with my MBP is the Univeral Photoshop and a new #&*$ing logic board that doesn’t make that @#$*ing noise. (yes, I’m one of *those* MBP owners…I’ve just been a bit more tolerant than most. Tolerance has its limits, however.)
Gee, Fred, I was going to yammer on with some advice on this stuff but you already beat me to it. Your mac-fu is strong!
By the way, over on Ellsworth and Carpenter, there’s a new sushi shop - it’s one of those “sushi-on-a-conveyorbelt” type places! Just like in Genshiken! Except not really, exactly like. But the sushi’s good, and the miso’s mild, and the tea is, well, _real_ tea. They just opened, so it’s pretty quiet.
It’s in that little shopping center that is catty-corner from Lowe’s, directly across Carpenter from the Showcase Cinemas. Punch “4035 Carpenter Rd, Ypsilanti, MI” into Google maps, and it’s there. If you email me, I’ll buy you lunch.
-r.
I’m still holding off getting an Intel Mac just yet although I’m hearing great of how great the performance is with the new towers. I’ve pretty much decided that my current desktop is my last PC.