I, Mac
You’d probably except me to write an entry about my brand new, ridiculously expensive MacBook Pro. Since I’m usually such a positive person, I’m going to tell you all about the small things I dislike with my new toy.
- Keyboard layout - I miss a couple of keys. Where’s DEL? Why do I have to use the “fn”-key to use the Function buttons? Is there a way to reverse this setting?
- iTunes - iTunes is hell. Let me give you a quick example: Streaming. I’ve been unable to find a way to define the streaming buffer. There are three options; Small, Medium and Large. But how large is Large? 128KB? 64KB? 14 bits? Hard to tell. Sometimes, Large is not enough and I want to define the size the damn buffer myself!
- The missing software - I’m missing Miranda for all my IM needs. I’m using Adium X now, but it just doesn’t do it for me. Any good alternatives? I need a program that’s capable of handling MSN and ICQ - Yahoo! and AIM is also nice.
- The heat - Have the MacBook turned on for a while, touch the wrong parts and you’ll get a burn. I have still not heard the fans power up. This is supposedly because Apple applied the cooling paste in the wrong way.
- The angle of the display.
The display does not bend back far enough. When I’m sitting straight in my chair, I’m sitting too high. Lowering the chair my eyes are in the right angle with respect to the screen, but now the keyboard is positioned too high and my shoulders hurt. This whole problem might be cause by my miserably unproportioned body.Solved by Gine - who pushed the screen back a couple of more inches. Yes, I’m a bit (too) careful with new stuff… - The mouse. I’m having a hard time clicking on what I meant to be clicking on because the mouse pointer accelerates in an unfamiliar matter. I’ve been playing around with the settings, but no love there.
Before all you Mac-freaks out there start flaming me with “if you hate it so much, why do you use it”, youre so stuuupid!!!!!!!!11!" and other intelligent responses:
Most of this stuff caused by my coming from the PC world and it’s just a matter of getting used to the MacBook and the way it works. I’ll get used to the keyboard layout and I’ll hopefully find some of the software I’m looking for. I could need a transition guide or something like that. Maybe it’s a case of RTFM?
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KristofferI wouldn’t call myself a Mac-freak, but at least for now it’s my weapon of choice. I don’t have a hip new MacBook, though, just an outdated PowerBook. Still, I’m quite happy with it. As for your issue nr 4 & 5:
My laptop gets hot AND is noisy as hell. Enjoy the silence, and buy some asbestos gloves.
I’ve said it many times: Women can be incredibly useful.
As for the pc-mac transition, you could get the Boot Camp-software, thus being able to install WinXP on your mac.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
There are some other solutions called virtualisations (kinda like an emulator, but not quite the same), but since I don’t have an Intel-processor in my ancient laptop, I haven’t really bothered to look into it…
Did you try to open your laptop and remove all the dust? I’ve got an old laptop that had the same problem. Cleaning it and now it doesn’t get hot and the fans never really turn on.
As for Boot Camp, it’s a good idea, but I’ve already got a PC and didn’t really buy the Mac to run PC software…
