OK, so lets see if this works now.
I was given an iBook on Friday by someone at OSCon, so as you can guess I've been playing with it a fair bit. Here's some greivances:
1. Alt-tab to switch between apps (which is of course command-tab on apples) goes left to right through the docked applications. Braindead. It's *so* common to go from one application to another back and forth (perhaps cutting and pasting, perhaps just doing one thing while waiting for another), that in order for this to "just work" you need it to flip from one to the next like KDE and Windows do by default.
2. The dock needs to recognise .jars and not treat them like documents (i.e. force them to go next to the trash can). The finder does the right thing when you try and launch one so the dock should too.
3. The track pad is too big.
4. No preview in file open dialogs (probably the thing I'll miss most from KDE).
5. Lack of free software. This is something I'll find hard to get used to. Fink is doing good things, but it's not exactly native OSX apps. For example, what do I use for an IRC client? Does everyone just buy ircle?
OK, enough for now - I do actually like it (mostly), although I am miffed about having to pay for an OS update (Jaguar) given that I've only just got this damn thing, though the new mail client looks worth the price alone.
Re:Some notes
Matts on 2002-07-30T20:50:35
Yes, you rock. LiteSwitchX does the right thing. Thanks!
The finder does the right thing when you try and launch one so the dock should too.
I disagree, it recognises them as documents, which is what they war. If you want them in the dock, run them then select "Keep In Dock"
what do I use for an IRC client?
Well anything written for *nix portably enough for a start. With OrborousX you can happily run xchat alongside OmniWeb, if xchat is what makes you happy at least. Or there's Fire.app, which I understand is popular. Me, I prefer to just ssh to my linux machine and use irssi there.
I've just installed JediKnight and it seems okay. Some people are reporting odd ctcp things when I message them, but I can't see it so screw 'em
#perl reports Snak is possibly the best. I'll try it next.
--Nat
Re:Free as in beer
jdavidb on 2002-07-30T19:21:09
Historically, "enter" (with the numeric keypad) and "return" (with the main qwerty portion of the keypad) were two different keys on the Macintosh. This was quite a shock to me when I migrated from the Apple IIGs, which went to great lengths to emphasize that they were the same. Of course, when I entered college and discovered ASCII terminals, I quit trusting the numeric keypad and anything off the main qwerty area altogether.
:) I'm guessing this explains your randomness, but I could be wrong.
Re:Free as in beer
belg4mit on 2002-08-02T05:52:08
Noooooo C-Enter to send.
How else can you IM ASCII art?
Re:Well...
Matts on 2002-07-30T20:48:51
Yeah, athenaIRC looks cool. Using it now. Still sucks compared to xchat, which is really the pinacle of IRC user interfaces, but I'm sure someone will port it eventually (it even runs on windows already).
I was chatting with the guy in the terminal room while waiting for 10GB to transfer and he had a lot of good things to say about Jaguar including that the speed difference on the iBook in particular will be very noticeable. Little nits like VPN support and a beefed up 'get info' are on the list too. Most of what you list are little things that we all get used to on our home OS and then grump about when they are different on another. You should hear me rant about Linux when I have to use it for any length of time after managing Solaris.
Re:Jaguar will likely be worth the upgrade
darobin on 2002-07-30T23:02:40
Last time I checked (but I could have misunderstood) Jaguar will be free for anyone that bought OSX less than a month before its release. If its release is indeed on 24/08 then Matt's iBook is probably safe. And the one I'm getting next week is almost certain to be
:-)
As to jars on the doc, I hadn't experienced that, as the only jar I run is jEdit, and I WANT that on the left side to be launched. I've heard good things about DragThing that pudge mentioned.
The trackpad got in the way until I turned off tap-to-click. I hate all trackpads anyway, and this one didn't annoy me more than any others.
As to preview, Column mode, learn it, know it, love it. If you click any image in the finder in column mode, it's preview will be shown on the next panel on the right. This SHOULD also work in file dialogs, but I haven't tested that. Dialogs are Column mode by default.
IRC is my one gripe. ircle pissed me off to no end. Everything is in its own window. AthenaIRC worked pretty well, but to do two servers at once it will pop up a registration request every ten minutes, and I was unable to find the company that wrote it to register it.
XChat runs flawless, though I still need to figure out how to cut and paste between X apps and OSX apps. Since I end up doing alot of moving about, I actually now use ircII on a remote box. Works like a charm. What I want is OSX native xchat. Hell, even a native mirc. I want one window, not ten. I want each channel full size, and switched back and forth by tabs. I'm going to check out Fire and Snak, which I hadn't heard of. Oh, and I guess I could give chatzilla a try.
And, finally, as to your problem in the last entry with word delete, I've found something interesting. Since the "backspace" key on the ibook is really a delete key, I played around a bit and found out that alt-Fn-delete will actually do word delete like you say in IE and under MS Word X. It does NOT, however, work as such in Mozilla or Chimera.
As it stands, I have two gripes about OSX. First, I still can't get any font other than Monaco 10 to look decent in Terminal.app (And the shareware GLTerm.app, which, while fast, doesnt take command arguments or
Re:I'll agree, sort of.
pudge on 2002-07-30T21:18:08
Fonts are kinda nice in Mac OS X, but yeah, they have certain problems. Sometimes they are just damned hard to read.
I hate column dialog boxes. Satan invented them. Even if they worked properly -- and they don't, as they are nearly impossible to effectively navigate with the keyboard -- they are just lame. I am waiting for someone to give me back Navigation Services from Carbon/Mac OS 8.1+, as they are God's file dialogs.
DragThing rules. It is very configurable, so you can make it look however you want.
And, um, LiteSwitch X is free.
