MacBook Pro Buyers Remorse - am I missing something?

[runebinder]

Some good advice already given, certainly the mac 101 and David Pogue links are very well worth folowing up.

My first experience of OS X was similar, looked and felt like Ubuntu to me. Do have a bit of patience and keep an open mind though, I've gone from what's all the fuss about to loving OS X.

There are always going to be features in other O/S's that are better, Win7s customisations are great, I mean OS Xs choices are grey or blue! Also Windows snap is very nice, however shake is pretty pointless IMO. Linux wise there's Compiz Fusion which I adore, big fan of eye candy and think it's some of the best desktop effects going.

On the other hand the Dock is ingenious, prefer it to the Windows taskbar and you have to do a lot of fiddling around Linux wise to get something comparable. Personal preference here, but go into Dock settings and reduce the size down a bit and turn magnification on. Also tick minimise into application icon, stops the Dock from getting too cluttered.

Windows Expose and Spaces are very useful to, as well as 4 finger swipe left/right to scroll between open apps. Dashboard is good (Vista Sidebar/Win7 Gadgets is a poor imitation of it), just use F4 to activate and click on the plus button in the bottom left to add more widgets.

In terms of other devices on the network, mine show up fine in the Finder sidebar. Go to System preferences> Sharing> Select File Sharing then Options and select Share Files and Folders using SMB (Windows). Also if you do get access to another Mac screen sharing is pretty funky.

Preview is good, if you have some PDFs/Docs/Videos etc, in Finder where their located zoom in and you can look through the pages/play the file without having to open it.

If you haven't already try Time Machine out, great back up tool, much better than System Restore as you can restore the system or just an individual file. Also looks pretty cool.

Basic Apps wise:

MacFuse: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ NTFS3G: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/2010/01/ntfs-3g-for-mac-os-x-2010116.html. Good if you need to read and write to NTFS devices.

Perian: http://perian.org/ Enables QuickTime to play many more video formats.

Flip4Mac: http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm Enables QuickTime to play Windows Media formats.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[stevespa]

I originally bought my first mac with the intention of installing windows in bootcamp and never running osx. I like the the look and feel of the hardware, and after the Intel switch, it made sense.

I used XP in bootcamp at work (worked flawless), and then tried OSX at home. It took me almost a month to figure out that I liked OSX better than windows (it just clicked one day). I switched to Parallels for windows, and started using OSX more and more. Now I'm almost completely weaned off Windows (just waiting for our exchange to upgrade from 2003 to 2010 so I can use Mail).

There really is no reason for remorse. If you miss windows, install in boot camp and be happy. You'll have a stable windows machine that looks great, and you can learn OSX on your own time.

 

[mrochester]

try a program called cinch... is the exact same as 'aero snap' in windows 7.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/75003534

That's brilliant! Thanks for that one. I must make a note of all these programs for future reference. Or keep the installation files in case I need them again in the future.

 

[mrochester]

Hello again all.

I've been having a play around with the settings - it has to be said, the track pad does not come intuitively! I might have an iPhone and be used to multitouch gestures, but the complexity of gestures on this thing is far greater, and it definitely takes some practice and a lot of setting up to get it the way you like it! I've also setup Spaces so that my browser, mail and IM programs are fixed to a separate space each, so that they don't get in the way of each other.

I'm a bit peed that Cinch wants to charge 7USD just to get windows to snap to the edges of the screen! However, this is an incredibly useful feature, and something I use an awful lot in Windows 7 (Media Centre window and web browser/email client perfectly side by side).

BTW, can anyone tell me how to switch a British English dictionary? Firefox is underlining 'centre' as an incorrect spelling even though that is perfectly correct here!

Many thanks

Michael.

 

[mingoglia]

OSX is different from Windows, not better. You get people go on and on about how its so much better - they are either liars or uninformed. OSX's beauty, for me, is Unix. Terminal.app is the single most powerful thing on the computer, and I like that. For others its just a pretty OS with limited options. Its a sidewise computing experience to windows, in someways higher and in someways lower. I WILL say keep the computer and see if its strengths are what your looking for. Those strengths are very good on OSX.

I agree 100%. Though Win7 is much much better than XP and is on at least an equal playing field with OSX. Like you I use it much less for the OSX and more for the unix. I've been a FreeBSD user for years and in fact all my servers are FreeBSD. OSX allows me to easily navigate multiple terminals. I will say the other advantage though is Spaces. I stuck to X Windows for years due to the multiple desktops and only made the move to OSX when I discovered spaces. People get dizzy when they watch me work and navigate through all my desktops in almost one fluid motion.

 

[Azathoth]

Hello again all.

I've been having a play around with the settings - it has to be said, the track pad does not come intuitively! I might have an iPhone and be used to multitouch gestures, but the complexity of gestures on this thing is far greater, and it definitely takes some practice and a lot of setting up to get it the way you like it! I've also setup Spaces so that my browser, mail and IM programs are fixed to a separate space each, so that they don't get in the way of each other.

Michael.

Yep, anyone that says that OS X is always more intuitive is just lying. My mother (who can write emails and skype, but is otherwise a n00b), spent 2 hours waiting on the new MB to do something before I told her that she needed to press the whole trackpad in for it to register as a click (trying solving *that* issue over the phone!).

It is indeed the terminal which is the killer app on OS X (and things like 'grep' etc) - this was no doubt the best move made by Apple, which was going nowhere fast in its OS 9 days.

But ppl are very set in their ways. At work ppl remember a bit of Windows from the XP days, most never used Vista ("because it's junk") and don't realise that Win7 has come a long way since 2001. Sure some of it is copied, in other areas I think they have better functionality than OS X (hey look, there the whole FreeBSD base was taken as the foundation)

*But* MS, which serves both consumer & business markets (yes, OS X is used in business too, but a negligable % at the moment) - hates to remove backwards compatibility and is therefore stuck using some models (Registry etc) which are probably not optimal in practice.

Apple is quite happy to abandon users along the way (Snow Leopard doesn't support Apple's own machines from <2005 that are PowerPC based) and the users are more than happy to leap to Apple's defence in saying that it's necessary for 'progress' and that Apple doesn't give you what you want, but 'what you need'

I think that over time you'll learn to live and enjoy OS X - I hope I will. And then you'll go back and wonder how you ever managed without 'feature X' - like I do now when I'm on an XP machine (and I don't even use Aero on Win7)

 

[BrianMR]

What a silly statement. I went back and I know plenty of people who have.

parajba...yes there are lots of things weird or left out with the OS when comparing it to Windows. Over time I found I liked it better that Windows except for a few minor things that I just dealt with.

Mrochester....I switched back not because the OS was underwhelming but because I thought the price was ridiculous for what I was getting. I would give it at least the return period and wring it out...you may love it. There is a learning curve coming from a lifetime of Windows. But despite what the fandom here will tell you there are plenty of good laptops from other brands and lots of people go back and forth.

When did you switch back? Are you still using a Mac but with Win7? Just curious what pulls a Windows user into posting on a Mac forum. Not dissing, just wondering.

To the OP, do give it a few days. Google around for guides on switching from Windows to Mac to help you find the little shortcuts, tips & helper apps that make an OS a home.

 

[mrochester]

Does anyone know if it's possible to have expose show all windows in all spaces? Right now, it's just showing me the open windows within the space I'm in, but it'd be great if I could see everything.

 

[matoch]

Does anyone know if it's possible to have expose show all windows in all spaces? Right now, it's just showing me the open windows within the space I'm in, but it'd be great if I could see everything.

Just hold down your spaces and expose buttons at the same time. You shoudl be able to see all the open application windows.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

What a silly statement. I went back and I know plenty of people who have.

I went back because of the horrible window management on OS X. Windows 7 is a much more productive OS, although I keep my MBP around for playing WoW in bed, and Final Cut. But otherwise I have a $450 Dell laptop that's more useful than my MBP.

 

[mrochester]

Just hold down your spaces and expose buttons at the same time. You shoudl be able to see all the open application windows.

Sorry, what I mean is, right now, I can swipe down with 4 fingers to activate expose, but that only shows the windows open in the current space. However, there doesn't appear to be a trackpad shortcut to show spaces, from where you can then also activate expose. Is there no setting for this, or am I just missing something?

The workaround I have found so far is to use an active screen corner to open spaces, then I can utilise expose once that is open, but ideally I'd like to keep away from an active screen corner since I am very likely to active it by mistake!

Thanks!

 

[ExcelonGT]

Take a look at a little program called: sizeup. It's really awesome for window management, albeit it all with keyboard shortcuts. But once you get used to that, you'll wonder how you ever did without.

windows 7 does this natively

 

[njean777]

I've just ordered a MBP 15 (antiglare) and will probably be going through the same steps - about 20% of the office are using MBPs and raving about how good they are. Most migrated from various versions of Linux (where 20% of anything doesn't work), whereas I'll be coming from a Win7 background. We run the office on Linux, so OS X's unix foundation is the only reason that it makes sense for me to go to a Mac (Linux is too time consuming to get working properly on a laptop, and often has issues regarding sleep mode)

The multitouch trackpad seems to be the 'killer app' for the MBP - though I cannot honestly say that it's intuitive.

I already know that there will be a couple of features like window management that IMO are *better* on Windows 7:
*window resize from any part of the window edge
*snap to edge when resizing
*Win key + arrow keys for smart tiling of windows (or moving to another monitor)
*I like the maximise button to reduce window clutter - when I'm working on 5 projects I prefer to have only one window visible at a time.


Hopefully I'll be able to find some little utilities that can sort out some of those things. Any suggestions?

1.Cinch will do the same thing windows does from any edge on the screen.
2.I dont use 2 monitors so i have no clue what osx does in this situation.
3.You can maximize the windows, and just use expose to switch from window to window. That would be the F3 key.Mac doesnt have a maximize button but you can resize the window as you see fit from the bottom right corner.

 

[murdercitydevil]

I've been missing the window snap feature myself, thank you for the cinch recommendation, that's awesome.

 

[relativist]

Not sure if it's available where you are at, but it's always a good idea to get one-to-one with a mac, especially for a switcher like yourself. Maybe they will still let you buy it if you claim you didn't know about it (maybe you really didn't)? I've been using a macbook for 2 years now, but when I upgrade to the macbook pro this summer I'll be getting one-to-one, there is a lot yet to learn...

 

[mrochester]

Hi all, me again!

I must have hit some key combination, or done something on the trackpad, and I couldn't work out how to get it back to normal so I had to restart!

What happened was, when in the spaces view (where I can see my 4 desktops), I couldn't make it zoom into one of my desktops. Instead, when I click one of the windows, I was taking direct control of the app running in that space - so I was browsing a really tiny version of the web, and scrolling through a really tiny list of emails. I've also set my dock to auto-hide, and this wouldn't come back up again either.

Does anyone know how I got into, and how to get out of, this mode?

Many thanks again!

Michael.

 

[neteng101]

Not sure if you've already seen them, but the video tutorials are a great starting point...

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/

 

[breathesrain]

After using mostly Macs for most of my life, all I can say is that I'm glad there's so much of a difference between windows and OS X. Imagine what we'd be missing out if we didn't have a choice between them, whatever benefits and drawbacks each OS has. I mean, right now you can dual-boot Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, with both working fairly well. I find that to be more impressive than individual features of either operating system.

 

[neteng101]

Does anyone know how I got into, and how to get out of, this mode?

Sounds like you got Spaces, and Expose views going at the same time. Expose view shows you thumbnails of running application windows in a particular Space. The videos I posted above will help you figure out Expose and Spaces better - so much easier seeing it in action vs. me trying to explain it all.

If you lose your dock, and need to un-auto-hide it, you can always go to the Apple menu, Dock - Dock Preferences and change it to not auto-hide.

 

[mrochester]

Sounds like you got Spaces, and Expose views going at the same time. Expose view shows you thumbnails of running application windows in a particular Space. The videos I posted above will help you figure out Expose and Spaces better - so much easier seeing it in action vs. me trying to explain it all.

If you lose your dock, and need to un-auto-hide it, you can always go to the Apple menu, Dock - Dock Preferences and change it to not auto-hide.

I know that you can combine expose and spaces. However, this was something else. In the spaces window, I could type an IM to someone that was located in the 2nd space. But clicking on space 2 didn't zoom me into it, it was directly manipulating the windows within the space. I have no idea how I made this happen, and I've done it twice now!

 

[frostiex]

I would say call up apple support and setup a time with one of the genius at the apple store, they have 1 on 1 session to teach you how to get things done the Mac way. very nice....I was a windows ONLY user only up until June last year (been using windows since the 286 era). When I won a Macbook Pro from a contest last June and once I started using it...I can't go back. It took me about 2 weeks to get used to it....my wife took her complaining about 1 month of constant bitching every time she sits in front of it and now she loves it...everything is so easy...really.

I only run bootcamp for steam!

 

[Jason Beck]

Better Touch Tool's window snapping is excellent and configurable. I have found that with the purchase of a new mac the added benefit of the trackpad is excellent. The Magic Mouse and Wireless keyboard are awesome too.

 

[dyn]

In fact my strategy has always been to learn and use cross platform sw as much as possible, to prevent being tied down to any - and I would recommend others reading this thread to do the same.

That's one of the most stupidest things to recommend. It's not about the software but it's all about the content. If you can you should use something that is available for a variety of applications. For example The GIMP. It is cross platform but when using it's native file format you're in a lock in because that file format is only known to The GIMP. If you switch to some other app you can't use your files, your content. If you use something like jpg or png you don't have this problem. If you are working with other people on something this is also the way to go. Use a file format everyone can use, but never ever focus on OS or applications!

*Thunderbird

Mail and Thunderbird are actually very good together. I didn't have any problems moving from Evolution to Thunderbird and Mail or back. As long as you can import or simply re-use the mailbox files there isn't really a problem. Again, it's the file format that counts, not the software.

*Openoffice (our 25 person company runs on openoffice since 2001)

This is also shows the importance of file formats. You can use it for ODF, OOXML and those old Office format files. I think it's much better than iWork because it does a far better job at OOXML and the old Office files.

*Adobe Lightroom

Mind you, this only runs on Windows or OS X, no Linux port. Might be important for people with a unixy background.

Any Live Messenger recommendations? aMSN was never that stable when I tried it in 2008 ish period.

Most people would vote for Adium but it lacks audio/video support. Messenger 8 (the official Microsoft one) is in beta and it supports audio/video but it is very very buggy and slow. Some people find aMSN a lot better than Messenger 8 beta.

1. Windows management is better from a "I need to get a lot of work done"
standpoint but horrible from a "I need to look over data while using another program" standpoint. Spaces helps alleviate this, if you can train yourself to use it you wont miss snapping windows as much.

That's not true at all. The content is being displayed in a window and you simply compare windows. You can do that in every mainstream OS, they don't differ in that department. OS X's way of doing it is a little better than Windows way of doing it. In OS X nearly everything is in a window, in Windows this isn't the case because that depends on the developer. If they implemented a multi document interface than all of the windows are in 1 window, more like tabs. This makes it very hard and even impossible to compare content in the same application because there is no way of putting the content side by side. Most people use Firefox, try comparing 2 tabs and 2 windows and you'll see what I mean.

The only downside is the amount of clutter it brings. You have a lot of windows on your screen after some time. Closing a window means closing a window, it's not quitting an application. That can be very confusing to people who are not used to Macs and it can't be changed. You need to manually close the application by using your mouse or keyboard (cmd-q).
Things like Expose, minimising windows and hiding applications are great tools for managing the clutter. If you want to concentrate on just 1 application you can hide all others, if you want to concentrate on 1 window you can either close or minimise the other windows. Spaces is something you use when you want to group applications and/or windows, like as if you were working on different projects. The same way you'd do in Linux or even Windows (powertoys for xp had something like that).

Moral of the story: Macs are different and people need to relearn some basic principles of doing things. Window management is one of the most essential things that are completely different from doing things when compared to other OS's such as Windows and Linux. It seems to be one of the biggest obstacles. However, most people like the way it works after they've given it some time to familiarise themselves with it. Learn that and simply substitute control for command and you just learned half of OS X. There are quite some other nifty things you can do regarding automating things. Take a look at Automator, Services and Folder Actions. They can be very useful and powerful instruments. The other 50% is something you need to go out and explore.

I've been having a play around with the settings - it has to be said, the track pad does not come intuitively! I might have an iPhone and be used to multitouch gestures, but the complexity of gestures on this thing is far greater, and it definitely takes some practice and a lot of setting up to get it the way you like it!

What do you mean by that? There isn't much to setup, you simply enable or disable some settings and that's it. If you want to do some really cool stuff you need 3rd party tools like better touch tool. Great application because it let's you set your own gestures for both the trackpad and the magic mouse.
When compared to the setup you need to do in the Synaptics settings on a Windows machine, Apple's implementation is overly simple (too simple imo so I prefer better touch tool). Btw, better touch tool does window snapping too.

My mother (who can write emails and skype, but is otherwise a n00b), spent 2 hours waiting on the new MB to do something before I told her that she needed to press the whole trackpad in for it to register as a click (trying solving *that* issue over the phone!).

Most trackpads are setup that way. They disable tap by default. It's one of the first things I enable when reinstalling notebooks (with OS X, Windows, Linux). I think they do that to prevent problems when people are trying to move the cursor, they might accidentally tap which can cause something to start doing something. This is not much of a problem when you have visual buttons instead of an entire trackpad that functions as a button. Oh and you need to click on the lower part of the trackpad as well. Not something Apple did well

windows 7 does this natively

So does OS X. Both systems do it differently: one maximise the window to your screen, the other optimises the size of the window to whatever is inside the window (you could call it "maximise to content"). Some like the OS X way, some like the Windows way.

 

[pastparticiple]

When did you switch back? Are you still using a Mac but with Win7? Just curious what pulls a Windows user into posting on a Mac forum. Not dissing, just wondering.

I switched when the new MBPs came out with disappointing specs, higher price, and the slimy "you can have matte but only on high res and it will cost you 150usd extra" option. Don't get me wrong I love OSX and the MBP is a nice laptop I just find it no longer a good value. When I can get 99% of what I need in a machine that costs 1/3 of a MBP I realized I didn't want to reward a company with my money for being such greedy ****s. But of course the fanboys say it's because I am jealous and can't afford it.

I still have an older MBP that I use occasionally but use a PC as my main machine. I am posting because I want to just like you. I know some people think that only those who drink the kool-aid should be posting, but that's not how the real world works.

 

[underblu]

In my mind the only Windows based laptop that comes close to the MBP in design and overall performance is the HP Envy. The envy costs about the same, has marginally better performance but is not encased in a billet of stunning high performance aluminum.

Oh yeah than there's OSX. As a current XP user (on my desktop) I find it easier switching between XP and OSX than trying to figure out Vista or 7.