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Return of the Mac

vinny9 — 2007-04-05T13:05:54-04:00

I'm back... Here's what I've done to my little MacBook.

I've got Camino running as my main browser. Safari just doesn't cut it though it does have some nice features that Camino does not (mostly RSS). I grabbed a recent Intel-optimized nightly build from here. Will probably grab one every couple months or so.

There's a neat trick to adding address bar searching. Just bookmark a website's search URL and then give it a keyword. So to use google I'd bookmark "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" add the keyword g. Then to search on google, I'd just type "g sillytech" in the address bar. You can add all sorts of searches including wikipedia, dictionary, thesaurus, etc...

I haven't had a chance to try out iChat yet. It seems you either need to use .Mac or AIM for iChat and I only know my brother on AIM and he's touring South East Asia (bastard!). But I did install the Chax plug-in. It looks like it adds some useful features.

I installed Quicksilver. It looks very useful but I haven't used the MB enough to really feel the difference. It does look like it will be worth it over the long haul. There are some very good tutorials at Lifehacker.

I'm moving my photos over to iPhoto. I'm liking the ability to put slideshows together and keyword stuff. I thought about using picasa or flickr but I really don't want all of my personal pics online and I don't want to have to manage 2 sets of pics so this works out quite well for me. It also lets me burn sets of pics to discs quite easily for family.

Keywording a lot of pictures is not as simple as it could be. I have to select a group, then drag them to the keyword. It seems more intuitive to drag the keyword to them or even just click the button while they are selected. Keywording 6000+ pics is going to take some time. I did learn that using the trackpad for a long time hurts my wrist. Time to dig up my USB mouse.

Oh: trackpad. I didn't have it set to recognize clicks so I was always using the button. I enabled click on trackpad and it's a much nicer experience, especially the two-finger tap to right-click. That is awesome. I just wish it wasn't quite so sensitive. It's just a hair too trigger-happy and there doesn't seem to be a way for me to adjust it. I did enable "ignore accidental input".

Still don't like or need Expose. I'd rather have Spaces.

For my RSS needs I installed Vienna. I would prefer a browser solution but Camino is not doin' it. Vienna is very simple and it just works. Don't need much more than that. I took a look at Shrook but it was not for me. I also tried using Shiira (a new browser on the block; it supports RSS). It's way too early in it's development to really be of use. It's pretty slick with some nifty features. If it moves along at a good pace, and lives up to its potential, I can see myself switching down the road.

I'm going to try out Front Row and iDVD on the weekend.

I hope I haven't exhausted people's curiosity/patience. Let me know if you want to hear more.

MacBook First Impressions

vinny9 — 2007-04-02T01:14:32-04:00

I got my MacBook on Friday and have been poking around in it all weekend. I had asked a few questions here and gotten some great responses (thanks, guys!).

My first move was to do what I do on my windows machines: partition the HD to keep my data separate from my OS. This way if I need to upgrade to Leopard, it should be even more painless (perhaps that's just my Windows mentality though I did read it on a few Mac sites as well).

In any case, this website gave a great step-by-step method for doing exactly what I wanted. It works flawlessly so far. I've got it split 25GB/50GB on my 80GB drive (you lose some in the formatting and splitting). I install everything to my primary and download files there. All data (pics, torrents, music, etc.) goes to the other drive.

Once that got setup, I had to choose how to set up my dock. For a windows user, this is one of the weirdest parts of the Apple OS. It's like a taskbar + start menu. I have it along the bottom of my screen just because it looks asymmetric on either side. I like symmetry. I have it scaled down with magnify on mouse-over and also set to auto-hide (which I never did with my taskbar in Win). It's an interesting design paradigm that has its advantages and disadvantages. I like being able to launch programs from there (something I hated in windows: the quicklaunch can only handle a couple icons otherwise it's too small and cluttered). I dislike minimize in OS X. Why does it add the window to my dock?! It should just alter the program icon in the dock so that if I click it, boom, it's back. It's not like I'm going to launch it again.

Dashboard is stupid. Thanks for wasting my RAM. I immediately found an app to disable the bastard. Like I'm desperate to know the weather every damn second or to have some fancy ass calendar for no reason. The date is up there in the top right and iCal is at your fingertips. Anyways, Dashboard is a waste.

I'm using Camino for browsing. Not a fan of Safari. It's ok but I can't get it fullscreen?? WTF?

Digression:
Those 3 window buttons are very weird for a windows user. The red X doesn't close the app; it just closes the window, the app itself is still running. So I have no window interface for closing the app? Why? I definitely prefer the Photoshop paradigm to the Gimp one OS X seems to use. When I'm working in an app, I like it to fill my screen. Less clutter, more workspace. Also, to the green + button: you're a fickle asshole. Sometimes you fill my screen, sometimes you get 10 pixels wider. Can we get you to always fill my damn screen??? I hate you green + button. I can drag the bottom corner to make the window bigger so make my window bigger already! Ok, ranting over.

Camino is nice but it could use a keyboard shortcut to cycle tabs and better extension support. I might flip to Firefox if there's an extension I can't live without but for now I'll survive. There are a few options though, it might be ok.

I tried BitRocket at Gil's suggestion. It worked quite well so I'll stick with it until I find a reason to abandon ship.

iTunes has been very kind to me. My main box is a Windows PC upstairs on my 2nd floor. It has my iTunes with all the songs I've been ripping to it. I was really hoping I didn't have to repeat it on the MacBook. Good news, iTunes sharing works flawlessly between the 2 machines over my WiFi. All the songs are upstairs, I hit my Shared library and, bingo, I can play all my songs. Bonus: I have the Airport Express as my home router/wifi base with AirTunes. From my MacBook, I can fire up my PC library and then route the output to my sound system over wifi. Sweeeeeeeet!

iPhoto is quite cool. I'm not sure I'm ready to abandon my PC photo filing system. I'm going to need to become a bit more used to this interface and add Photoshop for the Mac. I do like the keywords and integrated slideshows. I can see myself switching in the near future.

Terminal has made its way to my Dock. It rules.

Finally, there's Finder (the system explorer for us windows users). The Application folder in Finder is so important it should really be its own application. It's so vitally essential to the OS but its placement in the Finder window totally underplays how crucial and how often you're tooling around in there.

Hardware-wise I love the machine. You really do need more than 512 MB of RAM. top is telling me I'm using almost that amount right after I finish booting without having done a thing. I love the white look. I'm in the honeymoon phase where I'm babying it but Ben like the swirly pattern the screen makes when you press the LCD display. Time to duct tape gloves on the little rat... Screen is gorgeous, photos look awesome. I haven't had a chance to spin a DVD yet but I'm really looking forward to it. I love the two-finger scroll-wheel substitute, I love the two-finger right-click (I should film a movie with that name). I don't like Shift+Ctrl+Option+OpenApple/squigglythingy (command?). 4 is one keyboard "shifter" too many.

Still investigating iChat, iMovie, iDVD and how to eject a disc with that eject button....

Sorry for the mega-long post. I'll put it behind a cut if someone reminds me how to do it.

My new MacBook Pro

dustin — 2006-11-03T01:47:30-05:00

My new MacBook Pro arrived early this morning, and so far it's awesome. Apple's transfer assistant kicks ass, easily copying (almost) everything over from my old PowerBook to the new one with no effort required.

The speed increase is noticeable in a bunch of different applications. Compiling the Lux sources takes under half the time on the new book versus the old one. Since the MacBook has an Intel chip in it, I can also run Windows on it (purely for testing purposes). I bought Parallels Desktop, so I don't even have to reboot; Windows can just be run inside a window of Mac OS X.

I've been lusting after a MacBook Pro since they were first released. I told myself that I would hold out for the first revision, to avoid any early model problems. There turned out to be a variety of issues with the first generation models, so it was a good move. As soon as Apple announced the new models last week I jumped on it like a fat kid on a smarty. So far this one is rock solid (knock wood). I'm even working with it on my lap, and it seems cooler in temperature then my Powerbook was. Time will tell the full story of course. For now: Kick ass!

Return to the age of Battery

dustin — 2006-09-01T20:35:26-04:00

Apple's doing a iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 battery recall. I just checked and my battery's serial number is on the list. This means that I'll get a nice new battery (in 4 to 6 weeks). The process for getting a replacement was really easy, so kudos to Apple for that. In fact, it seems like it could be abused - adding 1 to my serial numbers validated, meaning I could have gotten them to send me another battery for my non-existent other computer (of course, you have to provide a valid mailing address to them).

My powerbook only ever gets really hot when the battery is re-charging. I wonder if the replacement will be any different.

(Apple also has a separate battery recall for 15-inch MacBook Pros, and Dell has a massive battery recall going on too)