I've been playing around with a shiny MacbookPro recently which I've got set up with BootCamp (and sometimes trying our Parallels and Fusion to get Vista and OSX playing nice together).

Sadly I've noticed some little things that, like my earlier complaints about iTunes, lead me to wonder if Apple are not living up to their legendry usability reputation with their Vista support, or if it's a deliberate tactic?

Using the MacbookPro under BootCamp with it's built in keyboard:

  • Why do I have to hit Fn+Delete to delete something? It causes me pain in Internet Explorer, in Outlook, in several other apps. Hitting Delete on its own sends a backspace which has all sorts of unexpected and unintended results... and as I keep forgetting to hit the Fn key I end up cursing. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make the keymapping user controllable?
  • Why doesn't the keyboard backlighting work? I love it in OSX. It makes typing late at night so much easier. But in BootCamp I don't get the option any more. I'm sure it's not going to be rocket science to write (after all, there are Microsoft and 3rd party keyboards on the market for Vista that already have this capability) Update: Looks like BootCamp 1.3 will support this for MacbookPros. Shiny ;)
  • Get SongbirdI like the fact that the Front Row remote works with iTunes under BootCamp, but like remappable keyboard buttons I'd love to be able to use it with the media player of my choice (for instance SongBird). I'd also like it to be able to control the media player without forcing me to hit the "menu" button to bring it to the foreground - no more running it minimised and being able to control it. The Keyspan remote has this facility which makes it so much more useful.

These are not big issues, but little frustrations that, like the issues with Parallels and Fusion, stop this solution being "prime time".

Which leads me on to another frustration with iTunes... On our home machine we have a combined library of music, but three users who can log on. Of course you can only have iTunes running on one profile at a time (so if someone forgets to close iTunes the others are locked out until they find out who it was that had it open) and even if you point the Library to the same directory it doesn't share the library and playlist meta-data. And to sync the three iPods we have in the house (a 3G, a Nano and a Shuffle) you have to log into the correct users account as well.

On the iTunes frustration subject... why does it play so badly with media keys on keyboards. My MS natural keyboard can happily control Windows Media Player, and my old Vaio T27GP media keys would control WMP or Songbird out of the box, but needed a third party add-on for iTunes.

Windows Media, SlimDevices and Songbird handle these situations so much more elegantly that once again you have to wonder why Apple just don't seem to get it....

Actually, on the subject of media keys... I'm surprised the MacbookPro doesn't include them on that huge expanse of keyboard surface.

Still on iTunes... if all I want is QuickTime (rare, but there are some media sites that like it) why do I have to installed iTunes just to get it?