Hi! This blog will outline my journey, thoughts, comparisons, rants, raves, and otherwise bloggy like material on my switch from a Windows based PC to an iMac at work.

See The Beginning to get started.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Apple ... Pie? Nom Nom ... Thoughts.

Where do I begin? I have finally been putting the machine through some paces and it is holding up very well. In short my current conclusion is that OSX is better than Windows XP but not as good as Win 7.

I have not had any compatibility issues yet. Hooray! A list of  some things I like, don't like or just want to comment on.
  • What is up with Command-Tab. It doesn't scroll through items that are minimized? Why? This seems like an obvious fix. I have decided to use spaces and keep most things open on different spaces divided by category. This works pretty well. I thought Expose would do the trick but it only works for your current space. This doesn't help when switching between Windows. 
  • Some of the finder views still seem foreign to me but I am getting used to them. I noticed that in Icon view the icons do not dynamically realign. This is annoying. Also the folders are just kind of mixed in with files. I am used to folders coming first or last ... again something to get used to. 
  • The time and date is in the upper right corner instead of lower right. It does not open a calendar view when I click it. Boo. Then I found dashboard shortcuts! Yay! I like the way dashboard better than widgets. Pretty slick implementation.
  • Mini display port for using a second monitor ... and the cable is 30 bucks ... I just hate getting ripped off. One of my biggest complaints with pretty much everything Apple makes. Thank you MonoPrice!
  • I think the Mighty Mouse sucks. Feels cheap. Crappy laser. No extra buttons .. like a back button. I like buttons. Right click seems to have problems... get over it .. I like to right click.
  • Everything wants to be a keyboard shortcut. It will take time to memorize all the shortcuts. I am really struggling with using command-? for doing things. My fingers need a muscle memory wipe. 
  •  MS Office .... that is a whole other post ....
  • Spotlight is awesome. It searches everything so quickly. Very nice. Indexing files appears to be really fast ... almost instant. Searching appears to be faster and more relevant than Win 7 (although not by much .. I will be testing this more).
    We want even talk about Win XP searching ... 
  • I found an FTP client. Yay for Filezilla!! Now I am looking for a Notepad++ replacement. So far two MacHeads I talked to said there isn't one.   :(  I am going to miss Notepad++. Maybe I will try out some Wine! 
  • The jury is still out on the keyboard. I like how the f-keys are mapped to activities like sound and stuff. This is logical to me. When I need to use a function key then I just hold down fn. This is slick. I think I am going to map all my windows function keys at home to do the same thing.  
  • I just installed iTunes 10. I will probably have a post about iTunes. 
     Still more to come folks. Comment below!
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    2 comments:

    1. RyanSeptember 3, 2010 at 10:18 AM

      So you can make expose work with spaces so you can see all windows on all spaces. Go to Settings > Expose & Spaces and set up your active screen corners. Set one corner to 'All Windows' and the other corner to 'Spaces'. Then when you want to see all windows, hit the Spaces hotspot then the All Windows hotspot and you're golden.

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    2. -B!September 3, 2010 at 12:18 PM

      That is pretty slick. I like that and you can move stuff to different spaces more easily. Wow. I can't believe I didn't think of that. haha. It also appears to work with the expose mouse shortcut while in the spaces view.

      Sweet! Thanks.

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