Happy Mac

Posted on December 27 2010

I think I've made enough Airfix kits, cooked enough, played enough games and generally been Dad enough to have a few minutes playing with my new MacBook Air.

This is the first Mac blog.

I love the keyboard. I love the way it feels. I love the look.

Nothing is in the right place! I will get used to it.

Being methodical I've been trying to set things up and not just play. I'm not much of a player on computers - and have never played a computer game bar those my sons occasionally ask me to partake in. So one word of warning when shifting systems - or indeed if you're not: invest time in remembering and recording passwords. It has taken me some time for me to do so. And if you've been doing this as long as I have then you have some pretty old ones - one email account totally baffled me but access has now been gained - ditto two ftp accounts which have not been played with in a millenia and yet were I realised in use - which identified an immediate small source of cash saving as a consequnce.

But for the machine itself, silly things are bugging me as yet. Is there a universal macro writer? I used one on the PC called Key Text which simply let shortcoded text be written anywhere on the system with a few pre-arranged key strokes (massively useful for things like definitions and so on) and I have no idea where the equivalent is yet here - which is rustrating.

And where's "delete"?

I should maybe play with the main box first and not learn on the portable.

But one thing I can say for sure is that without a doubt this is the best portable keyboard I have ever used - I love it. It's like a dream compared to the Samsung netbook and I thought that was good.

And one other thing - how does correction work? I'm using Google Chrome as a browser as I'm familiar with it and it offers me the inevitable red line and no hint that it's going to offer obvious auto-corrects? Why? Where's right mouse correction gone from the PC?

I see a couple of weeks of frustration coming up - but also pleasure in the offing.

Now, back to the cooking. And no, I'm not kidding - it is one of my pleasures. Better than thinking about tax all the time - and that I'm taking a break from.

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6 Responses

  1. Hum... says:
    December 27 2010 at 4:05 pm

    This may help you:
    http://sorou.sh/2006/07/17/10-tips-new-mac-users-switching-windows

  2. Colman Stephenson says:
    December 27 2010 at 8:16 pm

    The universal macro writer is called Automator and should be already installed. I’ve never used it but it looks powerful. You can get shareware Automator scripts from the apple down load site.

    Delete (forwards) doesn’t exist on the limited keyboard. You need to get used to using shift-arrow (left or right) to highlight followed by backspace. Option-shift-arrow does a word at a time.

    I’m not sure what you mean by ‘right mouse correction’ but do know this, Control-click brings up contextual menus, like the right-clink on a two button mouse.

  3. James says:
    December 27 2010 at 9:01 pm

    Hi Richard,

    I think the equivalent of macros would be AppleScript – take a look at http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/index.html. Failing that – learn command-line Unix scripting (not all that hard).

    Right mouse equivalent on my MacBook is achieved by holding down Ctrl and clicking the trackpad – and on Firefox that gets you the auto-corrects you want.

    Cheers,

    James

  4. SFL says:
    December 28 2010 at 4:24 pm

    I’d point you in the direction of a brilliant application called 1Password which is invaluable for managing and storing passwords securely on the Mac (and PC for that matter).
    http://agilewebsolutions.com/onepassword

    Also, Things for the Mac (only) is a brilliant to-do list manager.
    http://culturedcode.com/things/

    Both are crucial to my daily Mac workflow.

  5. Robbie Pennington says:
    December 29 2010 at 12:13 pm

    I solved the lack of a right-click problem with a ‘Magic Mouse’…

    http://www.apple.com/uk/magicmouse/

    …which i’ve found to be brilliant!

  6. Richard Murphy says:
    December 29 2010 at 1:20 pm

    Thanks to all for the comments – all of which are being followed up

    I suspect I have not helped myself by starting on the MacBook Air and not on the new main box – but over the Christmas period there wasn’t time to sneak away and set up the main box – just time to play on the MacBook.

    The pleasure of the new main box will arrive today or tomorrow.

    And in the meantime to answer one email commentator’s humorous question – no I’m not being sponsored by Apple.

    They’d have to change their tax structures first.