Mac 2 - Connections and Spaces
Categories : Apple, Personal |
Day 2, and here’s some more thoughts on my Mac experience. The initial combination of “wow!” and “what the?!” has now given way to an increasing feeling of confidence, as I’m starting to get my MacBook organised, work out what does what, and set it up the way I want it. It’s getting late, but I’ll touch on a couple of topics that spring to mind :
Networking
I was a bit unsure as to how my MacBook would go on my network with my Vista PC, but so far things haven’t been too bad. Firstly, wireless internet connection through my router took about 30 seconds to setup and has worked fine. Secondly connection to my networked HP all-in-one printer (which plugs directly into my router) was very easy - much smoother than Vista which keeps losing the printer. I haven’t tried using the scanner component of it yet though.The next thing I tried was iTunes. On my PC I have set the iTunes software to share my music on the network. Loaded up iTunes on the Mac and immediately I could see my library on my PC and start playing songs. Just had to authorize the MacBook on my iTunes account to be able to play purchased tracks. Obviously Apple software likes talking to Macs - this was so easy!The next part was not quite as easy - accessing the contents of my PC hard drive from my Mac. I’ve had problems with sharing on Vista before, even with my old Vista laptop. But this only took me 15 minutes or so to sort out thanks to a bit of googling - just needed the IP address of my PC, set-up a new user account on the PC with a password, and re-set some of the sharing permissions on the PC and I was good to go. Not quite as painful as I thought it might be.Final step is if my Vista PC can access content on my Mac hard drive. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Spaces and Shortcuts
Quite impressed with Leopard’s native ability to run a multiple desktop setup. Not that the high-res screen isn’t plenty big - but it’s nice to be able to assign apps that I want running but don’t need to see at all times (like iTunes or Messenger or Mail) to another desktop “space” that I can instantly get to with one keypress. And I can drag and drop applications between spaces. Very handy feature that illustrates one of the key diferences with Mac OS - keyboard shortcuts are way more important. In Windows most everything is done with a mouse - keyboard shortcuts are available but I was always too lazy to learn more than a few. In MacOS the keyboard shortcuts seem to take a much greater prominence, something that I imagine, as I learn them over time, will speed up the way I work. Mousing on the Mac is more versatile than you might think, given that there is only one button. Some useful hints on my previous entry have shown me how to scroll and “right-click” and get more use out of my trackpad.
