Accidental purchase

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?

Posted in Apple, Geek, Photo on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

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