Mac converts
My brother came to visit at the weekend, partly to take delivery of a brand new Mac mini I’d ordered for him. He’s always been a Windows (and now *nix) user, but after a blown power supply on his old Windows machine, he decided that he wanted to get another small computer to run alongside it. All those years of steady but stealthy indoctrination from me must have had some effect, because he decided to get a Mac. If I’m honest, it probably had more to do with the fact that the mini is small, cheap, and he already had a monitor he could use with it.
When I held the handbag-sized box outstretched towards him with a flourish, the first thing he said (laughing) was, “Is that it?”. I don’t think that he’d realised quite how mini it would be. Anyway, we had a lot of fun setting it up, and I gave him a kind of whirlwind tour of Mac OS X, showing him the structure of the file system, the System Preferences and how to install applications.
I’ve used Macs for such a long time that many of its quirks and differences from Windows are invisible to me, so it was a very interesting experience to walk someone through the process. I think that he generally found it fairly intuitive, but certain things like clicking the close button and expecting the application to quit (which admittedly it sometimes does) might take a bit longer. At one point he asked me if the window widgets could be moved to the right hand sides of windows. “Err, no.” I resisted the urge to say that the left hand side is the One True Location for window widgets, but it is funny how the system you use leads to such a strong feeling of the absolute correctness of one pattern or the other. I think that the different keyboard shortcuts will probably take even longer to adjust to, as I’ve found to my cost in the opposite direction when using Unix applications.
One feature of Tiger that I hadn’t used at all, but which proved invaluable for a switcher was the Spotlight search box in System Preferences. I didn’t take much notice when Steve demoed it in his keynote, but they’ve cleverly put in keywords that Windows users will be likely to search for. So, for example, searching for ‘wallpaper’ brings up the Desktop and Screensaver pane—-it’s very handy.
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I recently had to go in the other direction, setting up wireless networking and showing someone how to use Indesign on a laptop running WinXP - and I haven't used windows since the days of Win98. I found it incredibly frustrating and counterintuitive. At least part of that was not XP's fault, it was simply that it didn't do things the way I expected... so I expect your brother to go through a little of this as he adjusts. OTOH once used to OS X, he'll never want to go back
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I've bought a Mac mini just two weeks ago -- and being a long time Windows and Linux user, I've made the same experiences: I was really amazed how small and quit the mini really is, I was immediately drawn into the polished GUI OS X offers.
Different key bindings however are making my "switch" difficult. I find that I still use ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-tab to copy/paste stuff... At work, I'm using a PC, so I really doubt that I'll adapt to the key bindings too soon :-( Luckily, I was able to use my PC keyboard with my mini, so at least all other keys ({,},@,...) are at familiar places.
I've found David Pogue's book "Mac OS X -- the missing manual, Tiger edition" extremely helpful to discover how to efficiently use some of the nice features OS X has to offer. Could be of some help for your brother as well...
by Markus @ 10/11/2005 12:12 pm • Permalink •
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Every time I quit a Mac office and started at a Win office, I'd spend about two weeks going nuts about the lack of groovy Mac hotkeys. (Apple+Q is my favorite. Ever.)
I'm gonna buy myself a mini for Xmas.
by Mush @ 10/11/2005 9:12 pm • Permalink •
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Martin: I think that he's liking it a lot at the moment.
Markus: Yeah, key bindings are a problem. What you really need is a keyboard which can be switched between 'modes' for different OSs, which will send different key codes when the same keys are pressed. In fact, the Touchstream keyboards are great for that, as they have 'gestures' which trigger the appropriate key codes to be sent when in different modes. So bringing the thumb and first three fingers together (as if gathering something up) send Cmd-S on the Mac and Ctrl-S on the PC. And he has exactly that book, so he's way ahead of you
Mush: It's a really nice little machine, and much more zippy than I thought it would be. Quiet, too.
by bsag @ 10/11/2005 10:12 pm • Permalink •
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Hi - just made the conversion myself... yesterday - so far so good - I'm just looking for a list of recommended (and hopefully free to very cheap) pieces of software for FTP, HTML/CSS/JS/PHP editing, etc - also if I might ask one question - I was looking forward to naming the computer Eli - honestly I actually spent time thinking about this - but, I wasn't given any option for naming the computer and now I find that it's named Ger's iBook G4.
So, the question is: how do I change this?
I have to admit - part of my conversion can be attributed to reading this blog over the past three years.
by Ger @ 11/11/2005 5:12 pm • Permalink •
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I didn't quite make the jump. I got a Mini, but its sitting lonely in the corner of the room now. Only periodically used for whatever Mac-only software I have at the moment (Photoshop, Delicious Library). Mac laptops are just too expensive and their battery life is pretty crap. I've got a new Thinkpad R52 and on wireless it gets 4 hours with the basic battery.
In the end though I found that OSX didn't really work for my business workflow, just combines a lot of OO calc worksheets and Linux shell. OSX doesn't have OO2 yet, and Linux console from OSX are worse than horrible. So now I use WinXP laptop and Ubunut/NX desktops.
When the Intel Macs come out I'll probably see if I can run OSX, WinXP and Linux together. Maybe even a copy years Xen might be able to run Intel OSX and WinXP at the same time.
by Nicholas Lee @ 12/11/2005 5:12 am • Permalink •
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Ger: Wow, my Jedi mind tricks worked!
by bsag @ 12/11/2005 8:12 am • Permalink •
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(OK, I was having trouble posting my comment, let's see if this works without the links -- you'll have Google for them.)
Ger:
FTP: Fugu and Cyberduck are both very good and free. Or there's Transmit which is excellent, but costs money.
HTML/CSS etc.: You've got all the free Unix editors you could wish for already installed, including Vim and Emacs, which are both good for coding with some plugins. Or on the pay for side, there's Textmate which is stormingly good for all text editing, or skEdit which is more tightly focussed on web coding (only 20 bucks, and free upgrades for life).
Changing the name of your computer: Eli---that's sweet. Go to System Preferences - Sharing. The text field at the top labelled 'Computer name' should read Ger's iBook G4. I'm not going to try it right now, but I think you can just change it to Eli. You might also have to click the edit button below and change it there so that the host name is also Eli.
Hope that helps.
by bsag @ 12/11/2005 9:11 am • Permalink •
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Great! Thanks for the tips - I've been trawling through your blog, and a few others - for info on good software... it'll take a while but I'm enjoying myself thus far!
This computer is now officially Eli - thanks for that too.
by Ger @ 12/11/2005 1:11 pm • Permalink •
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Got here from Pharyngula, great blog you have here.
I converted to Mac a few months ago. It sounds ridiculous, but the best thing about OS X is the application Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com). To say you use it to launch other apps, or open files, or browse, or search, or anything at all, doesn't do it justice. It's...the all-embracing Dao.
Seriously. I thought at first that it wasn't very useful - now I just can't use my computer without it. Hell, this morning I lost my watch and subconsciously pressed Ctrl-Space to invoke QS so it could find it and bring it to me.
I wasn't at the keyboard, either.
/qs evangelist
by A Pang @ 14/11/2005 4:11 pm • Permalink •
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Hi,
I need help seriously.
I bought a mini mac and do not know how to use it.
I am having trouble conecting to the internet.
Anyone got any advice help?
by Claire @ 10/01/2006 11:02 am • Permalink •
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