Week 2 of the move from the old Dell machine to the iMac. Things are getting better and while I’m not a power user yet, I’m quite comfortable already. My biggest disappointment was the awful look of the Palm Desktop on the Mac OS and I knew that I had to give it up. I installed Missing Sync and was able to synch my Zire 72s with Apple’s address book and iCal almost on the first try (had to cancel a couple of old conduits still trying to talk to the Palm Desktop). Turns out that now that my data is all gathered in iCal, I quite like the look and feel of it and that’s a big step towards feeling comfortable on the iMac.
Unfortunately, I’m still unable to sync via Bluetooth so I have to use the USB cable. Not a huge deal, but it’s annoying. I’m tempted to buy a Bluetooth mouse just to do something with Bluetooth! I bought a Mac because I had been convinced that networks and communication between devices were much easier to set up than on a PC and I have to say that it hasn’t been my experience yet.
The iPod/iTunes move went quite smoothly, thanks to my LaCie external drive where all my music was stored. The songs I had bought on iTunes all made their way back into the iMac without problems.
It’s still too early for me to be able to tell if the platform is such a huge advantage over Windows XP, which was quite stable on my old Dell. I guess it will be more apparent when I start playing with video editing and other more complex tasks which were so frustrating on the PC.
Overall, I’m happy about the move but a few things bug me:
-Firefox seems a lot more unstable on the Mac. It « hung » 4 or 5 times in the last 10 days when I visited sites with interactive applications (Flash or other). That had never happened on the PC. What’s up with that? Is Safari more stable?
-I can see why the hand-holding and the integration between the various applications can be convenient, but it can become quite frustrating. When I plug in my digital camera, iPhoto pops up and seems to be my only choice of accessing the content on the camera (unless I buy a card reader). It starts building up a bunch of folders for me and makes extra copies of photos in a different location. Isn’t that taking a bit too much space on the hard drive? What if I have my own filing system? To keep doing things my own way, I have to take the time to disable the automatic features of iPhoto.
Also, if you want to use the integrated e-mail function from iPhoto (which is cool because it makes reducing the size of the pictures quick and easy), your options are limited to using Mail, Eudora and AOL. I’m using Thunderbird… so that’s a lost feature for me. (If there’s a solution to that, let me know.)
-The design of the iMac is beautiful and sleek, but why on earth would you put the USB ports in the back? If you want to plug in something, you have to get up from your chair, walk around the desk, hold the screen to keep it from tilting while you push in the USB cable. It would have been much smarter to put those USB ports on the side of the unit. And why are the two USB ports on the keyboard only USB 1.1 and not USB 2.0 ?
-One of the weirdest things to get used to for an old-time PC user is the changing menus at the top of the screen. I have a 20″ screen. When I’m working on a window that’s located at the bottom right of the screen, I have to go all the way back up to the top left of the screen to access the menus (I don’t know all the keyboard shortcuts yet). You also have to remember to highlight the window whose menu you want to access. Small stuff, but it takes some getting used to.
Still to come:
-Setting up a wireless network for the printer.
-Installing my screenwriting software, which, I hear, has a few bugs on the Mac OS.
-Finding a good, free FTP application for the Mac and getting it to work.
-Move my blog to WordPresss.
Je n’ai jamais vraiment aim� Firefox. Si tu tiens � �viter Safari, tu peux mettre � l’essai Camino (http://www.caminobrowser.org/), dont je me sers depuis 1 an sans trop de probl�mes sur mon vieil iBook G3. Seul inconv�nient quant � moi : il utilise beaucoup de m�moire.
Logiciel FTP gratuit? Jette un coup d’�il � Cyberduck : http://cyberduck.ch/.
why pressword?
much better than blogger?
Firefox still does bug out on certain sites that have badly-coded javascripts; you might want to make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed as well.
As for application commands, the real secret is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for your major apps, then there’s a lot less menu-ing to do.
To switch apps without manually selecting a window, press command-Tab; you’ll get a big popup display of the icons of all open apps, then you can use the arrow keys to select the one you want to switch to without ever using the mouse!
As for bluetooth mice, I found a decent one from Logitech at Compusmart for around $75. They’re still a tad pricey compared to regular wireless mice, but then you don’t have to eat up a USB port with an adapter.
as for the USB ports – they’re on the back because Steve Jobs believes you’ll plug everything in once and leave it there, and it’s prettier ;)
USB 1.0 on keyboards, I can only surmise that putting a USB 2 chipset in the keyboard would have made it too expensive. I don’t think there are any USB2 keyboards even in the PC world! I suppose you can always get a usb2 hub if you want to bring a set of ports around to the front of the machine.
Tintin76: WordPress is supposed to be a lot more flexible than Blogger. More functions. More fun. ;-)
AJ: I think I saw that mouse at Futureshop too. Is it this one? How do you like it? I was wondering if it’s too small.
I learned about that switching apps trick this week. Pretty handy. I also like the F9 function.
I have an old USB hub but it’s 1.1 (bit slow) so I need to get a new one. Steve Jobs should have put in more USB ports if he didn’t want us to unplug anything! And it would have been just as hidden on the side… Sigh… Mac people. ;-)
Regarding menu location– I think once you get used to them being at the top you’ll find that you can get at them much more quickly. Having them up at the top means that they’re all essentially infinitely tall, and you can whip your mouse to the top of the screen without trying to target the tiny little rectangle highlighting the word. This is based on a principle called Fitts’ Law, which you can read more about on Wikipedia (of course).
Regarding an FTP application, I’m partial to Fugu.
Firefox should be solid– I use it all the time on my iMac at work. As always, make sure you’ve got the latest version, etc. However, if it’s giving you fits then Safari is a reasonable alternative (as is Camino). I tend to keep both open all the time.
For your digital camera– you should also have an application called « Image Capture » in your applications folder. You can use this as a stripped-down alternative for pulling pictures off your camera, and it also includes a preference setting for what to do when a camera is connected. Why they don’t have this in iPhoto itself, I don’t know. :/
In iPhoto 6 (which I guess came with your iMac) you can set in the preferences to manage your photo library yourself. Then you can just drag all your pictures into the iphoto window and iPhoto only makes thumbnails and saves pictures that you’ve edited in its own folder.
I never used iPhoto before version 6 execatly because this fact, but now it’s quite workable. Getting a card reader is a good idea I think, they’re cheap and much faster. My wirkflow is as follows. Put card in card reader. Drag all pictures in folder « New Photos ». Choose « don’t overwrite existing files » and check checkbox so it does that for all files. Open all pictures by selecting them all and double-clicking (On Windows that would open a zillion copies of an application on the Mac they all open in one window) in Preview. There I weed out the really bad pictures by dragging their thumbnails to the trash.
Then I move the pictures thet are left to my own folder system based on date and location « Montreal 10-2006 » and then I import them into iPhoto. Convoluted? Yes, but I like to have some control over things.
1) Card reader: get a USB 2.0 card reader for maximum speed.
2) Disable iPhoto auto-start, using Applications:Image Capture (strange place to put the prefs, I know…)
3) if you use iPhoto, get the Flickr Plug-in, it’s great.
4) What’s the problem exactly with the Palm and Bluetooth? You must initiate the HotSync from the Palm, but it’s working great here…
5) for the ftp, I usually use the finder for the download (cmd-k). I’m very partial to Transmit (it’s not free, sorry), when I need serious ftp.
6) Printers are really fun to configure with Bonjour(ex-Rendez-vous). I’m now installing Bonjour on every Win PC to manage their printer connection.
7) For productivity with the large screen, I would recommend something like LaunchBar or QuickSilver (to handle keayboard shortcuts easily).
8) And if you haven’t yet installed it, Adium for multi IM accounts.
Some reactions to your post:
–Remember to de-authorize your old PC from your iTunes music. You can only use music you download on 5 devices, and if you don’t de-authorize you’ve in effect burned one of those devices.
–Firefox is generally rock solid now, but make sure you’re using the most recent version. I’ve heard that updating to FF 2 RC is OK now, though I haven’t done it myself. Safari is fine too, I use FF now, but I used Safari for a long time as well.
–You can get alternative programs to download stuff from your camera – there’s Image Capture but also Graphic Converter (shareware) is excellent, among others. The theory behind iPhoto is that hard disk space is cheap, so why be parsimonious about it when you can gain benefit by being more liberal about it.
–As far as the email part is concerned, it’s a two-person dance, and Thunderbird doesn’t have the « stuff » (aka a decent Applescript dictionary so that it can be controlled by other programs) to enable such functionality. Unless the Thunderbird for Mac developers add that it won’t ever be possible.
–That brings up a question though – what are you using to filter junk mail in Thunderbird?
–As far as a wireless network for your printer goes – you can do Printer sharing, which is OK and works pretty well, but even better would likely to buy a wireless print server.
Good luck!
Thanks everybody for all the info!
Jason: Thanks for the tip about ImageCapture. I didn’t even know I had it! Sounds like it will be perfect for me.
Mare: A card reader does sound optimal. One more thing to plug in… sigh… ;-)
CFD: About the Palm synching problem: I see that the Palm is communicating with the iMMac via Bluetooth but I keep getting an error message saying the « port is already in use by another application ». I’ve read extensively on the subject but none of the tricks suggested worked. I thought it might work easier with Missing Sync but I still got that error message, even after trying the solutions proposed by Missing Sync. Oh well. Not a big deal.
-On Firefox: I do have the latest version. I downloaded it last week!
-On QuickSilver: Patrick (i.never.nu) also recommmended it. I’ll look into it.
-Mikel: The reason I used Thunderbird is because the migration from the PC was going to be easier. I wanted to preserve all my e-mail folders (the ones saved on the hard drive). Importing them in Mail would have been much more complicated, from what I read.
I use Thunderbird’s build-in junk mail filters. They work quite well.
-Ed and I bought a print server this week. Now we need to install it and get it to work on both my Mac and his PC. Ed seems confident…
wordpress is a lot of fun. a lot! i’ve used blogger (old, pro and new) and mt, and wp is the one i’ve had the most fun with, and the one that’s allowed me to do what i want easily. i find that i’m trying to do complex stuff… and then i realize there’s a built-in easy way to do it: hurray!
(i’m not done yet – but i’m enjoying the ride!)
Martine, tu appr�cieras ce Guide d’introduction � MacOS X (une intro certes mais qui va pas mal loin…).
Et je suis fid�le � LaunchBar comme lanceur (qui est ant�rieur � Quicksilver et date m�me de l’�poque o� Mac OS X �tait OPENSTEP)
Funnily enough, I moved in the other direction (I needed a dirt-cheap computer), back in late December. Still miss my 2001 iBook (500MHz, 384MB RAM) and Mac OS X.
One thing I noticed (and was mentioned by others, elsewhere) is that Flock is much less of a resource hog on Mac OS X than on XP. No idea why. Though I never had issues with Firefox on OSX, I had switched to Flock and this made my transition to XP less fun.
Safari can be a great tool, especially if you use one of OSX’s best-kept secrets: Services.
Ah, Services! The best tools for compulsive writers. You know, those menu items like « Summarize, » available in pretty much all Cocoa apps and several Carbon apps. They also include support for the system-wide multi-lingual spellchecker (a fantastic tool for us, bilingual writers). Be sure to check out some of these, especially WordService. And once you start using Nisus Thesaurus, you’ll wonder how you did without it.
Perhaps the main trick with the Mac, mentioned in several comments here, is to only use the mouse when you really have to. Especially if you use the Mac to write, at any length. Use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible. Luckily, they’re very consistent across the system so you’ll be used to them in no time. When you’re writing, shortcuts are much more efficient than any kind of mouse movement. And you can usually apply shortcuts to any menu item. Menus are there to find out about features or to reach some of the lesser used features of an app.
Writing, on the Mac, is really pleasurable with the right tools. My favourite writing tools overall are outliners. Yes, there are outliners on any platform. But Mac OS X users arguably have a much better selection than anybody else. (What is widely recognized as the best outliner on Windows has been discontinued a number of years ago and doesn’t support any XML format.) If you’re interested in outlining, be sure to check ATPO. If you’re not yet into outlining, you might want to give OmniOutliner a try (IIRC, it comes preinstalled on new Macs as a trial version).
Another thing you might want to do is check out the wealth of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open-Source Software) on Mac OS X. Not only are most Linux projects also available on OSX but there are very high-quality projects made especially for Mac OS X. These tend to be �ber-productivity apps (i.e., efficient software for actual work) like the TeXShop TeX editor and the BibDesk bibliography manager. Or academic apps like TAMS Analyzer. But there are more « mainstream » apps like the Camino browser (mentioned here) and the TextWrangler text editor. To be honest, I almost never bought software for Mac OS X because so much of what I needed was already available for free.
Mac OS X is also a very cool geek platform. While the Mac OS turned us long-time users away from CLIs, Mac OS X integrates GUI and CLI elements extremely well. More often than not, I had a Terminal window open to do quick manipulations on files and processes. As any Unix geek knows, the shell is often the best place to accomplish real work.
I guess I’m writing this more out of nostalgia for my days working on Macs than to give you specific advice. There’s clearly a lot to say about Mac OS X.
Tr�s int�ressantes tes histoires de switchage au Mac. Je vais continuer a les suivres avec int�r�t! :)
J’ai moi-m�me penser � switcher, les Macs sont si jolis et selon les fans (ou devrais-je dire les ap�tres?) ils sont si faciles d’utilisation!
On ne peut pas dire que tu es une newbie des ordis, t’es m�me plutot geek (ceci dit avec le plus grand respect!). Alors je crois que tout est une question d’habitude.
Je crois que je vais encore rester sur mon vieux PC beige. On voit bien que rien n’est parfait en ce bas monde! ;)
Wow, lots of data and interesting info to digest here! ;-)
Alexandre: About outlining for writers: I just realized yesterday that my iMac came with a fully working version of OmniOutliner. I played with it a little bit but it was hard to fully grasp how useful this could become. While I’m very comfortable writing directly on a keyboard, I still like to outline with a good old piece of paper and a pen! There’s something about handling paper at that stage which allows me to feel more free and creative, more connected to that OTHER part of the brain. I pick my notebooks carefully for each new project, get out my Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and a pencil and cover the pages with notes which I often refer to during the actual writing process.
Ed told me about « Services » last week and I’ve only started exploring those functions. Lots of stuff there! One could learn about how to be more productive on the computer forever… without ever actually getting anything done! Dangerous toys.
I have to remember that I learned how to use a PC over many, many years. I guess I can’t expect to know everything there is to know about Macs in a couple of weeks.