Got a Mac, so shut up already
I just installed OS X on the used G4 I bought for my father-in-law. Having installed Windows scores of times — probably more than a 100 in my lifetime — and having installed Linux a few times with mixed success, I was interested in how the Mac would do.
Answer: Pretty durn easy. As easy as Windows XP, and definitely easier than Red Hat or Mandrake.
And then the fun began.
The UI effects are real crowd-pleasers. It matters to me that the droplets of water play catch as you wait for something to install. Let’s not say I’m superficial. Let’s just say I’m attuned to visual payfulness. (Also, I’m easily amused. It’s a gift.)
I love the built-in Bayesian filtering in the email client. It beats the integration of Outlook and Popfile to bits.
Sherlock is so cool that it seems like a proof of concept, not the functional app that it is.
And I’ve just started kicking it around. I expect to find even more to like.
Of course, I still have things to whine about. For example:
The installation disk doesn’t tell you to hold down the c key in order to get the machine to boot from the CD
Windows XP gets you hooked up to the Internet without throwing DHCP/proxy gobbledygook in your face.
The Mac registration process doesn’t give you enough choices and doesn’t let you opt out of questions such as “What are you going to use your Mac for?” Annoying.
The one-button mouse still feels like a really bad idea to me.
There’s only one corner you can drag on a Mac window to resize it. There’s no way to size a window up or left, only down and right. Or am I missing something obvious?
Internet Explorer has already crashed. I was checking a stock quote at www.tse.com and the window simply disappeared on me. (I hadn’t yet discovered Safari. Now I have.)
The real test: Will my father-in-law take to it like a cat takes to a one-button mouse, or will he come down with a case of the eensy little gotchas?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Having just switched (back) to Mac myself, I think the biggest recommendation I would make is: get a two+ button mouse.
Somewhat ironically, I am now using my old PC’s Microsoft-brand mouse (ergonomic, 4 buttons and a scroll wheel) with my Mac, and it works great.
The installation disk doesn’t tell you to hold down the c key in order to get the machine to boot from the CD.
Actually I don’t think you have to. If you pop it in to an already booted Mac and double-click the “Install Mac OS X” icon, it should immediately dialog: “Your computer must be restarted” with buttons that read “Cancel” and “Restart.” Upon that restart, the Mac is booted off the CD. As I recall.
The one-button mouse still feels like a really bad idea to me.
Yes, for goodness sake get a two-button-with-scroller ASAP. Although it must be said that Apple takes great pains not to hide software functions within contextual menus because they have no visual cue to their existence. Be that as it may, my first order of business with a new Mac is a new mouse.
There’s only one corner you can drag on a Mac window to resize it. There’s no way to size a window up or left, only down and right. Or am I missing something obvious?
Probably not. I mean you undoubtedly already know the function of the green gumdrop (i.e., “zoom button”). When clicked it tries to open the window as wide as necessary to show the window’s entire content. When clicked again it resumes it’s original size. Aside from that, yeah, you only get the one resize handle in the lower right corner. Never bothered me much. I expect it’s about habit.
Will my father-in-law take to it like a cat takes to a one-button mouse, or will he come down with a case of the eensy little gotchas?
My own experience as a member of the nerdier set with helping novice friends and relatives is that they never seem totally pleased with whatever you give/do for them. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they haven’t paid anything for the equipment or service. Speculation on my part. Good luck to you and your father-in-law.
Dear David,
I wish you the best of luck in trying to find any peace on this issue while you’re making reasonable criticisms of a platform known for its zealot customer base.
I switched from lintel to Apple when OS X came out and love it. I’m on my second Apple laptop, a PowerBook. Though, I’m unsure if it was the advent of WiFi and the fact that these have been my first laptops that make the difference. Perhaps a wintel laptop would have had the same effect.
Single best thing about Apple’s platform is that the software/hardware ties make everything just work and the laptops have no doohickies or thingamabobs hanging off them… no more dongles! That’s it is UNIX too isn’t bad either.
On the window resizing issue, you’re not missing anything, that’s pretty much it. You can click on the green dot and that will resize the window, but I’ve never managed to figure out how to predict how much larger or smaller it’ll get. Mostly, I just drag the corner.
Pretty much every USB 2-button mouse will work out of the box without trouble. If your father’s machine already has a 2-button USB mouse, just plug the thing in.
Don’t forget to run Disk Utility and select Repair Permissions. Jaguar always seemed to have issues with permissions. Nothing that was ever really a show-stopper, but glitches like IE quitting might be related, or it might not.
Apple released a new version of Safari (1.2), which improves compatibility with some websites, but it’s Panther-only. This has, reasonably, raised a bit of a hue and cry from continuing Jaguar users. Perhaps Apple will issue an update for Jaguar to allow it to support Safari 1.2, or they might not.
iChat AV just came out with version 2.1(beta) which supports video-chats with AIM on Windows. iChat AV is a $29.00 program for Jaguar users. May not be an issue for you, but something to keep in mind if you entertain enabling video-chat capability for your father. Ordinary text-iChat (1.0) will work just fine.
Keep in mind that every Cocoa app (Safari, Mail, TextEdit, others) supports “Check spelling as you type” from the Edit menu. You may also wish to investigate the Services menu. Cocoa apps (those built from the ground up with from the NextStep frameworks) support Services and Jaguar ships with some nice ones for TextEdit and Stickies. Internet Explorer is a Carbon app, as are the MS Office apps. Lest someone come along and feel obliged to correct me, Carbon apps can be written to support Services. In my experience, few have to date.
If you’d like a free copy of Unleashing Mac OS X Jaguar (>1500 pp, $35.00 when I bought it) e-mail me a mailing address and I’ll send it along to you. It covers all the built-in apps as well as a great deal of the BSD System if you want to muck about in the Unix guts of OS X.
Omni Development Group offers OmniDictionary, a free online dictionary app that I find more convenient than Sherlock for quickly looking up the big words you philosophers sometimes use. It’s a Cocoa app and it installs a nice Service that you can use to look up any word you’ve highlighted in a Cocoa app (Safari, Mail, NetNewsWire, others).
Have fun and if you have any questions, just ask.
One other suggestion: if you might need to remote control the Mac (e.g., remote configuration), there is a free VNC server for the Mac ( http://www.redstonesoftware.com/osxvnc ). You can access this from any VNC client, and you can also tunnel VNC through ssh (and there is built-in ssh in the Mac).
The Mac VNC client (which you probably don’t need) has one of the best software names ever, “Chicken of the VNC” ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/ ).
If Jaguar (10.2) feels sluggish on the older hardware, look into Panther (10.3). Surprisingly to most, OS X speeds up on later releases, even on older hardware. Nice nod to the installed base, which doesn’t upgrade as much as Wintel users, since the things just don’t die…
I’m assuming you’re on 10.2 because the water droplets don’t play catch on 10.3’s installer. And the first poster is right, if you insert an install CD, it’ll do the reboot from CD for you…
As for the x-button mouse, just use whatever you’re comfortable with. Older and younger people I find are more comfortable with the singles, the inbetweens like the multi. I have both, and I tend to go back to my bluetooth single-buttoner. It’s just so comfortable/ergonomic that I use it, instead of getting a scroll-wheel cramp. I have a friend who thinks he RSI injured himself with a scroll wheel, and has gone back to the 1-button. Plus, just press the ctrl key+ click to get a context menu, or in 10.3 use the “action button” in finder windows.
David, on browsers: as much as I appreciate Apple’s efforts with Safari, do yourself a favour and install Mozilla Firebird.
It is generally less trouble with sites (i.e. less support calls to you), and the user interface will be more straightforward for a PC user. Apple integrated some new concepts in Safari (the bookmark handling for example) which may not be immediately obvious to your father.
And one more thing: stop playing with that machine or your father will never see it – get a Powerbook for yourself! :)
Safari, Jaguar, Panther, gumdrop… Sad to say this entire lexicon is foreign to me and may be forever. When I think about a little proprietary platform with less than 10% of the installed base, it’s easy to feel dismissive about jungly candystore motifs. But y’know, 8 or 10 percent of something huge is something huge. I’ve got a feeling that the McIntosh is here to stay.
Do they still give them away to the K12 schools to get the kids hooked young?
The networking dialog in the installer is a mistake. IN fact, Macs will connect automatically to DHCP over any attached ethernet or wireless devices, and switch between them automatically.
I suspect that box is there for big education institutions that have old-fashioned sysadmin policies that don’t use DHCP and require people to enter that stuff manually.
Took you long enough…
Hmmm… I’m not sure I would agree that Microsoft x-button mouse is particularly ergonomic. I read the theory of what does make a mouse ergonomic -at http://www.ergonomicmouse.com – and the Microsoft mouse doesn’t exactly qualify…