Comments on David Alison's Blog: Mac: After two months of Mac, here's why I switche...

@Nick: Thanks - I use both Expose and Spaces all t...

2008-05-15T09:34:00.000-04:00

@Nick: Thanks - I use both Expose and Spaces all the time. It's a great feature.

One thing you should really check out is Exposé. I...

2008-05-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

One thing you should really check out is Exposé. It makes dragging and dropping from one window to the other so much easier.
Just go into your System Preferences and choose the Exposé pane. You can set up easy keyboard or mouse shortcuts to make life easier.
I have mine (and many of my friends do too) set up to display the desktop if I mouse up to the top-right corner, and to show me all of my windows if i mouse to the bottom-right. It makes saving things to the desktop a breeze and adding lyrics or album artwork from the internet to iTunes so simple. Congrats on your switch!

I too also hated on macs so much back in the day b...

2008-05-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

I too also hated on macs so much back in the day because they were a joke that only the computer newbs used. After seeing vista come out and how horrible it is, MS doesnt have a leg to stand on.

Just rummaging around in iPhoto and found that the...

2008-04-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

Just rummaging around in iPhoto and found that the export command under the file menu let's you pick how the filename will be set. You can use the title, filename, sequence, or album name. You can, of course, use one of several file naming utilities to tweak that output. One of them is built into the OS inside Automator.

…my only problem with mac’s is resizing windows ca...

2008-04-17T22:31:00.000-04:00

…my only problem with mac’s is resizing windows can only be done bottom right corner. Same with shared folders on the network, can’t rename them.

Yes yes alias, but remember new user.

Same with installation of programs. I was totally confused by seeing a ‘hard drive’ image on my desktop when installing or unzipping and then another icon that runs it.

As well how many years did it take Apple to figure out what right clicking does…albeit I love the scroll wheel on the mighty mouse.

One other thing that bugs me. When I close a program I want it closed, not shrunk to the taskbar. I guess apple+q works, but again this is from a newbie used to clicking on the X in the wrong spot ;-)

@Anon: I have the evaluation version of TextMate a...

2008-04-15T08:11:00.000-04:00

@Anon: I have the evaluation version of TextMate and it does indeed appear to be a great editor. Coming from Windows my editor of choice was UltraEdit - which I still find a fantastic editor. As great as it is I'm having a hard time justifying over $60 for a text editor (the US $ to Euro is the problem here). Since I'm still doing all of my primary development on Visual Studio the need it not intense yet so I'm waiting on purchasing a license.

Dig into Textmate and you will be equally amazed a...

2008-04-15T05:53:00.000-04:00

Dig into Textmate and you will be equally amazed about Textmate as you are the Mac. It may be the best software value, second to the operating system bundle itself.

@SlimJim: Glad you're getting some useful tips fro...

2008-04-13T19:25:00.000-04:00

@SlimJim: Glad you're getting some useful tips from this blog. I don't have a MacBook Air - just a regular white MacBook. A friend of mine got one a little over a month ago and loves his. He carries it to meetings in a predominantly PC office and generates a lot of interest.

Thanks for the tip on Monolingual. Fortunately I have 320GB of disk on this MacBook so I've just been cranking away and not worrying about it too much.

Hi David. I've enjoyed your blog, and have picked ...

2008-04-13T14:53:00.000-04:00

Hi David. I've enjoyed your blog, and have picked up several useful tips. I just got my MacBook Air yesterday, and so far think it's great. Here's a tip that might be useful and will free up about 3.2 GB on your hard drive. Go to Version Tracker and download a program called "Monolingual" which will strip all foreign languages from OS X. It takes a while to strip all that out (maybe 10-15 minutes). I've done this on my new Air and when I upgraded to Leopard on my MacBook Pro. Will be interested to read what you thin about your MBA as time goes on..SlimJim

@Jeff: Sorry man, I have to disagree with you on y...

2008-04-10T07:17:00.000-04:00

@Jeff: Sorry man, I have to disagree with you on your initial premise, that Windows requires a second mouse button to be useable. Windows operates fine with a single mouse button - the second mouse button is truly a secondary level of functionality. In the 18 years since Windows became popular I have observed my wife using it regularly and I doubt she's clicked the right mouse button on her own. She's very capable on her computer but it's purely a tool for her. It's an afterthought for most users, the power users are the ones that really take advantage of it.

When I switched to Mac I didn't struggle with the mouse at all - in fact I was surprised that I was able to use it so easily because of misconceptions on how it could be used.

If you're a web developer and you appreciate usabi...

2008-04-10T02:16:00.000-04:00

If you're a web developer and you appreciate usability, then you'll realize the value of a point you failed to make when talking about a 1-button mouse.

Yes, the OS now supports secondary clicks, mostly to show contextual menus, but the UI itself was *designed* to function very well with a one-button mouse.

Everyone misses that point, because they just assume that because Windows requires a 2nd-button to be reasonably usable, then Apple's omission of a 2nd button meant that its usability would drop just as much as it would if you were "stuck" with one-button on the mouse.

The Mac ships with a 4-button mouse, and both left-side and right-side buttons are configured as "primary mouse button", meaning out of the box it behaves as a one-button mouse.

and guess what? the UI is still quite efficient.

Since your audience may contain significant numbers of potential "switchers", you might want to make it clear that while *some* may be true, any blanket assumptions that Windows and Mac OS X are basically the same should be avoided.

@Editor: Great tip - I saw it down there but wasn'...

2008-04-09T15:13:00.000-04:00

@Editor: Great tip - I saw it down there but wasn't sure the purpose. Thanks!

With regard to Mac keyboard shortcuts , a tip (par...

2008-04-09T14:11:00.000-04:00

With regard to Mac keyboard shortcuts , a tip (pardon if covered already). You can set a keyboard shortcut for literally any application, including the Finder. The place to do this is very well hidden in: System Preferences / Keyboard & Mouse / Keyboard Shortcuts. Go all the way to the bottom and "open" the "All Applications" triangle. It probably is pretty empty. What you do is click the "+" that is around there somewhere, choose your Application, and type the name of the command you want to assign a keystroke and then type the keystroke. (I'm telling this from memory because I'm at work, so if you don't see it the first time, keep digging.) This does what the previously mentioned App "Spark" does.

To Karl C.: Inverting the pixels on an LCD screen ...

2008-04-09T03:42:00.000-04:00

To Karl C.: Inverting the pixels on an LCD screen or switching to grayscale is pointless - the backlight of the LCD which actually sucks the power will remain on full power all the same. That's why the remaining battery time won't change in any way.

It's a cute myth, but just a myth nonetheless.

If OLED screens should become available one day, inverting the screen would actually save power since there only the bright pixels will suck power, but with an LCD even the black ones do. Sorry! ;-)

@Karl C: Thanks man - glad you enjoy reading my bl...

2008-04-08T22:15:00.000-04:00

@Karl C: Thanks man - glad you enjoy reading my blog. You can always throw it into your RSS reader - I try to update it daily, though today seems to be comment day. That slow motion effect is pretty cool.

ALL: I'd like to keep the anonymous comment on to make it easier to, uh, comment, but please just toss your first name in there somewhere so that I and others can respond to you. Thanks!

Great post David. Welcome to the Mac Universe! Its...

2008-04-08T22:09:00.001-04:00

Great post David. Welcome to the Mac Universe! Its a wide ope space I've been exploring for 20 years now. Here's yet another tip for getting the most out of your battery and wowing your friends- be sure to have towels around for them to wipe up their drool! Using the Universal Access control panel under System Preferences you can reverse the display colors (this can also be invoked from the keyboard using CMD+OPT+CTRL+8). This turns all the white pixels black and all the rest of the colors appear like they do (did?) in color negative film. With the majority of the pixels black (literally turned off) your display will suck that much less juice out of your battery. You can go even farther by checking the box next to the reverse color controls and "use grayscale" which may reduce power consumption even more.
Another cool but useless trick is to hold down the shift key when invoking Dashboard or Exposé to make them open and close in s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n.
Enjoy your continued explorations!

@MacBook Air Anon: Dude, I personally think it is ...

2008-04-08T22:09:00.000-04:00

@MacBook Air Anon: Dude, I personally think it is easier to wear meat pants into a shark tank than to get a network administrator that only supports PCs to allow Macs in the door. Dedicated IT guys want as little as possible to create additional work for them.

My advice to you would be to use Bootcamp (or better yet, Fusion) and get XP installed. I know the Air is light on disk space but if you show them that it's really just a skinny little Windows machine you may stand a better chance. Once they do the sign of the cross, bless the machine and leave you alone you can boot up into OS X and use the machine the way you really want to.

Good luck!

Very informative and well written. My network admi...

2008-04-08T21:57:00.000-04:00

Very informative and well written. My network administrator at work is highly resistant to allowing Macs onto our network, even though I've demonstrated that I (MacBook Air) can function perfectly fine on the network with no problems at all (using Entourage 2008 to access the Exchange Server, browsers to access our intranet, VPN or Parallels if I really have to use Windows). But he still won't officially allow it. What advice would you recommend? Is there a web site or other resource that can help network administrators become switchers or at least tolerant of Macs on their networks?

If you want cheaper RAM with your Mac Pro, take a ...

2008-04-08T19:17:00.000-04:00

If you want cheaper RAM with your Mac Pro, take a peek at Expercom.com

Regarding Refurbs - I bought my MacBookPro over a ...

2008-04-08T18:56:00.000-04:00

Regarding Refurbs - I bought my MacBookPro over a year ago as a refurb from the Apple Store. It gets used a good ten hours a day, usually more, in my consulting/web design business - and I've never had a moment's trouble with it. For Christmas, I purchased a refurb MacBook for my wife. We couldn't seem to keep it connected to our wireless network, so I called the Apple Store up, explained it to them, and within three days they sent a prepaid shipper label to me - and within a week of calling them, all of my costs had been refunded to my credit card (we then purchased a new MB at the local Apple Store).

But, given my initial GREAT experience, and the follow up GREAT experience with a less than perfect machine, I will definitely try another refurb when I'm ready to replace my MBP.

For webdesign, I use SharePoint Designer (Windows only) because I have to - I use RapidWeaver (Mac only) because I LOVE to (realmacsoftware.com).

Happy Maccing!

Regarding your REALbasic response:Native controls:...

2008-04-08T18:43:00.000-04:00

Regarding your REALbasic response:

Native controls: REALbasic uses native controls on each platform. There are some limitations as the built-in controls don't always map exactly across platforms, but you can create conditional code for such situations. You can also use third party plugins or access the operating system's own UI via OS declares. Also note that RB apps are true standalone apps: no DLLs or anything else required, just an .exe for Windows and an .app bundle for Macs.

It's interesting that you mention web development: at the REAL World conference in Austin just last month a brand new product called Yuma was announced (http://www.yumadev.com/) -- it's basically a PHP replacement that uses the REALbasic object-oriented language. The really cool thing about this is that it means you no longer have to develop your desktop app and web app in different languages. For instance, if you've got a desktop app in RB that accesses a database, you can easily reuse that same code within a yuma-based page to access that database. You can also do the reverse: create a yuma-based web app and then resuse the same code to make a desktop app that runs on the three major platforms!

Yuma is brand new and still in beta, but I'm very excited about it. It tackles the same sort of problem that Adobe's trying with AIR and Flex but instead of trying to force web technologies to operate on the desktop, you get a real native application. Definitely worth keeping an eye on. You can use the desktop version of it for free (the server version costs money but it's not expensive).

@Jeff (Raster): Great comments - and an interestin...

2008-04-08T17:13:00.000-04:00

@Jeff (Raster): Great comments - and an interesting history. This is actually not my first Mac - just my first Mac in 24 years! I bought an original 128K Mac back in 84 when they first came out. Loved the little machine but I was limited to a single piece of hardware at that time and sold it in order to get a PC clone for my development work.

As far as the Mac Community goes, I think the vast majority I have communicated with - both through this blog and on some of the forums I frequent - have been great. Sure, you always get the Fanboys (Fanbois to some I guess) that simply troll for people to skewer. It's what makes the world an interesting place (insert large wink here). As a counter to them there are legions of PC folks that do the same thing in reverse. I simply ignore them - works great.

While I hated the Mac at one point in my career it was mainly because when I developed web sites they would simply not work in Safari. It was a nightmare that only recently has gotten much, much better. Other than that experience they just didn't matter that much to me.

Thanks again for reading the blog man - and contributing to the comments!

@Anon: Thanks for the info on RB. Looks like an in...

2008-04-08T16:59:00.000-04:00

@Anon: Thanks for the info on RB. Looks like an interesting product. Over the years I've done a wide range of development tools and languages, though I've become quite consumed with C# lately. It's outstanding for the kind of web development applications I am doing today.

I looked pretty closely at Flex (from Adobe) as a cross platform client side tool as well. Right now my needs are to build high performance web based applications that support high transaction rates in a public server environment.

At some point after the release of my product I do plan to look at building custom client interfaces for it so that people will not only have a web browser interface to it, though that is down the road.

One of the challenges I've had with cross platform solutions is the compromise on the UI controls. While many standard controls work fine cross platform there are some that really feel funky when simply ported over. As a UI purist I want to see a Mac UI when I'm on my Mac and a Windows UI when I'm on my Windows machine.

Here's a specific example: when you have a preferences style window on Mac you normally close it with the small close button in the top left corner. The saving of any changes to settings is implied.

In Windows that only happens when you hit the OK or, if the dialog is modeless, Apply buttons. The Cancel button will abort any changes you have made. It's a small difference, but a difference none-the-less. It's also a good example of why building those cross platform single source code bases are tough!

David,I'm new to your blog... I found you last nig...

2008-04-08T16:52:00.000-04:00

David,

I'm new to your blog... I found you last night from MacDailyNews (Longtime Microsoft Windows developer switches to Apple Mac.)

I know this reply may be a bit off topic for this blog entry, so I apologize in advance for it's length, lack of organization and content if I've offended. I will try in the future to post it where appropriate.

On Self Employment...
I'll be sure to check out your other blog entries on starting and running your own business. It's always helpful to have additional insight from folks that have or are faced with similar challenges.

If you haven't looked into it, check out FreshBooks. An excellent, simple and cost effective web based time tracking, billing and invoicing tool. It works great in the office, on the road, or even from an iPhone. It won't work for everyone, but it sure has made life for us easier.

With our business, we make 90% of our living keeping Windows based systems up and running... It's a good business. (Insert wink!)

We use the Mac for 95% of our business stuff and 100% for personal pursuits. The flexibility and stability has been difficult if not impossible to match.

On Platform Recommendations...
Our usual recommendation for businesses is to get Windows if it's needed... If not, seriously consider the Mac.

My attempt at being platform indifferent! (Insert grin!)

For family and friends, I take the Andy Ihnatko approach, which is roughly...

"Get a Mac unless you have a real and valid need for Windows.

If you get Windows, you can call me exactly three times for free assistance (Use those three wisely!) If you get a Mac, call me pretty much anytime day or night within reason."

The primary reason for that is of course, without doubt, I know at some point in the future they'll be calling on me for help, usually without the expectation of any compensation for my time. They are family and friends after all!

There are many good reasons for not getting a Mac, but truly valid reasons are dwindling fast! For the vast majority of folks, it's getting to the point where it simply does not matter what you get, so why not consider a Mac?

On the Mac Community...
It is interesting about how vocal, helpful and sometimes otherwise, the Mac Community can be. There are times that I'm proud to be a Mac user and other times that I'm embarrassed. Like I said, the Mac Community can be very vocal.

Maybe a Little Too Long in the Tooth...
I've used almost everything imaginable, from the DEC PDP-8 to Vista Ultimate. I've been involved with building or built my own systems from a MITS Altair 8800 in the late 70's to the latest Windows Gaming and Multimedia systems.

I've just started to seriously revisit Linux -- Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon.) Previously I messed around with various distros like Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, etc., but it was just too time consuming, and to be frank, not all that enjoyable.

Since 1984, I have always been able to rely on my Mac. Not always a happy reliance, but for better or worse I've never gave up on Apple, and in return, their products have never let me down. Obviously your mileage may vary.

Regardless, welcome to the Mac Community! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have for nearly 25 years.

---RASTER

Great to have you on board, David! Welcome!A coupl...

2008-04-08T16:34:00.000-04:00

Great to have you on board, David! Welcome!

A couple comments on Mac software development. If you join Apple's paid developer program you can get significant discounts on hardware (like that Mac Pro). If you're a serious developer, that might be worth considering. Most say the discount pays for the membership so it's a bit of a wash, but if you're thinking of doing it anyway, it could be worth it.

Also, I noticed you mentioned Visual Studio, so you might check out REALbasic (http://www.realbasic.com). It's a cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) development environment that's similar to VisualBasic. (There are some conversion tools, but aren't that effective from what I understand.)

Some people like to poo-poo RB as a toy, but like any tool, you can create crap with it if you want: it's all in how you use it. There are some amazing applications out there developed in RB (like XSilva's Lightspeed Point-of-Sale software, http://www.xsilva.com/). For people who want to develop cross-platform apps from a single code base, RB is pretty awesome. You should check it out if you haven't already (they are based in Austin, too).