Project! 10 days with apple

Myradon · Jul 13th, 2005, 05:39 AM

I'm going to put together a journal of 10 days with apple machines. the 12inch Ibook and the Ipod Mini (4gb). Th goal is to go a full 10 days without using the Dell (thank gods) or my Minidisk player (Poor bluey!). I'm, planning some pictures, comparisons and other fun. if anyone has a webspace where I could display the results, that would be awesome

Anythig I should pay special attention to? I have not written such an article.

Vexel · Jul 13th, 2005, 09:22 AM

Just start a thread

Grunt · Jul 13th, 2005, 10:50 AM

You've already started a thread - post the results here

Myradon · Jul 13th, 2005, 06:41 PM

alright, as soon as I get back home to lethbridge, this thread will have my opinion. I Think I will find a place to up the information up elsewhere or more permanently than a forum post, as i think it would be elpful for other consumers to see a fairly new users abillity to move to Apple systems.

CN · Jul 13th, 2005, 06:52 PM

Sounds cool. You could post the results here, or if you use .Mac you could use that webspace (although from your post it sounds as though you don't). Either way, keep us up to date with a URL or whatever

zekite · Jul 13th, 2005, 09:32 PM

I'm interested in your project...although I can't offer you webspace. I will be setting up my in-laws this summer with an eMac in hopes of converting them. This will involve some intense mentoring, followed by Apple remote assistance and personal/periodic 'help sessions'. It just makes so much sense for them to have the eMac.

Good Luck

Myradon · Jul 14th, 2005, 12:12 AM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by zekite
	I'm interested in your project...although I can't offer you webspace. I will be setting up my in-laws this summer with an eMac in hopes of converting them. This will involve some intense mentoring, followed by Apple remote assistance and personal/periodic 'help sessions'. It just makes so much sense for them to have the eMac. Good Luck

Thanks for the support

I am going to post everything in this topic once I get home, however I might see if some apple friendly site would host it. It's rather have people find it through google as an article, rather than just the post here

Good luck with your mother in laws machine. Hopefuly she takes well to it and gets to enjoy machines.

Myradon · Jul 16th, 2005, 07:00 AM

Day one.

Here we are, day one of this project. I purchased an apple Ibook (the focus of this article) and received a free ipod as part of a rebate program. This isn’t so much to do a trial run of the mac operating system, (I have used it on and off for the past month or so) but rather to use a new machine, and see what I can find as someone using only and apple.

We’ll start from the top. Today we open boxes. Now this may be silly, but I was impressed by the box. It’s a very nice display box, handle included, and extremely well packaged. Minor things like a top sheet to clean up the look of the Styrofoam, a two layer package, these were cool. inside I had several adaptors or plugs, the Ibook, manuals and installation material.

Here I have a few shots of the ibook along an empty soda bottle (600 ml). Not the size. This is the 12 inch model but it has exactly the same dimensions as one of my university text books, save in width. That’s very handy and I can see this being a very easy machine to pull out when needed. Secondly the height when closed. that Cylinder is the cap from our friend Mr. Soda bottle. Two caps in height, that’s a small laptop.

Reading the instruction manual (which was plain and easy to understand with a few pictures to guide me) I found that I needed to Charge the Ibook to 100%, they drain the battery to calibrate it. Well I plugged the machine in, and fired it up. To my joy, it was already to g, all I needed to do was enter my name, and a few preferences, I wasn’t timing but I’d probably say about 15 minutes at most. now compared to the last Windows machine i assembled, this was pleasing. I was expecting do a OS install, but that was unneeded. As you can probably guess, this is my fist pre built system that I have purchased in a very long time :P

The operating system is easy to understand, and pleasingly, it came with Two word processors, and office suite, web browser, media players, accounting software, and a media suite. Very very nice. I plugged in my Digital camera, and it recognized it, needed no drivers and imported my pictures very easily. Excellent! I plugged in a usb mouse, same deal. by the way it recognized both buttons and the scroll wheel, so yes you can use a two button mouse with a mac.

Following apples switch guide online I had already burnt a disk with all the data I had wanted to transfer. The CD was recognized and the files moved over easily. The only format not recognized was the Open Office.org save files, and I’m sure once i install that program, I'll be fine. All up things are going well.

the next step for me was to organize the Dock. The Dock is a small bar along the bottom of the screen that works like a combination of the start menu, and Task bar in windows. it allows you to launch programs with a click, and manage the programs you have open. I know I won’t be using garage band, or mail anytime soon, so I removed them by dragging the icon into the trash. Poof ! We have smoke, and they are gone. Next I wanted to add Apple works ( a productivity suit) to the dock. I drag the application on to the dock, and it’s there. I now have a link I can use to launch Apple works as desired, and I did not have to create a short cut, not did I loose the original program to the dock. it’s a very smooth system.

Next up I installed the one computer game i have. Diablo 2. it installed as quickly as any windows computer i have used recent;y and as well. I’m not a big gamer, so I can not do that comparison for anyone. Diablo 2 ran fine, and looked very nice on the screen. it ran as smooth as anything, and that was a bonus. Again Diablo 2 is NOT a new program so I should hope it runs well.

Next up I need to kill the battery, so I bring the machine upstairs and plug it into my router. The Connection was immediate, no pop ups nothing I was just online. this is due to the greatness of a router, and I appreciated not being told when the network connection was or was not unplugged.

After updating the software (again This still beats having to do a fresh install of XP) I had 11 updates. it went rather quickly and while doing this i decided to watch Xmen. Xmen runs well both in a window and at full screen, however the transition between the two is not perfect. Now this is Probably due to the 256 megs of ram i have,l and I do plan on upgrading as soon as possible . on the upside the 256 is inbuilt so I will always have base ram, and anything I ad is an addition, not a replacement.

I fired up Safari the included web browser. it did a fine job of going to my fave web sites, and loaded them fine. Except for Live Journal. the script was all hammered together. I’ll look into this tomorrow.

So far I have used my camera and mouse. The system has been updated, I can watch my movies, and surf the web. not bad. I opened up the system preferences and played around a bit. I made an account for my wife, and made the dock smaller than the base size. this is pleasing as well, every change happens in real time, I don;t have to click apply, the computer does what I tell it to the first time. That’s nice. good computer, have a biscuit.

That leaves me at the start of this article, or more accurately the start of writing it. I opened up Apple works and using the writing application composed this document. I like the program it is very neat, and haas all the options i need right up front (spell checker and font manager). before I finished here i opened installed my favorite fonts form my old machine. I double clicked on one, it opened the font, and asked if I wanted to install it. On saying “yes” the font manager opened, and I was able to install the entire directory. on the plus side it also filtered through and removed the few fonts that were corrupted,. it asked my permission, but didn’t require me to sort through file by file to find the corrupt ones.

in closing for tonight This has been a very pleasing experience. I have NEVER had a computer set up, doing useful tasks this easily in my life. The operating system feels more like it is offering advice when it asks something rather than giving me a pop up and telling me that I have a camera, I can open it by clicking somewhere. it’s very fast, in that I don’t have to take extra steps to get things done, the camera opened, I selected import pictures and it completed the task. I could then close the photo manager (iphoto) and move on to something else. This is great, and i look forward to the next week.

Cheers,
-Aaron Myradon

mac_geek · Jul 16th, 2005, 07:22 AM

A great synopsis of day 1... a really enjoyable read. I can feel your excitement in your prose!

...but Appleworks?! You're drinking the Kool-Aid...

Elias26 · Jul 16th, 2005, 07:34 AM

That is awesome bud! I am happy that you are so thrilled with your new computer, as so you should be given the price tag of said purchase. So I am assuming you won't be going back to the PC world anytime soon? *heh*

We got another one boys and girls! He's got a few screws loose, but we'll take him nonetheless. But on a serious note, I love that about the Mac OS X. It's the OS for dumb dumbs. Yet it isn't, if you know what I mean. Everything comes so easy that even a retard can set it up, yet only the smart people run Mac OS X, because lets face it, it's superior in every way to Linux and anything Windows has out there. Plus she's a beaut!

So Myradon, you downloaded any widgets yet? How are you loving Expose? Or when you switch users. I love that 3D cube effect. No more computer turning off and restarting, taking forever.. just switches from one user to the next within mere seconds and gives us a nice lil' show too. Tiger's awesome! I love that pussycat.