The storm this morning brought two things: mrak's much-talked-about postcards, one from Qatar, the other from Vietnam, both posted in the last week of his travels; and a man from TNT Express Worldwide bearing a MacBook.
Apple has a strange way of managing expectations; the Apple Store website told me it was late in shipping, but then the shipping itself took one day instead of two or more. Anyway, they managed to suck me into buying an iPod with a two hundred dollar discount so I guess they've earnt the right to laugh at me.
I spent most of the day trying to reinstall everything, after I asked Migration Assistant to ship all the crap in my home directory over. Surprisingly Isabelle installed with little hassle, and Apple's new(er) X11 works pretty well. I was shocked to find how easy it was to install Debian these days, even under (a trial version of) Parallels.
In short: it's bigger, heavier and much, much faster than the old iBook, and the fan comes on pretty much as soon as you do anything serious. The glossy screen seems to be OK; it's all about getting the angle right, like MySpace. The keyboard is actually quite fine too, despite appearances. No regrets so far.