The "Switch"

[jkd]

So yeah, I'm awful. I'm getting my very first Apple computer, ever. A slick 15" powerbook. On my XP box, I use Winamp, Firebird & Thunderbird, and UltraEdit pretty much nonstop. Now the Mozilla products are no problem. I'm not a fan of iTunes though. At all. I think it's a terrible audio player with a worse interface (this may be my first apple computer, but I've used OSX substantially). Are there any alternatives to iTunes (Audion???)? Free, preferably, that perform similarly to Winamp? I like minimal interfaces with a wide-range of audio support (Foobar is another excellent audio player, as far as I'm concerned.) And I know VideoLan comes in the OSX flavor, so I don't need to worry about video.

And then comes UltraEdit.... BBEdit? Yes, but terribly expensive. I just spent all my money on the overpriced laptop, don't want to spend anymore on software. SubEthaEdit? Is that comparable to Ultraedit? Other program suggestions? Thanks for any advice. :)

[rmedek]

hmm... I don't know about text editors-- I'm the kind of guy who found BBEdit too confusing :) I'm a Text Edit man, myself...

Audion is a pretty good alternative to iTunes (it's actually the "standard alternative," I think). Pretty much anything by Panic Software is a great buy: minimal interface, all the features you need and none you don't, inexpensive, and easy to configure. And stable.

Oh, and welcome to the Mac club!

One last thing... if your pb has at least 1 Ghz of RAM and a L2 cache I'd recommend Virtual PC for web tests, otherwise it's too slow to be useable.

[jkd]

hmm... I don't know about text editors-- I'm the kind of guy who found BBEdit too confusing :) I'm a Text Edit man, myself...

Audion is a pretty good alternative to iTunes (it's actually the "standard alternative," I think). Pretty much anything by Panic Software is a great buy: minimal interface, all the features you need and none you don't, inexpensive, and easy to configure. And stable.

Oh, and welcome to the Mac club!

One last thing... if your pb has at least 1 Ghz of RAM and a L2 cache I'd recommend Virtual PC for web tests, otherwise it's too slow to be useable.

1.5ghz G4 512mb. That's why I have no more money.

[jkd]

So I'm using Adium for instant messenging and Firefox/Thunderbird combo for browsing/email. It turns out VideoLan does an excellent job playing any music file I throw at it, and with it's minimal interface, has replaced iTunes as well as Quicktime on the dock.

I'm still short one text editor though. TextEdit will not suffice. Any suggestions?

[liorean]

Have a look at SubEthaEdit for your text editing. It's not perfect, but it's the closest to my PC favorite (SciTE) that I've been able to find. You'll find it is far less featurerich than UltraEdit, though. You could probably compile SciTE or something similar from the Linux scene for use in Apple's port of X11 if you wish.

As for the audio program, I personally like the flexibility of iTunes, but then I never liked WinAMP either. You might want to have a look at interfaces communicating with iTunes for your player if you want a more minimalistic interface. There's MenuTunes, loads of Konfabulator widgets, and probably a fair number of other programs like that. I personally just close the window and use the right click menu, opening the window up again when things I want to do aren't covered by that menu.

As for video, there's four programs. Windows Media player is pretty fair for anything Windows media. MPlayer2/OSX is the best player overall, but doesn't get the audio sync right on AVIs if they are damaged. Quicktime is actually quite good on Mac, but if your file is damaged it won't be able to play it past the damage, independent of file type. Finally, VCL is a little on the lacking side in features, but competes with MPlayer in being fault tolerant.
MPlayer and VCL are of course best at playing all different types of codecs.

(If you want a rather small interface for music, MPlayer might be a good choice. It's basically just a playlist, if you sum up it's music capabilities.)

For IM, I'd say you have two good choices. Adium and Fire. iChat doesn't even aspire to compete.

[gsnedders]

Proteus is another option in the IM scene, as for text editor, you may want to try TextWrangler, which is bacially a cut down version of BBEdit. If you need an FTP program, there's Fetch or Transmit, normally the one you prefer is the first one you use on a regular basis...


And Welcome back David... I may finally get my X:links problem solved :thumbsup:

As for my new computer... *drumroll*... Dual 2.5GHz PowerMac G5... :cool:

[Antoniohawk]

This thread will prove really helpful to me when I get the money to buy my powerbook. :thumbsup: to you, Jason, for saving me from extra work. :p

[gsnedders]

Programs I use: RSS News Reader: SlashDock
Mail: Mail :p
IM: Proteus
Web Browsing: Safari
Download Manager: Speed Download 2
FTP: Transmit
Text Editor: BBEdit
Calculator: Google or Calculator
Hacking OS X with a GUI: TinkerTool

[jkd]

So I despise Fire. (I have very strong software preference and tastes, in case it wasn't obvious)

I stuck with Adium, which I enjoy very very much, although it can't seem to receive files or direct connect on AIM. VideoLan is staying my audio client, as well as video.

Tried the various text editors... I especially despised jEdit. SubEthaEdit is alright, though I'm thinking I'm just going to have to get BBedit. I used pretty much all of UltraEdit's features extensively, and can't lose them without significant retraining now. I might end up having to write my own text editor for OSX if I can't find one that cuts it... that would be ironic. :D

Otherwise, I am very much enjoying the OSX experience. :)
My future computers will probably come from Apple. I gotta hand it to them, you plug in hardware it just works. WinXP did a fantastic job with this, but my MX700 mouse instantly worked completely... except for the app switch button. Installed the mouseware stuff from logitech and remapped the app switch to F9 for Expose. Now that is extremely convenient, I highly recommend mapping a mouse button to Expose.

iPhoto recognizes my Canon PowerShot SD100 (though I had to install Canon software to pull movies off the camera), and my previous experience with networking Macs let me drop this into the home network pretty much instantly. Plugged my Sony SDM-73 lcd monitor into it, bam, instant detection and color profile support. I'm impressed. Expose on two monitors is amazing.

So that's that. I'll probably take my old PC and reboot it into Linux and forward an X session to the powerbook and control it through that.

[bradyj]

www.macupdate.com
Offers some excellent download searches and keeps up on the Mac products -- you'll also find many of the iTunes additions liorean was talking about on there with a quick search.

Useful widgets:
http://www.objectpark.net/en/mcc.html
http://www.bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/
http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/index-e.html (runs off safari webkit, but you might like it better than safari)
http://haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/ (extends safari nicely)
http://www.mkd.cc/sox/ (very successful in keeping my mac sturdy, use it on all our work machines)
http://www.stuffit.com/mac/index.html (look at the title 'StuffIt Expander' and download the trial. Select the 15 day free trial, not the 30 day. It's free to use forever, after 15 days you get a notice to register if you would like technical support. It will stuff, zip, tar, and expand everything)

There are also some excellent doc switching alternatives and other stuff if you'd like.

When I get to work tomorrow I'll pull all my Mac RSS feeds that link to product updates and info. Which reminds me, http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ for rss feeds.

Quicktime is a higher quality format than many other video options, dumping that makes me sad -- I also like iTunes for it's complexity and enjoy the features it has (if you're a political geek, have fun downloading the full 9/11 commission interviews and Democratic convention speeches for free), extensions may be what you are in need of as stated.

Adium is my preffered chat -- Proteus is nice, but it's not freeware, and Adium has many of the same features if not more.

As far as FTP, I prefer Fetch, but Transmit is just as excellent. Are there any other programs you're looking for?

http://dealmac.com/ has good cheap mac offers -- you should also look at Dell, who is often times the cheaper Mac reseller (ironically) -- and never feel a need to buy Apple memory -- it's no better than some of the excellent alternatives on http://www.cdw.com and it's drastically cheaper.

and, hey, now on safari you can enjoy the beauty of drop shadow CSS:

text-shadow: 2px 2px 3px gray;

[jkd]

I also like iTunes for it's complexity and enjoy the features it has (if you're a political geek, have fun downloading the full 9/11 commission interviews and Democratic convention speeches for free), extensions may be what you are in need of as stated.

So I just found the Zoom feature... (Why is it called Zoom? Normally zoom makes thing bigger...), which is what I needed for iTunes. Gonna grab SizzlingKeys4iTunes and setup some "Media Keys" like Windows computers have by default - I wonder why Apple just doesn't steal the idea? They are going for the media thing, and having 5 extra buttons on their laptops that tie into iTunes is minimal effort for a "stylish" (and useful!) thing.

[liorean]

Windows computers have media keys by default? All media key functions I have are powered not by Windows, but by the keyboard drivers - that is, Logitech or Microsoft (who only have volume control and nothing else on the keyboard I got with the comp), depending on what keyboard I use. Logitech of course provide the same features for the Mac for the same keys.

Of course, if you have a Logitech keyboard you can set keys to act as you wish, hooking into AppleScripts controlling iTunes if that's what you want.

But then, my PC is not a laptop, and neither keyboard is built in.

As for Expose, it's got three settings: show desktop (move everything out of the way), show all application windows, show all application windows for the active application. I personally use the hot corners feature to trigger them, instead of mouse buttons, but that's just for preference. Sometimes you might trigger expose by mistake that way, which isn't always fun.

[bradyj]

http://www.macrumors.com/macrumors.xml
http://www.macosxhints.com/backend/geeklog.rdf
http://www.macosxapps.com/backend/macosxapps.rdf
http://guide.apple.com/rss/newarrivals.xml
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/mnnfeed.xml
http://www.macworld.co.uk/rss/macworld.xml (better than the above us version)
http://lockergnome.com/rss/osx.php
http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wpa/MRSS/newreleases/limit=10/rss.xml (itunes releases)
http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wpa/MRSS/justadded/limit=10/rss.xml (itunes just added)
http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wpa/MRSS/featuredalbums/limit=10/rss.xml (itunes exclusives)
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/blogger_rss.xml (safari's web blog)

Various websites:
http://www.ipodlounge.com/
http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/
http://www.macwindows.com/
and just for fun to see where it evolved from:
http://myoldmac.net/index-e.htm

[gsnedders]

Also, if your screen is full, you can click on the file that you want to move, and then use Exposé, holding the file over where you want to move it, wait for it to open that window, then drop it once it's opened.

[oracleguy]

Windows computers have media keys by default? All media key functions I have are powered not by Windows, but by the keyboard drivers - that is, Logitech or Microsoft (who only have volume control and nothing else on the keyboard I got with the comp), depending on what keyboard I use. Logitech of course provide the same features for the Mac for the same keys.

Yeah, usually you need to install drivers to customize them but I have found with some keyboards at least some of the media keys will work no matter what. But that is with newer versions of Windows, namely XP.

[liorean]

I think it depends on the device as well. Some advanced USB devices seems to not need any drivers or customisation done at all for such features to work - I guess they have them stored in a flash memory or something, and use PnP.

[Skyzyx]

As for Expose, it's got three settings: show desktop (move everything out of the way), show all application windows, show all application windows for the active application. I personally use the hot corners feature to trigger them, instead of mouse buttons, but that's just for preference. Sometimes you might trigger expose by mistake that way, which isn't always fun.

Yeah, it's the same with me. I've got a PowerBook G4, and I got tired of having to hold down the [fn] key before pressing F9 or F10, so I mapped them to three corners of my screen (the fourth being for my screensaver).

But I do agree, sometimes I'll bump a corner with my cursor and get frusterated.

[liorean]

You know that you can change the function keys to work as F1-F12 per default and require you to press down [fn] to use their special meaning instead? It's either in the Apple keyboard and mouse settings or you have to download and install the uControl system preferences panel, but the setting exists in the OS.

[bradyj]

I tried to go with the hot corner -- but I'm used to my screen saver as a hot corner, so it throws me for a loop.

What key do you hold down before F9/10/11? I've never had to hold a key before I just press them for it to work? Or do you have your F keys set to launch other programs?

[liorean]

You've got a stationary Mac, right?

On the iBook and PowerBook you need to hold down the [fn] key to use the F1-F12 keys. They default to [light down], [light up], [sound off], [sound down] [sound up], [numlock], [unused] *5, [eject]. (PowerBooks have one less unused key, but I don't know what it's used for.)

I personally have the screen saver in one hot corner, and the three expose features in the other three corners.

[gsnedders]

On my PB I have F9-F11 as the Exposé keys, but I don't need to hold down fn...

[bradyj]

On the iBook and PowerBook you need to hold down the [fn] key to use the F1-F12 keys. They default to [light down], [light up], [sound off], [sound down] [sound up], [numlock], [unused] *5, [eject]. (PowerBooks have one less unused key, but I don't know what it's used for.)

That's interesting a good way to cause some confusion for new PowerBook-ies, do they explain that in the expose system preferences?

Yeah, I've got a tower, makes sense:)

[rmedek]

You know that you can change the function keys to work as F1-F12 per default and require you to press down [fn] to use their special meaning instead? It's either in the Apple keyboard and mouse settings or you have to download and install the uControl system preferences panel, but the setting exists in the OS.
It's in System Preferences-->Keyboard and Mouse-->"Use the F1-F12 keys for custom actions"

Custom actions would be (in PBs at least) Expose for F9-F11, so checking the box lets you control those with just a click, and adjust keyboard lights by holding fn and the key.

[liorean]

Well, there's some difference between Jaguar and Panther, and also some difference between 10.3.2 and later. Jaguar doesn't have Expose at all, and those users have F9-F11 unused. 10.3.2 doesn't have that Apple system preference choice, and must use uControl, while 10.3.3 and later have it.


Panther *Books have F9-F11 as Expose keys independent of whether they have custom or standard function keys set up, from what I gather.

[mindlessLemming]

...but I have found with some keyboards at least some of the media keys will work no matter what.

Windows XP + Microsoft keyboard = 19 media keys, no installation.

[rmedek]

I guess I should have been more clear... the Expose button (F9-F11) set up I was talking about refers to new PBs running 10.3+ (the kind jkd just bought).
Windows XP + Microsoft keyboard = 19 media keys, no installation.I hear Microsoft also throws in this blue screen thing too, how do I get that installed on my Mac? :D

[Antoniohawk]

I hear Microsoft also throws in this blue screen thing too, how do I get that installed on my Mac? :D
http://null.ithium.net/andrew/images/interior_exterior.jpg :D


I received 6 invitations to give out on gmail today and I seem to have lost one. :( It now says that I only have 5. Any ideas why?

[SpiritualStorms]

Damn, i was going over some of the posts of this thread, and i must admit, that i felt dumb. I don't know half the applications mentioned in this thread.

This brings me to a question as a result: What exactly is the difference between Apple, and Windows? I mean, i know it has something to do with platform, but is there another way of understanding the differences?

[bradyj]

Regarding the hardware: It's all IBM/Motorola, so not much - from what I remember their computing are built quite different -- Apple with a few short fat tubes for information, PC with many skinny long tubes. But I know little of that.

OS: Apple's is unix based, PC is not.

What I find in graphics is that Apple tends to render large files more fluidly -- I can open a 1gig photoshop file in my mac, adjust and save, and not worry about crashing... PC's, well, even suped up ones in my experience don't handle that load very well. I also find my Mac OS doesn't tend to corrupt barely at all -- since OS X I've only had to update my system, not reinstall it. Most of it is style difference, though -- the OS's are very similar but also very different -- I find mine more visually appealling, more intuitive and more ready to run out of the box; aside from being more stable.

The old joke is that Apple 'is a software company disguised as a hardware company' -- they make excellent software with overpriced boutique hardware. I was reading back in the day about the Microsoft Mac division that makes Office for Mac -- they say that when they speak with Apple, they recieved questions like why did you choose this color, what's the reason for this type of button, how does it feel to users -- where Windows they said is more about 'what protocols where used to write this', what's the underlining architecture. Mac takes great care in their language and building, but they focus a lot more attention on how the users get to play with it and how it works for them.

That's my take atleast.

[Antoniohawk]

Regarding the hardware: It's all IBM/Motorola, so not much - from what I remember their computing are built quite different -- Apple with a few short fat tubes for information, PC with many skinny long tubes. But I know little of that.

OS: Apple's is unix based, PC is not.

What I find in graphics is that Apple tends to render large files more fluidly -- I can open a 1gig photoshop file in my mac, adjust and save, and not worry about crashing... PC's, well, even suped up ones in my experience don't handle that load very well. I also find my Mac OS doesn't tend to corrupt barely at all -- since OS X I've only had to update my system, not reinstall it. Most of it is style difference, though -- the OS's are very similar but also very different -- I find mine more visually appealling, more intuitive and more ready to run out of the box; aside from being more stable.

The old joke is that Apple 'is a software company disguised as a hardware company' -- they make excellent software with overpriced boutique hardware. I was reading back in the day about the Microsoft Mac division that makes Office for Mac -- they say that when they speak with Apple, they recieved questions like why did you choose this color, what's the reason for this type of button, how does it feel to users -- where Windows they said is more about 'what protocols where used to write this', what's the underlining architecture. Mac takes great care in their language and building, but they focus a lot more attention on how the users get to play with it and how it works for them.

That's my take atleast.
And that's why I want one so badly. Thanks for the summation Brady, even though I'm not the one that asked for it. :)

[liorean]

I'll give it my take, hopefully adding something to what bradyj said:

MS vs Apple:
Microsoft: Primarily a software company for the PC hardware platform
Apple: Primarily a hardware and software package solution company.


Mac vs. PC hardware platform:
The Mac hardware platform differs from the PC platform in a number of areas. The first is that there is only one supplier - Apple. The components used in the systems are fairly alike nowadays, with a few great distinctions: The processor architechture is different, for instance. The PPC processor used in the Mac is a RISC processor made by IBM or Motorola. It's bigendian. The x86-32/IA32 architecture in PC on the other hand is CISC and littleendian.

Mac vs. PC operative platforms:
The Mac hardware platform can essentially run three different types of OSs. The Mac OS produced by Apple, Linux/UNIX/BeOS OSS operative systems, and Amiga OS. Only a computer with Mac OS could be considered a Mac.
The PC platform have the Windows choice, the DOS choice, the Linux/UNIX/BeOS choices and a number of others.

Mac OS X vs. Windows XP:
OSX is built on the BSD system, and could be considered a full UNIX with a better-than-X11 GUI system built on the Carbon API. This can be contrasted against the NT environment of WinXP, which uses the Win32 API for it's GUI. OSX uses OpenGL and PDF for it's rendering, while WinXP use a 2D bitmapped rendering system. (Longhorn will change to the same kind of system that powers OSX but will use DirectX instead of OpenGL.)
OSX core system uses the mach microkernel and traditional POSIX and Unix system mangagement. WinXP uses a monolithic kernel wich has a very limited subset of POSIX support and uses the traditional DOS-come-windows system management. (Meaning threading, process handling and whatnot.)

OSX vs. WinXP application pool:
OSX is a UNIX environment, and thus contains a lot of UNIX tools. You can further compile and use many more applications and tools from the UNIX and Linux application pool. It also has a large set of Mac applications built for OSX or earlier Mac OS versions. Only programs that were developed for both the Mac and the Windows platforms (or ported to them) are available on both. Windows on the other hand has a positively huge DOS/Windows application pool, and several ports from the UNIX and Linux pools.

[SpiritualStorms]

LOL...if i felt dumb before, i sure a heck, feel dumber now. LOL.

[brothercake]

Here's another Apple / Windows difference - Apple only ripped-off Xerox with their OS - Microsoft ripped-off Xerox and Apple with theirs ...

[AaronW]

Heh. Sucks to be Xerox.

[gsnedders]

Here's another Apple/Windows difference...

There have been 3 main OS changes which have required Applications to be rewritten, in the order they happened: Apple II - Macintosh
DOS - Windows 95
Macintosh - Mac OS X Once again... Apple has had more... and fired more Co-Founders...

[liorean]

James: Well, the relationship between a number of companies involved is not as straight as to make a statement such as "Apple copied Xerox". Canon, Xerox and Apple all had a system in development, at different stages, and all were inspired by the work of the others. Of course, that Apple hired a lot of people out of Xerox PARC and managed to find success in their system has automatically given them the stamp as the baddie of the lot. Actually Canon was more of the idea-duplicator, but they never gained success with their project.



Talking about operative system improvements, the way have been straighter for one company than the other company:
Apple:
Apple II --| (Lisa --|) Macintosh --| A/UX --| (NeXT NeXTSTEP, Rhapsody -->) OS X

Microsoft:
DOS --> Win16 --| Win9x --| WinNT (--> Longhorn)

Microsoft has gone through two large OS breaks. Apple has gone through one more. Apple has also made it through one major processor architecture change during a single OS evolution. Microsoft has during three operative system evolutions prepared for three (MIPS, Alpha, IA64) but stayed with IA32 through the whole course. Apple's A/UX was of course a side track, but an important such because it shares many properties with the development of OS X.

[SpiritualStorms]

LOL:

Heh. Sucks to be Xerox.


I have heard that part before. Thats why many think Bill Gates didnt really create anything since he was already using someone elses template.