Overall, the macbook in delightful. It is visually stunning, both hardware and software. I am quite impressed with OS-X. Everything is quite smooth and polished. Skype works great. I have Ubuntu and Windows XP running in Parallels desktops. It is exceedingly useful to have access to all three OS for a variety of reasons. I am still migrating files and passwords over from Ubuntu. Being able to use Revelation (password manager) in an Ubuntu virtual machine means I can look up from the 100 or so random passwords I have created and remember them in Firefox in OS-X. Windows XP gives me some access to software otherwise unavailable, but more importantly makes it easier for me to demonstrate things like installing packages in R for students running Windows.
I keep a "Share" directory on my server which I syncronize with my laptop(s) using Unison. A major obstacle I discovered is that the native OS-X file system is case insensitive! Yikes! That is a very peculiar choice, but I assume it is for historical reasons. Anyway, I cannot copy my Share directory to OS-X because some names are not unique except for case. I'm pulling my Share directory into the Ubuntu virtual machine for now and creating a new case-insensitive Share directory for syncing with OS-X. Probably time I cleaned up those files anyway.
The macbook itself is fantastic. The aluminum case is slick as is the black bordered flush mounted lcd. Two main complaints. There is a lot of extra real estate around the screen. Although the screen is 13 inches, the laptops rivals a 14 or 15 inch model in size and weight. I am used to my ultralight 12 inch Dell X10. Another nice feature of the X10 is you can bring multiple pre-charged batteries on long flights and swap them as needed. Not so on the macbook. My bigest complaint however is the backlit keyboard. I thought this would be the killer feature, but it turns out it was very poorly executed. The problem is that light leaks from behind the keys when viewed at anything less than a 45-degree angle. I don't know about you, but I don't tend to look directly down atop my laptop keyboard. The LED shine is highly distracting even on the lowest intensity. Probably useful on a plane where you are forced to hunch over the keyboard, but not great sitting on the couch or comfy chair.
One very pleasant surprise is that the touch pad can be configured for right-button clicks. If you are used to a two button mouse, its hard to lose a button.
Ubuntu clearly has a lot of catching up to do. It is a great environment for software development. OS-X on the other hand for the most part "just works" in ways that seem un-obtainable in Linux. To be fair, some of that is simply that Linux is less common and so vendors and network administrators do not spend the time to make things seamless. (Getting connected to our secure campus network is trivially easy on a mac, but daunting for Linux. Of course, the admins spent a lot of time writing a java app specifically to make things easy for mac users. Otherwise, it would be just as hard.) Some things are about OS-X are weird. Its actually hard to figure how what programs are currently running as applications can continue to run with no windows open. OS-X is large and complex and not entirely intuitive. Ubuntu is actually much simpler and in many regards more straightforward. If Linux had better support from vendors like Skype among others, it would be more competitive. Aesthetically it needs more work as well. For now, I'm pretty happy running it in a virtual machine. Change is good I suppose. I've used Linux exclusively for 10 years. It was time to branch out.