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Just one more after Dinner mint....
by David Crowson at 14:33 08/11/06 (Blogs::Dave)
On the way through Heathrow I got bored , so I stumped up and bought myself an 8Gb Nano (was almost tempted to get a Shuffle, sooo damned sexy and small).

Itīs very black and wafer-thin, almost edible in itīs after-eightness....

Oh, and my Sony Vaio screen went pop again, so Iīve replaced it with another Vaio, I was soooo close to getting a MacBook Pro...but the price was too much.


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bombholio
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Just one more after Dinner mint.... David Crowson - 14:33 08/11/06
Re: Just one more after Dinner mint.... Steve - 19:52 08/11/06
I've actually just replaced my 4yr old 17" Powerbook with a new 2.33Mhz 15" Macbook Pro. With glossy screen.

It's a truly lustful object. I'd actually kick Bruce out of bed for this.

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stevepa

Re: Just one more after Dinner mint.... Bruce Ure - 20:10 08/11/06
Harumph. Well I've been seeing this half-terrabyte Mac Mini behind your back anyway so neerrrrrrr.

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Re: Just one more after Dinner mint.... David Crowson - 20:27 08/11/06
Plan B.

I'll be joining you with a fully stuffed macbook pro quite soon. The resolution of the new vaio is shite so I'm taking it back tomorrow and having the landlords mac in turn he's getting a shiny new quad pro....

Cool, my first proper mac (although I did get to use the Lisa when it first appeared I didn't own it)

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bombholio

[falls off chair] Simon - 09:31 09/11/06
Truly the end of the world must be imminent if Dave's getting a Mac!

}-)
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 11:47 09/11/06
I thought it had last weekend.

Went to visit the parents only to find my mum ill in bed (she'd been there for a week). She hadn't eaten for ten days and her stomach was swollen and she looked bad enough to scare the crap out of me.

They took her into hospital Monday, under surgery they found the blockage , cancer of the bowel. Luckily they were able to remove the whole cancer and stitch the pipework back togethor. She will make a full recovery.

Cripes.

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 12:08 09/11/06
(!) Glad she's going to be OK.

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simon

Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 09:11 10/11/06
Well, Plan B it is, gave the VAIO back last night (much to the chagrin of the chap who had obviusly got a fat commision from the sale), should get hold of my new-old fully stuffed powerbook next week when his nibsīs quad core arrives....

So as Mac virgin (sort of) what do I need to know.? (Any tips, web sites etc)

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 09:46 10/11/06
Plug it in, turn it on, use 'About this Mac' under the Apple menu on the top LHS of the screen to discover what version of the OS it has installed (should be 10.4.x).

This is second-hand yes? You probably want to vape and reinstall from the original disks to get it into a known clean state as the first step. Then go through the initial setup, which it'll guide you through when you reboot for the first time afterwards.

In the process it'll set up your networking to get online (unless you've got a weird ISP it should be just plug in the ethernet cable and away you go - DHCP is 'standard' config) and then run (from the Apple menu again) "Mac OS X Softare Update" to grab and install all the latest updates.

The initially-created account is an 'admin' account, so you might want to create a normal account for your day-to-day use as the next step. There are 'short names' and 'long names' for each account username - eg my main account shortname is 'sb', but I log in as 'Simon Banton' (well, I don't really, but I'm not posting my actual usernames in your blog!)

And off you go... and remember - don't try to out-think it.

Put any new applications into the machine-wide 'Applications' folder at the root of the hard disk. When you try to do so, you'll be prompted for the admin user password (assuming you're logged in under the non-privileged account).

Explore the Apple menu (System Preferences are under there) and getting around generally. If you want a command line, 'Terminal' lives in Applications -> Utilities.

That's all I can think of for now.

NB: I don't use Apple Mail, so don't ask me how to use it :-)
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 10:52 10/11/06
Surprised (but glad) you were allowed to just 'take it back' -- is this a laid-back Dutch thing or did you have to threaten them?

My recent switchers' perspective goes like this (after you get it up and running as per Simon's post).

Get a copy of Parallels because you WILL miss windows-only apps. It's not expensive (50 quid?) and it works absolutely flawlessly and very fast. It's possible, should you wish, to forget you are actually running Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac. (Strictly speaking you're not, entirely, since it will use VTx, i.e. native Intel instruction processing--if that's the right words--rather than emulation, for much of what it does).

Get a copy of OpenOffice.

Get a copy of the latest Lightroom beta.

The rest is getting used to the quirks.

The weird mouse acceleration profile may do your head in. I fought it for a while and looked for gizmos to work around it (of which there are several). It seems I'm not alone in finding it very annoying but exclusively in people moving from Windows so it's not that Apple's is 'wrong', it's just that they are different. I have now almost got used to it but I'm still not as quick mousing as I am on Windows.

You will learn quickly with much swearing that Shift-End doesn't work any more to select to the end of a line of text. You have to start using Apple-Home. PgUp and PgDn work differently as well. You will get a large bump on your forehead.

Also note that Ctrl-C becomes Apple-C, which is all fine and dandy except that Apple is where Alt is on the PC keyboard, not Ctrl. You can either remap the keys on the Mac, or just get used to it. I've done the latter, and find that once I've used one or the other machine for about 30 seconds, I subconsciously switch into "OK, I'm on THIS machine which uses THAT position for 'Ctrl'" mode, and it's not an issue.

Same applies to loads of other quirks... in general I've found it easier to go with them than fight them.

Prepare to be annoyed at the inability to do anything to files which are part of a set being copied from another place until the copy operation is finished.

Prepare to LOSE files if you try and copy a folder onto another folder of the same name. Windows merges... OSX replaces.

Blimey, that wasn't meant to turn into a novel.

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Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 11:19 10/11/06
Select to the end of a line of text:

Cmd-Shift-Rightarrow

Move to the end of a line of text:

Cmd-Rightarrow

Select to the start...

Cmd-Shift-Leftarrow

Move to the start...

Cmd-Leftarrow

Select to the end of everything...

Cmd-Shift-Downarrow

Move to the end of everything...

Cmd-Downarrow

Select to the start of everything...

Cmd-Shift-Uparrow

Move to the start of everything...

Cmd-Uparrow

Select forwards, character-by-character...

Shift-Rightarrow

Select backwards, char by char...

Shift-Leftarrow

... you get the idea.

So if I want to start at the top of this posting, and select every line, line-by-line I go:

Cmd-Uparrow, Cmd-Shift-Rightarrow, Shift-Downarrow (line by line)

It's powerful, when you get used to it, because it's quite 'chord-like'. Not that it stops me typing:

1-Shift-G, Shift-G, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-Y and 'esc :wq'

... but, as always, [fx: Klingon voice] "Today is a good day to VI!"
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 11:35 10/11/06
[troll mode on]
So what you're saying is, Windows has waaaaay easier, simpler and better keyboard editing shortcuts? ;-)

Select to the end of a line of text:

Shift-End

Move to the end of a line of text:

End

Select to the start...

Shift-Home

Move to the start...

Home

Select to the end of everything...

Ctrl-Shift-End

Move to the end of everything...

Ctrl-End

Select to the start of everything...

Ctrl-Shift-Home

Move to the start of everything...

Ctrl-Home

Select forwards, character-by-character...

Shift-Rightarrow (same!)

Select backwards, char by char...

Shift-Leftarrow (same!)

And if I want to start at the top of this posting, and select every line, line-by-line I go:

Ctrl-Home, Shift-Downarrow (line by line)

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 11:52 10/11/06
Oh no, youīve lit the blue touch-paper, Iīm outta here before he goes off ;-p

PS I notice that MS have released a new screen saver, the BSOD, so they have a sense of humour after all....
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bombholio

Re: BSOD Simon - 12:21 10/11/06
Nah, they've just acquired Sysinternals and dumped all their programs into one big folder.

Plus ça change...
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 11:52 10/11/06
[troll response mode on]

Hmmm, so on Windows you have to actually move your right hand from the Rightarrow key to the End key in order to change from character to line mode, whereas on a Mac then you can just add the 'Cmd' key to the Shift-Rightarrow chord you're already using.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel :-)
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 12:07 10/11/06
Au contraire mon ami, going from select-whole-line mode to select-single-character mode is a matter of striking the Rightarrow instead of the Downarrow, all whilst keeping Shift pressed.

(This is where, when my wife or one or other daughter and I are discussing texting, I challenge them to a race, me using predictive text and them not.)

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Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 12:17 10/11/06
If we had a race, I'd challenge you to one to select 'hotmail' from this email address using only the mouse:

pieceofcrap@hotmail.com

Betcha I can double-click faster than you can click and drag :-)
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 12:37 10/11/06
Sorry mate, double-click selects 'hotmail' here as well.

That's more of a software-dependent thing than a OS-dependent one, shirley. For instance, I used Firefox to do that test: I can't vouch for IE or Photoshop or SmartFTP (on Windows) behaving the same, and I'm fairly sure that some of my Mac apps don't behave like that. (Textwrangler? Interarchy? iTunes?)

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Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 14:15 10/11/06
Notepad - give it a go in Notepad. I only mentioned this because I was compelled to use it the other day at a customer site, and got *incredibly* frustrated at double-clicking on a word not doing the Right Thing.

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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 15:02 10/11/06
Notepad's a good case in point, yes, it exhibits that shameful behaviour here.

It is the Devil's work.

<spit>

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 15:29 10/11/06
Never, ever use Notepad for anything. Wordpad is far superior....

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 15:40 10/11/06
WordPad is pants for raw text editing though.

I use the free 'Programmers [sic] Notepad' and the shareware 'TextPad' in Windows, and the free 'TextWrangler' on the Mac.

TP does some things better than PN but its syntax highlighting lets it down badly. Both PN and TW excel at this.

TW seems to me a real labour of love by its creators. I can only imagine what its big (non-free) brother 'BBEdit' is like.

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Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 15:54 10/11/06
BBEdit is superb - I don't write HTML in anything else (well, apart from vi).

Built-in FTP/SFTP client so you can open and save files directly from the server, powerful regexp search and replace, file comparison, syntax colouring, plug-ins for lots of useful stuff, scriptable, ability to run unix command line stuff from within it and capture the output... I use perhaps 20% of its capabilities.

A proper text processor is well worth having.
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 15:57 10/11/06
Damn, we're agreeing :-)

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Re: [falls off chair] Hugo van der Sanden - 00:07 11/11/06
Heh, I bit you wished you could use 20% of vi's capabilities. :)

Hugo

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 09:03 11/11/06
Ain't that the truth!
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simon
Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 16:02 10/11/06
I do most of my non/Unix editing in Ultraedit these days.

Blows the weeds off np,wp and most other editors....

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 16:22 10/11/06
Dave you bastard, you've just cost me $40.

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 16:23 10/11/06
You're welcome :), but there is a free version that's just as good....

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Gordon Hundley - 00:25 30/11/06
You're going to want TextMate on that new Mac of yours.
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DrGoon
Re: [falls off chair] Steve - 09:05 11/11/06
Oh, and go over to www.opencommunity.co.uk and get a copy of Vienna for all your RSS/Atom newsreading goodness.

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stevepa

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 12:08 10/11/06
Oh, I forgot to mention:

Select forwards/backwards, word-by-word:

Alt-Shift-[Right|Left]arrow

Move forwards/backwards, word-by-word:

Alt-[Right|Left]arrow

I'd give some contrasting examples from Windows, but my local W98 box has just decided it doesn't want to boot. Good job I cloned the disk (using dd on Linux, natch) the other day.

Not ready reading drive C
Abort, Retry, Fail?
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simon

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 12:24 10/11/06
Select forwards/backwards, word-by-word:

Mac: Alt-Shift-[Right|Left]arrow
Win: Ctrl-Shift-[Right|Left]arrow

Move forwards/backwards, word-by-word:

Mac: Alt-[Right|Left]arrow
Win: Ctrl-[Right|Left]arrow

Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 12:08 10/11/06
I donīt , I use a trackball.

The only button I press is Shift.

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 12:22 10/11/06
The only buttons you press are the mortgage company's ;-)
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simon
Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 12:25 10/11/06
I never could get on with them. I wonder if the acceleration profile will be different than what you're used to.

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 11:29 10/11/06
I had to threaten them

"but youīve USED it, we canīt sell it now" they said.

"Theres a restore disk, itīs easy to reset" said I

"but we canīt refund your cash, itīll have to go through head-office and youīll need to give us bank account details"

Utter nonsense, but we played along...We will see if they give me the money back or not, but itīll take a week apparently :-/

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 13:26 10/11/06
Hereīs the spec of my new old machine....

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bombholio

Attachments...
PDF file (47 K) Daves First Mac Specification
Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 13:55 10/11/06
'Spanky'?! :-)

That's a sexy spec.

I'm quite tempted myself but I'm not sure I could live with 1440 x 900. It's just not enough, after my (your ex, still going strong) Vaio's 1920 x 1200.

[Thinks...] that's 1.3 and 2.3 megapixels respectively, giving the Sony almost 77% more screen real estate (if I've done my maths right, for once). Which is quite a difference.

1440 x 900 seems to be enough for most folk but people at work are always wondering how I can read the type on my monitors, so I think I have unusual eyes (well, eye).

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 14:06 10/11/06
which is why I couldnīt understand why the new vaio (15" screen) could only muster 1280x800.

Probably fine for gynecologists, but not for me.

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 14:12 10/11/06
[Splutter!]

Sorry, you've lost me there.

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Re: [falls off chair] David Crowson - 14:24 10/11/06
cos itīs like browsing the web through a letterbox :-/

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bombholio

Re: [falls off chair] Bruce Ure - 14:27 10/11/06
Nutter :-]

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Re: [falls off chair] Simon - 14:20 10/11/06
's verra niiice :-)

I'm waiting for OS X 10.5 to be released, and then I might have to upgrade to a MacBook Pro.

That'll make this PowerBook G4 the shortest-owned main machine I've ever had - heck, I might end up replacing it before the (extended) AppleCare warranty runs out!

Not that it'll be going anywhere - I've got too many Classic MacOS apps to dispose of PPC architecture just yet.
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simon