Learning My First Mac

Ctrl+Alt+Delete in Mac OSX

2009-10-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

This morning Firefox crashed and I couldn't get out of it - it turns out Mac does have their own version of Ctrl+Alt+Delete; you can use Command+Option+Esc to bring up the Activity Monitor and close a frozen application

From Learning My First Mac

Using Skitch for Simple Image Editing

2009-10-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a free simple image editing tool for Mac that can take the place of Windows Paint, and a friend tipped me off to Skitch. It's easy to use and beautifully designed (kind of like Tweetie). Rather than tell you more about it I've embedded their video:

Modify the Multi-touch Settings on Firefox for Mac

2009-09-27T11:45:00.001-07:00

I'm having some serious trouble getting used to all of the different keystroke combinations on Mac after so many years of PC use. Hand gestures, on the other hand, I'm getting pretty good at. To make using multiple tabs in Firefox easier, I just followed CrunchGear's instructions on hacking the multi-touch settings. Now a 3-finger swipe left or right moves me from tab to tab, which I find much more helpful than moving back and forth through the web history!

Perian Fixed My Codec Problems on Quicktime

2009-09-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

Right away I downloaded VLC Player as an all-in-one video player to replace Quicktime. However, this weekend I was trying to play XVID compressed files and VLC Player couldn't really get the job done. Video played, but very often it froze for a bit and even crashed a few times. Enter Perian, a codec you can install to bring a diverse set of codec support to Apple's native Quicktime player. Perian calls itself the "swiss-army knife of Quicktime components", and it worked as advertised. Now I can play XVID compressed videos right on Quicktime; its not perfect, but it's performing much better than VLC.

Facebook’s New Desktop Notifications App for Mac

2009-09-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Since I'm not doing a great job of updating this Mac blog with the lessons I'm putting into practice, I'm going to try opening it up to information I may not be using now but might be valuable to me or other budding Mac lovers in the future. Today's lesson is about the New desktop alert tool that Facebook has covertly put out. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks exactly like the Google's Gmail notifier. It's main purpose is to alert you to incoming notifications and messages; if you want a more full-features option, Facebook has an Adobe Air app, and there's always 3rd party apps like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck.

Google Gmail Notifier for Mac

2009-09-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Back when I was using a PC I had my computer completely pimped out for Google. I was running Google Desktop for its quick-launch & gadget integration, Google Talk for it's chat & Gmail integration, and Google Chrome. So far I've been trying to find alternatives for those programs, such as Adium for chat (I'll definitely use Chrome though when it's finalized for Mac). However, I really missed seeing instant Gmail alerts. Enter Google Notifier for Mac. It puts icons in your top bar for Gmail and Google Calendar that give you alerts and quick access to functions. For now I've turned off Google Calendar alerts because I've sync'd Google Calendar with iCal, but I might swap one for the other in the future.

OS Lesson: Full Screen Windows

2009-08-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

So this might be the most surprising find yet: Apparently there is no native "full screen window" mode in Mac OSX. Not only does this mean that you can't quickly maximize a random program window, but you also can't move into full screen browser mode in Safari or Firefox (Windows users are used to hitting F11 to make all of the window frames and toolbars disappear when you need all of your screen space for browsing, screenshots, or slideshows). Instead of having a full screen mode Mac focuses on giving you what it feels optimally need, though this seems impossible to predict on many web pages. I've embedded someone's video below that illustrates how annoying this can be.
From everything I'm reading there are two options for fixing this problem. The first is to install an app called Megazoomer, which adds a hot key to fully maximize your active window. However, it doesn't remove the toolbars etc. when you're in a browser. To solve this challenge supposedly you Opera for Mac has a full screen browser mode. Together these two apps supposedly should get me to a feature that was built in on Windows, one that I found very useful often.

Solving My Divx Needs With VLC Media Player

2009-07-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was trying to play some Divx/Xvid files and Quicktime couldn't get the job done. More than a few people pointed me to VLC Media Player as the all-in-one solution for my video player needs. VLC Player plays just about every type of media file you can come up with, though I'm going to stick with Quicktime for now as my default when it's capable. So now I'm up to 2 browsers and 2 video players on the Macbook, though I'm trying to tread slowly and keep the installs light.

Trying to Decide Between Safari and Firefox

2009-07-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

From the beginning, I've been trying to break from my old habits and learn the primary offerings of the Mac. I didn't install Picasa to handle my photo needs (as much as I love it), and I didn't download an alternative browser to replace Safari. For the first few weeks I've been using Safari OK, and especially with this being a brand new computer the speed of the browser feels just as good as any other. I haven't missed the myriad of browser extensions on Firefox primarily because I prefer not to use them; after years of crappy computers, I've learned to love bookmarklets as an alternative light-weight way to provide the value of extensions, and bookmarklets work as expected in Safari. I've had some trouble learning the keyboard shortcuts, just like with everything on the Mac, but once I discovered [control+tab] for quickly sliding through tabs I wasn't horribly disoriented. So why did I download Firefox last night? The Awesome Bar. After years of using Chrome and Firefox on PC's, I fully expect the URL window to act as a smart bar that can handle partial URL's, keywords, and searches seamlessly. Seriously there's no reason why this shouldn't be in Safari also, but it isn't and it drives me crazy. I'm constantly putting searches into the URL form, and getting redirected to a broken page that asks "did I mean to search", with the words now filled in to a search box. It's easy to move forward from there, but I shouldn't have to. And until Safari does something about this, I'm now splitting my time between Firefox and Safari on the Mac. That is until Chrome comes out, which will probably win me over from all browsers just like it did on the PC.

OS Tricks: Taking Screenshots

2009-07-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

Something I needed to learn quickly in order to put together this blog - how to take screenshots in Mac OS. It turns out Mac has a lot of native screenshot capability built right into the operating system. Depending on whether you want to take a full screenshot, a screenshot of an active window, or of a custom selection, there are hot keys for all choices. Each will save the selected screenshot to a ".png" file on your desktop:

Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop

Also, if you add the [control] key to any combination it will copy the image to the clickboard rather than saving a new file. For more on the screenshot tools, check out the guide page over at MacRumors.

Desktop Apps: Tweetie Twitter Client

2009-07-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

The very first software I looked to download that didn't come pre-installed is a Twitter client. Between my home desktop PC and my work laptop PC I've played with Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck but for the most part I've avoided the power features and found the interfaces unattractive. For my Macbook I decided to stray from the Adobe Air apps and go with a Mac native client: Tweetie. A week later and i'm pretty happy with the choice.

It may be superficial but the number one reason I like Tweetie is its slick appearance (and really aesthetics is one of the reasons people love Mac, no?). It behaves like and iPhone app, sliding gracefully from window to window. It also has a clean interface for accessing your @replies, DM's, and managing multiple Twitter accounts seamlessly. It's not a power tool - you can't build custom groups, and you can't make columns - but I am much happier on Tweetie so far than I was in the overwhelming information stream of Tweetdeck.

Improvements I desperately want from Tweetie: There is no easy way to retweet people's messages with 1-click, and when you do it from the top navigation menu it defaults to the (Via @....) method rather than the more common "RT @...". We should have the option to choose which we want, and RT in 1-click. Also, I definitely want an easy way to pop to the top of Tweetie to see the most recent messages rather than it fixing to the last place I read - at some point when you return to your computer after a while you give up on catching up and want to go to the most recent. Hopefully Tweetie keeps up with the app and rolls out improvements, while keeping with what makes it great - the clean, pretty, and simple.

Learning the Mouse: The Right Click

2009-07-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

One of the first differences you notice when switching to Mac is the missing right-mouse button. And if you switch to a new Macbook Pro, the difference is even starker - there are no mouse buttons - just one big clickable multi-touch surface. Right-clicking, or secondary clicking, initiates easy access to common needs such as copy, paste, save, etc. On Mac without a two-button mouse, the right-click menu can be brought up by holding Control when you click the mouse button, and on a multi-touch trackpad it can also be brought up by clicking simultaneously with two fingers next to each other.

Learning the Keyboard: Switching From One Application to Another

2009-07-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

Since I learned to use a computer without a mouse, I rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts for moving around. Probably the most helpful windows shortcut of all time is Alt+Tab, which if you're for some reason not familiar with enables you to switch easily through all of your open application windows. The first thing I tried of course after opening a few applications on my new Macbook was Command+Tab (hold the Command key first and hit the Tab key), which I expected to replace the familiar windows action. Unfortunately, Command+Tab is only half functional. On the Mac, Command+Tab does switch from application to application, but if you have multiple instances of the application open (say, two Safari windows), then Command+Tab only brings up the most recent window of that application that you were in. Instead, if you want to switch between various application windows, you first have to switch to the application window you want using Command+Tab, and then switch between application windows using Command+"~" (the ~ key). This action will let you switch across various browser windows or from your IM list to your IM windows, etc.

My First Mac

2009-07-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

My name is Kevin. I've been using PC's exclusively for over 13 years, and as a techie my lack of knowledge about Macs is embarrassing. Finally I've decided to go all in, buy a new 13'' Macbook Pro, and begin my journey into the cult of the Mac.

I turned on my Macbook for the first time July 5th, 2009. After just a few minutes playing around, it became very clear to me that the Mac world is completely different than the PC world. Most of the ways I navigate the computer are different, and general rules I have grown accustomed to are thrown out the window. Right away I realized I had to Google every question and every action so I can figure out how to do it.

Beginning this website is for 2 reasons: The first is so I can document for myself all of the things I'm learning as I explore the computer, tap into friends and Mac communities, and do research, in case I forget what I learned. The second is so people who are also converting from PC to Mac right now have a place to turn as they inevitably hit the same questions I am. I hope this helps all of us! Drop me notes, post suggestions, let me know your thoughts.