The other update I suppose is my trip to the Apple store in Chavwater, er Bluewater. I was extremely keen, as mentioned before, to have a good play on the Mac, especially with regards to its access features, Zoom and Voiceover. Well the store was suitably empty and I even managed to grab hole of two Genii (or is that Geniuses?) who showed me how to finish off the job of making it work. I had a good play, and here are my issues:
- Zoom gives Zoomtext a run for its money. So far this has been the best mag package I have used on the PC, so I was pretty impressed with it overall.
- I was also impressed by its OS look and feel in general. However, I must just ask any MacHeadz reading this (yes, I know there is a least one of you reading) – are there any keyboard shortcuts to do common functions? For example, ALT-F4 closes a window in Windows; CTRL-C is the copy key, etc etc. Since I try to use the keyboard if there is a mouse equivalent, then this matters to me. Sure they exist, but can’t find much about them online. I certainly didn’t find many which were freely translatable from Windows, but a) I was fairly time-limited and b) I only really thought about when I let the store.
- A Mac seems like a good idea in principle, but is it significantly better than, say, my standard Dell laptop (its an iBook I’m interested in)? The only sin this laptop has against it is that it is pretty slow by today’s desktop standards, but then again it is three years old.
- Can I be bothered to learn a new way of working? I am forced to us PC software at work, and I’ve not done else from about 1990 when I first acquired the old Ness (home build job) 386sx running DOS 4.01. Windows/PC day-to-day operation seems pretty neat by those standards – those days when using a Mac was entirely different ballgame to running a PC . How different, other than the fiddly little learning differences, is one from the other now? I hate computers for their own sake in the sense that my wife is. I just want something which works and does a few small tasks well, eg, Internet, WP, email, blogging. The most advanced thing I currently do is log on to work via an SSH secure link (which apparently can be done on the Mac, but I suppose I’d better check to be sure). Not much to ask so perhaps a Mac is just overkill?
Mood: Hot, but generally feeling pretty fine.
Book: Mac mags (ooh the excitement is excruciating)
Music: BBC London burbling in the background
1 comment:
Hi Adam, it's me again; your reader :-)
are there any keyboard shortcuts to do common functions? For example, ALT-F4 closes a window in Windows; CTRL-C is the copy key, etc etc.
Of course there are.
Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
Full keyboard navigation keyboard shortcuts
You can even create spoken commands for keyboard shortcuts of your choice, so you can say 'Close window' or whatever.
Here's another URL for Voiceover discussions: http://discussions.info.apple.com/tiger.voiceover/
A Mac seems like a good idea in principle, but is it significantly better than, say, my standard Dell laptop
That's difficult to say objectively. I mean, yes; it is better. But significantly? I don't know. It also depends on many personal and subjective things. So based on my personal experience, I can tell you that for me, it is significantly better. Why? I can sum it up by saying that after 13 years using Windows (since version 3.0), and after switching to Mac, the only thing I regret is not having made the switch before. I can now enjoy using my computer, which is a feeling I had in the good old Spectrum days. :-)
Can I be bothered to learn a new way of working?
The learning curve is not steep at all, and you'll find yourself at home with the Mac in no time. In fact, you'll find that many things such as the folder hierarchy (how things are structured inside the file-system), or tiny details of the GUI, or how things work, really make sense in the Mac. And at this point, you'll start noticing (and disliking) how those things, which you may take for granted now, are implemented in Windows.
If you use MS Office at work, it is the same thing on the Mac, only better (the only drawback being that there is no Access for the Mac, which in my opinion, is no drawback at all :-)
The same applies to many other applications of course.
Another bit of personal experience, which I believe all switchers go through, is this: whenever the spinning beach ball replaces the regular mouse pointer (signalling that the computer is busy), and stays spinning for more than say 30 seconds, your first and only thought at this point is "Feck... it has crashed"; Well, chances are it has not. It's just your brain, which is used to numerous hang-ups in Windows. Thankfully, that horrible feeling goes away once your brain readjusts.
I just want something which works
You said it yourself, mate. What's the most used phrase associated to Macs? "It just works". Period.
And no, a Mac is not overkill if you factor in all the included accessibility features, its ease of use, its logical (and why not...) clever design (both in structure and function), etc.
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