The news always seems to be carrying some story about a cyclist and a driver getting into a fight or of a cyclist being struck by a car while they are riding. When these stories are discussed in the comments section of a news site tempers flare and heated arguments about sharing the road break out. The pattern is so consistent that you can predict it pretty accurately:
Category: Parallel Desktops
Parallel Desktops
My brother called and told me my mom was in the hospital. At 80 her health has been declining pretty rapidly so I immediately booked a flight to California, planning to spend a week there to help my brother with both her and my father. Needless to say I had a lot on my mind as I rushed to the airport in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning last week.
Back at home my wife’s MacBook sat at her desk, left on overnight like she often did so that when she woke up in the morning a quick shake of the mouse would brighten the screen and allow her to check e-mail. From what I can tell in the hourly backup logs, at roughly the same time my aircraft lifted off the runway the 120GB hard disk in her MacBook crashed.
When I checked in with my wife that night to update her on my mom’s status, she told me that her MacBook was dead.
Me: “Dead?”
Allison: “It’s just got a gray screen. I’ve tried restarting it and that’s all that comes up.”
Of course, this has to happen when the only techie in the family leaves on a weeklong trip.
When Steve Jobs announced the iPad a few months ago I didn’t think “Wow, I gotta have me one of those…”. Though I was intrigued by the form factor and slightly motivated by Steve Jobs’ demonstration of the device, it didn’t scream out at me as something I needed. I was actually more amused with all the criticism surrounding the choice of iPad as the name for the device.
I yawned and went on with my life.
Nearly a month ago I walked in to our local Apple store with my family. We weren’t looking for anything in particular, just letting my kids fawn over the Mac hardware as we thought about buying a MacBook for my son before he heads off to college. I asked one of the Apple store employees if they had an iPad I could take a look at. He handed me an 8 x 6 inch card with a picture of one on it. The device was far thinner and lighter than I expected.
He then asked if I would like to reserve one.
The other day I was sitting at my desk when I started to hear a faint clicking sound. I pushed the noise out of my mind for a while and continued to work on the task at hand. Before long the clicking started to get louder and louder; it was clearly a consistent mechanical noise and was coming from under my desk, right where my Mac Pro is parked.
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It’s now the two year mark for my switch from Windows to Mac. Over the last two years I’ve gone from a Windows developer exploring the Mac as a compliment to my Windows and Linux machines to a full time Mac user that spends the vast majority of my time in OS X.
I didn’t wake up one day and say “Wow, I hate Windows. I’m going to switch to Mac”. I bought a little white MacBook, put it on the desk next to my primary Windows machine and started playing with it. Though technically underpowered compared to the dual screen, custom built PC I spent all of my time on, I found myself constantly reaching over to the MacBook to use it. The environment was fresh and new to me and I began to really enjoy the user interface consistency that OS X and the vast majority of Mac applications shared.
For such a small device the performance was excellent too; though it was the least expensive of the MacBook line of computers it didn’t feel like a compromised machine. Applications loaded quickly and I could run several large applications at once and see very little performance impact. In the past when I purchased the least expensive Windows based laptops the machine was barely usable out of the box; it needed to be cleaned of all the “extra” applications and within a month of using it the performance would start to deteriorate. Not so with the Mac.
In relatively short order I went from having a MacBook to purchasing a Mac Pro, which replaced my primary Windows desktop. Whereas the MacBook was quick, the Mac Pro was—and still is—remarkably fast. With dual 2.8Ghz quad core Xeons and 12GB of RAM, I was suddenly able to run a huge number of applications seamlessly.
The bottom line is I’m really happy I decided to “try out” that MacBook two years ago. Computing—as a software developer the place I spent a huge number of my waking hours—became fun and exciting again.
Tips For New Switchers
Over the last two years I’ve learned a lot about helping people make a successful switch from Windows to Mac. Here is a quick summary of some tips that can help you or someone you know make the transition easier, along with some links to blog posts on the topic:
1) Learn the keyboard
As a touch typist the first problem I had when I started using a Mac was adjusting to the keyboard. A Mac has a Control, Option and Command key to the left of the spacebar, Windows has Control, Start, Alt in that same spot. The more advanced a keyboard user you are the more time it will take you to adjust. Keys like Home and End exist on a full size Mac keyboard but they don’t perform the same actions they do on Windows. Backspace and Delete swap labels but not functionality. All of this leads to a lot of missteps initially; invest the time to learn the keys.
Blog Posts: Windows to Mac Keystroke Mapping – a Quick Guide | Where did my Backspace key go? | Have you tried using the Option key? | Keyboard vs. Mouse | Switching to an ergonomic keyboard | The Page Up / Page Dn keys |
2) Be prepared to deal with MS Office files
Nobody at Apple would ever want to admit it but for now DOC, XLS and PPT files are the common language of the business world. You will want to find a solution to open, create and edit Microsoft Office files quickly and easily. The most obvious way to handle this is to get the Mac version of Microsoft Office. While I personally have it installed on one of my Macs, lately I’ve been using Neo Office to handle those types of files. Though technically you can use iWork to handle that, creating DOC and XLS files in Pages and Numbers requires extra steps that make it a challenge.
Blog Posts: I hate my Mac!
3) Learn about DMG files
If you download a new application over the web chances are it will be packaged up as a DMG file. A DMG file is a disk image and presents itself like a physical CD / DVD would when it is loaded up on your Mac. TUAW has an excellent 101 style overview of them. DMG files are important because of tip #4.
4) Learn to install applications
If you are coming from the Windows world you will need to adjust to how 3rd party applications are delivered on Macs. In Windows most downloaded applications come in the form of a self contained setup program. Double-click it and it starts an install wizard. On Mac you will generally receive a DMG file (see tip #3 above). Inside it may be a PKG file; which can be double-clicked to start an installation program. In some cases the application will just be contained in the DMG file; you drag that into your Applications folder to “install” it. The process is simple once you learn it but not obvious if you are new to Macs.
Blog Posts: Installing new applications
5) Time Machine is your friend
Go out and buy an inexpensive external hard drive that you can use to run Time Machine, the backup program that comes with OS X. It’s seamless, backs up your machine every hour and quickly allows you to either grab an older version of a file you’ve recently modified or perform a complete restore on the machine. I don’t need to use Time Machine for restoring files too often but when I do it’s a glorious feeling that I’ve got backups when I need them.
Blog Posts: I love Time Machine because… | Fixing a simple Time Machine error
6) Learn about windows
I’m not talking about Windows the operating system, but the windows in OS X. In Windows when you want to close an application people often just click the X in the top right corner of the window. On OS X the majority of the time clicking on the little red circle that turns into an X when you hover over it will also close the window of the application but not actually quit the application. Maximizing a window in OS X doesn’t make it full screen like it does in Windows.
Blog Posts: Tips for tabbing your way through windows | Avoid the potholes when switching from Windows to Mac
7) Find some great applications
OS X is a pretty complete operating system and comes with enough applications to get any web oriented person up and running. That said, there are tens of thousands of applications that you can use to make the most out of your Mac experience. Over the last two years I’ve cataloged the applications I’ve found and without a doubt those are my most popular blog posts. Whatever your interest is, chances are someone has created a nice little application to service that need.
Blog Posts: After 3 months, what’s really being used | My critical applications 5 months after switching | 8 months after switching, my favorite applications | My top 10 free Mac utilities | 10 little known Mac utilities
Hopefully this will help some of the more recent switchers out there. You can grab a complete list of my Switching to Mac blog posts (currently at 71) by clicking on the Switching to Mac label on my blog.
Have a tip for helping a recent switcher adjust to a Mac from Windows? Drop a note in the comments below!
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I generally like to put up blog posts that talk about cool things I’ve discovered on my Mac, or problems I’ve overcome and how I did that. This time it’s about a pet peeve I have with my Mac: quickly viewing a group of images. I believe there is a tiny change Apple can make that would have a huge impact on usability, especially for non-technical users.
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After finding that my MacBook Pro's battery required service and would no longer hold a charge I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple store in Reston, VA. After a short wait Vilma (the Genius) called me up and asked what the trouble was. After I filled her in on the issue she reached into a drawer and grabbed an iPod Nano that was labeled "Battery Diagnostics":
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I've gotten a lot of e-mail lately asking why I haven't been updating my blog. Frankly it's because of two reasons: my business has kept me busier than a one-armed wall-paper hanger and my Macs have just worked. With my adjustment period from Windows to Mac firmly in the rear view mirror and a well rounded set of applications available for use, I haven't really had any issues to speak of.
Get the machine fully recharged then let it rest in that state for at least 2 hours. Once charged, unplug the power and run it down until the machine goes into a sleep state. Let it stay in sleep mode for at least 5 hours to fully exhaust the battery. Recharge from there and you are ready to go.
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Upgrading to Snow Leopard
The UPS truck pulled up yesterday and delivered my family upgrade pack to Snow Leopard. Though I'm a software developer I really stick to the web side of things and have not participated in any of the developer versions of Snow Leopard. As a result, I've only done modest reading on it and I am approaching this upgrade as many consumers would.
Action | Leopard | Snow Leopard |
Start to full load | 1m 37s | 1m 3s |
Shut Down | 10.5s | 4.5s |
Next up I started loading applications. Here were my results:
Application | Leopard | Snow Leopard |
Safari (1st time) | 3.4s | 1.6s |
Safari (2nd time) | <1s | <1s |
Text Editor (1st time) | 1s | <1s |
Text Editor (2nd time) | <1s | <1s |
iPhoto (1st time) | 13.5s | 10.4s |
iPhoto (2nd time) | 1.9s | 1.8s |
iTunes (1st time) | 9.7s | 5.1s |
iTunes (2nd time) | 1.8s | 1.5s |
Pages (1st time) | 12.9s | 10.1s |
Pages (2nd time) | 1.5s | 2.0s |
Firefox 3.5.2 (1st time) | 18s | 15s |
Firefox 3.5.2 (2nd time) | 2.2s | 2.4s |
So, generally I saw a modest improvement in application load times. I've only just started playing with Snow Leopard and I'll likely have more observations coming soon. While I'm generally happy with the upgrade from a performance standpoint and love the strategy Apple is using for this, I'm holding off upgrading the Mac Pro until I have a better handle on which of my development tools need upgrading / patching.
How about you? Did you notice similar improvements in performance? Found a site that can help identify Snow Leopard compatibility? Drop a note in the comments!
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I hate my Mac!
I was chatting with some friends yesterday, some folks I hadn't seen in a while. As they were getting ready to leave Donna looked over at my MacBook, propped open and sitting on a table.
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TNT doesn’t like Mac users
I was sitting on the couch the other day and relaxing when my wife yelled to me from the other room:
David! My Mac's not working!
I love those highly specific descriptions of a problem. I asked for a little more clarity.
I'm trying to watch a video and it's not working!
I dragged myself off the couch and over to my wife's MacBook. She was on the TNT site and trying to watch an episode of Raising the Bar. She would click on "watch a full episode" and a blank screen would appear where the viewer normally would be.
It was not immediately apparent what the problem was. A poorly installed codec? A broken web page? I rummaged around for a little while and found that the TNT support site stated that they didn't support Macs for viewing their shows. Why? Here's what the support site says:
TNT.tv would like to apologize for not being able to accommodate Mac users.The issue is related to the Windows Media Player, specifically video with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is because the WMP for the Mac is not supported directly by Microsoft . Our agreement with the studios that produce the shows stipulates that their content be protected (full episodes) from piracy with DRM software.Additionally, WMP is more universal than other platforms like QuickTime and Flash Video for distributing protected content.
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One of my favorite–yet least mentioned–free utilities is Growl, a universal notification service for Mac that lets applications notify you of events. Now instead of each application deciding on how they want to present notifications for things like new mail, incoming tweets, etc. you can control it in a single place, assuming the application supports Growl or an extension has been written for it.
Such is the case with Mail.app. Though Mail.app is not written to support Growl the developers for Growl have created an “extra” that can provide that functionality. I’ve been using this setup for a while now and have been quite pleased with it.
After upgrading to Safari 4 I suddenly found that Mail.app was crashing on me as soon as a new e-mail came in. Here is the error message I was getting:
Which was followed by:
Reset and relaunch had no effect – Mail.app just crashed again. It turns out that an error has been introduced into Growl after upgrading to Safari 4 that creates this crash. There are two solutions to this problem:
Solution 1: Change Mail.app notification to Summary
The problem for Growl is when individual e-mail notifications come in; that’s what is causing the crash. If you don’t have any new e-mail (which causes the crash) you can load up the Mail.app preferences and switch to the Growl tab, then change the setting to summary mode:
If however you can’t load mail up to get to that setting you can accomplish it by changing it through the terminal. Load up a terminal window and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.mail GMSummaryMode -int 2
This will change the setting for you and allow you to load up Mail.app. The downside to this is if you still want individual mail message notifications. For that you can use Solution 2.
Solution 2: Install Growl Beta 1.1.5B2
There is a beta version of Growl that addresses this issue; you can grab it from the Growl beta page. Just download the DMG and install the latest Growl package AND the newer Mail.app extension (in the Extra folder). This is of course beta software but I’ve been running it for a while on two of my Macs and it’s been running fine so far.
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