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Today, I went to the Apple Store to grab the latest and greatest from Steve Jobs–the 15-inch LED-backlit widescreen notebook known as the MacBook Pro. Normally, I’m a Windows guy, but have a machine in the office running linux and basically holding all of my media. Basically, I’m equal opportunity when it comes to computing.

First, let me tell you why I got a MacBook Pro, and why I was the first on the block to get the newest (shipped yesterday, in stores today–they didn’t even have them out when I arrived, I had to beg!). Previously, I had always put together my own machines (with the exception of a laptop here and there–latest being an Asus EeePC which is awesome in it’s own right, but way too small for PHP development). Today, something changed. I wanted something that just worked, worked well, and could do everything I threw at it and more. Enough of those chincy Vista crap outs (got rid of Vista, all my Windows PCs run XP at this point), and frankly, enough tweaking and modifying my linux installs to get it to play nice with everything else. So I should have gotten a MacBook? Nah…with the Pro, I’ll have the extra firepower to play some Windows games with it’s built in GeForce 9600 (or save battery life with the integrated 9400M–cool beans).

Anyway. Here’s my unboxing (click the pics for a bigger view):

Here is the spiffy new box. Notice how small it is compared to previous packaging.

Magsafe, ethernet, Firewire 800, two USB, mini DisplayPort, audio in and out, and an ExpressCard slot along with the battery meter.

I had a little trouble at this point getting the cover back on. It seems the little tabs on the cover don’t have anything on the case to align with, therefore you just have to get lucky! Could be a problem for someone changing a battery often…

If you look closely, it’s glossy enough to see the unfinished paint job on the wall behind me–how embarrassing.

So there you have it. The new MacBook Pro 15″ unboxed, up and running. It’ll take some time for me to get into the general workings of a new operating system (I haven’t used MacOS since…oh…1995), but I’ll be sure to post more impressions of it after I do! Of course, I’ve written this entire post on the thing, including the picture uploads, so I’m going full force.

A couple things I’ve noticed while taking pictures. As I said above, the LCD is highly glossy. I’m interested in seeing how well it’ll handle outdoors use. There are a few extremely minor flaws in the anodization…nothing I’m going to worry about. Also, FireFox has crashed three times during this posting. Maybe I’ll try Safari next time.

Next up, installing my development environment so I can get some productivity going on…I’ll probably start with a nice simple XAMPP install, but we’ll see. Anyone know of a good Mac PHP/text editor?

Update: The strange black thing? It looks like an Apple-branded napkin. Maybe it’s a mousepad. Or a microfiber cleaning cloth for this insanely glossy screen. Yeah, that’s it.

Update 2: Added a couple of notes.