Tag: Apple

A couple of months back, I was weighing my options for a new system. After I wrote my past post, I went and installed the evaluation version of Windows 8, and chose to use as my primary system, which turned out I did so for about three weeks. After all, I did want to give it a fair shake since I had not really used it since Consumer Preview. I’ll be honest, I am not quite as negative on Windows 8 as I was previously – there are noticeable performance improvements, and I started getting a little more used to the Start screen (once getting in the mode of hitting the windows key, then typing what app you want – ala Unity in Ubuntu). I still find it odd though that some system settings are in Metro, while others are still in the traditional Control Panel area. In the end, it still feels pretty disjointed. I’m hoping that Blue, now to be officially Windows 8.1 will solve some of this.

So in the end I chose a Mac, and purchased one about a month ago. Specifically a MacBook Pro 13″ – the base model, but had the RAM upgraded to 8GB. This was partially due to budget, and partially I found I like a smaller to medium footprint in a notebook, but still wanted decent hard drive space.

Now, I was still playing with Windows 8 some on the old system. I attempted to configure it for my son to use while we were going away for the weekend, but it had an issue with Minecraft complaining about video drivers. Once I installed what was supposed to be Windows 8 video drivers (ATI), Minecraft would run, but then the system would “blank out” after some time, and then not respond until you hard rebooted it. Time was running short, so for that trip, I had to revert back to Windows 7.

So back to the Mac. I like it. I am still relearning some things, but honestly remember quite a bit from when I used one last several years back. My setup is a 24″ monitor, keyboard, and mouse, with the laptop to the right opened as a secondary monitor. I’ve also moved the dock to the left side of the screen, as I’ve done in Windows when I use it, and as Unity does by default in Ubuntu. There is also a monitor to the left of the 24″ monitor, but that is hooked up to a cable box to use when I want to watch some TV.

One of the biggest adjustments I’ve needed to make is using Command instead of Control with keyboard shortcuts, i.e. Ctrl-C becomes Command-C in OSX. Once nice thing about having a mechanical keyboard is that I was able to physically move keycaps on the keyboard to match the remapping of keys I did. Note the Ctrl, Alt (equal to Option in OSX), and the blank “Windows” meta key used for Control.

To raise the laptop up so the screen is closer to the height of the main monitor, and also give some more room for the external mouse, I found Bench Cookies work quite well!

Some of you may be thinking, “once someone gets a Mac, they’ll want all their devices to be Apple”. This is true for some – one person I know also switched recently to Mac, then he quickly followed by getting an iPhone, replacing his Android. I tend to be a person who says “never say never”, but at this time I just don’t see myself adopting all things Apple or migrating into the Apple ecosystem. I am using OSX as an OS that gets out of my way. My wife has an iPhone, which I think is a great fit for her, but I personally still am more drawn to Android for my phone and tablet. I use Google products and really like how Android works with those products. My approach as I see it is very similar to Lamarr Wilson, with the difference being I have and like my Nexus 7 while he enjoys an iPad for a tablet. (If you are not familiar with Lamarr, check his channel out. He’s a very funny dude.)

So there it is. You can probably expect posts in the future that will include Mac, as well as Windows and Linux when I discuss OS related topics. Isn’t variety great?