How much you wanting to spend? What size laptop you want? Apple has refurbs available that can save you a little money over a new one.

As a general rule, look for an Intel based machine, Core 2 Duo or later. I would seriously consider a newer machine right now, vs an older one. OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) will reportedly drop support for a lot of older Intel macs when released: http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/16/os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-system-requirements/.

well, I bought a 2008 black MB from craigslist last year for $300. It's an intel dual core, I upgraded the ram to 3gb. Ran/runs fine. But when I started getting into serious development work on it (iOS, web/rails) I realized I needed something with more horsepower, and just bought a new MBP from apple.

I've been a dedicated PC person since I was 12, even when I had some dedicated mac friends back in the day who swore by their apple emblemed machines. The macbook I bought last year converted me.

Macs are for people who enjoy computing, PCs are for people who want to game and just get stuff done at the office. Maybe at one time this wasn't the case, but with the current state of macs and OSX this is how I see it. The development world has completely embraced the mac, even .NET developers like myself prefer them now.

I bought the Macbook because I didn't want to put down a grand on something I might wind up not caring about. 9 months or so usage out of that older macbook made me a believer (well, that and a few iPads later as well).

I think you're safe if you buy a Macbook on craigslist, just ask them to let you run it, mess around on it, open a bunch of apps, unplug the adapter, if it's not giving you any problems during the test drive you'll probably be okay. Download geekbench from the app store and run that, it does diagnostics.

Refurbed macbooks will cost more, I looked at them for a while and decided to test my luck with Craigslist. A co-worker messed around with it, and found a white macbook on craiglist shortly after. He loves it, will get the next gen mbp when they come out.

I've had a couple of MBs and have an "Air" model right now. Very handy indeed and rock solid, not a bit of a problem with it at all after using it pretty intensively and dragging it around wherever I went. If you can afford one, I think it is your best bet.

You would be better off waiting for the refresh with upgraded processors and gpu's that should arrive in June.

Also since the mbp 13 is pushing the limits of your budget, why consider such a drastic switch (to the macbook) when you have no experience with them (aren't sure if you would like them)?

The 13.3" Macbook Pro being offered at Bestbuy.com mentioned OSX Lion being preinstalled. The refurb model on apple.com has the plain OSX.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Apple%26%23174%3B+-+13.3%26%2334%3B+MacBook%26%23174%3B+Pro+-+4GB+Memory+-+500GB+Hard+Drive/3107695.p?skuId=3107695&productCategoryId=pcmcat247400050001&id=1218379464801

My question is...besides being upgrades in the operating systems. What are the differences in OSX and Lion? I checked out some reviews and there was debate of Snow Leopard being better than its successor, Lion.

Both are OSX. Snow Leopard is 10.6 and Lion is 10.7, the newest version to date. Mountain Lion (10.8) is reportedly due to be released this summer.

SL has a smaller memory footprint and has Rosetta (PowerPC emulator) for running older PPC software. Having used both, I think SL is a little more stable than Lion, though that is improving after some Lion updates. Unless you have some essential need to run SL, Lion will work fine. If you find a good deal on a machine with SL, Lion is $30 if you decide to upgrade.

This is where you need to be careful.

Part of the reason why macs are traditionally "virus free" is simply because... people didn't bother coding them. As macs are becoming more popular the hackers are stepping up.

I personally work retail computer repairs. I HAVE seen infected macs. Granted I'll be the first to say we still see more PCs than Macs with viruses, but we also sell more PCs than Macs still anyway.


My own personal advice - do not install adobe flash, at least not to Safari. That's where the flashback virus came in from.

I'm starting to think my old mac was one of the computers targeted cos the adobe kept trying to update itself. But I was on Leopard which isn't really affected.

Because of this I've gone hardcore against safari + adobe flash. If I really need to use flash I'll use google chrome instead.


And some other suggestions ....
1) Carbon Copy Cloner. FUCKING AWESOME for making a bootable copy of your HDD. This will save your ass if you ever had to change your hdd out cos it copies everything including software.

2) Don't use the admin account for day-to-day stuff. if you do get hacked then... why let them onto the admin account? Make them work for that shit. I think i mentioned this earlier... my Dog has the admin account - I'm using a basic no-rights account. Granted it's annoying if I want to make folders on the main drive but... you can do one-time access to features by using the admin name/password. and if i need to do a lot of work then I can use doggy's account. but mostly I just use mine

3) Time machine. might as well back your shit up right. Seriously... it works better than windows at backing your stuff up.

4) If you use parallels or bootcamp... get antivirus. seriously protect yourself. your mac CAN get a virus thru windows.

5) And cos it bears repeating - fuck flash on safari. there's an extension you can use that works with youtube. (although not with embedding and arfom - you have to use chrome for that) it's called "flashtohtml5".

This. I've seen infected macs. And I know my supervisor would roll his eyes at me for not using antivirus.


I'm careful about where I go online tho. And as I mentioned, no flash for safari.

Also - if you use safari make sure you have it set to warn you if sites have malware. I *do* get those warnings - usually when I'm searching for images. even innocent ones are sometimes hosted on infected websites.




Actually that's pretty close to what I got. VERY similar stats... except for the fact that mine was a Mac Mini & not a laptop.


For program compatibility... there ARE some programs that don't work with Lion (yet?). I had a customer ask about how hard it would be to go back to SL. To do this she would have to reformat the computer & reinstall. And NOT use time-machine for backing up her data cos it backs up the OS.

So you might also want to consider dual-boot using bootcamp.

In theory, I suppose it's possible that somebody could code up something in VBA that might do something if you're running Office 2011, but there's really nothing out there in that vein right now.

There's about one sort-of-virus in the wild for Macs right now (it's really a Java exploit because Apple is running an old version of Java and trying to drop support for Java anymore), and it's already been killed by the latest Java update from Apple.

Viruses are pretty much a non-issue on Macs, in spite of the "I've seen infected Macs" group in here. Macs aren't invulnerable or anything, but there's just almost nothing out there to infect them. One can debate the reasons all one wants –– but it's been that way for about eleven years.