drinking the kool-aid
Feb. 2nd, 2006 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roneOne of the things i requested at my new job was that my corporate-issue laptop be a Mac (partly because i was damned if i was going to get stuck with a stinkin' Dell). After some wrangling with the CFO, my request was granted, so now i have in my possession a 15" PowerBook with a gig of RAM. I also have a Kyocera KPC650 EVDO card. I've installed Camino and Firefox, and i downloaded all 800+MB of the developer tools just so i could have gcc kicking around (which i used to build screen, which i configured and compiled with zero hitches).
I like it. The display is crisp and things work, once you get used to the idea of trying stuff that you know would have never worked in Windows. It's a damn sight better to use than the GNOME-RedHat desktop i got (which keyboard [DAMN YOU, DELL!] already triggered both tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome in my left arm — after 3 damn days of work!).
In summary, all computers suck, but the Mac seems to suck less. Huzzah.
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Date: 2006-02-03 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 11:02 am (UTC)I am still ambivalent about Dashboard but now that I've found a couple widgets I can use (a quick, lightweight CSS reference sheet and a PHP reference that uses php.net), I don't actively hate it. The hoopla around it is still primarily because it's shiny rather than useful.
Now that you've drunk the water, you can get involved in emacs/vi/BBEdit arguments.
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Date: 2006-02-03 11:45 am (UTC)I don't even touch dashboard.
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:56 am (UTC)Mine came with the dev tools on the install DVD - I'm surprised you had to resort to downloading?
But yes, the Mac seems to do the best job of a desktop of any of the things I've seen lately (XP, KDE; and Gnome but less recently). The dock in particular seems to be a simpler and better implementation of the notion of a pile of icons and things at the bottom of the screen than the alternatives I've encountered.
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Date: 2006-02-03 11:17 am (UTC)And, agreed on the install of dev tools - if you DID get it on the DVD, install that as well, I occasionally have some issues with gcc's latest version, and when they update the devtools, they leave the older gcc's in place, which can then be called by name.
(I'm sure they updated the gcc/devtools once since Tiger was released... so that DVD copy would still want to update itself.)
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:56 am (UTC)If so, how do you like it? My crappy old crappy pc is on borrowed time and replacing it with a Mac and that software is under serious consideration at my house.
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Date: 2006-02-03 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 11:10 am (UTC)(My Norwegian/Sweedish friends would like you to please install Opera as well (: )
Btw: 2 things I reccomend installing - Blacktree's "Quicksilver" (I don't even touch Apple's find-thing-whatever-it's-called in the upper corner, I do wish I could uninstall it (: ) And, if you're using the touchpad (I can't) 'sidetrack' from raging menace.
(If you're like me and would like to have visual glance performance stuff, menumeters rocks. Also raging menace.)
Finally, I reccomend darwinports (darwinports.opendarwin.org) just because, well, source-based things and I get along.
But, serioiusly, quicksilver.
Oh yes if you need multiple desktops, 'Desktop Manager' - google for it, it's open source somewhere or something. There's another but it's payware and I find desktop manager is just fine.
Oh, and - just cuz I can't work without this feature anymore - I tie the expose' "desktop" to the lower-right corner, "all windows" to upper-left and "application windows" to upper-right. So, when I need to switch apps, slam to upper corner, pick and I'm there. It is _SO_ freaking efficient. (due to the fact that I generally have at least 5 tasks going locally, and 6 or so term windows...
OH GOD, I cannot STAND terminal.app - I can't really use iTerm either, but it's slightly better - I compile and use aterm, rxvt-unicode, and Eterm. Which means yes I am constantly running Apple's X but it WORKS (aside from some odd issues with paste buffers as X and Apple's paste buffers are designed from opposite ends of the spectrum... and yes I do mean infrared and ultraviolet.) Your mileage may differ with iTerm, various folks I know use it 24/7 with no issues.
Anyway with that many windows, grouping them on different pages via 'app based windowing' just works better. Also it keeps me from spending 24/7 on irc some days.
Anyway, yes, it's Unix with a good user interface, and I'm enjoying working in the 100% osX office. Xserves are fun (: Oh and the Apple Raid? Also fun (:
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Date: 2006-02-03 01:46 pm (UTC)I find Spotlight pretty useful, but it took a bit of customization and, I admit, of lowering expectations, to start to appreciate it. But of all the computer search thingies I've used over the years it is by far the best.
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Date: 2006-02-03 09:33 pm (UTC)In fact, it's so far off from my experience with it that I am wondering what software you had INSTEAD of quicksilver.
I do know folks who also like waiting for spotlight and prefer it over Quicksilver. But I've never had any of them say it was because it was faster - it was more a 'slow and steady wins the race' argument. That, by the instantaneous bit of Quicksilver, they felt it had to be missing something, so they needed the slowness to be reassuring. It's basically the same sort of feedback you get from the search on windows. Or, heck, the find command on unix.... 'It's working! I can hear the hd spin!'
So, yes, use what works for you. I just can't fathom the argument that a sloth is speedy animal, though (:
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Date: 2006-02-03 09:44 pm (UTC)I'm as baffled by your findings as you are by mine. I just tried Spotlight once again, to be sure I wasn't hallucinating -- I searched for "Towne", looking for the PDF copy of a particular article -- Spotlight turned it up (out of >70GB used on my hard drive -- some 750 PDF files, though I wasn't limiting the search to that folder) in less than a second. Retesting on other PDFs give similar results.
As I say I've uninstalled Quicksliver, so I can't do a direct comparison, but I do know that when I tried searching for PDFs they usually took well over 10 seconds to turn up (and in contrast to Spotlight were usually not the first on the list, needing to sort through a bunch of irrelevant stuff to find it).
In any case, if you find that waiting for more than a half second is too much anguish, I bow to your faster reflexes.
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:10 pm (UTC)I think, tho, this may come down to organization of files... I'll BET that my system slows down spotlight to a freaking crawl (cuz, spotlight isn't any half second thing, try 10+ seconds... I ain't waiting for that.) and that it just 'works' with Quicksilver, whereas yours probably makes Spotlight scream (which is BEYOND me how that could be but still, it must be, as you're not saying it's slow (: )
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 09:36 pm (UTC)Just need aterm/Eterm/rxvt-unicode to be native to solve the cut/paste bit...
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Date: 2006-02-03 01:25 pm (UTC)Preview sucks, so use Xee!
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/Xee1.1.zip
Macs are supposed to be pretty, so use my screen savers, which are pretty!
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaWater1.3.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaGlass1.1.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaSnow1.1.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/LotsaEscher1.2.zip
There's also some widgets in http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/, most of which are useless. I'm working on EVEN MORE useless widgets as we speak. The notable exception is Alarm Clock, which I use to wake myself up, but which may not be all that useful on a laptop.
Now, for the rest: Others suggested QuickSilver, which is nice enough to have. I don't know how the trackpad handles, but if you're trying to connect a normal mouse to a Mac, you'll notice that OS X has fucking horrible mouse acceleration, which cannot be turned off, and makes the machine nearly unusuable. This can be fixed with USBOverdrive: http://www.usboverdrive.com/. It also allows for other nice customizations.
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Date: 2006-02-03 09:39 pm (UTC)If you have a Logitech mouse thingage, you may not need USB Overdrive, but I installed it anyway (:
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Date: 2006-02-03 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 09:59 pm (UTC)I guess I could just link you the Macupdate page, where I did try to summarize what it does: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19978
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:13 pm (UTC)That says 2 magic words, tho: 'lightweight' and 'fast' - so, I'll be leeching and testing (:
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Date: 2006-02-03 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 10:33 pm (UTC)gabba gabba
Date: 2006-02-03 03:25 pm (UTC)ONE OF US.
Re: gabba gabba
Date: 2006-02-03 08:57 pm (UTC)Shit (:
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Date: 2006-02-03 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 07:03 pm (UTC)Some people claim that QuickSilver does what it does, but it really doesn't. LB allows you to find/launch/open ANYTHING on your machine by hitting cmd-space and then typing the first letter or two of what you want.
It is blazingly fast, and completely unobtrusive. You can decide what it indexes and what it doesn't. And it allows you instant access to any app/song/whatever on your machine (you can configure what it indexes). I don't know how it does it, and how it remains so stable, but it does.
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html
Also, try Yojimbo.
http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/index.shtml
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Date: 2006-02-03 08:31 pm (UTC)good for you
Date: 2006-02-14 12:04 am (UTC)By the way how is your new job? love you Uji
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Date: 2006-02-14 12:08 am (UTC)