Mac

[cellio]

My Mac Mini arrived Friday, faster than I expected. In an act of will I did not punt my congregation's Friday-evening services, attendance at which required starting Shabbat two hours early, to play with it (and go somewhere else later). I did verify that a VNC server is running on my PC and reachable from my laptop, so I can skip the dual-monitor/keyboard/mouse-on-one-desk setup. So now, off to rearrange bunches of hardware and load up a new machine.

If you've got favorite Mac tips & tricks, sites, software, etc, please feel free to share. I've used an iBook (running Tiger) casually, but as a main machine it's new to me.

Comments

Re: Apps

[cellio]

Thanks!

otherwise very difficult to google for

Yeah, I can see that. :-)

Any advice on getting Firefox to use the control key instead of the option key as a prefix? That placement really sucks and I'm so used to control-t from Windows that it's screwing me up. (Also control-c and control-v, so I suppose I should be asking this question more broadly -- but if any app can be customized in that way, it's got to be Firefox. :-) )

Re: Apps

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

Apple Menu, System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Keyboard "tab" (probably already selected), click "Modifier Keys..." in the lower left corner.

You probably want to swap Control and Command. You may want to set both Control and Command to trigger Command.

Re: Apps

[laurabee.livejournal.com]

Huh, I had no idea that existed. I just remap my brain to use Command on a Mac. Now that I'm used to it, I like it better. Possibly because my thumb is stronger than my pinky?

Re: Apps

[cellio]

Wait, your thumb? On my keyboard I would have to fold my thumb under my palm about as far as it can go to reach that key, and it's really hard to do that while hitting some other keys like 'v'. What keyboard are you using? (My current keyboard isn't going to be the final one; I can already tell its ergonomics are sub-standard. But I don't think these keys move around that much, do they?)

Re: Apps

[laurabee.livejournal.com]

Huh. I can reach the Option key if I reach all the way under my thumb. I usually rest my left thumb on the very left edge of the spacebar, so it's only a slight jump to reach the Command key.

I have the old school white keyboard that came with my Mac (not the silver laptop-key style ones that came with Willie's Mac). I agree on the new keyboards would be more of a stretch.

Re: Apps

[cellio]

I rest my left thumb below the center of the space bar, roughly between 'v' and 'b'. I suspect those typing lessons in fifth grade were my downfall -- who anticipated modern keyboards back then? :-)

Re: Apps

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I use my thumb for it as well (M$ ergonomic keyboard), but I often do not keep my hands on the standard baseline. Trying it out it seems like I rotate my left hand clockwise a bit and drop it one row down and one column out towards the edge when doing lots of cut/paste operations.

I'll second the Synergy recommendation from above if you do want to use both computers at once easily, although a few people where I work prefer to run Xming on the Windows box and just use native XWindows to deal with the multiple monitors.

Re: Apps

[cellio]

Actually, I want Control on the caps-lock key (for emacs) and already remapped that. I don't think I can map both Control and Command to the same key, and that would probably confuse some apps anyway. (Do any Mac apps other than emacs, which isn't a native Mac app, use control?)

What I'd really like to do is to tell individual applications, or perhaps the OS if my suspicion about control is correct, that wherever they're expecting command, they should accept control. Otherwise it's going to take a long time and a lot of finger cramps to de-hard-wire cut and paste. :-(

Re: Apps

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

Control is used by non-native apps. You'll end up using for RDC, VNC, terminal apps, etc. Other than that, I've never touched the control key.

I wonder, given how little control is used, if you might have more luck the other way: tell the non-native apps (well, emacs and Terminal) that whenever they expect control, they should accept command.

Re: Apps

[cellio]

An interesting thought. Thanks; will investigate.