First Impressions

I survived my first day on the iMac. Everything seemed to go pretty smooth but I performed relatively light work duties. I am fully expecting some challenges ahead.

Anyway... on to my initial impressions.

I am still trying to find where everything is. There are some UI elements that don't make a lot of sense to me and others that I am just not used to. For example, navigating the file/folder/documents/images structures is different than Windows. There are similar things but my eyes are just not drawn to the right spots or I don't know the best place to click. Oh .. and why do I need/want coverflow for my documents folders? Not sure about this UI "enhancement".

Honestly .. OSX kind of feels like using iTunes a little bit. I hate iTunes. Haha.

I finally figured out that the red x closes the documents but that the application continues to reside in memory. This is a change from Windows ... at least visually and not necessarily technically. What are the best practices? Should I close an app (or is it called quit an app) when I am done everytime or just let things reside in memory unused. Will OSX auto close them if it needs the space? Is there an inactivity timer to autoclose?

Other notes: I setup VMWare today and can now run Windows XP virtually. I have not really looked at it but so far it looks slick. There appears to be some really nice integration points between the two systems. I think it is BS that I cannot just run OSX virtually on Windows but Windows can do either.

A quick list of the software I have setup to use so far.  Ideas, suggestions, and thoughts are very much welcome.

• Mail app that comes with OSX (MacMail?)
• iCal
• Spaces (I love spaces and don't know why MS has not implemented)
• Firefox (Safari a little)
• Adium (I tried ichat but Adium seems better)

In conclusion .. based upon a day, maybe day and a half, of usage ... I prefer Win 7 hands down. Will this change? I don't know. I am really trying to stay open minded. I have no intention of using my Windows XP virtual environment unless necessary.

I have been keeping a list of my thoughts in a file and plan on putting them into a blog post soon.

... oh yeah ... getting used to "command-?" vs "ctrl-?" ... is a huge change. My fingers are so trained for windows style copy/paste/cut/bold/undo/all etc... that it is proving a pain in the apple. I can't seem to figure out how to place my fingers to quickly do back to back actions really quickly. Control (CTRL) just seems like a much better key for this activity.