I like it. It is different, and I really appreciate my windows machine at home, but the MAC just looks so good (and is remarkably fast from what I have seen so far). It will just take some getting used to.
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Jay
Ah, the cranial implants appear to have set in. :)
*chanting*
One of us,
One of us,
One of us…
laneman
ok, that was fun
laneman
emoticos no work with your filter
rob
You’re right the MAC looks good. I’m looking forward to M.U. Hockey.
Alan
It’s different. A few things you might find useful. When using Safari, you can use the right click menu to pull up the dictionary on a highlighted word. You can also use Control + Command + D and a bubble definition will pop up.
You can print anything to PDF from the print menu.
You can highlight files and zip them into an archive file from the right click menu.
One thing that’s different; applications stay open until you close them. Merely closing a window does not usually close the application. There are exceptions, like the dictionary. :)
Give it some time.
Dennis-SGMM
Much like an iron boot. :)
El Cruzado
Actually that work anywhere except for MS Office and a few other old apps (like the one I work on. Sigh…).
Damn useful if you ask me. Especially since you can also check the Thesaurus etc.
JPL
Okay, who nipped into the memetic poisons?
RSA
What is that, some kind of gnomic conceit?
Jon H
MAC is a cosmetics line.
A Mac is a computer.
Also, typing three capital letters is slightly more work.
JPL
Close. Presumably it’s a meme so infectious the human brain would be incapable of critically considering it. Or to put it another way, imagine if after seeing the latest Lay’s Potato Chips ad, your brain was rewired so that you literally couldn’t eat just one.
Jon H
Alas, I would have advised you to wait a few weeks or a month before buying a Mac.
The new OS X, 10.5 (Leopard) is supposed to ship this month. If you’d waited, you’d have received it preinstalled. Now, at some point you’ll have to cough up the $129.
teak111
I hate being an iphone slave, 2 years with att or Steve takes your first born and sells them into a chinese labor camp where iphones are made. Yikes.
Cain
Only liberal weenies use Macs. If you’re a real man you’d be using a GNOME desktop with Linux! (yes sorry, free software bigot)
cain
wasabi gasp
Linux weenies reek of gnomic conceit.
knobboy
Yep, I worked on Windows machines from 1982 until this year. Finally couldn’t take it anymore, went out and got an iMac. Never looked back. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.
It’ll take some getting used to.
Keyboard shortcuts.
More keyboard shortcuts.
Also, with the command-` shortcut, you can cycle through the open windows of an application if you have more than one open.
RSA
Got it.
Good one. The fetishization of idiosyncratic information appliances is pretty amazing.
The Other Steve
Ahh the annual Apple tax.
Keith
Any idea of Apple will offer rebates/vouchers for those who bought Tiger (or whatever the current version is)?
I wouldn’t use a Mac unless an app I had to write needs to run on it (and actually, that was the last time I used a Mac. And I had similar issues with the CD drive that folks mentioned…it lacked an eject button, so I used to open it with a paper clip, since the mouse didn’t have a right button at the time, either). I never really took to the paradigm…it’s colorful, pretty, and very animated, but it’s just a tad too abstract for my tastes (but then Vista has such ridiculous bugs and usability reversion in it that outside the hardware accelerated UI, I don’t have many ways to recommend it over XP)
Chris Johnson
John, do you ever do work with audio and/or music? Are you planning to be playing with GarageBand, or getting Logic 8?
Go to the bottom of this page for copies of all the freebie Audio Unit plugins I’ve written, so you have more fun things to play with. Consider it a gift from the evil commie liberal mac user fringe.
(This is my day job- yes, I can pay the mortgage on my house just from writing great audio plugins even though they are not only Mac only, but also a format found mostly in Apple host applications like Logic and AU Lab…)
Mike
My son just brought home a Mac laptop from school. Knowing nothing about Macs, I was not looking forward to hooking it up to our home wireless network. When I turned it on, the very first thing it did is pop up
Not bad. Not bad at all.
S.W. Anderson
Be prepared for the dubious joys of proprietary computing, starting with more expense at every turn.
But, if you suffer that with grace you might in time be accepted into the fraternity of Apple elitists who view the 90-some percent of us who work and play on Windows/Intel/AMD gear as riff-raff.
jake
What I’m getting from the replies to John’s titanic struggles with his new
makeup kitPC is that if you’ve conquered Windows and miss swearing at your computer, you should buy a Mac.Bravo!
Jay
Apple typically provides copies of a new version of Mac OS X to customers who buy a Mac within a month of the release of the OS, usually for a nominal fee (around $10). John, I’d check with your retailer about the specifics.
And let me say that “Apple elitism” is nothing compared to some of the treatment I’ve gotten from bigoted Windows users. When I sold software for Fry’s Electronics (a semi-national electronics retailer) I got at least one arrogant prick a week who would sneer at the Apple software aisle, or inform me that he didn’t care what my opinion was, because he was the customer and he was right.
I’ve had people tell me that I should “stop sucking Steve Jobs’ cock” — that is a direct quote — and had a visitor to a business I owned loudly proclaim, when he saw the iMac sitting on the counter, that he hated Macs and “wouldn’t be surprised if that Mac ended up on the floor”. (That one was particularly satisfying, as I got to politely inform him that if he couldn’t control himself he could get the hell out of my store.)
In my experience, people who use Macs do so by choice, and are naturally defensive of their decisions. The Windows users I describe are arrogant in their perceived superiority, many of whom proudly proclaim they’ve never looked at or touched a Mac.
I speak as someone who’s owned Apple machines since the Apple II, built my own Windows PC 4 times (from Windows 98 XP), ran Linux on the desktop for close to three years, and make a living doing tech support for Mac and Windows software. All three OSes have their strengths, but I have had fewer problems with my Macs than with the alternatives.
Cain
Breaking news, the The Decider has decided! And he’s continuing to decide! God help us, if he ever stops deciding!
From his press conference at the Lancaster Chamber of Conference today regarding the health care insurance for kids.
cain
rachel
GNOME? No thanks, I prefer KDE.
jake
O my fucking God. The man makes Kieth Richard[s] sound coherent.
I wonder what Yale got out of Elder George and Iron Babs, just to let their swaggering buffoon through the gates.
Chris Johnson
More expense? Dude, I’m a sound engineer. As I type this, I am not three feet from two API 3124+ rackmount preamps- that’s eight channels of microphone preamp, totalling, oh… $4,800.
Fuckers cost more than my CAR. WAY more.
You can buy eight channels of preamp from Behringer for $320. And they have glowing tubes you can see through little vents! And they suck.
Sometimes people do things for a reason, even if one of the effects is spending more money to do whatever it is they’re doing. I have API pres for what recording I do. I have Apple computers. Truth be told the Apple computers make me more money than the APIs. Of course the APIs aren’t computers, so they have resale value. But it’s surprising how old Macs hang onto a scrap of resale value too, in spite of being computers…
Chris Johnson
Oh yeah, almost forgot- the Mac can’t be seen because it lives under one of these:
http://www.argosyconsole.com/images/vseriespage/70v2r.png
When you’ve worked long hours on something like that you really can’t go back to Ikea or Office Depot dreck without much wailing and gnashing of teeth…
Okay, you’ve got us pegged. Mac users are effete, elitist snotty aristos, who should all be guillotined, and the money they saved up to buy such wasteful indulgences should be reclaimed and given to the poor to spend at Wal-Mart. Can I go home now? :D
Randolph Fritz
OLPC is coming. And, no, it’s not for grown-ups. But it puts all the laptop manufacturers to shame.
Kent M
A Mac. Nice. This deserves a comment.
Here are a few things you may want to check out:
http://www.sauria.com/blog/mac-tips-and-tricks
I personally recommend PathFinder, an app that replaces the Apple Finder with something much more customizable and which can even be set to work more like a WIndows Explorer if you want…
Enable the second Mouse button by opening the Pref Pane and selecting “Keyboard & Mouse” and selecting the Mouse Tab. Or get a Microsoft three button mouse, even better…
Good luck.
Kent M
Oh yeah, and use the Column View.
Also, when you’re typing, pressing the option key with an arrow left or right will advance the cursor one word. Very helpful.
Face
Isn’t it true that Macs have few if any viruses and Trojans written for them, making it almost unpossible to download something that jacks up yer computer? In effect, when you buy a Mac, you’re paying for this advantage?
Jon H
Other Steve wrote: “Ahh the annual Apple tax.”
I prefer to think of it as a tithe. And I do it willingly.
(It’s also not annual anymore. It’s been a couple years since Tiger.)
When I see the alternative in Windows-land, where Microsoft flails around for six years, drops all the features that were interesting, and then drops a confusing variety of expensive turds on the market, I really don’t mind.
Jon H
“sn’t it true that Macs have few if any viruses and Trojans written for them, making it almost unpossible to download something that jacks up yer computer? In effect, when you buy a Mac, you’re paying for this advantage?”
And you don’t need to effectively waste one of the cores of your Mac running anti-virus software.
laneman
And look at the liberul hellywood – when was the last time you saw a PC in anything???
Hmmm
Hmmmmmm????
Proof that Macs are evil and against candy, ponies and freedom!!11eleven!1
Billy K
Get it straight:
Liberal Weenies: Mac
Libertarian Douches: Linux
Republican Assholes: Windows
Billy K
Chris johnson,
Are you the guy that wrote Mastering Tools for OS 9 several years back?
Catsy
I don’t have anything in particular against Macs. They’re pretty, the interface is decent, they’re generally solid and they’re good at what they do.
But even setting aside my uneasiness with the degree to which the OS tries to relieve me of the “burden” of control over my computer, there’s one area in which the Mac is desperately lacking: games.
Unfortunately, that’s 90% of what I use my computer for at home.
Cassidy
OT…
Does anyone have a product reccomendation for a DVI Wireless Transmitter. This device would be used from a multimedia workstation (Dell) to a projector (Panasonic).
RSA
This turns out to be one of the basic design principles for modern user interfaces. It’s not a problem per se, but what is problematic is that the transition between interaction-for-novices and interaction-for-experts is often not handled very well, if at all. For example, menu options are displayed along with their accelerator keystrokes, which in principle makes it easier to learn a faster method for choosing some function, but for sequences of choices or more complicated decisions, it’s much less obvious how the interface should support learning.
Jon H
Catsy wrote: “But even setting aside my uneasiness with the degree to which the OS tries to relieve me of the “burden” of control over my computer, there’s one area in which the Mac is desperately lacking: games.”
If you play games mostly, I’d suggest a console. Or a cheap Windows PC with Warcraft keyboard / cheetos dispenser.
Otherwise, you use a tool from Apple called BootCamp to partition your hard drive for dual-booting into Windows. Then install Windows, and Apple’s drivers (also in BootCamp) and you’re good to go. Apple hardware is supposed to be pretty sweet for running Windows, actually.
My MacBook Pro is set up this way; I have a 10 GB partition for Windows, which is kind of tight, but I can install the games on an external drive so it’s not a problem.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance ran really nicely like that during an all night marathon last Christmas.
Jon H
“But even setting aside my uneasiness with the degree to which the OS tries to relieve me of the “burden” of control over my computer”
Oh, also, I’d have to say in one aspect OS X gives you a lot more control than, say, Windows. Windows hides a lot of information, for example, the full paths of the running executables. That information is quite important sometimes, especially on a platform so afflicted with malware.
RSA
Parallels, which I use, is also a nice choice. I don’t play games, but I do run lots of specialized software, some of which is Windows-specific. There are pros and cons for each approach, but both are usable, which is kind of cool.
Nick
Bah, you GUI weenies. BASH is what a real man uses!
In all seriousness, congrats on figuring out and enjoying your Mac, John. I’ve very tempted myself to get a MacBook Pro the next time I need a laptop, though just buying a Dell (or otherwise PC) laptop and installing a Linux distro on it has been serving me well. The few games that I play get relegated to a dedicated gaming PC, the consoles, or (for the older games) into a virtual system. For the past year, Windows was for play; Linux was for real work… If I get a Mac, it would probably settle into the latter category.
And, yes, I am a programmer.
Gus
When did this blog turn into a Mac information site?
dlw32
Ah, Macintosh… How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
Love the Mac, especially since OS X. Both the Mac interface and BSD Unix, sweet. Bring up the Terminal app and you can grep and awk to your heart’s content.
Now if we can only get Windows to run as a cover over a Unix implementation…
Cain
Bah! Clearly, you’re an options shopper!
cain
Cain
And in that, you should get a nintendo wii. If there was a game where I could beat up liberal weenies, libertarian linux douches, and republican windows assholes I am there. We need a game where we can act out our agressions. Might help redstaters too.
Unfortunately, if we gave them a game where they could beat up Bill, the scene would be roughly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrkh7djDIy8
cain
laneman
laneman
Hmm, I didn’t close my blockquote – ya’ll are smart enough to figger it out
Cassidy
HALO…Slayer…
The Other Steve
I’m amazed at the number of Mac users here.
How do you guys get through life not being able to do any useful work with a computer?
RSA
On the contrary: we get so much done, so much more quickly than on other platforms, that we’re able to waste enormous amounts of time commenting on blogs.
orogeny
Just a question. I’m a PC user who has used Macs in the past…have nothing against them, I’m just used to PCs and have no desire to learn to use a new system when I’m happy with what I’ve got.
But, where does this idea that PC’s crash every 5 minutes come from? At work, I run a new Dell Optiplex with dual monitors, 2Gb of RAM, high end video card and three hard drives. AT any moment, I typically have Dreamweaver, Photoshop, IE, Firefox, Word, Outlook, and Notepad open and running. My system hasn’t crashed in…I can’t remember the last time it crashed. My home system is a 4 year old Alienware system that I’ve upgraded a couple of times (just hardware, never been f-disked, never reinstalled the OS). My wife and I both have accounts on it and it is used for both serious work and serious gaming. Once again…it never crashes. Both machines have installed software that occasionally will lock up, but simply closing that software always seems to solve the problem. Both machines run XP Pro.
Do the other PC users out there have different stories?
capelza
Love my Macs (on my fourth one, had an SE something years ago, c, 1990).
Have had PC’s in the house with the kidlets…especially the big gamer. Just don’t like them. They feel clutzy and the fans drive me nuts.
My old I-Mac Graphite died a bit ago and went to get a new one. Almost plonked down the 1200.00 for the new one, but a got a super deal on an E-Mac (350.00) and I couldn’t justify the extra expense for the super cool comp in screen, for now.
When the Graphite died after six years of abuse (being hauled across the ocean in the hold of a boat, stored in damp garages, etc) I did go look at some PCs. Just couldn’t do it, too much extraneous stuff needed to make it like a Mac.
laneman
Only my version – I am an Amiga refugee, they barfed hard, I tried a PC and then left instantly and left it to my small vermin and went to a Mac.
The blue screen of death sucks – I have never seen a comparable on my ‘miggy or mac.
The Other Steve
1998
The Other Steve
LOL! The Amiga was a steaming pile of excrement. No wonder you like the Mac.
orogeny
laneman,
What version of Windows? Older versions of Windows, particularly 3.0 ad below had real problems…I still don’t know what an “Unrecoverable Application Error” is, but they happened a couple of times a day in Win 2.1. Up till Win 95, that was a huge problem…just as pre-OS X Macs had issues. I’m talking about Windows today, XP Pro particularly. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw the “blue screen of death.” I don’t have any experience yet with Vista…suspect it’s not nearly as bad as people are saying, just different.
The Other Steve
Sorry, wrong question. My answer 1998 was in reference to this:
laneman
I use it as a euphamism for the sukkyness of m$’s OSes.
check out how people (and m$) are responding to vista (clicky
when the progenitor bails on a sukky whatever, you know there are problems.
orogeny
I think you’re right TOS. Mac users get irate when one mentions the one-button mouse (which still is what comes with a Mac, isn’t it?), but 10 year old stereotypes about Windows are just fine.
orogeny
Laneman,
It is my understanding that Vista is very different from XP Pro. Of course there are going to be a fair number of folks who don’t want to make the change. I don’t think that this says anything bout the quality of the OS, it just says that MS might have changed too much too quickly. My wife just got a Vista system a work a few weeks ago. She hated it at first, but now says that she is starting to really like it.
Billy K
Wow. That was the most masterful troll I’ve seen in a while. Almost got me, you wascal!
orogeny
;-)
S.W. Anderson
Jay wrote:
My comment about Apple users’ elitism was meant to be 50 percent tongue-in-cheek humor, 50 percent too true to be funny. I’m sure there are two sides of the story, although in 25 years of personal computer use, I’ve never seen or heard anything like the unforgivably boorish behavior you describe.
Given the the size of the Windows PC-using population, it figures there would be some insulting jerks in the mix. I’m at a loss as to how and why you seem to have attracted so many of them, though.
Cain
VHAAT?! No way dude, the Amiga was king. Best games, and it was the only multitasking OS at that time. It was the only thing that I could use that was close to a Unix machine which I needed for my CS projects.
cain
The Other Steve
About 3 years ago Apple invented the two-button mouse. Proof once again that only Apple can innovate in the computer field.
The Other Steve
Ok, sure… there was Deathsword, and Nuclear War and Dungeon Master and such. And yeah, it could multitask, as long as you didn’t push it. But it had a tendency to crash like all the time. And things which were cheap and plentiful for the PC cost a frickin fortune. And primary above all else was the total lack of decent development tools. Sure you could buy Lattice C++, but nothing could be had for free, and as a poor student that just sucked.
My friend and I back in college had Amigas. We were so glad to be rid of them.
Catsy
You’re kidding, right? Either that or you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Consoles are for people who like console games. There is really not a lot of crossover between console and PC gaming. For the most part I don’t like console games, and I resent the degree to which the dumbing-down of games for consoles is being inflicted on PC gaming due to how many games are being developed in parallel for both. The way the interface is oversimplified, the way you have no little or no control over the hardware or OS, the far more limited selection of games, the extremely proprietary nature of hardware that’s prohibitively expensive to replace if something goes wrong… you know, come to think of it, consoles remind me a lot of Macs.
And any PC built for gaming is not going to be “cheap”, unless you’re comparing it to an equivalently-powered Mac.