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All you mac buffs...
ThatCanonGuy
Registered Users Posts: 1,778 Major grins
I had the chance to use a mac today. First time ever for me. I can say that I had a very hard time figuring out how to... turn it on :wink. Let's see... no power button on the front... not on the keyboard... not on the mouse... not on the back... wait, there's something... HEY, a power button!:barb
First thoughts are, the one-button mouse system is way primitive... Firefox is nice, but no favorites bar... arg, am I the only one who appreciates visual buttons? I'll have to try some photo processing on it. It doesn't have PS though.
First thoughts are, the one-button mouse system is way primitive... Firefox is nice, but no favorites bar... arg, am I the only one who appreciates visual buttons? I'll have to try some photo processing on it. It doesn't have PS though.
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I have a favorites bad in Firefox, I don't recall though if it's a preference or not. You're not alone, I prefer the buttons but everyone seems to be going away from them.
"bookmarks toolbar" is a setting in Firefox, even in Windows it is off by default. just click View>Toolbars>Bookmarks Toolbar. Chrome does same thing, as does Safari. Unfortunately, Safari won't let you use web favicons for bookmarks, unlike every other browser on the market, so I stay away from Safari.
I found tutorials for switching from PC to Mac on the Apple website that were helpful, but it turned out to just a matter of getting used to doing things a new way, nothing complicated.
The only thing I really miss is that I seem to be unable to tell my Mac to open documents in particular program via double-clicking. I always have to right click and then click on "Open in ...".
I LOVE the magic trackpad. (I hate the mouse but really haven't given it a chance. My kids use it, but I don't think they know how to right click yet either.) I love how easy it is to scroll and otherwise navigate pages with just strokes of the finger(s).
As far as photography and my digital scrapbooking, well, I was on a laptop PC before so I can't compare, but images are beautiful on my Mac.
michelekendzie.smugmug.com
Michele:
Next time, right click, and then, in "Open with...", rather than choosing your preferred app, choose 'Other...' down at the bottom. You will then get a Finder window that lets you choose your app, including a check box that allows you to "Always open with..."
I'm glad I mentioned it! Thank you!
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But Apple will be at a clear disadvantage soon. Have you heard about Windows 8? It's going to change the world of computing. It's going to be a Lion competitor AND an ipad cometitor. Microsoft will be launching the Windows Marketplace, their version of the App Store. And this Windows 8 will run on desktops, laptops, and tablets. Yes, we'll be able to run Photoshop on a Windows tablet. And when you hook up a keyboard, it becomes a full-blown laptop. Of course, it'll have disadvantages at first, but after a while I think this will be a real game changer.
Soon is over a year from now, earliest, for Windows 8 to ship. Windows Vista shipped two years late, and Windows 7 was 18 months late. Perhaps Microsoft will get things on time this go around. Not that Apple is any better I suspect, except Apple doesn't preannounce anything, so we can't tell. Most of the time this works, in the recent case of Final Cut X, it was a disaster.
iOS is moving to v5. Windows 8 will be v1. Win8 is brand new OS, sharing nothing with Win7, which is based on Windows 2000 core. Neither iOS nor Mac OSX was anywhere feature complete in their initial releases, and while promising, didn't really take off till later updates. I don't think Apple will be at a disadvantage anytime soon. As a consumer, I am excited about Windows 8, as it keeps innovators moving forward, bringing us better products.
However, I have loaded Win8 Developer preview on a Virtual Machine. While I think it might be interesting on a tablet, I am not convinced at all on a PC. Maybe I am too engrained in my habits, but dang, Win 8 is confusing, too many swipes, charms and remembering what is open where. I recommend you give it try first.
Indeed, it might be awesome when it finally ships, and 3rd party apps might be really killer, but that isn't now.
IF MS continues to produce operating systems as they’ve done in the past, if history is any indication, I’m not sold. This from a Mac and Windows user. I find I want to strangle Window’s 7 little neck far, far more often than OS X.
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Hmmmm, not sure what this means: true, the whole touch pad is 'one single button', BUT it is set to support one finger for left click, two fingers are right click = two button mouse.
so, as an example I can do pinch to zoom, I can slide pages, use forward/backward tool by keeping two fingers while making the motion.
if you press the button with two fingers, it will look at it as a right click, one finger - left click.
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The reason for that is the power button is not expected to be used very often. The default power manager (Energy Saver) settings are set up so that if you were to walk away from the Mac for a while, it would time out and power down to sleep, and when you come back, you would hit a key and it would wake and resume. There's not really a need to turn it all the way off and on. If you work with a lot of apps (email, web, Photoshop, DAM, etc), it's easier to work this way than to shut down and then have to set up all those app windows again when you cold boot the computer. The way it is designed, you get "instant-on."
And actually, that's the way many people (including me) also use Windows now, since Windows has improved its standby behavior. I'm not sure if it's still less stable than the Mac version of sleep, since I still find that Windows users do not trust standby/hibernate, while on the Mac I often go for weeks (literally) without shutting down or restarting the computer. I really have a very, very rare need to ever touch the power button on my Mac. So it goes in the back, because Apple has this obsession with a minimal front panel design.
It's funny to see this in coffee shops. Typically, Windows users show up, boot the laptop, get coffee while awaiting the boot sequence to complete, then start opening programs, then start opening windows. Mac users simply open the lid and start typing because all their apps are already open and on the network within 5 seconds of coming out of sleep.
That's why I love plugging 2-button mice into my Macs, I right-click all the time and the system and many apps will give you plenty of right-click menus. I used to use a $5 generic USB mouse until it broke, and currently I use a very nice Microsoft 5-button Bluetooth wireless mouse with my Mac. So...where's the problem again?:D
The position of the button makes sense. I rarely shut down my laptop either. I just found it humorous that it took me, a fluent Windows user, 5 minutes to figure out how to turn on a mac
No problem, no problem
With regards to Right-Click... I've got one finger right click just like Windows on my Magic Mouse using OSX Lion.
Take a look at this page (and the video) which explains a bit more about what it can do...
http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/
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Can work as a two button mouse. You just have to go into hardware settings, find the magic mouse and select the left and right option.
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That is what actually annoys Windows converts I think. Not that the Mac can't do it, but that Apple decides to disable the capability out of the box and you have to go turn it on. Because what that leads to is that people start up their new Mac and there does not appear to be any way to get a context menu out of their mouse or trackpad, even though there are actually 4 ways to do it on a Mac laptop. (Turn on right click for a connected mouse, or Ctrl-click, or turn on the bottom right tap option on the trackpad, or turn on two-finger click on the trackpad...).
Starting up: open the lid
Closing down: close the lid
Mouse?: have not used mine for several months, just the touch pad
I doubt windows 8 will make any difference to the growth of Apple. It is the level of easy integration with apps and cloud and other Apple devices that makes Apples a joy to use. Plus a hundred and one well thought through design details. The Windows paradigm is quite different.
There was no lid or touchpad, it was an iMac.
I played with it some more. My website looks gorgeous on that screen! I find Windows to be easier to use, though I'm sure that's because I'm used to it and not Mac. Windows has some features that make more sense; for example, double-clicking on the top bar of a window makes the window smaller (the green "+" button on a Mac window).
I can definitely see myself getting used to it and being able to use it fluently, but right now I'm happy with Windows. Maybe I just haven't used it enough