Journeys in Mac-land
Experiences with a new PowerBook.
How have I lived without a Mac for all these years? I’ve had the PowerBook for five days now, and nearly every bit of it has been great. MacOS X is just so pleasant to use. Everything looks good, and installing/uninstalling software is so simple. The hardware is immaculate, from the excellent connectivity (including AirPort, FireWire 400 and 800, USB 2, Bluetooth, Gigabit ethernet) to the little touches like the throbbing sleep light, the glowing Apple on the lid and the backlit keyboard.
There are some things that I miss, though. Native software is slightly more scarce, but the support for most *nix software easily makes up for it, and usability and visual aspects of native software are brilliant. Even Microsoft makes their software better on the Mac. I miss a right mouse button, and I hate trackpads. The trackpad I can understand, but why can’t there be a right mouse button? As it is, you access context menus by holding the Control button whilst clicking. Why not make that easier by including a right mouse button? I will pick up an external mouse when I get around to it. I’ve not yet been able to access my shared directories on my Windows box, but I have been able to go the other way. I also have to determine whether it’s quicker to re-encode all the WMA files I have or just rip them all again.
In other news, my copy of Return of the King has not arrived today, and thus probably won’t be here until Monday. Bottom.
December 10th, 2004 at 11:43 pm
You get used to the ctrl+click thing. Perhaps it’s a bit easier on the 12″ as the crtl key is so much closer to the trackpad button
And just to counter your new hardware niceness, I got return of the king today
December 11th, 2004 at 3:10 am
As for encoding, may as well re-rip them all again, you’ll lose quality no matter how well you re-rip, but there should be a *nix version of FFDshow or a similar codec pack that can handle them. Besides, why on earth did you use such an ugly format in the first place?