macfail

[jazzfish]

Still thinking seriously about this Mac switch. For awhile I was contemplating a 13" Macbook, but I'm starting to suspect that may not be enough screen real estate. Which means a Macbook Pro, which would push me up from Expensive into Really Bloody Expensive. So I stopped by the Apple store at lunchtime, figured I'd take a look at a Macbook and see what the size was like.

"I wonder how it types," I said to myself. "I'll just click at the end of the URL field..." where "click" took a bit of figuring out, but, okay, I can probably get used to that, "and select everything in it. CTRL..." what idiot put a "Fn" button where my pinky is supposed to be hitting CTRL? Does this stand for "Fail now" ? Because it's going to cause all my navigation and copy/past muscle memory to do just that. "...and Home." And I quite literally tried twice to hit the Home key in its usual places: first to the right of the Backspace Delete key, then just above it. Nothing. Who the hell designs a keyboard without a built-in Home button?

... okay, poking around online reveals that if I revert to my original plan of "laptop plus iPad" and get an iMac, I can get a "keyboard with numeric keypad," which has a six-button navigation keyclump and also puts the CTRL key in the lower left LIKE GOD INTENDED[1].

It also reveals that under OSX, Home and End don't perform the more common task of jumping to the beginning and end of the line, but instead do the 'top' and 'bottom' thing all on their own. The way to go to the beginning and end of a line is CMD+left/right. Because why would someone want to go to just the beginning or end of a line? It's much more sensible to make those common actions require a second keystroke, and for the rarely-used 'top' and 'bottom' to happen more easily so I can completely lose my place in the document.

(This Home and End behavior is very nearly unacceptable in the Neo, which was designed by ex-Apple engineers. Neo only gets a pass because I know better than to try to edit anything on its six-line screen.)

My budding love affair with Macs may have just crashed and burned, much like a second date when the other person says, "Actually, I'm feeling much better after having my engrams cleared."

Argh.

---

[1] I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that CTRL really belongs to the left of A, since I spent my first eight years using an IBM Model F.

Comments

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

The mere lack of a forward-delete key drives me insane.

[rockynomad.livejournal.com]

As a Mac guy who's had to get used to using PCs for work, I can agree that while the Mac has awesome features like not crashing all the damn time (my brand new high-end Dell laptop BSODs with dismaying frequency, and my then-new tower at a previous job went through 3 motherboards), the forward-delete key ought to be on every keyboard. You're right - as slick as Mac OS is, the hardware could be a bit more multifunctional.

[jazzfish]

This (Dell) laptop is the first computer I've had in, um, ever, that hasn't required major hardware work within two years of acquisition. I'm kind of shocked, honestly.

And seriously, what were the Mac keyboard designers thinking? It just utterly baffles me.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I am doing wrong, but I just don't see the rate of PC failure that people complain about.

[jazzfish]

In my case, some of it's been sheer bad luck (power blips at the wrong time during bootup, or during patch installs), and some has been due to buying dirt-cheap bottom-of-the-line hardware because that's what I could afford at the time (Vimes's Boots style).

[jazzfish]

Ack, right. At least that's also present on the optional full-sized desktop keyboard. At this point I'm growing baffled that anyone manages to work at all on a Macbook. All that vaunted "design" seems to have gotten in the way of "being useful."

[rbandrews]

At this point I'm growing baffled that anyone manages to work at all on a Macbook.

Ever actually tried?

[jazzfish]

Fair enough! Also, by "anyone" I meant "any writer," which of course translates to "any writer who uses the same editing habits and patterns that I do," because those are of course the only habits anyone would ever use.

I'm genuinely surprised and shocked that, in the rush to remove useless keys (and gord knows there are some in the canonical 104: "Pause," anyone?), they nuked five that I expect people used fairly often.

[rbandrews]

You are obviously very picky particular about the tools you use for typing. Hey, I've been there. I use Dvorak, and a bunch of custom Emacs functions, and habitually buy every new pointing device that comes out on the off chance that it'll be the one that doesn't hurt my hand.

I've used Macs morning, noon, and night for eight years. Trust me, it's possible to get work done on them, even if work involves typing a lot of text. No OS anywhere is exactly what you want out of the box, but OSX is a lot easier to tweak to make it what you want than Windows XP or Vista or 7. So a half-hour in the Appletorium with a straight-out-of-the-box iMac won't be as representative as an afternoon with something you can tweak the hell out of.

Also, you do know that fn+left is beginning of line, right? It's not like you can't do it...