Xray Dubs - macintosh tag

First weeks with a Mac - general impressions so far

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 09:00:57 GMT

Well I've had the Macbook Pro now for about three weeks. My first impressions are generally good, but its not an experience that has been without flaws. Overall the experience of switching has been very good however. The computer has generally performed well.

I have noted a tendancy on its part however to take a disliking to having a differing set of attached peripherals when woken from sleep than it had when it was put to sleep. E.g., when I leave work, I frequently close the lid, unplug the apple keyboard, turn off the bluetooth mouse and pack the computer in my bag. Then when I get home, I'll just open the lid without any of these items attached. The computer then gets a bit confused and flicks back to a grey screen for several extra moments before resuming correctly. I have to get used to detaching the peripherals before I close the lid.

I have had one solid crash since I bought the machine. It absolutely locked up on me when waking up from sleep and had to be turned off and restarted.

There are minor interface annoyances that I find with the operating system. Some of these are a matter of learning the new new keystrokes for the various opreations (and training muscle memory to not reflexively press Ctrl-C when I mean Apple-C). However a significant annoyance is the way the F11 key minimises all open windows, but restoring any other window instantly opens all the application windows as well. Another major annoyance is the way that Home and End keys (on the external keyboard) don't take me to the beginning and end of the current line. That is functionality I reflexively rely upon in both Windows and Linux.

Apart from that the general impression I have in using the operating system is that its definitely nicer than Windows XP or Linux. Quicksilver rocks most excellent and I am getting used to the Dock's behaviour now.

New Macintosh

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:56:41 GMT

Well I finally got the Macintosh after all the saga. I got a Macbook Pro 15", with a 7200 rpm hard drive and 2GB memory at a good price off Infinite Systems in Charlotte St Brisbane. I also got an Apple keyboard and a cheap Logitech bluetooth mouse.

There was only one glitch getting it going, that was it didn't seem to like my wireless network. There were no real options to configure the wireless apart from the network SSID and a 'password' field. I dragged out the Dell and tried six ways to Sunday to configure the wireless network to force the Mac to recognise it. No dice. I decided to haul out the long ethernet cable and didn't bother to configure a wireless network, and I set it back to the default configuration (shared key WEP 64 bit ascii passwd). The funny thing was, as soon as I connected the ethernet, and got started, I opened the OSX System Preferences and could instantly and could instantly see all the familiar wireless options and got the Mac talking on the wireless network in next to no time.

The only other glitch so far was that I went and downloaded Firefox from teh Firefox website. Safari saved some file called 'Firefox 1.5.0.6.dmg' on the desktop and I have no idea if this is an installer file or what. Double clicking on it produces no visible action from it, so I'm stuck with Safari until I figure that one out.

Now the update icon is jumping up and down at me -- I think the update download is finished. Time to check that out.

Second dissappointing thing about the Apple Mac

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 08:58:19 GMT

So I'm still waiting for the replacement for the first one that came, and was dead. Should be here next week. But that's not the dissappointing thing (well, not the second dissappointing thing).

Yesterday, I committed some changes to the current development branch. A Macintosh-using developer (quite a few of our developers use Macintoshes as their personal computers, although the company-standard for a developers workstation is a 64 bit, 2GHz AMD desktop with 2Gb RAM, 2 x 17" monitors, and Ubuntu desktop Linux operating system), IM'd me and said 'YOU BASTARD'.

So I was all like, 'Say Again'?

He replies, 'You committed a file called Home and there is already a directory there called home/'

Me: 'Huhhhh? Why does this matter'

Dev: 'The Macintosh uses a case insensitive file system'

SSSSCCCCCRRRRRREEEEEE!!!! SAY WHA???

The Macintosh Uses A Case Insensitive Filesystem?! How can this be? It's a Unix, right? But no, it turns out this wonder of modern computing uses a file naming system straight out of 1979.

Yeah, OK, so you CAN get a case-sensitive filesystem ... by reformatting the disc. When I google about that I get pages returned with titles like 'The Dangers of case-sensitive HFS+'. Dangers? WTF?!

If these dangers can be overcome, reformatting will obviously be the first task I do to it if I ever, ever, receive my mythically on-order and maybe-delivered-next-week after-a-month-of-waiting new 15" Macbook Pro. But srsly? A CASE INSENSITIVE FILESYSTEM IS INSTALLED BY DEFAULT? What barrel-full of retarded monkeys decided on THAT? Its enough to make me wonder.

First dissappointing thing about Apple Mac

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 05:54:41 GMT

OK, so nearly two weeks after I ordered it, I'm still waiting for it. It's apparently "in transit". Sorry Apple but your supply chain issues are a complete disappointment to this new customer.

Update: now the dealer has it, but the machine won't take any second stick of RAM. The machine is DOA and has to be returned before I even see it - another week's wait. I am seriously considering cancelling the order.

Come to the dark side, Luke.

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:24:01 GMT

I'm buying a Mac. I ordered it yesterday. It's a Macbook Pro, 15.4" display*, 2.0GHz Intel processor, with 2Gb of memory. The Mac won't be used for music production, in the main I'll probably stick with Windows XP. I will be able to convert my Windows machines to pure-music configuration though, no more dual boot. The Mac will be used primarily for Java software development, I got it for it's Unix variant.

* why is this stuff not metricised yet?