I had several good reasons for purchasing a MacBook but, anticipating my new laptop's arrival, I still was nervous about switching. About a month later, it's been a positive overall experience for me. I hardly miss my old PC at all.
The positives
Great keyboard and trackpad. The keys are springy and let me type fast. The touch pad responds better than other pointing devices I've used in the past. It's hard to describe, but a combination of the touch surface and the way it responds to fast and slow motions, somehow make it better.
It sleeps and wakes up intuitively. I've dealt with multiple laptops and desktops where the sleep or hibernate commands don't work the way you set them in Windows. It's common for machines to ship straight from the vendor with memory-resident software that messes up power saving. Not so with this MacBook! Close the lid and it sleeps immediately. Open the lid and it comes back on almost instantly. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Lots of applications open? No problem. Mac OSX is designed to handle multiple open applications without cluttering up the interface. I find that when the Windows XP Taskbar has more than four or five applications, all the rectangles and ellipsis text look crowded and bug me. The OSX Dock holds many applications by icon, marking them subtly and without lots of cut-off text.
Quicksilver. Although I like the Dock, I don't use it to launch applications. On the advice of coworkers, I downloaded the freeware Quicksilver launcher. Quicksilver opens with a key combination, and then typing only a few more letters launches an application. It has many more functions, but I'm content with the fast, no-pointer-required application launching for now.
The negatives
My slippery, dirty case. The matte surface of the black MacBook is quite slippery, almost like the inside of a nonstick pan. I've come close to dropping it more than once. Other times, I caught myself holding on so tightly that the case was flexing. At length, I decided it's only safe to pick it up with two hands.
After a month, my laptop has picked up several noticeable fingerprint marks. Cleaning them safely is not straightforward, because Mac community resources are flatly contradictory on the best way to clean the case. Is an isopropyl alcohol solution fine, or will it strip off your finish? Does Apple's iKlear polish work on black MacBooks, or not? My favorite comment from this post was that the dangerous wood fibers found in paper towels will scar your case like sandpaper. Hmm.
Keyboard layout. The Command buttons for keyboard shortcuts are crowded close to the spacebar, unlike PCs, which puts the Ctrl button at either edge. On my Wintel laptop, for keyboard shortcuts, I can easily reach the Ctrl key with my pinky finger and hit a letter key with my index finger. That's not possible with the Command keys on this keyboard layout.
I also miss the PC Delete key (aka "delete forwards"). It's difficult to remember (and reach for) Fn+delete for that.
It's a two (or three) mouse button world. Come on, Apple. Is there any reason left not to ship your computers with two buttons for the trackpad? After all, if you plug in a two-button mouse, it will work. You even sell two button mice. We're years past the point when even diehard Mac fans could argues that Command-Control-Shift-clicking is a good idea.
On my PC the scrollwheel is clickable as a third mouse button, and I use it to open a link in a new Firefox tab. So, I really feel two buttons behind.
The Finder is so missing. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but since I know the file system is based on a hierarchy of folders, widgets layered on top of that make it more difficult to orient myself and save things where I want them.
In the Mac OSX Leopard screenshot to the right, there's a little Home row of breadcrumbs that mimics the UI I've seen in iTunes. However, that was turned off by default on my Macbook.
The button to create a new folder is also needlessly buried. I guess I'll have to learn the keyboard shortcut for that one.
And the final score ...
I very much like the MacBook overall, but for reasons beyond all these pro and cons. II'll need one more blog post to expound on those reasons.