Rabbit Hole

The final installment of my journey with Apple.

Well this is the final chapter, and what does that mean? Yes I did get my Mac Book Pro. I haven’t written on my blog for a while and not because I’ve been playing with my Mac Book, but because I’ve been in detroit for the past 3 days; I’ll save that for another post.

Thursday morning I was told by purolator that my MacBook was in transit and in Toronto! How excited was I! It meant I was probably going to get my laptop sometime in the afternoon. I waited patiently all day… Colin kinda put a kink in my plans though by wanting me to watch the store for 30 mins in the afternoon. I’m a nice guy so I agreed and headed over there for 1:30, I stayed for as little time as possible and rushed home afterwards to continue waiting for my MacBook. As I was pulling in my drive way so was the postman! Perfect timing. I got my MacBook and headed back to the WGC.

When I arrived I got my box opened it up, inspected the hardware and played around with OSX. I updated leopard and then proceeded to dual boot Windows. This is where the fun began. Apparently in order to dual boot Windows, bootcamp needs a very specific Windows XP CD; one that I eventually found on the Computer Science MSDN. It took me a couple of tries to get the setup going correctly; its a really finiky process, but with the proper formatting technique I got everything down pat.

Now I am dual booting OSX and Windows XP. I am in the process of trying to figure out how to get Ubuntu installed so I can do some network security tests, but I’d rather use Parallels for that. So next step is to actually get parallels.

I’m really happy with how Apple handles dual boot installs. When you get into Windows the first thing you should do is insert your Leopard CD that came with your computer. It will install ALL the bootcamp drivers. I didn’t have to go on the net to install anything! I put in the DVD and it went ahead and made my life a hell of a lot easier.

I am really happy with my MacBook Pro, it hasn’t left my side since I got it… there are a couple of things that I don’t like, for example how the function key is the left most button on the bottom row (that really fucks up my gaming experience)… and how the microphone is embedded into the left speaker, but other than those small things this is an extremely powerful machine.

All weekend I was doing some “ethical hacking” on wireless networks so expect to see some articles written on WEP decryption and the likes! Anyway if you have the money and need a new laptop I suggest you get a MBP; its the best large sum of money I have ever spent!

Allow me to continue into the second part of the saga that involves me getting my Mac Book Pro.

We left off last time with me submitting my student enrollment information via fax. Unfortunately that didn’t work out as I hoped. Apple received the fax, but they said it was too dark and I needed an actual proof of enrollment form. They emailed me after I inquired on whether they have received my information. This time, however, I was able to email them my photo ID and proof of enrollment. I headed to the University Computer Center and got it all straightened out.

It took them another day to receive my papers and finally this morning they confirmed that I was a student at the University of Windsor. So at 7AM this morning immediately after waking up I bought my Mac Book Pro for about 2300 dollars. I was a little upset though, I mean I was expecting to pay 2300, but on the American site the laptop was only 1999… I don’t want to be “one of those people” who complain about prices when the Canadian dollar is equal to the American dollar, but when it’s a difference of 300 dollars I tend to notice. However, I realize that they must take in affect duty and our crazy taxes.

Either way I purchased express shipping because I am a sucker for it and it should be here by Friday at the earliest… YAY!

I just like to state that this entire series of blog posts is essentially be boasting that I am getting a Mac Book Pro. I am ridiculously lucky, thankful and excited… now that I got that out of the way allow me to start this story off.

It all started in art class; recently I have been doing a lot of different work on Mac’s, mainly video editing, animation, programming in opengl etc. I have been looking at getting a new laptop for some time now; the last time I got a laptop was my final year of high school which was roughly 5 years ago. The laptop I received was 200 dollars off EBaY and… well probably stolen… it wasn’t the greatest of its kind. Unfortunately as most of you already know Apple products are VERY expensive. The laptop I am getting retails at about 2799… so pretty much 3000 dollars after tax and shipping. This is a big turn down for someone like me who is really into things like multimedia development. On top of it all Mac’s now use the Intel chipset so you can fully emulate Windows if I ever wanted to play any video games on the run. This laptop is better than my home PC so I’m assuming that will soon be phased out; also means I don’t have to buy a new processor anytime soon.

My friend Pat works for Apple, he gets a 15% discount on all products so I was planning on buying it through him… its better than the 10% student discount. So I started to save money. Aparently my parents found out about this “saving of money” and decided it would be a good present to pay for my macbook. Yes like I stated before, I am lucky, spoiled even… but anyone would accept such an offer. I still have to pay for half but I basically pay my Dad 100 dollars a month. I brought this up with Pat and he said if I am getting a Mac Book Pro you might as well get whats called the ADC Student discount. It works like this:

You first sign up for a one time membership fee of 199 dollars this allows you into the developers program and student program on proof of enrollment and citizenship. After you pay this 199 dollar fee you get a one time 25% discount on any Apple based system! I did the math and the 199 dollar fee is worth it… instead of getting 300 dollars off I end up getting 400 dollars off; it helps! So I purchased the ADC Student membership and awaited emails.

This morning I found out that I needed to fax my citizenship and proof of enrollment to Apple. I did this at work, I attached a cover letter, photocopies of my drivers license and student card, and finally the course printout of the courses I am registered in for Winter 2008. I have yet to hear back from Apple to verify my account… so now I wait.