Simon Willison’s Weblog

glad to hear you're digging the mac. here's a tip for you: sidetrack will give your trackpad scroll wheel capabilites as well as allow you to set tapping the trackpad as a right click. it's been exceedingly handy the past few months since i picked up an ibook. now i don't have to carry around an optical mouse or have my hands leave my laptop while working - save for when i have to swap cds.

boogah - 10th January 2004 06:18 - #

Damn.

I've been mulling getting a Mac since OS X came out (and I started hearing buzz about it).

And then you point out the deep discounts available to students.

And then you point to kernelthread.com's low-level coverage, and I go all googly-eyed at the seriously cool stuff deep in the heart of the thing.

And then you talk about stuff just working.

I'm nearly wholly compelled at this point. You'd better stop, or my wife won't be at all happy. ;)

Jeremy Dunck - 10th January 2004 06:32 - #

If you like the eye-candy with Expose, try holding the shift key down when you activate it. Fun! This also works with windows minimizing (the Yellow button on the windows). Enjoy your Mac!

August - 10th January 2004 06:46 - #

Ditto on region codes. Why shouldn't my mother in Minnesota be able to send DVDs to her grandson in Germany? I didn't mention DRM explicity in my 'why I didn't buy a Mac' post, but I guess it falls under 'not trusting Apple'.

Scott - 10th January 2004 07:22 - #

There really are only two kinds of computer geeks: those who've gone gaga over MacOSX and those who don't own a Mac (yet).

Some random notes:

• MacOSXHints for general tips 'n tricks.
• CocoaMySQL for a kickass GUI to MySQL.
• VersionTracker for a plethora of MacOSX applications
• Be wary of the iTunes Music Store. It's more addictive than crack.

Jacques Distler - 10th January 2004 07:58 - #

Jacques: don't I know it! I've bought 4 albums already :/

boogah: SideTrack is awesome - thanks for the tip!

Jeremy: I doubt you'd regret it.

Incidentally, one point I forgot to mention: The built in speakers on this laptop are fantastic - I was expecting to have to get headphones or external speakers to get decent sound quality but they're easily good enough for listening to music - they don't sound tinny at all.

Simon Willison - 10th January 2004 08:08 - #

To select whole words, try shift+alt+arrow key. Works in most apps. Try the up and down arrow keys if you want to select whole blocks of text. Release the shift key and you just move the cursor. Holding the command (Apple) key will select/move whole lines of text in the apps that support it.

Roger - 10th January 2004 08:58 - #

Delete: The delete key is backspace. The issues seem to be that some command-line programs. When in the Terminal go to "Window Settings..." in the Terminal Menu. And select Keyboard from the drop-down list. There are options for full keyboard mappings and a check box labeled "Delete key sends backspace" which is probably what you need. vi (vim actually) works fine for me with that box unchecked. But I'm don't remember what the defaults were or everything I changed to get everything working the way I like. Because, one of the other nicities of OSX that you haven't gotten to experience yet is how stable and portable OSX home directories are. I've been using the same home folder across 3 computers, 4 HDs and 3 major versions of OSX in the past couple of years. So I do very little refixing of things I have already fixed.

Somewhat related, the key mappings for all Cocoa apps can be altered to do all kinds of fun things. Check GNUFoo's OSX Section for a key binding that implements full Emacs style movement and editing commands (many of which are already on by default.

Also from GNUFoo, uControl. Modifier key remapper extrodinaire.

Word Selection: Macs have a whole slew of in-line selection/movement tricks. Your "ctrl+shift+arrow" is now "opt+shift+arrow". While holding option, right or left jumps by word, and up or down jumps by paragraph. While holding command, right or left jumps to beginning or end of line, up or down jumps to beginning or end of the document. Shift can be added to any of the above commands to select while moving.

Xian - 10th January 2004 09:24 - #

Simon, Welcome! Glad you're enjoying the Mac experience... I must says as a long-time Mac user that it's funny to see the phrase "traditional mouse with two buttons..." ;)

pete - 10th January 2004 11:11 - #

Simon, Glad you're enjoying your new mac experience. Just a quick note about the delete key - if you want to use it as the backspace key - just hold down the function (fn) key in the bottom left of the keyboard.

Ben Pirt - 10th January 2004 11:47 - #

Re DVD region code: Simon, I've read on this page (see the paragraph about "All Region Players") that the VLC player should do the trick without tinkering with the firmware. Worth a try, methinks.

Carlo Zottmann - 10th January 2004 13:41 - #

Welcome to the club! I "Switched" about a year ago and haven't looked back. I've also had problems with Terminal crashing (and pretty much only terminal). It seems like that was mostly pre-Panther, but I don't use it anymore, though. Check out iTerm, a tabbed replacement for Terminal. Don't think it's ever crashed on me, and tabs are fantastic.

Jason Clark - 10th January 2004 13:43 - #

The default Panther screensaver (Flurry) is indeed a joy to behold. For further OpenGL screensaver goodness, try out Fireflies by Simon Perry. Gorgeous :-)

Phil - 10th January 2004 14:21 - #

The screwdrivers in spectacle repair kits should be the right size. That's what I used at least. The screws are very tight and heat up pretty quickly so be careful while you're loosening them.

The above actually relates to my experience with an iBook but memory installation is done the same way as on the Powerbook

Is the iSight any good? I've looked at one in the past but they seem a little expensive (at least they are over here in England)

Danny Shepherd - 10th January 2004 14:43 - #

I realize it's a laptop -- and who wants to carry around lots of peripherals with a laptop, right? But if you miss right-click buttons, mouse wheels and such that are standard fare with Windows pointer/input devices, go out and buy a cheap USB mouse and plug it into the PB. It will also Just Work, as you expect (right-click brings up context menus; most apps' windows respond to the scroll wheel). Microsoft's Intellipoint mice, in fact, even have Mac driver software that allows you to map the extra side buttons to whatever interface goodies you wish.

Jay Small - 10th January 2004 16:14 - #

I didn't need a screwdriver to upgrade my powerbook. the RAM was just under the keyboard. Did this change with the new aluminum design?

Robert Sayre - 10th January 2004 16:29 - #

Robert: Yes, the new design requires you to flip the machine over and undo some screws on a backplate to access the memory slots.

Danny: the iSight was initially a bit of a dissapointment as it's designed for use with iChat AV and iChat AV only - I was very surprised that it wasn't able to import things straight in to iMovie. Then I found a link to Apple's QuickTime broadcaster which allows you to record from an iSight straight to your hard drive. The actual quality from the camera seems really good and it's a nice gadget, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you know other people with Macs and iSights who you want to video conference with. I actually only bought it beccause it was pretty cheap (US price + student discount = $119) and I had some budget left over.

Simon Willison - 10th January 2004 20:18 - #

Hi Simon, As anoter recent switcher, you might find my recent experiences helpful: http://www.sauria.com/blog/computers/operating_sys tems/macosx

Ted Leung - 10th January 2004 20:46 - #

I'll join the chorus for uControl / Sidetrack. As far as DVD playback goes VLC is nice and frequently handles deinterlacing low-quality DVDs and corrupt/non-standard files fairly well. It also has some neat tricks like being able to save streams or transcode on the fly. The downside is that VLC is still a little clunky and uses a lot more CPU. An alternative is 0Sex - an all purpose DVD ripper. You can have it create VOBs for individual programs (handy if you're building a video library - the next step is to convert them to MPEG-4 using something like OpenShiiva with 3ivx) or simply produce a VIDEO_TS folder or DVD image which can be played directly or burned to a DVD-R.

Chris Adams - 10th January 2004 21:29 - #

Simon, welcome to one of the better sides of computing. :)

Be sure to check out my Hints for New Switchers and, of course, the excellent What Is Mac OS X by Amit Singh.

I also have some HOWTOs that you might find interesting, and feel free to send me e-mail if you need any hints. I've pretty much tried it all, I think... :)

Rui Carmo - 10th January 2004 22:26 - #

In the iLife '04 version of iMovie, you'll be able to import directly from an iSight camera.

Simon P - 11th January 2004 00:28 - #

I can only say that my own recent experiences with the PowerBook mirror your own Simon. Rock on.

Wesley Mason - 11th January 2004 01:53 - #

I've never gotten Terminal.app working properly. No combination of termcaps, key remapping etc got the backspace key to work consistently in vim/shell/nested connections. As far as I can tell the Terminal.app is just a POS. I've switched to using xterms happily for the past year or so. Much better. Also, X11 loads up faster than there Terminal.app.

leonard - 11th January 2004 02:38 - #

To follow up on Leonard's comment, I too was having issues with backspace/delete key mapping when using the terminal for vim/ssh/screen stuff. For what it's worth, I had some success after changing Terminal.app to use "xterm" instead of "xterm-color" as the terminal type. (In Terminal.app's preferences.)

John Vollmer - 11th January 2004 20:08 - #

Sorry, Simon, Apple have to ship all Macs with a one-button mouse — because if they didn’t, third-party developers would make software that was so badly designed it needed more than one mouse button, and that would reduce the Mac’s competitive advantage.

(If you’re just switching from Windows/X11, you probably haven’t realized yet how much faster the Mac menus are, because you’re still taking care not to overshoot them.)

mpt - 12th January 2004 06:53 - #

The ridiculous DVD region limitations can be helped by Region X at http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download.html

Simon - 12th January 2004 10:38 - #

I'm jelous. The office bought me a mac to test pages on over a year ago, and then the budgets shrank due to hard times. (Which now I want to make it my primary machine and can't afford the software upgrades.) On top of that, I want one for home, but we can't do that this year either. So, there it is. I will say that after using it off and on, I now tell everyone to buy macs, and this coming from someone who was anti-mac for well over 15 years. I, like you Simon have seen the light. They are great machines.

Jason Derifaj - 12th January 2004 13:23 - #

FYI - I noticed the CTRl-Mouse button thing too when trying to open a link in a new tab in Mozilla.. If you hold the mouse button down a second longer, without hitting CTRL, that context menu will pop up on it's own..

Not sure if that'll help in whatever app you're using, but works in Mozilla.

Rick Romero - 12th January 2004 13:38 - #

Forget about vi, buy bbedit (http://www.bbedit.org) and type in your terminal % bbedit myapp.txt Then you are ready to code.

Bertrand Mansion - 12th January 2004 16:42 - #

heh, the longstanding joke among the Mac faithful is that Apple has always had a three-button mouse -- it's just that two of them are on the keyboard! Yes, we need the extra buttons badly (matt's sarcasm is taken as such ;-) -- as Jay points out (hi, Jay, long time!), any decent 3rd-party mouse should do the trick, altho it will break the aesthetic harmony just a bit.

Val - 12th January 2004 21:46 - #

Apple has always used �delete� on its keyboards where PCs use �backspace� .. Apple uses the term �forward delete� or uses the forward delete symbol (�) on the key which PCs label �delete� (On a laptop keyboard you get forward delete by pressing fn-delete.)

All Carbon, Cocoa, and Java programs should work consistently with regards to those keys. Most X11 programs work fine too, although there may be exceptions. Command line programs, especially emacs and vi, may be more problematic. I've had the same problems on Linux and Solaris machines (especially when using SSH between different systems). It's a matter of getting your terminal emulator and your TERM variable to match properly, and sometimes configuring various settings in particular programs as well.

Selecting a word with the keyboard is done with option-shift-left or option-shift-right. Except for a few programs which use command-shift-arrows ... every once in a while I run across a Carbon program which gets it wrong. (You shouldn�t have any trouble with Cocoa apps, though.) Without shift, this will move the insertion point. Command-arrows move to beginning/end of line.

See the Aqua HIG for more info about what keystrokes should do what (but keep in mind that some programs such as Microsoft Word may do things differently for no good reason). Yes, home/end really are different from what you�d expect, and page up/down don�t move the insertion point. (In most programs.. there are exceptions.)

When using Mac OS X software you will get used to having one mouse button � Apple doesn�t use contextual menus as much. For X11 apps you will want to have a three b utton mouse, though. The good news is that just about any USB mouse should work without needing any special drivers. (Although some do include drivers to activate special features, most will work fine without.)

There are ways to get around DVD region encoding, as others have pointed out. I only have region 1 DVDs, so I haven�t tried any of them.

Any Mac with a gigabit Ethernet port can use crossover and non-crossover Ethernet cables interchangeably� it�s part of the gigabit Ethernet spec, and Apple extends it to 10 and 100 megabit connections as well. Extra monitors should work flawlessly � they did back in 1989, and it would be a big step backwards for Apple to mess that up after 15 years. :-)

Don�t look for any training in the speech recognition � Apple hasn�t put much effort into it since it first came out in System 7 back in the early �90s. It currently only does American English. They have recently started working on it again (particularly in the output � the new Vicki voice demonstrates a number of improvements from the old Victoria, but it is still a bit buggy). Perhaps they will start working on improving recognition again, too.

One cool thing to check out � turn on the character palette option for the keyboard menu. The character palette provides an easy way to get at any Unicode character. All Cocoa apps are Unicode-aware, and most newer Carbon ones are too. (Note that there are some pretty big non-Unicode apps.. Microsoft Word being one of the most notorious.) The keyboard viewer (which can also be added to the keyboard menu) may be useful for learning how to type certain non-ASCII characters. (hint, hold down the option key.) Another fun thing is the Zapfino font, which entertained me for hours the first time I played with it.

Tim Buchheim - 14th January 2004 03:54 - #

hmm.. all my lovely UTF-8 turned to gobbledygook ... it showed up fine in the preview, but got mangled somewhere along the line. Oh well.

Tim Buchheim - 14th January 2004 03:55 - #

some useful things with modifier keys the finder:

• when moving a file, hold down option (alt) to make a copy
• also when moving a file, hold down command to move from one volume to another w/out copying.
• the above two also work with selections when editing text
• in list view of a window, hold down shift to select a consecutive bunch of files, or hold command to pick out individuals
• shift-command-g for a goto box... it has tab completion

rebecca - 15th January 2004 06:36 - #

Mac users probably know this but i've been using a mac only for the past week so bare with me :). i just discovered that holding the one button on a link under Firebird show the right-button context menu. I haven't tried it with other apps.

Arnaud - 15th January 2004 13:58 - #

:he backspace-delete

I am not an Mac user (expecting a child, so my computer upgrade budget is rather non-existent), but I believe that this could be done with plain .vimrc commands.

Matej

Matej Cepl - 15th January 2004 17:51 - #

In addition to Rebecca's hints:

• pressing option when you click on a finder window's close button will close all the opened windows (the same with the minimize button)
• pressing option while clicking on a background application's window (to bring it to the front) will also hide the former forefront application

Option an command keys are very often used to perform alternate tasks, "play" with them.

Cheers

Riccardo - 17th January 2004 03:02 - #

I'd love a Mac but can you buy a cheap one without a monitor? I don't need another monitor, but don't want to shell out for the G5.

The main problem would be learning a whole new system. Even after using Windows for years, I'm finding new things. Thanks for the CTRL + SHIFT + Arrows tip! But why do the down and up arrows do nothing in Windows?

I found a similar tip this morning - in Mozilla double-click on the first letter of a word and it highlights the word and the one before it too.

I have my Windows mouse-wheel button set to double-click - a real time-saver when rushing. I suppose I should consider making links work on single clicks from the Folder Options instead.

Without the wheel for scrolling I'd be lost. That Apple mouse SUCKS. Panther looks amazing though. But all my Windows programs wouldn't be there so what would I do? I'd need to save files compatible for other computers using Windows (XP). I'm thinking of Office 2000.

One more thing: does the Mac come with built-in server tools? XP requires you to buy the Professional edition I believe. Only it would be good to set PHP up locally for testing web pages.

Chris Hester - 21st January 2004 12:26 - #

hmm.. all my lovely UTF-8 turned to gobbledygook ... it showed up fine in the preview, but got mangled somewhere along the line. Oh well.

Dan Origo - 29th January 2004 22:31 - #

What amuses me the most is that people buying into the hype and going ahead and spending thousands of dollars for a mac, finds out later that there are so many things that suck in those machines. The funny thing is that nobody wants to admit it at first, and they are always like, but overall it is a better machine, but it costs money for Apple to make the software (after spending hundrends of dollars each year for a slightly better OS), the Ghz myth (when PC chips crush Apple almost all but maybe one or two photoshop filter benchmarks) , the PCs cost more (when they somehow manage to add the cost of the building into a super computer project which uses PCs, and they compare the price of the building and the PCs with those macs in another project), etc... You can probably find more examples in this site.

Serge - 29th January 2004 23:18 - #

Hi everyone, im considering buying a 12" ibook for university this year. Im just wondering if anyone knows a good uk website that sells cheap mac games as i really cant live without at least a couple of descent games :) - thanks

Mark - 13th June 2004 17:45 - #

Can anyone help me - I use apple works and look for the option of backspacing whole words, not only each letter. With PC it works very easy with ctrl+backspace, but this does not work on mac. And neither does using any of the other keys like alt, apple, shift - either combined or alone. They could not help me at my local mac store, either and I have not found it on mac help or mac guide. erik saunes

erik saunes - 15th September 2004 11:51 - #

I am a new user of an ApplePC - using a Powerbook G4. Every MS Office application I use only covers part of the screen (even in maximise or zoom mode). It's bizzare that one can't view any application in full-screen mode (there's nothing on help either on the PC or on the internet that says how to do this). Please HELP!!!!!!!! Thanks a ton!

DK - 5th April 2006 19:19 - #

Hi, I stumbled on this post of you since I am a convert also. My annoyance was the delete key in the terminal app. And with all "problems" one can encounter on this brilliant machine there are people ready to help, websites full of info and solutions to make the experience better and better as time goes by. I love all you guys with the suggestions made in the comments! Thanks!

Wouter Roosendaal - 28th September 2006 11:03 - #