My New MacBook
I was looking for a system that had Unix power under the hood and a polished Desktop interface, plus I wanted a laptop to add some mobility to my work. A MacBook was a viable option. So I went for it.
I’m a power Windows user and I spent about 3 years working in Linux. However I was impressed by MacOS speed and efficiency, by Expose and Spotlight features, and by preinstalled software such as iLife. Still I couldn’t find a lot of tools I’ve got used to. Having Unix under the hood was a big saver. I added Terminal.app to the Dock, installed MacPorts and XCode tools, and then a lot of packages and command line tools from MySQL server to Midnight Commander. Another plus, MacOS comes with Java preinstalled and optimized. So I could install NetBeans right away.
Then I had to find my way with a different keyboard shortcuts and a slightly different keyboard layout. I remapped CapsLock key to work as Ctrl and turned off option in the preferences for function keys to control hardware settings. After one week the MacBook keyboard is natural for me.
One component that I still cannot understand is the Dock. When you open 30 applications at the same time and want to launch an application quickly from a list of 100 that you use every day — it becomes hard to manage. I searched through Mac forums and found that there exist tools that can help me with Dock. LaunchBar, Butler, and QuickSilver were their names. And I hope that Stacks feature in Leopard will be helpful as well.
After I installed all the tools I needed for my work and learned MacOS a little I started to really enjoy my MacBook. However I lost several pieces of my hardware. My old laser printer had only LPT port which is not supported in modern computers. And my satellite receiver PCI card also wasn’t supported. But that’s all right because I’m going to upgrade them anyway.
The next thing I’m going to try is to plug an external display for more convenient daily work at the desktop. Also I want to try different office suites (from Microsoft, Apple, and Sun) and Adobe applications for work with graphics.
In overall I’m happy that I made the switch. In Windows I always was struggling with the lack of powerful command line support found in Linux. I used cygwin, but it wasn’t well integrated and had its glitches. In Linux I was spending a lot of time configuring the interface, installing different packages, drivers and servers. In my opinion Mac offers the best from the two worlds.
Kevin said,
January 8, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Quicksilver is most likely the application you want out of the ones you listed. It’s powerful and has a minimalistic interface. At first you’ll probably only use it as an application launcher, but as you familiarize yourself with its powerful array of features, you’ll use it for much more.
Top Tip: Autohide the dock once you get used to using Quicksilver.
ignat said,
January 8, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Thanks Kevin! Yes, I’ve already added Quicksilver to autostart. I use it all the time as an application launcher and document finder. And I like how fast it is.