probably the last newmac update
Nov. 24th, 2010 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI've been using Taranis, my new Mac, pretty intensely for the past couple of weeks, and we more or less understand each other. I'm still looking for a better name, though. I keep hoping something vaguely piratical will strike me, as this computer has occasionally put me in mind of the pirate with a steering wheel attached to his crotch.
Certain things are still in the Wrong Place. Copy/pasting and jumping around by individual words have been exceptionally difficult to get used to. Worse is the menu problem I complained about last time. Mapping the "navigate the menu" key to Option-A mitigates but doesn't rectify the problem: it still takes twice as many keystrokes on OSX to activate a menu option. I'm frustrated by the lack of dedicated keys for Delete ("delete right" if you insist) and PgUp/PgDn, but Home and End keys really are just nice-to-haves. On the rare occasions when I want to use Ctrl, having Fn be the leftmost meta key causes some awkward hand cramping. This is mostly noticeable when I'm switching tabs in Firefox.
The clicky trackpad takes a bit more force to click than I'm used to. (Tried 'tap to click.' Can't stand it.) Still need to test out the Best Trackball Ever and make sure it'll work.
I'm slightly uneasy about not knowing how to use the Terminal, which means I need a good OSX-flavor Unix reference/tutorial.
I'm not sold on the Finder. Yay for its multi-column solution to deeply nested folders, rather than relying on the tree view. Boo to lacking an easy way to display information about multiple files at a glance, a la Windows Explorer's columns. (Maybe I'm missing a setting.) Double boo to lacking a built-in way to move files via keyboard-- seriously, what was wrong with implementing Cmd-X like they'd done with Cmd-C and Cmd-V?
Many of my complaints boil down to "not very keyboard-friendly." Which isn't really all that shocking, this is the machine that popularized the mouse after all. The trouble is that OSX designers are convinced that their One Way is the best possible way to do things, and they're right more often than not. That makes it all the more frustrating when they're wrong, as in the case of "a pointing device is the best way to interact with the computer." It's certainly the simplest way, but, well, I like the keyboard. It's far faster once one gets used to it. I understand why they didn't provide it as an option but that doesn't mean I like it.
And having said all that, overall I'm pretty pleased with it. Spotlight, the search feature, is glorious in its simplicity: Cmd+space and type the first few letters of a program or document and it's right there. The smooth rounded "Aqua" interface feels sufficiently natural that I came across a blocky Windows-style dialog box the other day and actually flinched. Task-switching works as it should: between programs rather than between windows. Etc.
It's not so much that things "Just Work," since in my experience with Windows, once they've been installed and configured things mostly Just Work as well. It's more... a sense that things will continue to work. The amount of effort I have to put into getting them to work feels minimal. Boxer is a good example. Running an old game through DOSBox on a Windows machine involves tinkering and futzing and all manner of stuff I don't want to deal with, so I never did. On a Mac, you just drag the folder containing the game onto the Boxer icon, and it creates a single-file gamebox. From then on, you double-click the gamebox to run it, and it Just Works. Mostly.
Bottom line: the right things feel very right; the wrong things are still jarring. I think it's gonna work out okay.
Certain things are still in the Wrong Place. Copy/pasting and jumping around by individual words have been exceptionally difficult to get used to. Worse is the menu problem I complained about last time. Mapping the "navigate the menu" key to Option-A mitigates but doesn't rectify the problem: it still takes twice as many keystrokes on OSX to activate a menu option. I'm frustrated by the lack of dedicated keys for Delete ("delete right" if you insist) and PgUp/PgDn, but Home and End keys really are just nice-to-haves. On the rare occasions when I want to use Ctrl, having Fn be the leftmost meta key causes some awkward hand cramping. This is mostly noticeable when I'm switching tabs in Firefox.
The clicky trackpad takes a bit more force to click than I'm used to. (Tried 'tap to click.' Can't stand it.) Still need to test out the Best Trackball Ever and make sure it'll work.
I'm slightly uneasy about not knowing how to use the Terminal, which means I need a good OSX-flavor Unix reference/tutorial.
I'm not sold on the Finder. Yay for its multi-column solution to deeply nested folders, rather than relying on the tree view. Boo to lacking an easy way to display information about multiple files at a glance, a la Windows Explorer's columns. (Maybe I'm missing a setting.) Double boo to lacking a built-in way to move files via keyboard-- seriously, what was wrong with implementing Cmd-X like they'd done with Cmd-C and Cmd-V?
Many of my complaints boil down to "not very keyboard-friendly." Which isn't really all that shocking, this is the machine that popularized the mouse after all. The trouble is that OSX designers are convinced that their One Way is the best possible way to do things, and they're right more often than not. That makes it all the more frustrating when they're wrong, as in the case of "a pointing device is the best way to interact with the computer." It's certainly the simplest way, but, well, I like the keyboard. It's far faster once one gets used to it. I understand why they didn't provide it as an option but that doesn't mean I like it.
And having said all that, overall I'm pretty pleased with it. Spotlight, the search feature, is glorious in its simplicity: Cmd+space and type the first few letters of a program or document and it's right there. The smooth rounded "Aqua" interface feels sufficiently natural that I came across a blocky Windows-style dialog box the other day and actually flinched. Task-switching works as it should: between programs rather than between windows. Etc.
It's not so much that things "Just Work," since in my experience with Windows, once they've been installed and configured things mostly Just Work as well. It's more... a sense that things will continue to work. The amount of effort I have to put into getting them to work feels minimal. Boxer is a good example. Running an old game through DOSBox on a Windows machine involves tinkering and futzing and all manner of stuff I don't want to deal with, so I never did. On a Mac, you just drag the folder containing the game onto the Boxer icon, and it creates a single-file gamebox. From then on, you double-click the gamebox to run it, and it Just Works. Mostly.
Bottom line: the right things feel very right; the wrong things are still jarring. I think it's gonna work out okay.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 06:39 pm (UTC)you can task switch between windows with apple-tilde.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:04 pm (UTC)Delete-right: I wasn't very clear, and will edit post to clarify. It's good that Fn+Delete exists, and it still ought to be its own key. My personal use-case is that I add words to the beginning of sentences fairly often, and I want to make the former first word lower-case. Solution: move to beginning of word, right-delete, type letter. This used to be a two-key operation. Now it's three. (Or more, since word-hopping moves to the /end/ of the word and not the beginning, which is a minor annoyance in itself.)
(Relatedly, space and shift-space are almost adequate substitutions for PgUp/PgDn, /except/ when I'm in a typeable document, which is a lot of the time.I end up using Cmd-Up/Down even when space/shift-space are available because Cmd-Up/Down will consistently work, but that's, again, more keystrokes than it ought to be.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:12 pm (UTC)Next/previous word: Option+left/right.
(In Windows, it's Ctrl for next/previous, and Home/End for beginning/end of line. I use these all the time, so they were the first keyboard shortcuts I looked up for Mac.)