In my previous post I wrote about my experience with macs, and the conclusion was that in order to criticize macs effectively, I should get one. Over $3,000 and one week later, I got a brand new MacBook Pro 15″ (and a free iPod touch).
The mac came in a brown box, which included a white box inside it. Inside the white box, was the MacBook, the power and video adapters, and a black envelope. Inside the black envelope was a book titled “Everything Mac”. There was also an envelope labeled “Everything Else”. Following the instructions in the “Everything Mac” book I connected the power supply and powered on the mac using the hidden power button. The book included important information about using the TrackPad, stuff I had to figure out slowly in the previous posts.
When the system started for the first time, I was greeted with a language selection screen, and then a welcome video (with no useful information). After the welcome video, I was prompted to press Esc to hear instructions on how to use the mac. I did, however, it started a detailed explanation about an accessibility feature that didn’t even work.
I managed to complete the setup without much difficulty, but no tutorials were provided. According to instructions in the Everything MAC book, I installed software updates, and started to explore. I found a document about “Stacks” and document and download stacks. I also found some online tutorial videos.
One of the things I tried to do with the new mac was use the “Time Machine” backup software. I tried connecting two different external HDs, and got no visual response from the OS for the first, and only the small FAT partition showed up for the second. Reading about it online, I figured that ext3 partitions are not supported, and only plain old FAT drives can be used for backup. Big fail!
Another thing I tried was to download TV shows on iTunes, but I was stumped by the repeated requests for money. I have paid $3000 for a mac, why do I have to pay extra to use it???
August 23rd, 2009 at 23:22
Posted by
epsalon |
Apple |
one comment
As I’ve posted before, I’m staying at a fancy hotel in the Boston area. Next to the hotel is a Mall, and in this mall is an Apple store. Again I tried using the display laptops. If you recall, the laptops have no mouse buttons (the entire pad is a button), which after a short use causes pain in the wrist. The answer I got regarding this issue from “mac people” was: My mac has a button, but I’m sure the no-button pad is just A-mazing, Steve Jobs is God and I am his servant!
So, this time I tried a new approach: I asked a customer service person at the Apple store for help. The customer service rep didn’t repeat the same “Apple is God” story I get from fanpeople (I guess they are trained to avoid it). Instead, he calmly explained to me another Mac gesture: Hold a finger on the pad while dragging another finger. I had to ask where I find those fingers. It turns out Apple hardware uses unique input devices called “fingers”. The idea is that the trackpad somehow reacts differently to multiple input positions. It turns out this feature is required for basic functionality. Right-click is also supported with the Ctrl button, there is also a multi-finger gesture for that but I’m not sure what it is.
The next thing I tried to do is to replicate functionality I have on Linux on the mac machine. The functionality I decided to try was downloading and playing podcasts. I googled it and the search results pointed me to software called “GarageBand”. I launched it from the dock and selected podcast. It opened a complicated screen with space for male and female voices (why do I have to tell it who’s talking in the podcast?). I decided to try listening to Car Talk from NPR. I used the Safari browser to find the Car Talk podcast, and copied the URL. Then I had to right-click (with Ctrl) on a submenu that said Podcast (why do I have to select podcasts again?), the only option was “open in iTunes”. I know iTunes is spamware for copying music to iPods under Windows but that was the only option. Anyway, the iTunes had an option to add a podcast under the Advanced menu (If that’s advanced, what’s the basic way?). I pasted the URL using SpecialAlt(⌘)-V and confirmed.
Now I could go back to GarageBand and after a few trails I could finally see the podcast there and drag it to the play area. I put it under “Male Voice” since the show is narrated by men. The GarageBand software seems to be an audio editor like Audacity. I’m reminded of old Windows 3.11 WAV files were opened in sound recorder… Anyway, I clicked the play button and it played! seeking was pretty hard since it was extremely zoomed and there was no way of seeing the entire file in one screen.
I thought to myself there must be an easier way to do it. So I googled “mac podcast player” and found a program called Juice. I installed it, subscribed to Car Talk with the URL, and clicked on the play button. Well, it stated playing. In the background. With the same show of Car Talk still playing in GarageBand. All attempts to stop it didn’t work. I even closed Juice entirely (with SuperAlt-Q, as the customer service guy explained) and still both podcasts were playing. It finally stopped after I SuperAlt(⌘)-Q’d all applications I could find (except GarageBand, and Finder, that wouldn’t close).
Then, I decided to see if GarageBand can export to a mobile device. The whole idea of podcasts is to listen to them on the move! So, under the share menu there was something about Podcasts and iWeb. I clicked that, and the podcast stopped playing and moved to the start, forgetting my playback location. Good thing I remembered what it was and seeked back there manually (the export failed BTW).
After all those trials, an Apple guy finally approached me, and told me — that the store is closing and I have to leave. I asked why is the GarageBand thing so complicated, and he said that I should use iTunes to play podcasts. He couldn’t explain more since I had to leave. That’s all for now.
PS: I forgot to mention the fact that keyboard shortcuts don’t work as expected, the Alt-F4 Expose settings screen for example, says that expose could work F9, F10, and F11. Instead, those buttons adjust the volume! It turns out the real shortcut is F3! But I found that out only after coming back to my room. Amazing documentation from Apple, yet again.
PPS: I even thought I’d buy one just to see how it works, but an Apple laptop costs over $7,000, and for that price it’s only a 256GB hard drive. What is it made of? Solid Gold? And you still have to pay extra for backup hardware (yes, macs need special $500 hardware to enable backups). It seems like macs are the fancy hotels of the computer world — anything you want to do costs extra.
PPPS: I suspect Apple puts addictive substances in their products. That’s the only way I can explain why anyone who’s purchased an Apple product seems to be in love with it. On a more serious note, I think the main driver for people loving Apple products in cognitive dissonance — You don’t want to admit to yourself you significantly overspent for a product that is no better than others, and since things aren’t customizable, people convince themselves they like it that way.
August 12th, 2009 at 05:07
Posted by
epsalon |
Apple |
2 comments
I promised a second post about macs, and it’s time to deliver. The reason I’m updating about it now, is that it turns out that two of the undergrads working with me on the computational pool project are mac people, and use mac laptops. Whenever I explain to them why macs are hard to use and complicated they keep saying I’m doing it wrong, and there’s a better way to do it. My main complaint here that this “better way” is never documented and isn’t easy to find.
For example, one mac person in our group re-installed a mac machine that was sitting in my office after the HD died (it required a trip to the shop to replace, since mac hardware is hard to maintain, and this is desktop!). After he left, I tried using his machine, the first thing I was greeted with was a screen asking for a password. That’s not very user friendly!
So, I googled for password reset information. I found several sites explaining how to reset a password without the CD, but all required you to be already logged in. I realized, it must be possible with the CD. However, there was no apparent way to boot from CD. Heck, there was no apparent way to get the CD out of the drive. Later I found the eject button on the keyboard, but still the computer will always boot from HD. I googled “mac boot from cd” and found you need to hold the option button while booting, not del of F1 like normal computers, and of course no message on boot to tell you that.
I booted the install CD, and it had a password reset option, but it didn’t work, since it wasn’t the right version. I had to boot an upgrade CD in order to successfully reset the password. After the password was reset I could finally log in.
Next step was to create a user for myself. This was not easy. The “spotlight” search feature I was told so much about did not work since it was “indexing”. I finally found the user management from the control panel and created my user.
All this time I was interrupted with an annoying window that wouldn’t close saying “Welcome” in different languages. Same annoying pop-up junk as with Windows. After that was done, an “install updates” popup came up and it had to restart and install the updates. By the time I was writing this post, the updates have finally been installed. I will now try to log in.
I am now on the mac itself. I managed to install Adium and Firefox. As it turns out, the popup window that appears is a mounted virtual drive. The two icons represent the application and a shortcut/symlink (I’m not sure) to the “Applications” folder, which is similar to the Start menu in windows. Dragging one to the other launches an install script, though I’m not sure exactly how. After installation is done you must unmount (”Eject”) the disk image in order to use the application. The application itself is only available from the applications menu, which can be accessed by searching for “Applications” using the magnifying glass on the top-right of the screen (called “Spotlight”). Spotlight does not search the web, or for uninstalled applications.
You could also use spotlight to search for a specific application. In a way, it’s like a limited graphical command line. The most important application to locate with Spotlight is the real command line (called “Terminal”). This application will later appear on the bottom of the screen, and as I found in the book “Mac OSX or Unix Geeks”, you can drag it do a different position on the bottom of the screen to have it stay there. I did not find a similar way to add a non-running application.
Another discovery I’ve made: The screen has a hidden camera near the top, I guess Apple literally watches you. More to come soon.
Tried to install Hebrew. Worked, but without a keyboard shortcut. Any attempt to enable launched a monster keyboard shortcut menu, where it turns out that Hebrew conflicts with the “spotlight” thing. So, it’s either Hebrew or being able to launch applications. Updates to come.
July 4th, 2009 at 04:30
Posted by
epsalon |
Apple |
9 comments
If you had to name the two most common operating systems, you would most likely say: Windows and Linux. Well, in the US there is a third common operating system. In fact, it’s even more popular than Linux. It’s called MAC OSX. In the Bay Area, not far from Cupertino where Apple Computer is headquartered, Macs are very common. It sometimes feels like more people use Macs than Windows.
Macs are supposed to be easy to use and intuitive, so I tried using one in my local Apple Store in Palo Alto. They have working laptops there than anyone can come and use.One of the first things I’ve noticed was a lack of mouse buttons. We’ve all heard about Macs have only one button, well the new ones don’t even have that. The trackpad is the button, and there is no right or middle button. Dragging requires manual effort to keep the heavy trackpad pressed, and if you’ve reached the end of the pad, you’re out of luck. Can’t just hold the button.
Another thing lacking was a scrollwheel, the standard right-side-of-pad scrolling didn’t work. I happened to find by chance that you can scroll on a Mac by using two fingers on the trackpad. It’s weird but it works pretty well.
The other input device I was having trouble with was the keyboard. Ctrl combinations don’t seem to work, and there are no PgUp/PgDown keys. I had to ask to know that most Ctrl combinations are replaced with a new key called “command” (it’s similar to Meta), though some things like ctrl-left/right to move a word back and forth is actually with the alt button, which is also labeled “option”. The PgUp/PgDown require yet another modifier key “fn”. The total of five modifier keys leave little space for the space bar, and the most useful one (”option”) is not near the edge of the keyboard as one might expect, but near the spacebar.
One of the first things I tried to do was install FireFox and an IM client called Adium (I googled “mac IM” and that was the first result). Software installation on Macs is different from Linux or Windows. Downloaded files are “Disk Images” (something like an ISO) which you have to mount. Then, (and this is never explained, I had to ask), you need to drag the application icon to a nearby icon of a capital “A”. I tried to attach a screen cap of that but the capture application only saves to TIFF.
Anyway, even after you install the software, it only appears in a secret menu called “Applications” that you need to do the following to reach: Click on the desktop, click on the “Go” menu, click on “Applications”, browse to the application among a whole lot of stuff (like the “Programs” menu in Windows, but not sorted by vendor). The terminal BTW is under another sublevel “Utilities”. No wonder I couldn’t find it.
Now, I tried to look for some tutorial to explain these basic features. I found a help page about transitioning from windows that didn’t explain anything (such as scrolling, or the “command” button, or how to install or uninstall software).
I can talk all day about how non-standard Macs are. The close/minimize/maximize buttons are on the LEFT and are only color coded (red=close, yellow=minimize, green=maximize). Alt-F4 and other common combos don’t work (well, it opens an “Expose Settings” screen). Command-F4 doesn’t work either. It seems the combo is Command-W (I guess W is for Wlose, or they copied it from Firefox’s close tab combo). I tried some of the pre-installed software too, but about that in a future post.
Update: I figured out how to use an image conversion program called “Preview”. It seems Macs copy the awful Windows default of hiding extensions, so I had to guess what version of the image I’m uploading…
February 4th, 2009 at 04:34
Posted by
epsalon |
Apple, American Culture |
6 comments
