The joy of OSX
I’d been watching its progress from Shanghai, via Anchorage, across the continental US and to my doorstep. It had seemed like a long, long wait, but there it was yesterday morning — at last, my new Mac.
As always Apple’s packaging was beautifully presented. The computer was in a slim matt-black box adorned with a side-view of an unbelievably slender laptop, and even the styrofoam packing was sculpted: reminiscent of Islamic tile mosaics.
And I couldn’t believe how slim the notebook actually was. It made my two-year-old 12″ Powerbook look lumpen in comparison. It has a 200GB hard drive, a 2.2GHz Intel processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 15″ wide-format LCD display.
I restrained myself from starting the new machine up right away because I was waiting for a new firewire cable — which I’d ordered separately — to arrive later that day. The cable allows for easy transfer of all my files and applications from one computer to the other, and I’d heard it was better to do this while starting the computer for the first time.
The cable didn’t arrive until about 4:00 PM. I hooked up the two computers and restarted the old machine while holding down the T key, which made it go into firewire mode — basically a blank screen with a dancing firewire icon. I hit a button on the new machine and it started to suck the data across. It took around 90 minutes to make the transfer. Astonishingly, the new machine was now a clone of the old one. The only application I had to tweak was Hidden Sync (it synchronizes the Mac with my Lifedrive) and all I had to do there was to type in the old activation code. Apart from that the transition was completely seamless. Everything was copied across — all of my settings, my bookmarks, my files, my emails — everything. I can’t tell you how much easier this move was than the last time I bought a PC, after which I literally spent days transferring information from one computer to another, downloading programs that I’d bought on the internet, finding old installation discs, tracking down installation codes, and reconfiguring all the settings on programs to get them working the way I wanted.
Both computers are running OS X (Tiger) and because I’d cloned the old applications I wasn’t expecting anything new. But in the box was a thin and very beautifully designed remote control. It seemed a bit excessive for a laptop, I thought, but when I tried it out I was delighted. The remote brought up a rotating diplay of four icons — for iTunes, iPhoto, the DVD player, and iMovie (which plays videos stored on the hard drive, including videos I’ve downloaded from the iTunes store). The animation of the icons is delightful. They rotate with a gentle swooshing sound, and it’s the kind of feature where you play with the menu just because it’s such fun. The menus are purposefully large so that they can be read across a room, making the remote control very useful for presentations or even just playing music while you’re sprawled on the couch. What a great feature!
I’m still getting used to the slightly larger keyboard and keep hitting the caps lock key instead of the “A” key, but that’s not the computer’s fault.
Next up is to download Parallels, which will allow me to run Windows 2000 in a window, meaning that you can run both Operating Systems at the same time without having to reboot. This will allow me to replace the Windows desktop computer that I use in the office. I’ll be replacing two computers with this new one and selling the others, and the old machines should pay for at least half of the new Mac. I understand that Parallels does a similar trick to OS X of “sucking” the data and applications from the old PC to the new Mac. I’m downloading the software and can’t wait to try it. can’t wait to try it!
3 Responses to “The joy of OSX”
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You’re currently reading “The joy of OSX,” an entry on Bodhipaksa's blog, bodhi tree swaying
Published: Jun 14 2007
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Category: Technolust
Hi, I just wanted to thank you for taking a look at my blog issue yesterday. It was so easy to fix with just your one observation!
On the topic of Macs, I just got my first Mac recently and am enjoying learning how to use it. Hope you have a lot of fun with your new MacBook Pro!
Laura
You’re very welcome, Laura. (Laura’s talking about the wordpress.org forum that we’re both members of).
The new Mac is working out very well, thanks. I switched to using Macs two years ago and I have to admit it was a bumpy transition. The main problem was just getting used to new ways of doing things that were second nature to me. Over time though it’s switched so that I’m now a little lost on a PC. Although I can still find my way around on a Windows box I don’t enjoy the experience. And now I love my Mac. I’m *really* excited about Leopard being released, in a way that I don’t think many Windows users felt about Vista.
Good luck with your own Mac!
so that’s how you celebrated your 14th birthday!