I don't use LaunchBar or any of the other third party modifiers. I do use MenuMeters, but that doesn't affect how you use the OS, it just puts all sorts of nice performance monitors in the menu bar.
Whatever you do, please avoid APE and Haxies. They have been known to cause all sorts of system instability. Some people will argue that THEIR systems are stable with these tools installed, but I have seen dozens of reports where an obscure problem or crash was solved by removing APE.
The main issue about Dreamweaver MX2004 is speed. Even typing in design-view is atrociously slow. It's main slogan for the 04-version was: "It's not about the things we've added, it's about the things we've removed." Great I thought and immediately ordered thinking they've fixed speed issues and reduced bloat (defaulting to generating pure CSS-layouts). But alas, DMX04 is even more bloated than before.
I don't regret it though, learning to code pure CSS-layouts (with inspiration from csszengarden.com and glish.com/css) has been nothing but rewarding for me and renewed my faith and joy in designing for web.
Just check out this site with Safari 1.2: http://www.erikveland.com/ambassador. Pure CSS. Note the hover-effects and how the menu behaves when you scroll the "Om prosjektet"-page.
in response to NeutronMonk : yes, other apps dvd player comes to mind do have hidden menus a copy of tinkertool from, breslink.de I think will uncover them
For Safari, there is one tweak that is essential to do if you visit web sites that insist (contrary to what should be open web standards) that you are using IE for windows (some online banking sites come to mind). In Terminal, type in the following line: defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1 This will give a new "Debug" menu in the menu bar of Safari. Click this and go down to "User Agent" and pick the the web browser you wish to "spoof". It works quite well for me! Remember to do this before you are on the site in question, and remember that the User Agent goes back to the default "Automatic" after a re-launch of Safari. Credit goes to macosxhints.com for this one- just do a search there for "Safari" and see what you come up with! By the way, I believe there are other hidden Debug menus...
Wow, great to see Anand et al seriously considering Apple solutions. I've been an avid reader of Anand's column in CPU mag monthly and visitor to Anandtech before that, but have never owned any Apple products before. Not that I haven't come across more of them lately at conferences, technical & scientific conventions. Maybe it's just higher visibility with certain groups (like Tim O'Reilly's "alpha geeks") but there seems to be renewed interest. I couldn't be happier - after years of involvement, I can't help but feel the traditional computing world has become stangant and stifling in many ways. Of course, I haven't played many games in the last few years; I tend to (try) to use my systems as tools to get work accomplished. For the fist time the Mac is looking pretty tempting... Anand should write about his experiences in CPU mag as well, I know I'm not in the minority in being curious about it.
Once again, I am thinking of switching. Here is why. I becoming to believe that Apple may have the best product because they do the hardware and software and have integrated both better than those on the PC side where the software and hardware are treated as separate parts of the puzzle. So I am very curious about all of the Apple digital raz ma taz. ithis and ithat. I don't care about gaming and how many gigawatz my computer can run down the freeway, that not my cup of tea. However, I am interested in photos, music, etc, practical things I can do. I read you many times in the past and consider you the best technical expert on PCs. What I would really like to know is if Apple vs. PC is a better overall experience software and hardware for the average Joe.
Launchbar is quite an amazing app, in my opinion. One more vote for at least trying it, although I can see why you might avoid third party enhancers (the unsanity.com haxies are particularly odd/interesting).
I haven't been happy with Dreamweaver MX '04 for Windows either, curious as to what your complaints are for OS X as I have yet to use it. My last favorite Dreamweaver was v3, since then there have been a lot of additions that I didn't need at all.
jeffosx
Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate them :) I have already played around with the terminal (after all I'm a command prompt guy at heart) and have already been handling some tasks in there instead of in the gui. I'll try the cd trick though to play around even more :)
Thanks again to everyone who has been commenting, everyone has been very helpful.
Anand, I am enjoying reading your blog. I love Macs and PCs both, and couldn't imagine limiting myself to only one platform; Why limit yourself to blondes or brunettes when you can have BOTH?!
I would use OS X in its unadulterated form first, without Launchbar. For now, do the following:
Drag a copy of your Home icon to the dock. Drag a copy of your Applications folder icon to the dock.
Now you'll be able to cntrl-click (or just left-click but keep the button depressed) on those dock icons and you'll get pop-up menus to access frequently used files and apps.
Great approach to the trial so far Anand. I appreciate the way you dont complain about how OSX doesnt do this etc but rather "I cant figure out how to do this". Saves a lot of flame wars also.
As an app switcher you may also like the way OSX differentiates applications from documents and so switching just documents is done via command-` .
You may also want to venture into the terminal at some point. They have some nice GUI integration there also. Try typing cd (then drag a folder from the finder to the terminal)
I just wanted to point out a small issue: Dreamweaver MX 2004 fucking sucks. And yes, I paid for it (or rather my work did). It was singlehandedly the one thing that pushed me back to hand-coding with just CSS.
The last good Dreamweaver was version 4, when they ported to Mac OS X it got a lot worse. I thought it could only get better. Boy, was I wrong. Macromedia promise that they are working on an update though, but I just don't see how they can put any more makeup on that pig DMX2004 has become.
I use LaunchBar all the time. Yes, all the time, for nearly everything. I am not a Windows switcher at all, I just like to get things done as quick as possible, and LaunchBar lets me do that.
I used OS X for about two years before discovering LaunchBar and IMO it's like grease on the wheels. It just helps speed things up. I have a Dock pretty full of icons, but there's always something it doesn't have, for which I hit Cmd-Space, type a few characters that are in the app name and hit enter, boom. WAY faster than scrolling through a (hierarchical) menu of stuff to find what you want. No fuss, no muss. It's also great for firing off a quick email (it can search Address Book) and locating docs.
It's very good at predicting what you want, so even if you mispell something typing it quickly, or just plain enter a few characters, it knows what you want. I find myself typing only 3-4 characters and it already has the item I want highlighted.
I don't consider it to be a "Windows" thing at all (at least I'm not aware of anything remotely as functional in Windows). Start-Run is not quite the same thing.
Judge Fire, it's also interesting to note for everyone that in addition to being on Apple's Safari/WebKit team, Dave Hyatt is also one of the lead developers for Mozilla Firefox.
There isn't really anything like LaunchBar in a vanilla install of Windows. So, it definitely isn't a Windows-switcher's tool. However, I would strongly recommend sticking to vanilla OS X until you're very comfortable with it (at least a couple of weeks). This is what I did when I switched from windows and it worked very well for me. The only GUI enhancer I ever used was LiteSwitch X, however, most of its functionality is now in Panther so I have a completely vanilla Panther environment.
Also, not using GUI enhancers at first would do a better service to your non-Mac readers in my opinion.
He is working on Safari at Apple and discusses a number of design choices and features there - nicely open compared to what the h*** is happening with IE right now.
Anyway, related to picking up OS X as a Windows user, the entry on Safari 1.2 explains the UI keyboard shortcuts for tabbing etc.
They actually have a few apps similar to Expose for Windows, the most popular probably being WinPlosion (www.winplosion.com). They were originally called WinExpose, but I assume that they were forced to change the name. There's another one here - http://onlinetoolsteam.com/WindowsExposer/Product....
I don't know if they work exactly like Expose, but they seem to accomplish the same thing, which is to use clever animations and transitions to organize your desktop.
I use Launchbar to get to commonly accessed files and folders, sometimes to start up an e-mail message to a new person quickly. It's not so much a Windows switcher tool, as it is a convenience utility when you think "Oh yeah, I want to open this App/file or folder/etc. quickly".
There's a similar tool called for Windows called AppRocket, but I haven't used it personally.
IMHO, LaunchBar is just one of those productivity enhancing tools that provides a great 'flow' experience in OS X (and perhaps Windows). As pointed out, it comes from NeXT so I don't really feel there's anything Windowish about it, quite the opposite. Of course it/copycats are likely available for Windows, but that's another issue.
Another great such tool is Default Folder, which allows you to create, well, default folders for open/save dialogs and boost these dialogs in many other ways.
Some Haxies by Unsanity are quite functional too, like Windowshade. While Exposé renders the old OS 9 Windowshade feature kinda useless, things like making desired windows translucent via key/mouse shortcut is nice. Live ghost windows on your desktop : ) It also lets you control the window shadows, if you're for example having trouble visually distinguishing the topmost window. (Some people experience this with the less than perfect brushed metal shadows.)
The APE system behind their Haxies kinda hijacks every window being spawned, allowing things like theming or additional features like above. One such feature I've requested from them is the ability to 'float any window' into a global floater... let's see whta comes out of that. It'd be great for iChat, QuickTime Player, Console etc. - anything you want to keep an eye on when you're doing something else.
No third party tools like you've mentioned here. I seem to be happy with just a plain vanilla OS X. Granted, I haven't tried Launchbar or many other of these utilities. I guess I wouldn't know what I was missing.
Since you will be jumping back and forth to an XP install, can I suggest if you haven't already done so to use an IMAP mail server as opposed to POP3? Mail.app has excellent IMAP support - the best out of any client I've seen yet. Apple has really done a good job integrating it so IMAP feels at home like a POP3 account. By using an IMAP account though, I can jump over to XP and use Outlook Express to view/send my mail (Outlook doesn't like my IMAP server), or to Linux and use Evolution to do the same. It matches some of the benefits of web mail with the convenience of using a real e-mail client. If you don't have an IMAP server setup but would like to experiment with one, you should have a free 3 month .Mac trial membership that comes with an IMAP e-mail account and you can use that.
Likewise, I've switched over to using MSN because I can use it on any platform and not have to worry about contact synchronization. Prior to this I was using ICQ and it proved to be inflexible if I ever wanted to use it somewhere other than my main computer. I guess you could also use iChat (I believe it stores the address book server side too) but nobody up here in my neck of the woods tends to use AIM.
Personally, I went through a similar thing as you when migrating from OS 9 to OS X; I also decided to keep the OS as vanilla as possible for as long as possible. The result is that I've found lots of neat ways to use the dock, and haven't used any of the other add-ons.
A couple of things to note: You can put folders in your dock. when you click on a folder, a sub-menu of the contents pops up. This is a great way to sort your apps. One definite app to use once you start to get lots of processes running on your mac is Process wizard (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/... This sits in your menu bar and gives you control over all your running processes; you can kill them, switch to them, and change their priority on the fly.
One other thing to note: if you're not actually using a program, but it's still running, it will be one of the first things to be swapped out to disk. Even though I only have 384MB RAM in my mac, I find that I can leave 20 or so programs open with no problems, as usually I'm only actually *using* 4 or so at any given time. Instead of waiting for the application to launch, you just have to wait for it to swap into RAM.
Thanks again for all the responses guys. Keep em coming, they are helping a lot. I think I'm going to put all of these helpful hits into a FAQ of some sort at the end of the project to help others that have decided to switch (or at least try).
SmurfTower
You are very right, I want to get as much of the OS X experience as possible without resorting to third party applications and drivers. That's one reason I didn't even bother with any third party mouse drivers as I wanted to get the full unmodified OS X experience. I may end up waiting on LaunchBar, but that brings up my next question:
For you OS X users out there, do you use LaunchBar a lot or consider it to be more of a Windows convertee's tool?
I would choose for you not to install Launch-Bar yet, experience the Mac UI more extensively before you start using with 3rd party apps. Launch-Bar is a Windows concept and trying to integrate this into the Macintosh will influence the outcome of this experiment. Judge OS X on its own merits.
David, depending how you're doing your dual monitors you can do that with Nvidia's or ATI's drivers. However, if you're running 3 monitors off one ATI and one Nvidia card like me then you need some other software (that I have yet to find!).
Welcome to the Mac world. I got my G5 day after Thanksgiving last year and love it and OS X. The only thing I use my PC for now is playing BF1942/Desert Combat. Some points:
- Gaming with the mac is probably it's weakest point, not becuase of any real problems, but becuase the software deploys later than on the PC - sometimes *years* later like Halo. I would go ahead and grab the new ATi 9800 Pro ( the 256 MB version that properly supports the G5's 8x AGP )instead of the OEM card before you come to any hard/fast conclusions in that area. For most users gaming is not really a issue on the mac, becuase like me, *thats* what they use their PC's for!
- That brings up the PC vs. Mac debate. I believe it's old news and self defeating to have endless debates on "which one is better" - there is no reason these days why a mac user cant have a PC kicking around just like I do to play games on thats not on the mac yet, and there's no reason a hi end PC user cant have a mac around. This is not 1999, it's 2004, and the computing world has moved ahead. Poeple need to move ahead along with the times.
Yeah, Anand if you have the developer tools installed and want to see the point at which Exposé requires more VRAM than is available locally on the video card, you should run /Developer/Applications/Graphic Tools/OpenGL Driver Monitor. Click on the Monitors menu > Choose host > localhost followed by Monitors menu > Driver Monitors > (whatever driver is there...probably ATIRadeonGLDriver). A new monitor window should pop up. Click on Parameters and drag over "vramFreeBytes" and "gartUsedBytes". Adjust the graphing to your preferences. You should get something similar to this: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/GL/opengl.jpg. Each one of those spikes/dips was when I used Exposé and as you can see, my usage patterns at 1024x768 would require about 32 MB of VRAM at a minimum. I wouldn't be surprised, if as suggested by Lucian 64 MB is too little given your dual displays at high resolution.
On another note, if ATI gets you that new Radeon 9800 Pro, let us know if it causes the fans to spin more. Apparently, the PowerMac doesn't monitor temperatures in the PCI/AGP card thermal zone. Instead, it monitors how much power is drawn at the slots. It then uses this input to determine how fast to spin the fans.
In my experiences with gaming on a multi-monitor mac (12" pBook) is that one of the monitors will often be disabled (WCIII in Fullscreen) to conserve VRAM. In the case of WCIII, you can specify which monitor you want to switch to.
OS X dynamically manages VRAM between multiple monitors, but with a workspace that big (dual 22" or 23"?), 64 MB of VRAM isn't nearly enough (as you pointed out). Quick, get yourself a Radeon 9800 Pro (or Special Edition). =) Exposé will be much smoother when you do.
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38 Comments
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David Shaw - Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - link
I don't use LaunchBar or any of the other third party modifiers. I do use MenuMeters, but that doesn't affect how you use the OS, it just puts all sorts of nice performance monitors in the menu bar.Whatever you do, please avoid APE and Haxies. They have been known to cause all sorts of system instability. Some people will argue that THEIR systems are stable with these tools installed, but I have seen dozens of reports where an obscure problem or crash was solved by removing APE.
Ryan - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link
I have yet to use Launchbar, I can't imagine needing to either.NeutronMonk - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
Kristopher- you're a madman! Very impressive... what machines and os(es) are you using?Erik K. Veland - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
Re: Dreamweaver MX2004.The main issue about Dreamweaver MX2004 is speed. Even typing in design-view is atrociously slow. It's main slogan for the 04-version was: "It's not about the things we've added, it's about the things we've removed." Great I thought and immediately ordered thinking they've fixed speed issues and reduced bloat (defaulting to generating pure CSS-layouts). But alas, DMX04 is even more bloated than before.
I don't regret it though, learning to code pure CSS-layouts (with inspiration from csszengarden.com and glish.com/css) has been nothing but rewarding for me and renewed my faith and joy in designing for web.
Just check out this site with Safari 1.2: http://www.erikveland.com/ambassador. Pure CSS. Note the hover-effects and how the menu behaves when you scroll the "Om prosjektet"-page.
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
Dual monitor? Check out my desk.http://images.anandtech.com/banners/kristopher/DSC...
Anand you got nothin!
Kristopher
woj - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
in response to NeutronMonk :yes, other apps dvd player comes to mind do have hidden menus a copy of tinkertool from, breslink.de I think will uncover them
NeutronMonk - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
For Safari, there is one tweak that is essential to do if you visit web sites that insist (contrary to what should be open web standards) that you are using IE for windows (some online banking sites come to mind). In Terminal, type in the following line:defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
This will give a new "Debug" menu in the menu bar of Safari. Click this and go down to "User Agent" and pick the the web browser you wish to "spoof". It works quite well for me! Remember to do this before you are on the site in question, and remember that the User Agent goes back to the default "Automatic" after a re-launch of Safari. Credit goes to macosxhints.com for this one- just do a search there for "Safari" and see what you come up with! By the way, I believe there are other hidden Debug menus...
A Blair - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
Wow, great to see Anand et al seriously considering Apple solutions. I've been an avid reader of Anand's column in CPU mag monthly and visitor to Anandtech before that, but have never owned any Apple products before. Not that I haven't come across more of them lately at conferences, technical & scientific conventions. Maybe it's just higher visibility with certain groups (like Tim O'Reilly's "alpha geeks") but there seems to be renewed interest. I couldn't be happier - after years of involvement, I can't help but feel the traditional computing world has become stangant and stifling in many ways. Of course, I haven't played many games in the last few years; I tend to (try) to use my systems as tools to get work accomplished. For the fist time the Mac is looking pretty tempting... Anand should write about his experiences in CPU mag as well, I know I'm not in the minority in being curious about it.Joe - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Once again, I am thinking of switching. Here is why. I becoming to believe that Apple may have the best product because they do the hardware and software and have integrated both better than those on the PC side where the software and hardware are treated as separate parts of the puzzle. So I am very curious about all of the Apple digital raz ma taz. ithis and ithat. I don't care about gaming and how many gigawatz my computer can run down the freeway, that not my cup of tea. However, I am interested in photos, music, etc, practical things I can do. I read you many times in the past and consider you the best technical expert on PCs. What I would really like to know is if Apple vs. PC is a better overall experience software and hardware for the average Joe.David Smith - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Launchbar is quite an amazing app, in my opinion. One more vote for at least trying it, although I can see why you might avoid third party enhancers (the unsanity.com haxies are particularly odd/interesting).Coren - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
You can right-click to bring up a context menu on items- ie drag the apps folder into the dock, right click and instantly have a list of apps to use.anand lal shimpi - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Erik K. VelandI haven't been happy with Dreamweaver MX '04 for Windows either, curious as to what your complaints are for OS X as I have yet to use it. My last favorite Dreamweaver was v3, since then there have been a lot of additions that I didn't need at all.
jeffosx
Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate them :) I have already played around with the terminal (after all I'm a command prompt guy at heart) and have already been handling some tasks in there instead of in the gui. I'll try the cd trick though to play around even more :)
Thanks again to everyone who has been commenting, everyone has been very helpful.
jak - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Anand, I am enjoying reading your blog. I love Macs and PCs both, and couldn't imagine limiting myself to only one platform; Why limit yourself to blondes or brunettes when you can have BOTH?!I would use OS X in its unadulterated form first, without Launchbar. For now, do the following:
Drag a copy of your Home icon to the dock.
Drag a copy of your Applications folder icon to the dock.
Now you'll be able to cntrl-click (or just left-click but keep the button depressed) on those dock icons and you'll get pop-up menus to access frequently used files and apps.
jeffosx - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Great approach to the trial so far Anand. I appreciate the way you dont complain about how OSX doesnt do this etc but rather "I cant figure out how to do this". Saves a lot of flame wars also.As an app switcher you may also like the way OSX differentiates applications from documents and so switching just documents is done via command-` .
You may also want to venture into the terminal at some point. They have some nice GUI integration there also. Try typing cd (then drag a folder from the finder to the terminal)
Erik K. Veland - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I just wanted to point out a small issue: Dreamweaver MX 2004 fucking sucks. And yes, I paid for it (or rather my work did). It was singlehandedly the one thing that pushed me back to hand-coding with just CSS.The last good Dreamweaver was version 4, when they ported to Mac OS X it got a lot worse. I thought it could only get better. Boy, was I wrong. Macromedia promise that they are working on an update though, but I just don't see how they can put any more makeup on that pig DMX2004 has become.
thePurpleGiant - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I use LaunchBar all the time. Yes, all the time, for nearly everything. I am not a Windows switcher at all, I just like to get things done as quick as possible, and LaunchBar lets me do that.SmurfTower - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
My mistake....thanks for the clarification. NeXT huh? wow thats some old code. :) I knew about the dock tho. :pbakshi - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Re: LaunchBarI used OS X for about two years before discovering LaunchBar and IMO it's like grease on the wheels. It just helps speed things up. I have a Dock pretty full of icons, but there's always something it doesn't have, for which I hit Cmd-Space, type a few characters that are in the app name and hit enter, boom. WAY faster than scrolling through a (hierarchical) menu of stuff to find what you want. No fuss, no muss. It's also great for firing off a quick email (it can search Address Book) and locating docs.
It's very good at predicting what you want, so even if you mispell something typing it quickly, or just plain enter a few characters, it knows what you want. I find myself typing only 3-4 characters and it already has the item I want highlighted.
I don't consider it to be a "Windows" thing at all (at least I'm not aware of anything remotely as functional in Windows). Start-Run is not quite the same thing.
Michael - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Judge Fire, it's also interesting to note for everyone that in addition to being on Apple's Safari/WebKit team, Dave Hyatt is also one of the lead developers for Mozilla Firefox.Michael - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
There isn't really anything like LaunchBar in a vanilla install of Windows. So, it definitely isn't a Windows-switcher's tool. However, I would strongly recommend sticking to vanilla OS X until you're very comfortable with it (at least a couple of weeks). This is what I did when I switched from windows and it worked very well for me. The only GUI enhancer I ever used was LiteSwitch X, however, most of its functionality is now in Panther so I have a completely vanilla Panther environment.Also, not using GUI enhancers at first would do a better service to your non-Mac readers in my opinion.
Judge_Fire - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
You might be using Safari as your browser, so you might appreciate David Hyatt's blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/He is working on Safari at Apple and discusses a number of design choices and features there - nicely open compared to what the h*** is happening with IE right now.
Anyway, related to picking up OS X as a Windows user, the entry on Safari 1.2 explains the UI keyboard shortcuts for tabbing etc.
J
Reply - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
They actually have a few apps similar to Expose for Windows, the most popular probably being WinPlosion (www.winplosion.com). They were originally called WinExpose, but I assume that they were forced to change the name. There's another one here - http://onlinetoolsteam.com/WindowsExposer/Product....I don't know if they work exactly like Expose, but they seem to accomplish the same thing, which is to use clever animations and transitions to organize your desktop.
Mark - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I use Launchbar to get to commonly accessed files and folders, sometimes to start up an e-mail message to a new person quickly. It's not so much a Windows switcher tool, as it is a convenience utility when you think "Oh yeah, I want to open this App/file or folder/etc. quickly".There's a similar tool called for Windows called AppRocket, but I haven't used it personally.
Judge_Fire - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
IMHO, LaunchBar is just one of those productivity enhancing tools that provides a great 'flow' experience in OS X (and perhaps Windows). As pointed out, it comes from NeXT so I don't really feel there's anything Windowish about it, quite the opposite. Of course it/copycats are likely available for Windows, but that's another issue.Another great such tool is Default Folder, which allows you to create, well, default folders for open/save dialogs and boost these dialogs in many other ways.
Some Haxies by Unsanity are quite functional too, like Windowshade. While Exposé renders the old OS 9 Windowshade feature kinda useless, things like making desired windows translucent via key/mouse shortcut is nice. Live ghost windows on your desktop : ) It also lets you control the window shadows, if you're for example having trouble visually distinguishing the topmost window. (Some people experience this with the less than perfect brushed metal shadows.)
The APE system behind their Haxies kinda hijacks every window being spawned, allowing things like theming or additional features like above. One such feature I've requested from them is the ability to 'float any window' into a global floater... let's see whta comes out of that. It'd be great for iChat, QuickTime Player, Console etc. - anything you want to keep an eye on when you're doing something else.
J
GL - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
No third party tools like you've mentioned here. I seem to be happy with just a plain vanilla OS X. Granted, I haven't tried Launchbar or many other of these utilities. I guess I wouldn't know what I was missing.Since you will be jumping back and forth to an XP install, can I suggest if you haven't already done so to use an IMAP mail server as opposed to POP3? Mail.app has excellent IMAP support - the best out of any client I've seen yet. Apple has really done a good job integrating it so IMAP feels at home like a POP3 account. By using an IMAP account though, I can jump over to XP and use Outlook Express to view/send my mail (Outlook doesn't like my IMAP server), or to Linux and use Evolution to do the same. It matches some of the benefits of web mail with the convenience of using a real e-mail client. If you don't have an IMAP server setup but would like to experiment with one, you should have a free 3 month .Mac trial membership that comes with an IMAP e-mail account and you can use that.
Likewise, I've switched over to using MSN because I can use it on any platform and not have to worry about contact synchronization. Prior to this I was using ICQ and it proved to be inflexible if I ever wanted to use it somewhere other than my main computer. I guess you could also use iChat (I believe it stores the address book server side too) but nobody up here in my neck of the woods tends to use AIM.
Thinking about switching - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Can you try out iLife, including Garage Band and let us know how it rates.Starman - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I don't use any third-party tools. I even tried DragThing which got on my nerves. It's pure OS X for me.Mike
_Em - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Personally, I went through a similar thing as you when migrating from OS 9 to OS X; I also decided to keep the OS as vanilla as possible for as long as possible. The result is that I've found lots of neat ways to use the dock, and haven't used any of the other add-ons.A couple of things to note:
You can put folders in your dock. when you click on a folder, a sub-menu of the contents pops up. This is a great way to sort your apps.
One definite app to use once you start to get lots of processes running on your mac is Process wizard (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/...
This sits in your menu bar and gives you control over all your running processes; you can kill them, switch to them, and change their priority on the fly.
One other thing to note: if you're not actually using a program, but it's still running, it will be one of the first things to be swapped out to disk. Even though I only have 384MB RAM in my mac, I find that I can leave 20 or so programs open with no problems, as usually I'm only actually *using* 4 or so at any given time. Instead of waiting for the application to launch, you just have to wait for it to swap into RAM.
anand lal shimpi - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Thanks again for all the responses guys. Keep em coming, they are helping a lot. I think I'm going to put all of these helpful hits into a FAQ of some sort at the end of the project to help others that have decided to switch (or at least try).SmurfTower
You are very right, I want to get as much of the OS X experience as possible without resorting to third party applications and drivers. That's one reason I didn't even bother with any third party mouse drivers as I wanted to get the full unmodified OS X experience. I may end up waiting on LaunchBar, but that brings up my next question:
For you OS X users out there, do you use LaunchBar a lot or consider it to be more of a Windows convertee's tool?
Take care,
Anand
Ripoff - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
LaunchBar comes from the NeXT days originally, as do a lot of Mac OS X concepts. So it's almost family ; )It's more Unix command line than something from the Windows UI world (except for dos, tho)
SmurfTower - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I would choose for you not to install Launch-Bar yet, experience the Mac UI more extensively before you start using with 3rd party apps. Launch-Bar is a Windows concept and trying to integrate this into the Macintosh will influence the outcome of this experiment. Judge OS X on its own merits.Judge_Fire - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Yeah, you can have different pics on two monitors, speking of which:You can get nice desktop pics, split in two (or more) and sized for large mac displays at http://www.mandolux.com
Here are a few direct links to a few of my favorites (visit above adress to get the whole frameset+navigation):
http://mandolux.mine.nu/desktops/fire-desktops/kit...
http://mandolux.mine.nu/desktops/cruising-desktops...
http://mandolux.mine.nu/desktops/technosis-anthrax...
But the Buddha, Skies and clouds and graffiti stuff are all quite good, too.
J
Paul - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
David, depending how you're doing your dual monitors you can do that with Nvidia's or ATI's drivers. However, if you're running 3 monitors off one ATI and one Nvidia card like me then you need some other software (that I have yet to find!).David - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
really enjoy reading your updates, and look forward to more.i believe your dual monitors on the mac are each capable of displaying a different desktop pic - minor, but i wish i could do that on this xp desktop.
Tim West - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Welcome to the Mac world. I got my G5 day after Thanksgiving last year and love it and OS X. The only thing I use my PC for now is playing BF1942/Desert Combat. Some points:- Gaming with the mac is probably it's weakest point, not becuase of any real problems, but becuase the software deploys later than on the PC - sometimes *years* later like Halo. I would go ahead and grab the new ATi 9800 Pro ( the 256 MB version that properly supports the G5's 8x AGP )instead of the OEM card before you come to any hard/fast conclusions in that area. For most users gaming is not really a issue on the mac, becuase like me, *thats* what they use their PC's for!
- That brings up the PC vs. Mac debate. I believe it's old news and self defeating to have endless debates on "which one is better" - there is no reason these days why a mac user cant have a PC kicking around just like I do to play games on thats not on the mac yet, and there's no reason a hi end PC user cant have a mac around. This is not 1999, it's 2004, and the computing world has moved ahead. Poeple need to move ahead along with the times.
I am enjoying reading your discoveries.
GL - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Yeah, Anand if you have the developer tools installed and want to see the point at which Exposé requires more VRAM than is available locally on the video card, you should run /Developer/Applications/Graphic Tools/OpenGL Driver Monitor. Click on the Monitors menu > Choose host > localhost followed by Monitors menu > Driver Monitors > (whatever driver is there...probably ATIRadeonGLDriver). A new monitor window should pop up. Click on Parameters and drag over "vramFreeBytes" and "gartUsedBytes". Adjust the graphing to your preferences. You should get something similar to this: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/GL/opengl.jpg. Each one of those spikes/dips was when I used Exposé and as you can see, my usage patterns at 1024x768 would require about 32 MB of VRAM at a minimum. I wouldn't be surprised, if as suggested by Lucian 64 MB is too little given your dual displays at high resolution.On another note, if ATI gets you that new Radeon 9800 Pro, let us know if it causes the fans to spin more. Apparently, the PowerMac doesn't monitor temperatures in the PCI/AGP card thermal zone. Instead, it monitors how much power is drawn at the slots. It then uses this input to determine how fast to spin the fans.
aristotle - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
In my experiences with gaming on a multi-monitor mac (12" pBook) is that one of the monitors will often be disabled (WCIII in Fullscreen) to conserve VRAM. In the case of WCIII, you can specify which monitor you want to switch to.Lucian - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
OS X dynamically manages VRAM between multiple monitors, but with a workspace that big (dual 22" or 23"?), 64 MB of VRAM isn't nearly enough (as you pointed out). Quick, get yourself a Radeon 9800 Pro (or Special Edition). =) Exposé will be much smoother when you do.