The Mac/Thinkpad Shuffle

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Jonathan Gennick
Jan. 28, 2005 06:44 AM
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No, it's not a new product from Apple. The Mac/Thinkpad shuffle is what you do when you buy a new iBook for your daughter so that you can redeploy her Thinkpad to the family room, so that you can redeploy the six-year-old and broken family-room PC to the, well, to the dump.

Yes, the new iBook arrived, and Jenny opened the box Wednesday evening. She was thrilled.

Look out! Jenny's got a knife!

The adventure begins! Jenny carves into the newly delivered iBook box.

It's the first Mac in our family since I sold my Powerbook way back in 1993. Here are some of our initial thoughts and reactions:

Jenny likes the iBook case material very much.
She was momentarily upset at having only one mouse-button. I think I could carefully saw that button into two halves, but she wasn't too interested in my, er, suggested hack. Really, Apple ought to offer two buttons as an option. I'm sure the design is modular enough that they could offer two trackpad configurations.
You should have seen Jenny's eyes light up when I went to the iTunes store and began playing song samples. She didn't know what she was missing. And it all just worked. I've never run iTunes before, and I was playing song samples in less than a minute. No setup. No configuration. No registration. Just fun.
While transfering Jenny's files and other data, I found I can get just as frustrated using a Mac as I can using a Windows PC :-)
Apple's icon and GUI design are awesome. No Teletubbies on that screen. The icons are very pleasing to look at. Well done.
Why on earth does the extension adaptor for a two-prong power adaptor terminate in a three-prong plug? What's that about? Ease-of-use does not include hunting around one's office for a grounded outlet.
Sadly, OpenOffice.org doesn't seem to play well on the Mac. Having to use X11 is no bother at all. But the fonts, they render terribly. We opened a couple of Jenny's files, and the text was awful to look at. The good thing is though, that OpenOffice.org does at least run on the Mac. She's at least got access to her files. We both really appreciate that.
Hmmm... I just now opened Appleworks, typed in a few words using the default font, and the results there are not very appealing either. Interestingly, that font, Helvetica 12pt, renders better, though larger, in OpenOffice.org than in Appleworks. A further oddity is that clicking on the bold and italic toolbar buttons in OpenOffice.org has no effect at all. More research is indicated here.
Jenny's had some trouble adjusting to the trackpad. She tends to drag her palm across it while typing, with the result that her cursor flies across the screen, window focus changes, etc. She and I are both big fans of IBM's little, red nub. Oh well. Can't have everything. She'll get used it eventually.
Jenny was completely baffled (at first) by the slot-loading CD drive. It was a bit funny watching her try to put in her first CD. She was looking right at the slot, but couldn't find the drive. Such are the small joys of fatherhood :-)
iMail did an awesome job of importing Jenny's old email. She used to use The Bat! (which, by the way, I recommend unhesitatingly to Windows PC users) I had to export each of Jenny's folders from The Bat! one at a time. To my very pleasant surprise, iMail loaded the entire resulting directory and subdirectory of Unix mailbox files in one, fell swoop, and preserved the hierarchical structure into the bargain. I was most pleased with how easily that went.

Despite a few rough points during the configuration and setup process (I was in iHell for just a little while), and despite a few adjustments she's had to make (one button mouse, trackpad rather than Trackpoint, etc.), Jenny is a very happy teenager. When I offer to take back the iBook and let her keep her Thinkpad, the answer is a resounding "No!" And Jeff, my nine-year-old son, he's completely lost eyes for Thinkpads. He could care less that Jenny's giving us her old one. He wants an iBook too.

Jonathan Gennick is an O'Reilly Media, Inc. editor specializing in database and programming titles.

Comments on this weblog

Showing messages 1 through 20 of 20.

About OpenOffice.org
2005-02-04 13:44:05 zenism [View]

Give NeoOffice/J a shot. It's a Java app, ported over by Mr. Patrick Luby (www.planamesa.com). Since it's java, it uses the installed Apple fonts, offers easy printing, and uses the Mac menubar & command keys. It's much more Mac-like than the X11 version. It also offers easy cut and paste. The current version is based on OOo Ver 1.1.3 The speed is comparable the X11 ver.

Here's the link, I think you'll like it.

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php

z...

Tune Open Office
2005-02-04 02:03:22 deadpixel [View]

For better font rendering try to set the colours of X11 to Millions in the Preferences and / or follow the instructions here

http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/docs/openoffice-mac/

Alternatively you can use the Java version.

iBook Results
2005-02-01 08:18:34 breedlov [View]

I am interested in an iBook, mostly for the OS X. I'm worried about your comments regarding OpenOffice however. Can you expand on those comments?

iBook Results
2005-02-01 09:38:36 Jonathan Gennick | [View]

First off, I hated even saying anything negative about OpenOffice to begin with. It's a good product. We use it a lot. And I know a lot of people have worked hard to evenget it to run on theMac at all. That said, here's all I can tell you:

OpenOffice doesn't run as a native, Mac application. I had to download and install an X-Window server from Apple's web site. This is a minor inconvenience. Neither my daughter nor I are particularly bothered by the fact that OpenOffice doesn't "look" like a standard, Mac app.

Things got worse though, when we opened some of her existing, OpenOffice files, of which she has many. The text was unpleasant to look at.

Worse, when we try to apply italics or bold to a piece of text, the text does not change appearance. I'm guessing that the italic/bold settings are being applied, but visually we don't see them.

And that's pretty much all I know at this point. My daughter's gone back to school, and I've promised to buy her iWork, which I need to get around to doing.

Despite the problems, it's fortunate to have OpenOffice on the Mac at all. At least she can open her files, save them as RTF (or in Word format), and import them into iPages. And, because everything's on the mac, she can convert files at her leisure.

A few other programs
2005-01-30 05:46:33 robmiller [View]

Mellel for word processing. GraphicConverter for graphic files, Fetch for FTP, iComic for comics, Acquisition for peer to peer file transfer, BBEdit for editing, or SubEthaEdit. All these are good programs and should be in the dock along with Apple's own programs. I would have suggested Watson 2 years ago, but alas it is now a dead program.

switcher's guides
2005-01-28 14:14:02 restiffbard [View]

Jenny, two URLs that may help you with your switch.

This first one is geared to new Mac mini owners but it applies well to all Macs, Ars Technica.

The second is a number of bullet points about using a Mac,
Tao of Mac.

And my own advice, you will find that certain tasks when done in OS X will seem strange in their method but will soon come to realize that this is the way things should have been done all along. Also, if you think you can do something a certain way with a Mac, 9 out of 10, you can.

OpenOffice & Fonts
2005-01-28 10:19:57 rjstreet [View]

Which X11 server are you using? I've noticed massive disparities among them. I'm currently using XDarwin (the download version) with all of my Library->Fonts mapped so that xfs picks them up. Much nicer (don't have a link right off hand, but you can probably find the info on MacOSXHints.com).

Mouse buttons
2005-01-28 10:16:42 jimothy [View]

On desktops (or when using a mouse on a laptop), I think two buttons are a must. On a laptop trackpad, however, I could do just fine with ZERO buttons, since I always tap instead of click. This is where I prefer the control-click (or control-tap) over a second button.

Using the pinky of your left hand to hold the control key and the thumb of your right hand to move the cursor and tap-click, you can do a "right click" without removing either hand from the keyboard.

You can do the same with "nubs," of course, but not with PC laptop track pads: You have to remove at least one hand from the keyboard to do a right click.

Two buttons and AbiWord
2005-01-28 09:37:57 mmcclintock [View]

I like AbiWord for word processing, and it deals with MS Word files just fine: http://www.abiword.org/download/ . Besides, if they're plain MS Word documents, TextEdit can read and write them just fine!

And I prefer two buttons on my mouse as well -- so I use a MacAlly two button mini-mouse on my iBook (though any USB two button mouse will work, really, even those from Microsoft): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006HMQY/102-1567196-6216918?v=glance

Mac addicts can't stop proselytizing...
2005-01-28 08:29:16 vainst1k [View]

..."Hare Krishna, Ha-a-are Ha-a-are"

I liked it much more when Jonathan Gennick was just an Oracle expert.

Mac addicts can't stop proselytizing...
2005-01-28 09:20:42 JennyGennick [View]

MY DAD Is not a mac addict! you shouild have seen him trying to get the network running! he wasn't too fond of it then!

Mac addicts can't stop proselytizing...
2005-01-28 16:51:41 vainst1k [View]

Alright, so you're both Mac addicts. In denial. :)

Your dad (if indeed you're who you say) is a darn good technical writer. He always spellchecks what he writes. And so should you.

Mac addicts can't stop proselytizing...
2005-02-01 02:24:46 micampe [View]

Don't be so crude, vainst1k... what would a spellchecker say of yuour nickname? ;)

Thrilled
2005-01-28 07:27:14 look_to_windward [View]

" She was thrilled."

Heh, not so thrilled with having her picture taken by the looks of things!! I'm sure the ibook made up for it.

NeoOffice
2005-01-28 07:15:54 Dunx [View]

I've just recently started using NeoOffice/J on my iBook, a port of OpenOffice to OS X which doesn't use X11. The fonts are more cleanly rendered and the menus turn up in the menu bar which leaves more screen space for the text window.

I'm not going to recommend this too enthusiastically because I haven't used it enough to know how stable it is yet, but it might be worth a try.

NeoOffice
2005-01-28 15:04:53 skippyd [View]

I'll recommend it as well and a little more enthusiastically. I use it regularly as a replacement for Microsoft Word and it's excellent. While not fully aquafied, it does use standard Mac keyboard shortcuts for everything, uses all your standard Mac fonts, and plays friendly with the printing system.

Oh, and one last thing
2005-01-28 07:04:45 Jonathan Gennick | [View]

I also very much like the small, thumbnail images that you get when you minimize windows. Those are really helpful when it comes to finding the "right" window to un-minimize.

Trackpad fix
2005-01-28 07:02:52 viae [View]

There is an option in the system settings under keyboard and mouse (I think it's in their) to set the trackpad to ignore stray hits -- it is VERY helpful in stopping most cases of random trackpad-mouse-cursor-flying-across-screen-moments.

Trackpad fix
2005-01-28 09:24:19 JennyGennick [View]

hey, thanks for the suggestion, it helped me out a lot.

--Jen

Trackpad fix
2005-01-28 11:17:06 mrwon [View]

I'm not a Mac laptop user, but I've heard great things about SideTrack enabling 2-button functionality on PowerBooks & iBooks.

Myself, I'd just buy a USB scroll mouse. I find trackpads of all kinds significantly inferior.

Showing messages 1 through 20 of 20.

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