Day 1
The first day with the MacBook Pro was smoother than I thought. Launching the Photo Booth app and setting the effects to Bulge, Dent, Stretch, or Squeeze is just a great way to start a Monday. My wife and oldest son who are not morning persons got some good laughs out of that. Compare that app, with the one that has fascinated millions of first time Windows users. Solitaire. Interesting comparison huh? With solitaire, people stare blindly into their computer zombified yet focused on laying down virtual cards from the deck on the screen. Solitaire = I am bored. Whereas Photo Booth = I am entertained. In fact it's also entertaining watching your family members grimace and contort their face to add to the effect that Photo Booth provides. So, if I was to score Apple on this one, I would give them a 10, whereas Microsoft gets a measly 4. (By the way - I have Win 7 on my other box - and I can't think of what Microsoft has produced that's new and novel for a first time fun app. Is it still just a handful of card games?)
Later on in the day I played around with Safari and in moving text content around (actually moving two older blog posts from another blog I used to maintain to this one. I found myself trying to use the keyboard as if I was on a Windows box. At first I was a bit disappointed that Control C (Windows Copy), and Control X (Windows Cut), and Control V (Windows Paste) don't work the same on Mac as the do on a PC. But then I discovered quite quickly actually that Command C, Command X, and Command V do the same trick. Didn't take long to adjust to that. Right mouse clicks (I'm using the touch pad), are a different matter. Take for example this post. So far I have typed one misspelled word (at least one that was highlighted in red to indicate a misspelled word). On my PC I could just right click on the button below the touch pad and I would get a list of optional words to use to correct the misspelling. On the MacBook, there are no buttons in front of the touch pad. Sure I can click and double click on the pad it self, but that makes it behave like a left mouse click. Intuitively though, I tried holding the control key down along with a click on the pad and boom - I got the behavior I wanted. So the word I misspelled earlier in this post was disappointed. First typed it as dissappointed. When I hover over the down with the mouse cursor. Hold down Control and click on the pad - and wala it behaves as hoped with a listing of alternative words to fix my misspelling!
One behavior I was pleased to also find is the Alt Tab type functionality I use so often in Windows to sift through different apps I have running. On a MacBook - the behavior and key configuration is exactly the same. Command + Tab. Very cool!
There are however some other keys and behaviors I'm missing. Delete is really backspace - it does not delete text placed in front of cursor as you expect with Windows. This is driving me bonkers. Also - the end key - where is it? In this post, I have a whole line of text I just want to obliterate. If I position the cursor at the beginning of the block of text, I instinctively want to press control "End". to select and delete the rest of the line. I can hover use the mouse pointer by holding select and then clicking the mouse pointer to the end of the line. That selects the text. Then I can hit the delete key (or Command X). I'm longing also for a Alt PrintScreen behavior. I want to take a screen shot and post it on this blog. I'm sure there's capability to do it - but I haven't discovered it yet.
The bottom line is that adjusting to the keyboard and behavior of the Mac has been smoother than I thought, but there are still some quirks that I need to retrain the brain on and behaviors I still need to discover. I expect it will only get easier as time goes on though.
Btw - I do want to say how much I love the tactile feel of the keys on the MacBook Pro - and the fact that they light up. That is a major plus that should not be ignored.
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