Apple New Browser
If you haven't heard already there is some pretty big news coming out of the Macworld Expo. It's all covered at Slashdot and the new browser, Safari, is discussed by Scott Andrew and Mark Pilgrim amongst others.
It's about three weeks since I bought my first Apple and I'm still liking it. However, I still can't see myself switching away from Windows for good. The trouble with the Mac OS is that it is just sooooo mouse-intensive. As a Windows user I find that I can get away without using the mouse for about 95% of my tasks (unless I happen to be using Notes that is). All I need is escape, tab and enter. On the Mac there's just no getting away from the mouse though, and even then it only has one button! However, like I said to Mike the other day as he went about an overly-critical analysis of his new iPod, it doesn't matter. It looks amazing. If you get a drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend, you don't complain about the lack of brain activity. You just make sure as many people as possible take notice.
One last thing. A 17" laptop screen. Surely they can't be serious? Where will it all end...
Update: Safari's quite cool! Glad to see there's no work needed round these parts ;o)
Disclaimer: Can I just say that I don't think all beautiful girls are air-heads.
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Yes, but you never end up marrying the good looking dumb girl.
My point exactly. Something tells me this is just a brief flirtation with Apple.
I went out with a blonde girl once. One day she was on a training course in Leicester and while she was driving home, I heard on the radio that a mad idiot driver was driving the wrong way round the M25 motorway. I realised this was about the time she'd be cominr round London so I phoned her on her mobile to warn her.
"Be careful I said", I said to her " I heard on the news there was a mad person driving the wrong way round the M25."
"One", she said, in a panicky voice, " there's thousands of them!".
In that same vein richard I also had a blonde girlfriend, absolutely gorgeous but dumb as a rock. She bought a jigsaw puzzle that took her 6 months to complete! When I got home that night she was so excited that she had finished it. I said "whats the big deal?" then she showed me the box it came in which said "From 2-4 years."
Jake-
You can get a 2 button mouse for your mac. A friend of mine who is a graphic designer has one and prefers using it to holding down the apple key to get a right click. And since you work with Notes then you use right click all the time!
I was born and bred on Macs, and I have the same feelings you do but in reverse, I work on a PC, but if I ever bought another computer (apart from my 3 macs!!) it would be another Mac.
Incidentally I use a Microsoft Intellimouse on OSX with no problems, don't even need a drive to make it work, just plugged it in! That's one thing I can't live without - scroll wheel browsing.
I had a blonde girlfriend who tried to give me her really realy old mac. I said to her 'I don't want that it comes with strings attached'. This is actually true, though she wasn't actually er.. blonde..
Lay off the 'blondes'. We are not all dumb ;-)
I had a gorgeous (intelligent and non-blonde) girlfriend who is now my wife. Being gorgeous doesn't make you dumb.
Mac OS X is not a dumb blonde, it's the most amazing and intelligent operating system to appear on a personal computer. And beautiful too.
And (as already pointed out) you can use two or three button mice. The lack of keyboard support on Mac has always been a bit of an annoyance to me, but it can be more than remedied with QuicKeys. I haven't yet tried the OS X version, but the Classic version is fantastic. You'll be doing practically everything with your keyboard: far more than you ever dreamed of doing on windows.
If you have a drop-dead gorgeous wife, you don't complain that she has a little scar on her foot. I think that's a better analogy.
I suppose that all the contributions about blondes and beauty are from young men who are so fasinated with looks. The question I will like to ask is what happens when the beauty begins to fade, and everything begins to point downwards?
I rather choose a woman who does not have the looks, but who can contribute intelligently to any conversation and is not scared to take on new challenges.
Jake, I wanna know where you get time for a good looking woman and your good looking websites???
Kindly send the time (or the woman) to me!
I went out with a beautiful Brunnette and the blonde thing definetly is not confined to hair color.
Regardless of how beautifull a women is, the same can be said about websites. Content is king.
Brunnettes' are by by far better than blondes as well! something more mysterious about them.
Brandon(ball?) Z: She's got a scar on her feet? What a freak.. put her in a windowed shed and take her on the road, i'm sure you'll make some money outta her! (justa-kidding!)
I also use an Intellimouse with wheel and have no problems with Mac OS X. Additionally, you can turn on keyboard access which allows you to get around quite happily without a mouse, just takes a bit of learning.
I've had a Mac now for over a year and will not be going back to a PC, especially after the announcements for iMovie and iDVD.
I've been using a Mac G4 1Ghz, 1gb Ram titanium Powerbook with cd/dvd read write burner, and I can tell you this is one beautiful mother f&*ker of a machine, that constantly puts a smile on my face.
I'm not one of these dickheads that goes on ranting about Mac vs PC. In fact, it's about time Apple pulled their finger out with a decent OS, and bring it out of the late eighties and into the new millenium.
Although my Mac's not perfect, these new machines, really kick some serious butt, especially for Java based developers. Apple seems to be lowering their prices too over the past three months, which is good.
So who knows, not a Windows killer, but a serious workhorse, not just for arty farty graphic designers and multimedia gurus, but now for developers with Apple's unix based OS and free dev tools.
With Virtual PC software I can even run XP Pro on my new Mac, and it works!
Lee
It's only reading this blog and its comments that's lead me to realise, that in my twenty-four years of life, I've never been out with a blonde girl. I have been out with good looking girls though, and it's true, some of them ARE intelligent. I often think that's a bit of a shame really.
I've never used a mac, but I think I'd struggle without a two button mouse. I hate dragging scrollbars. Having said that, there is something to be said for designers using "lowest common denomitors" for testing. If you test a website using a mouse WITHOUT a scroll-wheel, you get to experience it as many of your readers will. It makes you think about design from that point of view. My PC at work doesn't have a mouse, but my one at home does, so I see it from both ends.
If you haven't yet seen this parody, it's worth a look. http://viper.bfmedia.com/images/mac.jpg
But did you see this on the same website ?
http://viper.bfmedia.com/flash/Icon%20Wars.swf
IMHO, the most interesting MacWorld announcement other than Safari was 'Keynote', Apple's new presentation tool ala PowerPoint (which it imports and exports to, as well as PDF, and think I think HTML too). The archived MacWorld footage of Jobs demo'ing it is worth a the effort digging it up to view. It's a wonderful display of the Quartz display rendering engine. Slick piece of work!
In other words, if one owned a shiny tiBook, Keynote makes it complete for a high wow-factor presentation of one's own ideas. Haven't seen anything like it in ages. Content *is* king after all. What are you gonna *Do* today?
Oh, I forget to mention the file format for Keynote is XML. Jobs made a point to say 'he was expecting a lot of developer opportunities in the form of plug-ins, etc. due to the open format, rendering technology, scriptability, import/exports, etc.
Jake,
my colleague tells me that you need to install a program called "Quick keys" that will probably help.
HEY!
If you guys were real mac users, you would now how to turn on full keyboard access!!! Systemprefs > Keyboard > Full Keyboard. It takes some getting used to, since its very different from what a pc does. Apple contra MS thinks in usability, hence many powerfull options are of by default. Don't bitch about something you're not sure of!
If you want something cool for your mac, install this http://mcgavern.com/mac/mip/ - this enables minimize in place (syspref > dock options > enable it), instead into the dock. Now I'm expecting to see some Windows people with long faces.
Cheers T Seebach
I've never used a Mac but I've been staring longinly at the Laptops in PCWorld lately. They are some extremely attractive looking pieces of kit I must say. Are there any problems in compatibility between Mac's and PC's (seeing as all of my work is done on a PC)?
I'm still using a V.O. Mac (Very Old) with OS 8.6, so I can't vouch for any of the following to work in later OSs. Lack of keyboard shortcuts has only been a problem for me in MS Office where nothing works as I'm used to. In most other programs I use the arrow keys, tab, cmd/ctrl-whatever to navigate, execute and have fun.
For example: From top level of the Finder (that's all windows closed for you Win users) I type the first 2 letters of the name of my hard drive to select it, then press cmd-down arrow to open it. Typing I N gets me to the first item that starts with "IN", one more down arrow then selects the Internet programs folder. After that I press Tab to select the first item (alphabetically, it doesn't matter how you sorted them) in that folder. Cmd-down again opens it, and since the first item (alphabetically) happened to be an application, I can now do whatever that application allows me to do.
And to reply to some of the other comments here. Yes, QuickKeys and other programs can be used to create macros that will open a program, run a script, or do whatever you like. Having seen people use them to create scripts for cut and paste I'm not sure they are really needed though.
As I see it the main problem isn't lack of keybord support, it's that thing between keyboard and chair. Just because the first letter of menu items isn't underlined doesn't mean the functionality isn't there.