599 replies to this topic

[darkpath]

We just got it in at work right before I left. On Monday, I'll be backing up my MacPro to a disk image, repartitioning the drive, imaging one partition with the backup, then installing Leopard on the other.

My PowerBook, on the othe hand, is staying with Tiger at least until Juniper Networks gets around to upgrading their VPN solutions to support Leopard.

[Johnboy007]

How good is the MightyMouse.

I'm looking to get a wireless mouse for my laptop (because track pads are annoying). Are they worth the price or am I better off getting something else?

[stromberg]

How good is the MightyMouse.

I'm looking to get a wireless mouse for my laptop (because track pads are annoying). Are they worth the price or am I better off getting something else?

MightyMouse is great. But do yourself a favour and stay away from a wireless one.

[Professor Dent]

On the Mighty Mouse, I'm not a big fan of it. I like to "rest" my hand on the mouse when I'm using it. With the Mighty Mouse, I found myself having to lift my hand up slightly & then press down so the right button would work. Head over to your local Apple store & give the mouse a test drive to see if you like it. I would second Stromberg's recommendation on going with a wired mouse.

Moving on to Leopard, I got it installed late Friday night. The install went off without a hitch & it was very similar to installing Tiger. "Exodus Honey" plays during the welcome movie. I have it on my 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook with 1.25 GB of RAM. Performance is very similar to Tiger. I do find Cover Flow in the Finder to be a little choppy at times. Quick Look is one of the main reasons I upgraded & it was well worth it. The menu bar at the top of the screen is now square. The rounded upper corners that were there in Tiger are gone. As is the blue Apple in the upper left. It is replaced by a black/grey Apple with a shadow. I don't have the translucent menu bar. From what I could read on several Mac forums, it has to do with the graphics card in the computer not being fast enough to generate it. Not a big deal for me as I like the solid one. One other visual change is the removal of the brushed metal look - everything now has the unified look. Overall, I'm pleased with everything so far.

[Righty007]

How good is the MightyMouse.

I'm looking to get a wireless mouse for my laptop (because track pads are annoying). Are they worth the price or am I better off getting something else?

It's worth the price! I love mine!

[stromberg]

On the Mighty Mouse, I'm not a big fan of it. I like to "rest" my hand on the mouse when I'm using it. With the Mighty Mouse, I found myself having to lift my hand up slightly & then press down so the right button would work. Head over to your local Apple store & give the mouse a test drive to see if you like it. I would second Stromberg's recommendation on going with a wired mouse.

Yep, just try one yourself and see if you can handle it.

Guess it's down to personal preference. I'm using a MM at the office and a regular one at home, and I have no problem switching between them. Must be because of the trackball that makes the difference clear and immediately noticable. On that note, the trackball acts up at times, not sure if this has technical reasons or if it's because of ordinary dust and dirt (how the heck do you clean that thing?).

Have no problems with the right button myself, but can't use the extra buttons on the side, as I usually hold the mouse between thumb and ring finger - exactly on those buttons.

To each his own.

[zencat]

I have Leopard installed and I'm loving it. Everything works as advertised. There are noticeable speed improvements, especially in web browsing and in Mail. Time machine is very cool. Spaces looks like a fab feature if I can get into the habit of using it. The new Dock looks great and I like the spring up folders. The backgrounds and effects in iChat are really fun.

Only disappointment is that Sherlock is gone. That has a great built-in language translator that I used quite often.

[TheSaint]

Last Thursday I got a brand new Mac mini to replace the G3 iMac I saved from work earlier this year. The power supply died in September and I had no luck in getting it replaced. This will be the 3rd Mac I will have had in my possesion this year. The G3 iMac replaced the PowerMac 7100/80 I had that I used primarily as a word processor.

[Johnboy007]

I might actually pick up Leopard this week, as the bookstore is selling them for incredibly cheap.

Might still wait a while before installing it.

[Righty007]

I might actually pick up Leopard this week, as the bookstore is selling them for incredibly cheap.

Might still wait a while before installing it.

Why wait?

[TheSaint]

I might actually pick up Leopard this week, as the bookstore is selling them for incredibly cheap.

Might still wait a while before installing it.

How much?

[Johnboy007]

I might actually pick up Leopard this week, as the bookstore is selling them for incredibly cheap.

Might still wait a while before installing it.

Why wait?

Updates and patches. Perhaps it's carryover from the days of Windows.

TheSaint, my friend says he picked it up yesterday for about $60 (no rebating). He has a tendency to exaggerate, so I'll be heading over there this afternoon to check it out.

[darkpath]

Based on my observations so far, while the process of getting my computer upgraded didn't go well, through no fault of Leopard (it was actually an issue with Tiger) the MacPro is running very well with Leopard. Indeed, it appears to be working better in the mixed platform environment I'm in than Tiger did.

One example is that we have 3 main print servers on the Windows side and the list of printer queues is so long for each of the printers that Tiger could not resolve the printer queue names of the printers I needed. Consequently, we'd been forced to use IP printing on the Macs. Leopard can see the entire print queue list.

[Arbogast777]

A funny little Leopard easter egg in case you haven't seen it yet...

 4mi23r5.jpg   13.53KB   21 downloads

[Johnboy007]

I tried out Leopard on my neighbor's MacBook this evening and was quite impressed with Spaces. As someone who is constantly writing something on Word, instant messaging, emailing, and surfing it's perfect. Just F6 from seeing everything.

Answered some of my questions about Time Machine, which looks considerably more manageable and worthwhile than its Vista counterpart (I really hated that).

[Professor Dent]

Picked-up a 15" MacBook Pro yesterday. It has the LCD based screen which is very impressive - graphics & text are crisp & clear & video looks great. It is much brighter than my PowerBook (at the exact same brightness setting, of course). The backlit keyboard is also pretty sweet. Makes typing in the dimly lit living room, like I'm doing now, less frustrating than it was on my PowerBook.

[Johnboy007]

The light up keyboard comes in handy when I'm writing papers in the dark while my roommate is sleeping.

[darkpath]

I've found spaces in Leopard to be a lifesaver at work where I also use VMWare to allow me to support Windows customers () and where the powers that be have seen fit to equip my colleagues with dual monitors but me with only a single 4x9 display. By using spaces, I'm able to put VMWare in full screen mode (where I find it works much more reliably) and leave it that way while still being able to have my other applications in a workable manner.

[darkpath]

I got an apple mac, nothing seems to work properly on it, I can't do track changes easily, I cant minimise much without losing things accidentally, I don't even like the way it looks and all in all the damn thing drives me nuts.

Oh and its got no floppy drive and I like everything on floppy's.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and ask, were you previously on a different platform?

What kind of changes are you attempting to track?

Minimizing with no risk of losing (presumably closing the window instead)...

I'm not certain, since I can't actually see what is happening with your computer and the description doesn't give me a clear picture just yet....

Ok, first, the distance between the minimize and the close boxes are further apart on Mac OS X than on Linux (Gnome or KDE), Windows (any version from Windows 3.1 to WindowsXP), or Solaris. This difference was deliberate in order to make it harder for someone to accidntally select the wrong control.

That being said, the keyboard shortcut to minmize is command-M (the command key is the one with the Apple logo and the propeller-like character on it). Personally, I find it more useful (perhaps because I am using the smallest of the PowerBooks with only 1024 by 768 resolution) to Hide instead of Minimize. The keyboard shortcut is command-H.

Are you using a "mighty mouse"? I know a number of people have difficulty feeling where the end of the left click is and where the right click starts. My own wife found it so impossible, I disabled right-clicking on her iMac.

What, exactly, is it about the looks of the computer that you find contrary to your wishes? Is it the layout of icons on the desktop, the position of the dock, the fonts used, or some other quality? I'm more than happy to try to help you customize the desktop layout to fit your work style; but without having some details about what is failing to measure up to your needs, I can't begin to look at where your particular Mac is failing you.

You do know that floppies only hold 1.4MB, right? Any Mac currently shipping can burn CDs in a much larger (and in my opinion more useful) 700MB chunk. Your Mac may even have a "SuperDrive" and be capable of burning DVDs in either 4+GB or 8+GB (depending on if its single layer or dual layer) chunks. Why, exactly, do you "like everything on floppy's"?

[Professor Dent]

Do give more details, ms minniespinney. We will be glad to help. I'm guessing you are switching from Windows. If so, give it a little time to get acquainted with the Mac & it's differences. There were a few things that bugged me when I got my first Mac but I got over them in a few weeks time.

On your data loss problem, you should not lose data when you minimize a window. If you try to close it, you will get a dialog box asking you if you want to save your file.

On the floppy disc issue, these things are fading fast & most computers sold in the past two years don't even come with them. It's an add on option you need to pay for on desktops. I have a Dell laptop I use for work that's 1 & 1/2 years old & no floppy in it either. If you need to use a floppy, you can get an external USB floppy drive for about $20. If you just have data on them, consider getting a USB thumb drive & moving all your data to it. I just picked-up a 2 gig drive up for $15. That's about 1,400 floppies worth of storage so it will save you a little space too.

[Johnboy007]

Yeah, my last two HP desktops didn't come with floppy drives either. I don't think they had the big clunky zip disk drives either.

Not much reason to any more, they're huge, fragile, and have a tiny storage capacity.

[Mister Asterix]

Oh and its got no floppy drive and I like everything on floppy's.

Five-and-a-quarters or Eights?




I kid.

[Professor Dent]

My Motorola Razr that had served me well for several years killed itself last week. Somehow, it gave itself a blue screen of death (no kidding, it really does have a blue screen when it dies). The Verizon tech people were stumped. After they told me the phone was dead beyond repair & that my entire phone book was lost, I went phone shopping.

Needless to say, I ended-up with an iPhone. So far, I'm very pleased with it. I use a BlackBerry for work & the iPhone runs circles around it for web browsing. The interface is very intuitive. I synced the Casino Royale trailers to it & the video playback is a little smoother than the iPod Touch. In the scene when Bond is jumping on the cranes, there is compression artifacting present in the sky on the Touch but not on the iPhone. The biggest downside so far is the AT&T Edge network. It is painfully slow (think dial-up type speeds). I will say that the phone is an attention getter. In less than a week, I've had at least a half dozen people see it & immediately ask if it was an iPhone & want to check it out.

[Righty007]

I just want to say that I love my MacBook Pro and would not be able to live without it. I just upgraded to Leopard and I like it.

[Professor Dent]

Welcome to the Leopard club, Righty.

Anyone else anticipating MacWorld 2008? I saw some photos of banners that are up at the Moscone Center. The tagline is: "2008. There's something in the air." I won't rehash all the rumors but I do look forward to seeing Steve's keynote. As far as presentations from CEO's go, I think he is one of the best presenters out there.

On an iPhone note, I read an interesting article in Wired on its development. It's long but worth the read.

[darkpath]

Thank you for the link to the article, Professor! That was indeed worth the read.

I've been using Leopard at work; but held off at home as my employer's remote access solution only recently became compatible with Leopard. I anticipate upgrading within the next few weeks and am eagerly awaiting new product announcements at MacWorld.

[Sbott]

Interesting article Prof. Dent, I always enjoy the story behind the product, which in the case of Apple and Jobs is always entertaining.
We're still waiting for the iPhone to arrive in Aus, hopefully on a 3G network if the rumors are to be believed.

[darkpath]

I am rather hoping that instead of Apple coming out with a Japan & Koreea specific CDMA iPhone, that the iPhone for those countries will be dual mode (CDMA & GSM). Of course, I'd then dare hope that the dual mode model would become the defacto standard model.... I know, I'm a dreamer!

[Professor Dent]

I'd say you are more of a visionary, darkpath.

Thanks, Sbott. I'm a fan of the story behind the product as well. I guess we will see tomorrow if Apple announces a 3G iPhone or not. I have to say, after having one for a little over a month now, it is a great device.

[Sbott]

Really disappointed with Steve's Keynote presentation. The 4 new products didn't really have the wow factor ( I know its hard to keep it up year after year).
The MacBook Air looks great but when you delve deeper there are clearly a number of issues with it that will stop many people from buying it. I think that Time Capsule, whilst not a striking as a MBa or iPhone, will be a great addition and I can see many uses for it.
The new software for AppleTv looks interesting, does anyone have any experience with the current version?