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Accidental purchase

Would you look at that?

Well, perhaps it wasn’t entirely accidental, but I appear to have bought myself a new Apple MacBook.

So far it appears to be pretty lovely. Being used to a Windows machine, I’m still getting used to the slight keyboard odditites and lack of a right mouse button, but it’s proved to be a fairly easy trans­ition so far.

I switched it on, filled in my details, chose a wireless network… and we’re done. Start up iTunes and within seconds I’m stream­ing music from the rest of the house. It’s a bucket full of aceness!

Right, what’s the text editor of choice out there? I’m used to TopStyle on the PC if that’s any help. Any other must-have software I need to download?

  • This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Apple, Geek, Photo.
  • Comments are currently closed for this entry.

19 Responses to “Accidental purchase”

1. SimonB on June 27th, 2006 at 9:06 pm

Ooo, nice.

2. matt on June 27th, 2006 at 9:13 pm

Watchout it doesn;t set fire to your house.

and BBEdit.

and, right mouse button = use a mouse with a right mouse button (or hold control down) (or I believe there’s a combin­a­tion of track­pad finger­ing you can do to get the contex­tual menu up) ;)

3. Olly on June 27th, 2006 at 9:32 pm

Oooh, using two fingers on the track­pad scrolls the page. That’s clever.

Simple things eh? :)

4. Weon on June 27th, 2006 at 9:42 pm

How long before you are cursing the use of Apple+C/V instead of CTRL+C/V though — it still annoys the hell out of me.

5. Weon on June 27th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

Also, do the MacBooks have a tap of the track­pad as a mouse click? The old Powerbooks didn’t and it catches me out every time and I end up sitting staring at the screen wonder­ing why nothing is happen­ing, frantic­ally tapping the track pad!

6. Weon on June 27th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

Me again. Make sure you don’t actually touch your MacBook

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2516244

7. Olly on June 27th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

I seem to have taken to apple-c/v fine so far and the track­pad doesn’t do the tap thing.

I’d heard about the discol­our­a­tion thing — i’m not too worried about that to be honest. All of my stuff looks a mess within a few days of me buying it anyway ;-)

8. matthew on June 27th, 2006 at 10:19 pm

congrats..
as for text editor

SubEthaEdit or Textwranger are my choices, simply google for em.

9. matthew on June 27th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

oh yes, sorry and Quicksilver is a must.

10. Ben Ward on June 27th, 2006 at 11:45 pm

Regarding the track­pad and right click­ing and stuff: I believe the new MacBooks/Pros allow you to place two fingers on the track­pad and click the button to right click (rather than stretch­ing for Control). My older iBook supports this with a 3rd party driver too and I’ve reached the point where I prefer it over PC based laptops twin buttons, as I tend to hit it right in the middle. Much more comfy I find.

Also, the track­pad click/click-drag is config­ur­able (disable­able) from System Preferences. I have it just set to click (not drag), although this can be annoy­ing if you’re new to laptops gener­ally as your thumb will nudge it when you’re typing and move the carat.

Finally, text editing is now being done with TextMate for me. It’s lovely and very well behaved as regards integ­ra­tion with the OSX user exper­i­ence is concerned. TextWrangler (the free version of BBEdit) irrit­ates me with its odd UI and excess­ively mahoos­ive menus. Definitely give TextMate’s 30 day trial a good run and then see if anything else compares. Smultron might be worth a look too (and is free).

11. Simon on June 28th, 2006 at 10:43 am

Do they still have the plastic cover­ing fans and causing burning thing going on? A laptop that you cant actually put on your lap… clever.

12. matt on June 28th, 2006 at 11:31 am

“The old Powerbooks didn’t and it catches me out every time and I end up sitting staring at the screen wonder­ing why nothing is happening”

You can tap it, you just need to tell the computer you want to, most people disable it… coz it’s dead annoying.

(I’m waiting for the Mac Pro to arrive / my power­book to explode, before updating)

13. Marc on June 28th, 2006 at 12:35 pm

Bootcamp? :-)

14. Olly on June 28th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

That would mean buying a legal copy of Windows ;-)

15. matt on June 28th, 2006 at 6:39 pm

Get work to buy you one. :)

16. SimonB on June 28th, 2006 at 9:10 pm

Should have bought a Dell. Mine is ace :)

17. T1 on July 1st, 2006 at 10:10 am

Tell you what my ex work Dell C610 for not a lot of cash at all is the best not a lot of cash I think I have ever spent !

18. Olly on July 1st, 2006 at 10:32 am

Nah, it’s rubbish! ;-)

19. J Duncan on October 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Nice! You can ‘right click’ by holding ctrl and click­ing btw. More of a windows person myself, but a mac has it’s advantages.