Optimizing the dual monitor environment for the Mac Pro
Now that I've had the Mac Pro for a little over two full days I'm finding it a joy to work with. It's very fast and quiet and amplifies the Mac experience that started for me on the little MacBook. I have VMware Fusion up and running on it and most of my development environment in there and spent a big part of yesterday in Visual Studio writing code. Here's is what appears to work best for me:
Even with the dual monitors and an effective 3200x1200 resolution I still love using Spaces. Activating that through either the mouse or keyboard and swiftly navigating between spaces is now second nature to me. In Windows I always used Alt-Tab to switch between applications; while I occasionally use Command-Tab to do that on my Mac it's usually only to toggle back and forth between two applications quickly.
Even with the dual monitors and an effective 3200x1200 resolution I still love using Spaces. Activating that through either the mouse or keyboard and swiftly navigating between spaces is now second nature to me. In Windows I always used Alt-Tab to switch between applications; while I occasionally use Command-Tab to do that on my Mac it's usually only to toggle back and forth between two applications quickly.
If you look at the image above you'll see that I've got 6 spaces to work with. I'm still tweaking that but I had a tendency on the MacBook to keep specific apps in certain Spaces and I'm continuing to do that with the Mac Pro.
Setting up VMware Fusion and Windows XP
At the bottom left is the Space I have dedicated to VMware Fusion and Windows XP. Fusion allows you to operate in one of three modes: Full Screen, Unity and in a window. The window view places your XP instance into a resizable window that lets XP think it's in a monitor of that size, which means if you resize the window to 640x480 then XP thinks it's operating on a 640x480 sized display.
Unity mode, which is really interesting, places the applications from your Windows XP instance directly into your Mac environment. I tried playing with it and didn't care for it as much as I thought I would. There are a couple of little UI artifacts on the applications I tried running and it just seems odd having older Windows XP style windows sitting in OS X. It feels like being in a brand new car but looking down at the stereo controls and finding something that came out of a 6 year old car. Well, maybe not quite like that but it does feel odd.
I decided that Full Screen worked best for me. The only problem with it is that when you switch to that mode your Mac menu quickly auto-hides up to the top of the window. I like having my Mac's menu visible because that's where my iStat monitors are and I like to occasionally scan the CPU to see what's up. Since Full Screen mode for VMware Fusion only takes up one screen I decided to try placing VMWare Fusion in the second monitor. Here's what it looks like:
Now I still have access to my Mac's menu bar even though I'm in Windows XP in full screen mode, making iStat visible at all times. I'm still spending time tweaking this but it's starting to settle into this configuration.
One Quick Question for Everyone
My friend Bradley is a heavy duty Quicken user and has been really disappointed with the Quicken version for Mac. He is down to only a couple of applications that he continues to depend on Windows for and Quicken is one of them. Can anyone recommend a decent replacement for it that is native to Mac? I'd personally like to find something as well, ideally one that interfaces well with my bank and credit card providers. I've spent zero time looking but have gotten such great tips from people here I'm hoping someone has a good recommendation.
Comments
The only programs I couldn't find a Mac alternative for were Tag and Rename and Quicken. But who cares I use parallels for Quicken and usually wait till I have a good batch of mp3's before I use Tag and Rename on them. Not as convient as a native mac app, but it works and that is good enough for me.
I do have a question concerning virtualization software. Currently I have parallels accessing my boot camp partition and I am thinking of giving Fusion a try. Can I have both applications using the same boot camp partition? I won't be running Parallels and Fusion at the same time, but I will be using them both to access the same boot camp partition.
Online banking is where it's at: mint.com
Probably works well with Fusion too.
http://macmegasite.com/node/4218
which might replace some of what is missing from Mac Quicken.
I usually browse Apple's downloads page to find mac os x softwares.
And maybe here at business and financial is the software you need?
@JT - thanks also for the nice comments man. I tried Warp out but experienced a couple of odd problems that went away when I stopped using it. Don't remember them specifically right now though...
Your friend should check out "iBank" -- it is an excellent replacement to Quicken.
Like your friend, I was frustrated by Quicken for Mac and looked into several alternatives. I found iBank to be extremely simple to use, easy to manage, and looked great. They came out with a new version right after Leopard came out and it's even better, adding in downloading of your accounts from your bank and a couple other features. It uses CoreAnimation and all the fun jazz that Apple added in Leopard (it even won runner-up in the Apple Design Competition). I've been using it for about a year now to track all my finances and I find it works great. One of the best features is that you can create filters to automatically tag your finances as certain categories (for example, it will automatically tag anything from "Apple.com" as "Electronics" or "Safeway" as "Groceries", etc. With Quicken, I had to manually give a category for each transaction, every time.
I've found it useful to set three hot corners. One set to Expose "show windows for this app", one set to Expose "show all windows", and one set to Spaces "show all spaces".
Switching between things on different Spaces and between different apps then becomes just a couple of quick flicks of the mouse. Flick to the Spaces corner to see the spaces, and maybe flick to the Expose "all windows" corner if I don't see the right window, and then a click to where I want to go.
@Tzs: I did indeed notice that - very cool. Activating Expose while inside of Spaces is pretty slick. I did try using hot corners once but I kept activating it by accident (one of the reasons I struggled with Warp other than the bugginess). I think I'm a little too over-caffeinated to use mouse gestures.
Have you tried using Fusion in full-screen, or any other mode, in a separate Space, thus allowing you to effectively flip back and forth between what would appear to be a singularly Mac environment and a singularly Windows environment?
Love reading the blog, all the best.
There is on online version of Quicken now, there is a decent review of it at:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/01/08/an-introduction-to-quicken-online/
Mint is similar and a little more mature. My complaint with the online apps (Wasabe too) is that they are building up a nice little database of users, financial information and spending habits, and if I was a bank - and had any money left from bad mortgages - I'd be pretty interested in buying up Mint or Wasabe etc.
iBank really is the premier native application for money management. Do know that you have to be running Leopard in order to use the newest version. But as an owner from the 1.x days, I can attest that it's a very actively developed application - which is nice.
One other to consider - as an online application - Mvelopes. (mvelopes.com)
You pay for the service - and at first it seems a bit pricey - but it includes CheckFree online bill pay.
It's a flash app - that works off the envelope system. They say, (and I would agree) that you pay for the service in the money you "find" from understanding your expenses.
I'm a big believer - and since it's online, you can access it from work etc.
Thanks for the mvelopes tip!
Try to use it in single window mode and stretch to both screen. Then you can use 3200*(1600-width of menu bar) screen.
Here's an example.