Return of the Mac
I'm back... Here's what I've done to my little MacBook.I've got Camino running as my main browser. Safari just doesn't cut it though it does have some nice features that Camino does not (mostly RSS). I grabbed a recent Intel-optimized nightly build from here. Will probably grab one every couple months or so.
There's a neat trick to adding address bar searching. Just bookmark a website's search URL and then give it a keyword. So to use google I'd bookmark "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" add the keyword g. Then to search on google, I'd just type "g sillytech" in the address bar. You can add all sorts of searches including wikipedia, dictionary, thesaurus, etc...
I haven't had a chance to try out iChat yet. It seems you either need to use .Mac or AIM for iChat and I only know my brother on AIM and he's touring South East Asia (bastard!). But I did install the Chax plug-in. It looks like it adds some useful features.
I installed Quicksilver. It looks very useful but I haven't used the MB enough to really feel the difference. It does look like it will be worth it over the long haul. There are some very good tutorials at Lifehacker.
I'm moving my photos over to iPhoto. I'm liking the ability to put slideshows together and keyword stuff. I thought about using picasa or flickr but I really don't want all of my personal pics online and I don't want to have to manage 2 sets of pics so this works out quite well for me. It also lets me burn sets of pics to discs quite easily for family.
Keywording a lot of pictures is not as simple as it could be. I have to select a group, then drag them to the keyword. It seems more intuitive to drag the keyword to them or even just click the button while they are selected. Keywording 6000+ pics is going to take some time. I did learn that using the trackpad for a long time hurts my wrist. Time to dig up my USB mouse.
Oh: trackpad. I didn't have it set to recognize clicks so I was always using the button. I enabled click on trackpad and it's a much nicer experience, especially the two-finger tap to right-click. That is awesome. I just wish it wasn't quite so sensitive. It's just a hair too trigger-happy and there doesn't seem to be a way for me to adjust it. I did enable "ignore accidental input".
Still don't like or need Expose. I'd rather have Spaces.
For my RSS needs I installed Vienna. I would prefer a browser solution but Camino is not doin' it. Vienna is very simple and it just works. Don't need much more than that. I took a look at Shrook but it was not for me. I also tried using Shiira (a new browser on the block; it supports RSS). It's way too early in it's development to really be of use. It's pretty slick with some nifty features. If it moves along at a good pace, and lives up to its potential, I can see myself switching down the road.
I'm going to try out Front Row and iDVD on the weekend.
I hope I haven't exhausted people's curiosity/patience. Let me know if you want to hear more.
| Posted by vinny9 on April 5, 2007 with category tags of macbook apple osx laptop |
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Written by vinny9
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