This is sort of a strange Macdate, as I am typing it from a Sunblade 100 workstation in the Unity Lab at NCSU's Library, but after working with this Sun for the past several hours something dawned on me: my Mac usage experience has greatly improved my tolerance for non-PC OSes and interface setups.
I've had to use these Sun boxes in the past, and I would always complain about their keyboard layout (e.g. the control and capslock keys are interchanged compared to a PC keyboard) and often times I would not be able to survive using the things for more than a few minutes to struggle to check my email. Interestingly enough, I don't find the keyboard layout difficult to get used to anymore. Maybe it's because I have to keep on switching between the positioning of keys when I switch between my G5 and the PCs that I use, or maybe it's just that not being tied down to one platform for the majority of my work has made me a bit more open minded in the computing world. I can even see situations where it helps having the control key where it is on this keyboard :)
That being said, this machine is still horrendously slow :)
I know the Macdates have been sparse these days, if you follow my regular blog you'll know that's because of the school projects that require me to use these Sun machines that is keeping me from blogging about my continued G5 experiences. Since I've run into a bug in the ASIC project I'm working on and I've made it this far into a Macdate I'll share a few things about my more-than-a-month with a Mac:
1) The more I use Safari the more I appreciate it as a web browser, however it is still entirely too slow for me and there are far too many times where I have to use Firefox because pages won't function correctly under Safari (particular German car configurator websites - what can I say, I'm a car guy and I like to play with their car configurators).
2) I'd switch to Firefox completely if I could get the autocomplete .com URL keyboard shortcut would work. I know, I'm fickle.
3) My desktop is getting messy. All the PDFs I click on in Safari download themselves to my desktop and sometimes multiple copies end up there as I forget that I've already downloaded a particular PDF. I'm thinking of having all of the automatically downloaded links go to a particular folder that I'll just trash periodically. Any other suggestions for removing clutter from my desktop?
4) I have yet to figure out the sense behind the icon organization on my desktop. I swear I've done this a tremendous number of times - I set the desktop to keep icons arranged by modification date, yet I still get seemingly randomly placed icons. The same applies for keeping icons arranged by name, type, creation date and just about anything else I can think of. It's a bit annoying, especially with so much stuff on my desktop - thus problems 3 and 4 are somewhat related.
5) Mail.app has been handling my email extremely well, I wondered how it would hold up under the load of thousands of messages and thus far it has been doing wonderfully. What is most impressive is that deleting thousands of messages doesn't bring the system to a screeching halt, I can actually work with the rest of the OS just as if nothing were happening in the background. Mail.app seems to have Outlook's file management trumped for large emailboxes.
6) DivX files no longer seem to want to play under Quicktime for me. The OS and the DivX codec just seemed to decide that they would exclude Quicktime from their nights on the town and now I'm forced to use the OS X version of mplayer2, which isn't bad but it lacks polish. I tried reinstalling the DivX codec to no avail, I have yet to try reinstalling Quicktime though (although I probably should have before making this post...shhh). Anyone else have a similar problem and/or a solution and/or especially an explanation for why it happens? I'm always curious as to why things happen, not necessarily just that they do :)
7) OCZ sent over 4 x 1GB beta sticks for me to play around with, so I ripped out the 8 x 512MB sticks and have been running on their 1GB modules with no problems at all. I'd actually be willing to say that the G5 has been more stable since the change in memory, but that's most likely due to the fact that replacing the RAM required a shutdown of the computer thus ending the life of any renegade processes. Once I'm sure that the 1GB sticks play well, I'm going to try and throw in another 4 x 512MB sticks to see what 6GB feels like. Before you scoff, I have run out of memory once under OS X with 4GB installed - but I have a feeling it was due to Excel just being its ornery self.
8) Derek was working on the pipeline diagrams for his NV3x Moratorium article (yes, he meant to type Moratorium, sheesh :)...) so I called him over to my place to use OmniGraffle on the G5. He was floored (ask him yourself) and decided that OmniGraffle alone was a cool enough program to want a Mac. I think we've both decided that the ideal setup is a Mac and a PC side-by-side. When I setup my new office in CT this fall I think I will give the setup a try.
That's all I can think of for now. Forgive me if there are any spelling mistakes as the Sun I'm posting from does not have the oh-so-useful system wide spellcheck that my G5 has spoiled me with. Not that systemwide spellcheck has prevented me from making spelling mistakes in the past or anything :)
It's back to trying-to-graduate-on-time again, goodnight all.
I've had to use these Sun boxes in the past, and I would always complain about their keyboard layout (e.g. the control and capslock keys are interchanged compared to a PC keyboard) and often times I would not be able to survive using the things for more than a few minutes to struggle to check my email. Interestingly enough, I don't find the keyboard layout difficult to get used to anymore. Maybe it's because I have to keep on switching between the positioning of keys when I switch between my G5 and the PCs that I use, or maybe it's just that not being tied down to one platform for the majority of my work has made me a bit more open minded in the computing world. I can even see situations where it helps having the control key where it is on this keyboard :)
That being said, this machine is still horrendously slow :)
I know the Macdates have been sparse these days, if you follow my regular blog you'll know that's because of the school projects that require me to use these Sun machines that is keeping me from blogging about my continued G5 experiences. Since I've run into a bug in the ASIC project I'm working on and I've made it this far into a Macdate I'll share a few things about my more-than-a-month with a Mac:
1) The more I use Safari the more I appreciate it as a web browser, however it is still entirely too slow for me and there are far too many times where I have to use Firefox because pages won't function correctly under Safari (particular German car configurator websites - what can I say, I'm a car guy and I like to play with their car configurators).
2) I'd switch to Firefox completely if I could get the autocomplete .com URL keyboard shortcut would work. I know, I'm fickle.
3) My desktop is getting messy. All the PDFs I click on in Safari download themselves to my desktop and sometimes multiple copies end up there as I forget that I've already downloaded a particular PDF. I'm thinking of having all of the automatically downloaded links go to a particular folder that I'll just trash periodically. Any other suggestions for removing clutter from my desktop?
4) I have yet to figure out the sense behind the icon organization on my desktop. I swear I've done this a tremendous number of times - I set the desktop to keep icons arranged by modification date, yet I still get seemingly randomly placed icons. The same applies for keeping icons arranged by name, type, creation date and just about anything else I can think of. It's a bit annoying, especially with so much stuff on my desktop - thus problems 3 and 4 are somewhat related.
5) Mail.app has been handling my email extremely well, I wondered how it would hold up under the load of thousands of messages and thus far it has been doing wonderfully. What is most impressive is that deleting thousands of messages doesn't bring the system to a screeching halt, I can actually work with the rest of the OS just as if nothing were happening in the background. Mail.app seems to have Outlook's file management trumped for large emailboxes.
6) DivX files no longer seem to want to play under Quicktime for me. The OS and the DivX codec just seemed to decide that they would exclude Quicktime from their nights on the town and now I'm forced to use the OS X version of mplayer2, which isn't bad but it lacks polish. I tried reinstalling the DivX codec to no avail, I have yet to try reinstalling Quicktime though (although I probably should have before making this post...shhh). Anyone else have a similar problem and/or a solution and/or especially an explanation for why it happens? I'm always curious as to why things happen, not necessarily just that they do :)
7) OCZ sent over 4 x 1GB beta sticks for me to play around with, so I ripped out the 8 x 512MB sticks and have been running on their 1GB modules with no problems at all. I'd actually be willing to say that the G5 has been more stable since the change in memory, but that's most likely due to the fact that replacing the RAM required a shutdown of the computer thus ending the life of any renegade processes. Once I'm sure that the 1GB sticks play well, I'm going to try and throw in another 4 x 512MB sticks to see what 6GB feels like. Before you scoff, I have run out of memory once under OS X with 4GB installed - but I have a feeling it was due to Excel just being its ornery self.
8) Derek was working on the pipeline diagrams for his NV3x Moratorium article (yes, he meant to type Moratorium, sheesh :)...) so I called him over to my place to use OmniGraffle on the G5. He was floored (ask him yourself) and decided that OmniGraffle alone was a cool enough program to want a Mac. I think we've both decided that the ideal setup is a Mac and a PC side-by-side. When I setup my new office in CT this fall I think I will give the setup a try.
That's all I can think of for now. Forgive me if there are any spelling mistakes as the Sun I'm posting from does not have the oh-so-useful system wide spellcheck that my G5 has spoiled me with. Not that systemwide spellcheck has prevented me from making spelling mistakes in the past or anything :)
It's back to trying-to-graduate-on-time again, goodnight all.
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MacDuff - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
FOLDER ACTIONSGreat idea :)
I too have a downloads folder and what I call "my junk drawer' folder AND a temporary URLs folder of pages I want to refer to again but don't wnt to add to my already rediculous bookmark file. these three folders are Docked, unique icons and all.
OS X's system-wide spell checking is a crutch for me for a couple off words I have never workd to get write -- er, I mean "right". I am slo a two-finger typer, having to lok at the keybpoard as I go. Spell checker really helps to clean up the mistyped words as a result...
as a matter of fact, I'll NOT spell-check this entry nor clean up my missed keys, just so you can see how itt can get ussing the "typing while blind" approach. One thing that I find is that I type kind of hard and get double-strokes on occasion :-( (eg: "ussing")
Anonymous - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
"oh-so-useful system wide spellcheck that my G5 has spoiled me with"rather than 'spoiling me' I use it to help improve my spelling.
Coombs - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
When I notice that the computer is using too much memory, I run MacJanitor to clean up cache etc. That usually releases a significant amount of memory. I ran it just now: 902MB Used vs 378 Free memory changed to 510MB used and 770 Free and MacJanitor is not done yet.T Money - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
To #11, how do you set up that floating cube thing? That would be a fun toy for when i'm bored.pbrice68 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
I have a "Downloads" folder set up in List View organized by descending Creation Date. I then have a Folder Action attached to "Downloads" that, when the folder is opened, creates a folder with the current date. As subfolders, it creates a Media folder, Picture folder, Archive folder, and Documents folder. I forget where I picked this script up, but it might be called "Download Sorter." It is excellent.The first time you open the folder each day (I've got my Downloads folder sitting in my Dock) it creates a folder named, for example, April 21, 2004. It then files all the items neatly into the appropriate folder based on file types. Any unrecognized are just filed with the dated folder.
It seems odd, at first, because you would think that stuff would be easily lost within the dated folderrs. But, the dated folders make it easy to find items that you have recently downloaded. Anything older than a few days is easily found with the Finder's live search toolbar item set to selection.
Also, a little tip, when using List view in the Finder, holding in Option when you click a folder's disclosure trianlge opens and closes all subfolders, as well.
Jon - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
For Divx playback, 3ivx is definitely the superior decoder. The only thing the official Divx codec has is VBR MP3 playback, but I haven't hit that snag in quite a while. 3ivx will have superior quality than either the Divx codec or VLC/mplayer2, so I use that when I can. But VLC is cool because you can make it use OpenGL and tile the video to a floating cube.Anonymous - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
"4) I have yet to figure out the sense behind the icon organization on my desktop. I swear I've done this a tremendous number of times - I set the desktop to keep icons arranged by modification date, yet I still get seemingly randomly placed icons. The same applies for keeping icons arranged by name, type, creation date and just about anything else I can think of. It's a bit annoying, especially with so much stuff on my desktop - thus problems 3 and 4 are somewhat related."When organizing by type OSX will sort by the way the sort key appears in list view. So '.SPRG' files which have the default kind 'Document' appear after '.dmg' files with kind 'disk image file' and before folders with kind 'Folder'
Also I think maybe some weird things count as modifying a file, so that might screw up the sort by last modification date.
"6) DivX files no longer seem to want to play under Quicktime for me."
I've noticed that some DivX files don't seem to play correctly or at all in Quicktime. I have no idea what the problem could be (anything from many DivX files not being to spec to serious bugs in the Quicktime plugin) but VLC seems to work pretty well and I like it better than MPlayer.
"7) Once I'm sure that the 1GB sticks play well, I'm going to try and throw in another 4 x 512MB sticks to see what 6GB feels like. Before you scoff, I have run out of memory once under OS X with 4GB installed - but I have a feeling it was due to Excel just being its ornery self."
I think you've already established that OS X will fill an infinite amount of RAM given enough time. ;) How much performance degradation did you notice after filling 4GB?
Excel? http://www.quantrix.com/ is supposed to be better (pricy, windows only, flash demo on site) It's a clone of Quantrix from NeXTStep (The Omni guys also came from NeXT) There's a free beta clone for OS X called FlexiSheet http://www.materialarts.com/FlexiSheet/index.html
Scott - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
On...4) I have yet to figure out the sense behind the icon organization on my desktop. I swear I've done this a tremendous number of times - I set the desktop to keep icons arranged by modification date, yet I still get seemingly randomly placed icons. The same applies for keeping icons arranged by name, type, creation date and just about anything else I can think of. It's a bit annoying, especially with so much stuff on my desktop - thus problems 3 and 4 are somewhat related.
...I have my desktop set to organize icons by name, and it works fine. But it organizes them alphabetically in columns from right to left, rather than the more-standard left to right (file names that start with a number are first in line).
Maybe the right-to-left setup is throwing you off?
TMoney - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
I second the recomendation of VLC for your DiVX movies. VLC is much nicer under OS X than under windows, and seems to deal with problem files a bit better.galactusofmyth - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
And you should check out Notetaker at aquaminds.com. Its just about become my favorite application. If you're familiar with OmniOutliner, MS OneNote or such, its like those programs on steroids.