I got it in a department store in Australia.

10/19/2008 4:57:41 AM

how much?

10/19/2008 5:14:20 AM

1500. fair enough for australia where electronics aren't so thriving and deal-inducing. hah

Just got bootcamp setup. woot. that was a pita, though. i only have an SP1 CD so i had to slipstream a SP2 CD. works like a champ though.

10/19/2008 9:39:53 AM

Quote :

"I just set it up and trying to figure all this mac shit out. so far so good. I'm pretty retarded. I d/led Firefox and clicked it. and a little box came up showing me to drag the firefox icon to the Apps icon... ok.. so i dragged it. hah then it copied or something. It also mounted the .dmg file like a drive image or something on the desktop. are all mac install files images?"

Dan - here is a little rant/how-to I wrote a couple years ago on Lifehacker. Unfortunately, it's still true today.
Installing programs on Mac is one of the dirty little secrets that Mac users prefer not to talk about publicly, or they will fool themselves into thinking it's actually a good way to do things, ignoring the fact that it is completely unintuitive for beginners. Once you understand the paradigm, it's easy and you won't have any trouble with it, but that doesn't make it good or right.

Quote :

"unfortunately, the issue of application installation needs to be emphasized yet again, in addition to the previous comments. Apple seriously needs to update their guidelines or make actual restrictions on how programs should be installed. Even though it's supposed to just be drag-and-drop (i.e. drag a .app to the Applications folder), it's never quite that simple. First of all, the .dmg paradigm is broken. Plain and simple, it just doesn't make sense to normal people. Why should you have to mount a virtual drive (a completely foreign concept to people who have never mounted an actual drive to begin with), then copy an app from the virutal drive onto their regular drive, unmount, then delete the DMG? If I didn't know what a DMG actually is, I would be terrified of unmounting/ejecting it (if I even knew I had to do that), much less throwing it away. What happens then? Does the program get thrown away too? But even if you understand the mounting/unmounting situation, installing a program can still be difficult or confusing. I'd say about 60% of the programs I've downloaded/installed are simple .app's, where I drop them manually into my Apps folder. However, there are some that come in .pkg (package) files. You don't drag/drop those, you open them, which starts an installer, which will then copy the .app and associated files to Apps for you. But how do you know what is a .app and what is a .pkg? Well, I know from the icon, but many people wouldn't. I have to wonder, how many people, who have been told time and time again that they just have to drag/drop into the Apps folder, drop those .pkg files into Applications, then run the installer everytime they try to open a program? Finally, you get a myriad of installers that are somewhere in between simple drag/drop into Applications or a full-blown installer. Those are ones that might pop-up a simple install screen (like the Firefox screenshot above) to help guide you. But those are also confusing. What is that firefox window trying to tell me? Is it instructing me to drag the .app from the mounted disk into my Apps folder? Do I drag the FF icon in the pop-up to Apps? Is that little icon of the Apps folder in the pop-up just an icon, or is it a symbolic link to my actual Apps folder, so that I can just drag the FF icon to the Apps folder icon? Sometimes the mounted disk image has a symbolic link to my Apps folder, so in the mounted disk, I can drag the .app directly to the link. But if I didn't know what a symbolic link was, I would be completely confused. Why can I see all my Apps from this disc image? What happens if I close and delete this disk image? Do I have to access my Apps folder via this disk to run my new application? And don't even get me started on uninstalling applications. Just drag/drop it into the trash? Ha, yeah right. 3rd party applications like Yank! or AppZapper are essential if you actually want to delete programs from OS X. As much shit as people give to Windows installers and uninstallers, I never had a problem with them. 95% of the time, Windows installers are simple executables that open a wizard where the user rarely has to do anything other than press "Next" a bunch of times. Then hopefully people will get rid of the installers after they're done, but if they don't, it's not a big deal. At least it won't mount any virtual drives whenever someone starts that program, or present them with many, ambiguous ways to install or copy or move the program. Only a limited number of Windows programs do you download the actual executable instead of an installer, and these are usually reserved for "power user" utilities like PuTTY and DVDShrink, so people using these should know how they work. Given these problems alone, I have a hard time agreeing with the commonly held conception that Macs are so much more beginner friendly. I shutter at the thought of visiting a "Mac beginners" computer and finding it littered with DMGs that mount and unmount everytime they want to run a program. "

http://lifehacker.com/software/mac/hack-attack-a-guide-for-switching-to-a-mac-224674.php?t=791480#viewcomments

10/19/2008 9:53:27 PM

Why not just use Safari though? IT's a great browser. Being able to drag tabs around is nice, and it scrolls with a scrollwheel/2-finger scrolling a MILLION times better than Firefox.

Seriously, at least open Safari and compare its scrolling to firefox.

10/19/2008 10:08:06 PM

hey Dan, btw - here are some other links you should look into a a new Mac user
http://lifehacker.com/software/mac/hack-attack-a-guide-for-switching-to-a-mac-224674.php
http://paulstamatiou.com/2005/11/29/10-things-every-new-mac-owner-should-know
http://danwarne.com/mistakes-made-by-new-mac-users/


^ i'm using FF3, and it works great, including scrolling as smoothly as Safari.
I used Safari almost exclusively until FF3 was released, and have been using FF3 full-time now. It is leaps and bounds better than FF2 on Mac.
Plus, I use the GrApple Yummy theme, whic makes it look almost identical to Safari.
http://www.takebacktheweb.org/

[Edited on October 19, 2008 at 10:40 PM. Reason : .]

10/19/2008 10:37:52 PM

hah i completely agree w/ our installation rant already. I've installed 5-6 apps now and i think i've seen em all now. I believe i understand it all now, but indeed, its confusing. I can't imagine trying to explain that all to my Mom. ha.

I have WinXP installed in boot camp now. And then i installed VMware Fusion 2 which can use my bootcamp partition. So now i can access the same windows install either by rebooting native or using VMware. Its pretty darn slick.

It took a few hours, but i'm getting used to macosx. I can't see getting by w/o keyboard shortcuts. I'm now in the habit of command-Q'ing everything to exit, command-w to "hide", command-m to minimize. I don't really see the need to minimize anything when it can just be hidden...? But somethings won't hide like Firefox, it just exits if you click the red X.

Ever try to use Apple Mail for gmail? I'm sure the web gmail will be easier to use but i'd really like the Mail icon new email notifier to work. Is it any good for RSS feeds?

I finally gave up and went back to using a mouse today. I was trying to avoid it. Is using the right click on the mouse "cheating"?


Brand new or not, this laptop is slick. Its exactly half as thick as my old Dell 15" and it feels like half the weight. Its a mean machine. As long as my GPU doesnt melt, i outta be in good shape for a bit.

10/19/2008 10:50:43 PM

Quote :

"command-w to "hide", command-m to minimize. I don't really see the need to minimize anything when it can just be hidden...?"

CMD+W closes a window or tab
CMD+H actually hides the application completely

Quote :

"I finally gave up and went back to using a mouse today. I was trying to avoid it. Is using the right click on the mouse "cheating"?"

no, of course not. If you are using the laptop as a desktop replacement, there is absolutely no reason not to use an external mouse. I use a 5 or 6 button mouse with my MBP, and have the other buttons mapped to things like Expose and Spaces.
But I also have no trouble using it as a laptop w/o any mouse, and just use two-finger tap for right-click.

Be sure to open System Preferences and just go through all the Preference Panes. You will learn a lot by going through each Preference Pane one at a time, and you will be able to tweak little things that you might not be aware of. For example, in the Desktop & Screen Saver pane, you can uncheck "Translucent Menu Bar" to make the menu bar solid. You have to go to the Expose & Spaces Pane to actually enable Spaces, which is turned off by default. Then under Keyboard & Mouse, you can get to all the Trackpad optioins, where you have a lot of options for clicking, zooming, dragging, etc.


A couple other things to look at for customization - be sure to configure your Dock to how you like it. You can do that in the Dock Preference Pane, or right click on the Dock and see options like mounting it on the side, auto-hiding, etc.
And especially look at how the Stacks and folders work in the Dock. There was a lot of controversy when Stacks was introduced in 10.5 because it basically was a step backwards for how folders in the Dock "should" work. But they updated the options in 10.5.1, so right-click on a folder or Stack in the Dock, and play with the options like "Display as" and "View Content as" to see which configuration is best for you


oh, btw - download quicksilver and use it as an application launcher - http://www.blacktree.com/
I remapped Spotlight to Ctrl+Space, and use Cmd+Space to bring up Quicksilver. It's practically the only way I launch applications, and if you get into it more, you can use it to do stuff like send email, change iTunes music, and FTP files with only a few key presses.

[Edited on October 19, 2008 at 11:05 PM. Reason : .]

10/19/2008 11:02:29 PM

I recommend setting the corners of your screen or extra mouse buttons to activate Expose.

Also try out the multiple desktops. You can press control+<arrow button> to switch between them. If you drag a window to the side of the screen and hold it there, it'll switch desktops. You can also rearrange windows from the "zoomed out" view of the multiple-desktops dock icon.

Another neat trick is option clicking. If you're in Firefox for example, and option-click the desktop, firefox is automatically hidden.

If you are in an application that uses documents (like Word), or the Finder, you can apple-click the title of the window to show your path. This is useful for Mail, for example, if you open an extension, but want to know where it's REALLY saved.

Also, any menu-item you click, there are sometimes modifers you can use. For example, click the Apple menu in the top left once to open it, then press the OPTION key, you'll see some options changing. This is useful to find "hidden" shortcuts.

If you ever switch applications by pressing command-tab, you can actually quit and hide the programs from that interface. Press command-tab, while holding the command key, tab to the application(s) you want to hide, and press h, while holding command. You can quit them by pressing "q" too. You can press either command-shift-tab to move back in the list or command-` (the button above tab).

On any Cocoa based application with a text field, you can always go to the Edit menu, and enable spelling/grammar check from the "Spelling and Grammar" option. This is useful for any instant message clients or anything you use.

If you command-click the little "task bar" items on the top right of the screen, you can remove them or rearrange them to your liking.

If you press command-brightness-increase button (one of the F keys), it redetects monitors (if you use multiple monitors). Pressing command with some of those other F keys does different things too.

For media playback, look in to applications called Flip4Mac (WMV) and Perian (everything else). VLC will play just about anything else those won't play.

10/19/2008 11:23:34 PM

I typically recommend against Quicksilver until you've used your Mac for a while. Play with it, get used to it, figure out the way it wants you to work and how that interferes with the way you want it to work. A lot of people immediately start installing little haxies or whatnot because they get pissed off when their Mac operates differently than the Windows they're used to. Sometime they just need to understand that there are some differences that take getting used to.
After a month, give Quicksilver a try. Allow it to be a device that makes your setup a step better; don't let it be a crutch that ruins your appreciation for the rest of the system. See what's possible, set it up in the way that fits you best, and then add on to it to your liking.

Quote :

"I'm now in the habit of command-Q'ing everything to exit, command-w to "hide", command-m to minimize. I don't really see the need to minimize anything when it can just be hidden...? But somethings won't hide like Firefox, it just exits if you click the red X."

Besides what Joe said about Cmd-W vs Cmd-H, this is a topic that can be a bit confusing for Windows converts.

In Macland, windows do not equal applications. In Windows (typically), when you close the last window of an application, the application shuts down. Some exceptions exist, such as Office, Photoshop, and the like, but even then it can be confusing. Multiple windows open in Excel, click the big red X and they all close. Multiple windows open in Word, click the big red X and only one closes. In some apps you can close all the individual windows (little gray X in office, for example) and leave the master window open with a gray background. Anyway, it's confusing and inconsistent behavior, but people still try to drag this paradigm over to OS X.

On OS X, 95% of the time when you close the last window of an app (red X), the app is still running. You can switch to it in the dock and fire up a new window without having to reload the entire application. This is obviously useful in apps like Photoshop, when sometimes you want to close all open windows but leave the app running so you can start a different project without waiting for it to restart completely.

But Apple decided that didn't make complete sense and decided to fuck it up a little bit. Some apps completely quit when you close the last window. Apple's reasoning was that single-window apps (like address book, ical) have no reason to stay running when you close that window. In these rare apps, the window is indistinguishable from the app. When you close the window for your address book, you obviously want to quit the entire program, because there's no use in closing that window to open a different one, because there is not a different one - there's only one possible window that exists. So the reasoning behind their decision makes plenty of sense also. So is it better to be logical or be consistent? I suppose the answer lies with the user. But even then, Apple wasn't extremely consistent with that reasoning. System Prefs, for example, is a single-window app, but when you close that window, the app remains running (in 10.4, at least).

Quote :

"I recommend setting the corners of your screen or extra mouse buttons to activate Expose."

In 10.4 I was not a fan of hot-corners for Expose. They were way too sensitive and I would accidentally engage Expose when I was just moving my mouse around. I believe they added in a small delay in 10.5 to alleviate this problem.

One of the most fun things to do when exploring OS X is to just hold cmd, cntl, opt, or shift when clicking on things. There are so many hidden things in the system, in addition to what ^ said.

I like shift-minimizing (yellow button). Especially doing it to a media player window with a movie playing in it. Tons of fun for the whole family.

Foreign characters are super easy to type. To type an accented letter (such as in Expose) (I'm on Windows now, so no examples from me), type opt-e and then the letter, so opt-e e. For a tilde-n (spanish), do opt-n n. The opt-n will create the tilde, and then you can type anything underneath it, so you can make a tilde-g if you want to...

Open up Dictionary and check out the preferences. Turn on whatever is there for mini-lookup-window. Then go to pretty much any other app (web browser), highlight a word, right click it, choose the dictionary/define option.




[Edited on October 19, 2008 at 11:44 PM. Reason : ]

10/19/2008 11:35:56 PM

Quote :

"System Prefs, for example, is a single-window app, but when you close that window, the app remains running (in 10.4, at least)."

They changed this behavior in 10.5.

I could have sworn back in 10.4 though it quit.

But it definitely DIDN'T quit in 10.3.

10/19/2008 11:38:02 PM

Thank god. It's still not the way I'd prefer it (I'd rather have to file-quit/cmd-q every app, no matter what) but at least it's a bit more consistent, in its own inconsistent semi-logical way.

10/19/2008 11:46:11 PM

Quote :

"Open up Dictionary and check out the preferences. Turn on whatever is there for mini-lookup-window. Then go to pretty much any other app (web browser), highlight a word, right click it, choose the dictionary/define option. "

Definitely do this. ^

If you find yourself typing a lot of foreign characters (or even just for the hell of it) try this:
Open System Preferences> Type "Keyboard Viewer" in the top right search box> Click the spotlighted item> Click "Input Menu"> and now choose "Character Palette" and "Keyboard Viewer" checkboxes. A flag should have appeared in the top-right "tray" area (if not, just click the checkbox at the bottom of the current window that says "show input menu in menu bar") , click this flag, and open the "Keyboard Viewer" and press down option and control. It shows which buttons do which modifiers. Open the Character Palette for a bunch of weird characters you can type.

[Edited on October 19, 2008 at 11:54 PM. Reason : ]

10/19/2008 11:53:52 PM

Quote :

"VMware Fusion 2"

I like parallels a LOT better than VMware. It does the same thing with bootcamp partitions, and it supports OpenGL passthrough so you can game in the VM (theoretically anyway)

10/20/2008 12:25:53 AM

orly can vmware and parallel place nicely together on the same partition/install? I'll check parallels out as well

10/20/2008 12:33:58 AM

i dont see why not. But I tried both Parallels and VMWare Fusion about a year ago, and Parallels was hands down better in every way.

Coherence mode in Parallels + OpenGL passthrough was the winner. Being able to run all my Windows apps without even having to deal with windows is simply awesome.

10/20/2008 12:46:47 AM

what sucks about both is they only support DX 8.1

10/20/2008 1:51:44 AM

VMware does DX 9.0c

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VMware_Fusion_and_Parallels_Desktop

10/20/2008 1:55:11 AM

I jumped on the Parallels ship very early and was happy with it, but I switched to VMWare Fusion when they started releasing the 2.0 betas, and haven't looked back since. My experience is that Parallels came out with first-mover advantage, but VMWare, being much more experienced, caught and surpassed Parallels pretty quickly. I haven't used the latest version of Parallels yet (3?), but I'm so happy with Fusion 2 that I don't feel the need to even try it.

10/20/2008 8:17:17 AM

Yeh, i've read that fusion 2 is faster and more reliable, but who knows. Its working great so i'll leave it as is. If i want to play a game i'll reboot. I had a full screen VM'ed XP open on the laptop and my gf came and started using it. She was like, damn this is running pretty snappy. (compared to our old laptop it was). And then i was like, and its actually a VM running inside macOS! OH DANG! hah I'm also happy that winXP hasnt yet complained bout being installed again on the macbook and activated again in the VM.

This is all working out quite well. I got the iphone SDK stuff today and started digging into that. I also d/led the Aperture 2 trial and its quite slick as well. I'm getting more proficient w/ the shortcuts and cruising along.

It has crashed on me a couple times though. It crashed once when i tried to take a VMware snapshot forcing a hard shutdown and it crashed several times forcing a 'force quit' while copying all my mp3s over from an external ntfs drive. It saw a few files as corrupt for some reason and whenever it'd hit one itd all go to shit.

Does anyone use Mail for gmail? In searching it doesnt seem uncommon. But its sucking ass from my point of view so far.

Anyone know if Time Machine can back up and just store the file locally? My external drive is NTFS so it can't be written to w/ a file, i'd copy it over via network to the other pc and store it.

10/20/2008 9:50:11 AM

FYI - on the Fusion snapshots thing.... My VMWare Fusion disk image ballooned to about 30GB+ when I enabled the auto-snapshots. Even after lowering them down to store only one snapshot and deleting whatever I could, the disk image was still over 25GB.
Since then, I just created a new VM and used nlite to create a streamlined XP installation, and after installing the few programs I use in Windows (MS Money, Dreamweaver) the disk image was still <3GB. I am not bothering to use snapshots anymore because I don't actually store anything useful on the Windows disk image. i.e. if it gets corrupted somehow, I'll just create a new VM and won't really lose anything.

What are you problems with Main and Gmail? I use gmail online, but my wife uses Gmail in Mail, and doesn't have a problem with it. She uses POP3. I had tried to set up IMAP, but she got annoyed at that because how long it takes to syncronize.


where is your external NTFS drive stored? Is it networked through another PC? If you can mount it as a network drive, you should be able to use it for a Time Machine backup, even if it is NTFS

10/20/2008 10:59:20 AM

Time Machine:

I've got time machine running on both my iMac and MBP...the iMac is hard wired to a 1tb drive and the MBP mounts the 1tb drive when i'm on my home network and backs up through wifi. Its actually quite painless and quick through wifi...obviously not the first time it runs but everytime after that its painless and you don't even notice it running. Definitely setup your time machine. You can also customize it and tell it what directories to ignore.

10/20/2008 12:24:46 PM

yeah, I have a Time Machine drive hooked up to a Mac Mini that I use for my entertainment center. Then my MacBook Pro and my wife's MacBook both wirelessly backup to the Mac Mini TM drive. works very well, all done in the background. Come to think of it, though, i'm not sure if you can use a drive shared behind a PC as a TM backup..... I think maybe it has to be networked behind 1) an Airport Extreme router, or 2) another Mac running 10.5


a co-worker picked up the new Macbook this weekend, and I played with it for a few minutes this morning. It is as beautiful as it looks in the pictures, and the screen is great. I was messing with it for a couple minutes before I even remembered/realized that there was no button on the trackpad. i.e. I was instinctively resting my thumb at the bottom of the trackpad, where the button is on older models, and was using it to click, and I didn't even notice the difference. But then when I remembered there was no button, I started try different things and click different ways, and it still worked great.

One thing I didn't think about was that if you leave your thumb resting on the trackpad at the bottom, then when you do other multi-touch gestures, your thumb is not counted. that is, you can rest your thumb on the trackpad, then use two fingers to tap for a right-click, even though technically you have 3 fingers on the pad. Alternatively, you can place two fingers on the pad, then use your thumb to click, again for a right-click.

10/20/2008 1:10:14 PM

speaking of time machine, has anyone connected a USB HDD to an airport extreme and used that as your time machine backup device?

I've heard, but not verified that this would only work if the HDD was a time capsule. any truth to that?

10/20/2008 1:11:11 PM

^ yes, I used a USB HDD behind an Airport Extreme, and it does work. There was a firmware upgrade earlier this year to enable it.

I stopped using it, though, because the drive would never spin-down or go to sleep! The firmware on the APE is not smart enough to put the drives into powersavings mode when not in use. I happened to be using a relatively cheap drive as my backup, and it's noisy, and it was killing me to hear it spinning 24 hours a day behind my Airport Extreme. So instead, I moved it to behind my Mac Mini, and the Mini puts the drive to sleep after each backup is made.

10/20/2008 1:18:23 PM

I, in effect, don't have another computer and my only external is full of stuff and NTFS formatted. So i dunno. I'll look into a new external drive sooner or later. wifi is so bad around here because there are so many networks. I'd go something direct connected i think. but then again i guess once the initial big backup is done, it shouldnt be too data heavy.

I assume the Apple solutions are rather expensive? Maybe i'll just get a normal usb 2.0 drive and format it fat32 or even mac

10/20/2008 8:39:05 PM

what "apple solutions" are you talking about?

The only "solution" they offer is the Time Capsule, which is an Airport Extreme with an integrated 500GB or 1TB HDD. They are pricey, especially now that HDD prices have fallen so much since the Time Capsule was released, but considering an Airport Extreme is $180 by itself, $300 for an Airport Extreme with an integrated 500GB HDD isn't too bad.
But apart from that, apple doesn't offer anything. You can use any external USB drive you want, and if you only use it for Time Machine backup, i would format it with HFS+

10/20/2008 10:21:56 PM

gotcha.

Man, i must be a freaking retarded with Mail. Ok, I'm using Mail. I have one and only one email account in it, gmail. Its setup as IMAP.

I have the Inbox, Outbox, Sent, Trash at the top in the left pane. Below that i have a GMAIL folder with its subfolders (labels), etc.

Firstly, its been d/ling emails for two days now. Why does it need to d/l all of them w IMAP? Can't i just get like the last 50-100 or so like the iphone's Mail? Secondly, when new mail comes, it shows up in both the upper Inbox as well as the lower GMAIL/All Mail and sometimes in the labels if applicable. If i read the new email in the main Inbox and read it, it is marked as read. However below in the GMAIL section, it is still unread. Thats pretty annoying. Why is this? I almost get the feeling like i have two things going on here at once. I initially had gmail setup as POP (which is default), but then i deleted taht account and redid it using IMAP. In the Accounts Preferences i have one and only one account (IMAP).

Is this how its supposed to work?

10/20/2008 10:41:29 PM

^ to eliminate the constant downloading go to the "Mail" menu in Mail, choose "Preferences" click your account, choose "Advanced", and for the drop down that says "Keep copies of ALL messages for Offline viewing" choose the option you want.

The lower "GMAIL" section is ONLY suppose to contain unique mailboxes that aren't Sent, Inbox, and Junk. You shouldn't have a redundant Inbox there. You may want to check your IMAP path prefix on the same Advanced menu up there.

10/20/2008 10:48:32 PM

^oh well actually there is no Inbox down there, my bad. There is a redundant 'Sent Mail' though. And there is an "All Mail" that seems to be acting just like the Inbox. So i guess its making a copy of my incoming email and sorting them into the GMAIL folders below? If so how do i make it so that the copy is always marked as read? I can't stand having the number/reminders for unread mail all over.

10/20/2008 10:53:36 PM

yeah, actually here are some setup tips for Gmail IMAP + Apple Mail, like how to map IMAP folders to Apple Mail Folders
http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862

also, just a week or so ago, Gmail added some new IMAP settings (available in your Gmail account settings) to disable certain folders from syncing over IMAP

10/20/2008 10:57:02 PM

outlook has always allowed you to disable the folders that you dont want to synchronize

of course, that is a client side option, where the settings in gmail would be more of a sever side option

[Edited on October 20, 2008 at 11:01 PM. Reason : 

10/20/2008 11:01:31 PM

^^Ahh. "Use mailbox as" is money. That cleaned things up nicely.

I still suspect there are strange read/unread behaviors. Like when i send a mail, it shows up as an unread mail in my Sent folder. wtf?

10/20/2008 11:09:44 PM

Ok, so here's an example now. My gf just sent me an email.

It shows up in MAILBOXES/Inbox as unread.

It shows up in GMAIL/[Gmail]/All Mail as unread.

It shows up in GMAIL/Priscilla as unread.

So i read it in the main MAILBOXES/Inbox and it is then unread. but in the other two locations it is still shown as unread.

10/20/2008 11:30:20 PM

^ what happens if you right-click on GMAIL/ALL MAIL and choose "Synchronize"?

10/20/2008 11:32:00 PM

^they remain marked as unread.

10/20/2008 11:47:39 PM

shortcut question:

Is it possible to map a keyboard shortcut through the OS that will execute a command through eclipse? For example...I want to be able to use a keyboard shortcut that runs my deploy script without having to navigate to eclipse to kick it off

10/21/2008 2:51:35 PM

probably possible w/ AppleScript

10/21/2008 4:36:15 PM

My friend is trying to use parallels on his new Macbook and it keeps freezing when trying to run it with XP on a partition. Anyone had this issue?

10/21/2008 10:23:46 PM

Mine should be here Thursday. Work bought me one of the previous 13" black Macbooks but it had a faulty DVI port. Apple rep agreed to let me exchange it for one of the new ones that just came out

10/21/2008 10:29:37 PM

cool - an experimental build of FireFox taps into the multi-touch gestures available only on the new Macbook/Pros/Air

http://theappleblog.com/2008/10/22/experimental-firefox-allows-multitouch-interaction/
http://ed.agadak.net/2008/10/touching-firefox

Quote :

" Swipe Left: Go back in history [bonus! hold Cmd to open it in a tab] Swipe Right: Go forwards in history Swipe Up: Return to top of page Swipe Down: End of page Pinch Together: Zoom out Pinch Apart: Zoom in Twist Right: Next tab Twist Left: Previous tab"

10/22/2008 2:24:32 PM

^ Are those pinches real zoom? I believe the default behavior in text based apps (web browsers included) is that pinches change text size. Are we gonna have a wrestling match between OS X and Firefox for control over gestures?

10/22/2008 4:54:57 PM

a guy on the macrumors forums installed some newer trackpad kexts on his 'Classic' MBP and got all the new 4 finger gestures to work. thats pretty cool. hopefully apple will add this for all in 10.5.6. If not it can at least be hax0red.


btw, i got this Belkin Cool Elevate Flow laptop stand/cooler thing w/ a fan in it. Surprisingly, it works amazingly well. I'm been playing with folding@home on it and w/ the cooler fan on, it can maintain 76-78C or so at the minimum (2000rpm) fan speed. If i turn off the fan, it maintains a similar temp (almost always below 80C) but the laptop fans run at around 4600rpm to keep it there. wow. all the cooler fan does is blow cool air up at the bottom of the laptop. yay aluminum enclosure.

10/23/2008 9:25:40 AM

So the new MacBook Pro is indeed a very solid device. My old MacBook is still nice and solid and good for lots of things. The Pro's biggest advantage (for me anyway) is the graphics, especially w/an external display.

It's thinner than it appears in this picture, and if you're the type that complains about how flexy some laptops are, this is the laptop for you!

10/27/2008 5:32:35 PM

Sweet. good luck with it. Look at these freaking forums:
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=90

Every thread is someone saying there is something wrong w/ their new MBP and/or an exchange issue.

10/27/2008 9:02:19 PM

well i would expect that out of any new product that is a complete redesign. that is one reason why i wouldn't buy a macbook air at least when they first came out. Same rule applies to cars IMO

10/27/2008 9:06:34 PM

So I picked up a new Macbook on saturday. Was great until the sleep light started flashing like a strobe light and eventually burned out.

Took it back today and got a replacement. After 2 hours of use on the replacement I noticed a giant "cluster" of dead pixels to the right of the center of the display. Extremely pissed off I turned off the machine and inspected the screen.

Turns out it is a giant piece of white dust or plastic stuck under the glass of the machine.

As much as I love Crabtree Valley Mall ( ) looks like Im going back again tomorrow.

Apple QC is the worst I have ever seen in a tech company.

10/27/2008 11:59:39 PM

^yeah there was dust under my 2g ipod touch and they tried to get me to pay the restocking fee to get a new one, like 15 minutes after i bought it.

10/28/2008 12:00:42 AM

Fuck that, I'll cancel the debit card transaction if they don't take this shit back.

Ridiculous

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 12:02 AM. Reason : sdadsd]

10/28/2008 12:02:26 AM

The manager told me he'd do it this one time, but he said "technically dust under the screen does not hinder operation", and so he wouldn't normally give me a replacement.

10/28/2008 12:05:12 AM