Geek Rant dot org » OS X

Getting used to the Mac

daniel — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:53:31 +0000

I usually use Windows, but I’ve been using Mac OSX a little bit, on a new iMac in the office of an organisation I do some work for. It’s nice, lovely design, though I think it’s pretty funny that it’s so damn streamlined that the On/Off button is hidden away at the back, so consequently there’s a PostIt note on the front of it to help people find it.

I’ve got used to having to go to the menu to properly shut a program. I’m not really clear on why clicking the red dot on the window doesn’t do it. But that’s okay — another PostIt note reminds us Windows people of that.

So far there are two main things I can’t get used to on the Mac (apart from the lack of tactile response from the keyboard and the feel of the mouse):

Command-Tab switches applications, but not windows. I can’t figure out how to get around the various open windows of an application without using the Window menu, which is cumbersome.

Differences with navigation around a document, at least how it appears to me so far… maybe someone knows better.

	PC	Mac
Go to start or end of document	Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End	Home or End
Go to start or end of line	Home or End	Command Left or Right
Go up/down a page	Page Up or Page Down	Page Up or Page Down
Go forward or back a word	Ctrl-Right or Ctrl-Left	Option-Right or Option-Left

But the thing that really keeps catching me out is that Home/End/PgUp and PgDown move you around, but don’t move the cursor. So you think you’re at the end of the document, but you start typing and it jumps to back where you were. At least, that’s what it does in Apple Mail. Very irritating; seems you have to click at the end to tell it you want to start typing at the end.

Is there a better/quicker/easier way?

Snow Leopard – Intel only

daniel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:18:45 +0000

It had to happen, right? Mac OS Snow Leopard is out today. It’s the first version which doesn’t run on PowerPC Macs.

“Snow Leopard is an upgrade for Leopard users and requires a Mac with an Intel processor.” — Apple Store

I suppose it’s been about three years since Apple stopped selling PowerPCs. I wonder how many 3rd party software vendors are also abandoning them. I know my sister has a PowerPC Mac laptop from circa 2004, but I wonder how many others are still out there in regular use. Perhaps the more significant issue will be how long patches for newly discovered vulnerabilities will be supplied.

Perhaps it’s no biggie, but I’m just imagining the fuss that would be made if Microsoft made a new operating system that didn’t work with four-year-old PCs.

Merry Christmas from Apple

daniel — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:30:03 +0000

My sister is fuming because she got an iPod Nano for Christmas, and apparently it won’t work with her 3 year old PowerPC MacBook, which runs MacOSX 10.3. Sure enough, the Nano specs say it needs 10.4.8 or higher. She’s got no real interest in paying and installing for an OS upgrade to get around the problem, so she’ll ask a friend to load her iPod for her.

Basically it means that Apple is saying you can’t have a new iPod if you run a version of OSX from before April 2005 (with the appropriate free updates).

Whereas it does run happily on Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista. So you need to have a version of Windows from no earlier than before October 2001 (with the appropriate free updates).

How does Apple get away with treating its customers like that?

No more security through obscurity

daniel — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:53:26 +0000

Feel safe using Firefox and/or Mac OS X? Don’t. This article discusses recent research showing both are subject to a number of vulnerabilities. Not as many as poor ol’ Windows users using IE, but still enough that it’s wise to be wary.

Not to mention the issues in the various media players.

More Apple stuff

daniel — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 08:15:34 +0000

Blogger Russell Beattie stirs up a hornet’s nest by declaring he’s thinking of switching back from Mac to Windows.

Reports are coming in that the new very groovy iPod Nano’s screen scratches rather too easily, so bad in some cases that the images get distorted.

Hot on the heels of the flawed (badly, for some people) iTunes 5.0, Apple has released iTunes 5.0.1.