April 24, 2006
More Mac Fuzzies
It is well known that I am a bit of a Mac zealot. I'm also a Summit Pale Ale zealot and a dark-roasted coffee zealot. I like what I like a lot. But I like them for a reason and I just encountered another reason why I love Macs so much.
1. My trackpad on my Powerbook died. The screen was also a little loose.
2. I transfered my home directory to a Mac Mini.
3. My whole entire life, every preference, every bookmark and every piece of email was right there on the Mini as if it was my Powerbook. I had zero loss of continuity on any of the million things I am working on with my computer.
4. I dropped my Powerbook off at the Apple store and it was shipped back to my office in less than a week with a brand new LCD and a new trackpad for a total cost of $0. (I have AppleCare, the extended warranty.)
5. I rsynced (well, actually psynced) my home directory from the Mini back to my Powerbook and picked up where I left off with a nicely refurbished Powerbook.
This is old hat for Unix people, who can easily move around their home directories. Maybe the same thing can be done with Windows, I don't know. All I know is that I am getting rather addicted to having all my stuff in the exact way I have it available to me at all times. It's nice that it works so well.
Posted by Michael at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Security for Mac OS X
Mac Geekery has an article about Mac OS X security. One cool thing they point out is that the Keychain Access application has a cool little password generator built into it. The days of Macs being immune to malware are over.
Posted by Michael at 10:15 AM | Comments (1)
January 05, 2006
CoverFlow
Remember browsing for music by actually looking at the cover art instead of a database? Check out a cool new app for Mac OS 10.4 called CoverFlow. It searches your hard drive's music collection, fetches the cover art, and presents your music collection in a lovely, graceful 3D interface. Double-click a CD to launch it in iTunes. Here's the story of CoverFlow.
This is just the kind of simplicity and function I want when Apple figures out how to converge iLife into the living room environment. Speaking of -- MacWorld is right around the corner. What will Steve Jobs unveil? Here's a look behind the magic curtain of Jobs' MacWorld shows, written by former Apple employee Mike Evangelist (no relation).
Posted by colsen at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)
December 16, 2005
10 for X
10 for X: Ten software titles for Mac OS X you must have
Some familiar apps here, but a few I've never heard of. I often end up using TextEdit to jot notes down when talking on the phone, or for ideas that (occasionally) pop into my head. Of course TextEdit offers no organization for notes, so I'm checking out Notational Velocity which automagically saves and indexes anything you write.
Posted by colsen at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2005
Apple's Swedish Connection
Ever wonder how Apple came up with the Command key symbol? Me neither, but here's the story. The Swedes use it to indicate an interesting feature or attraction. Over 20 years later, there's still a little Swedish campground in our shiny new Macs.
More computer history: The first video game
Posted by colsen at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
Portable Home
This is kind of techie, but I wanted to point out something cool about the fact that Macs have Unix under the hood.
I needed to bring my laptop in for a minor repair. I backed up my home directory to a fire wire drive. A home directory is a Unix concept that Mac OS X has embraced. Then on my iMac I just symlinked the backup copy of my laptop home directory in place of my home directory on my iMac:
cd /Users mv lolife lolife.old ln -s /Volumes/bd1/Mike/lolife .
As a result, when I logged into my iMac I instantly had all my mail, all my bookmarks, all my preferences for all my applications, all my documents, etc. It was as if I was logged in on my laptop. Symlinks are a Unix trick that we Unix geeks are very familiar with. What I thought was cool was how useful it is when combined with a desktop environment like Mac OS X. I don't know if there is an equivalent concept on Windows. I suspect there is.
Posted by Michael at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2005
Making the Switch (at home, anyway)
For my birthday, my husband bought me a G5 iMac (that's geek love, people!). I was raised on Macs, but switched to PCs in the early '90s because that's what was used in the offices I worked in. I've pretty much been on Windows ever since, and fairly happy. I know how to use it, and overall it has served me well.
But, now that I have the new iMac, I'll be switching from my Sony Vaio laptop and thought the process might be interesting to document here. I am, as we speak, attempting to transfer all my files from the PC to the Mac.
Getting the two hooked up via our home wireless network proved to be impossible (for unknown reasons the PC would not detect the Mac even though I had sharing turned on and was entering the IP address correctly). We resorted to hooking the two machines up with an ethernet cable.
To move from Outlook to Entourage or Address Book/iCal (haven't decided yet), I downloaded a program for $10 called Outlook2Mac which converts Outlook Contacts, Calendars and Email folders into files that can be imported into a number of Mac programs. My alternative would have been messing with a million different CSV files. Gross.
As far as usability on the new machine goes, change is hard. I've already lost half this post once already by using incorrect shortcuts. Retraining my fingers will be a challenge. And there's no right-clicking on a Mac mouse. So much to learn! iChat is easy, though - and I already tried audio chat with Nancy. Who needs phones?!
I'll continue to use a PC at work; my next challenge will be keeping myself fully synced between work (Dell PC laptop) and home (iMac) using Bluetooth and my Nokia 3650. Wish me luck. (Bluetooth on the PC has been a bitch for me in the past. But that's a whole 'nother post.)
All in all, I'm looking forward to my new bi-platform lifestyle. I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride.
Posted by Meghan at 10:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 27, 2005
Follow the Pointer
For those demos where you want people to easily see where the cursor is, this looks pretty cool. It's called Mouseposé and it looks like this:
Pretty cool!
Posted by Michael at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2005
OS X Easy Upgrade
OS X Setup Assistant Easy Upgrade
About a year ago I was given the opportunity to trade my almost new G4 Powerbook in for the next generation model. At the time, my workload was heavy and the risk of downtime while transfering data and setting up a new machine was too heavy to bear. I passed on the offer, and since that day have enjoyed uninterrupted great performance from my Powerbook.
I am typing this message on a shiny new 17" G4 Powerbook. Yesterday I was willing to invest the time necessary to backup the old machine, import to the new computer, and journey through dozens of setup screens to get my new machine up and running. Then i found the new Easy Upgrade feature of the OSX setup assistant. Using this utility I was able to port all of my data, applications and settings to the new machine with 1 click and a fire wire cable. Literally, I connected the two machine's via Fire Wire, clicked start, and within minutes I was completely up and running on the new machine. The experience was seemless.
OS X Setup Assistant Easy Upgrade
Posted by Chuck at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)