The Cult of Mac, Part Deux
I’ve been playing with the new Macbook Pro now for about two weeks, and am really growing to love it, and Mac OSX. I took it to work on the first day, and everyone oogled over it, wanted to touch it, play with it, and all thought that it was the Macbook Air, even though the white writing on the bottom of the screen said “Macbook Pro”.
After about an hour or so, I’d managed to connect it to the network at work using a Telstra NextG Expresscard modem. Of course, the security guys were saying “have you got antivirus on that? Want a firewall on that?”. Umm, no…
Anyway, I decided to put the Macbook to good use, and started work on a detailed design document within Pages 09 for a new network installation. After about a week and a bit, I’d typed my way through 40-odd pages of Pages 09 document, including tables, getting to know the quirks and nuances. Not too bad, but definitely not Word - Pages approaches problems a different way.
I was getting quite frustrated with some aspects of Pages:
- there’s no customisation of section numbering schemes - I either had to live with the predefined numbered list formats, or not use section numbering at all.
- I can create heading paragraph styles for each outline level (say, heading 1, heading 2, heading 3, etc …), which includes the text indents, font size, bold, etc, but could not set the actual outline level number. As a result, each new heading I added would default to outline level 1, and I’d have to go into the Inspector to change the level each time. With Word, I could add a button on the toolbar for each heading style, and everything would be set correctly.
- When I set a heading style to use “Body Text” as the next paragraph style, generally it would work. Sometimes, however, it would use the “Body Text” style, but massively indent it, and I’d have to change the paragraph style to something else, and then change it back to “Body Text” to “reset” the paragraph indenting to the correct indent level. Again, frustrating, because it seemed so inconsistent.
At one stage, I decided I needed to do a complicated enough table that I decided to use Numbers 09. Easy enough, and even imported back into Pages ok :)
Now, I decided to be really brave, and start drafting a presentation for the design - I need to present the design to the systems admins and executive before starting the Build & Install phase. I’d read all about Keynote 09 from the recent MacWorld Expo, and decided to learn about creating slides and presentations using Keynote.
After creating about 15 slides, with various transitions and effects, I think the result is quite nice, with the app intuitive to use, the effects quite stunning, and the themes exciting and polished. I’m looking forward to the reactions from the audience, especially when I pull out the Mac and my new iPhone to control the whole show!
One problem with having a Mac that’s quite thin - there’s no built-in VGA port with which to plug an external monitor into. I have a 24″ panel at work, which uses either a VGA connector, or a DVI connector (it auto-detects which one is being used), so I went down to JB Hifi, and bought both adapters for the MacBook (which has a mini-DisplayPort outlet).
I think the real power of OSX shines when it’s running multiple screens - I went into the Display setting, and found that OSX popped up a tailored display panel for each screen, and displayed it on each screen independently. Nice! So, I set the 24″ to 1920 x 1200, started working away, and almost immediately found a “problem” - I had my Macbook located directly below the 24″ panel, but I had to move the mouse to the right of the laptop’s screen to scroll onto the 24″ panel. The layout was really playing with my mind, and I kept trying to use the PC’s mouse (sigh).
Hmm… I wonder if I can re-order the displays, so that the 24″ sits above the laptop screen? Yup, I discovered it’s possible to place the two screens in any orientation, so I was able to stack the 24″ above the laptop display, so I could simply flick the mouse up above the menu bar to scroll onto the 24″ panel. Nice!! So polished!!
Ok, now the hard part. One application that I’m sorely missing on the Macbook is Visio. I do all my drawings in Visio, and I need to publish my design document in Word. So I decided to install VMware Fusion, and use a virtualised version of work’s SOE to run Word and Visio. I could then run Word and Visio natively on the Macbook’s display whilst the apps themselves run in Fusion - it’s called “Unity” mode. Worked well too.
Now, I type away in Pages 09 with “Track Changes” mode on (so I know what changes have been made since last “import” into the Word document), fire up Fusion, run up Word, and copy/paste the text from Pages 09 into Word. I can then import the various diagrams and drawings produced in Visio into the Word version of the Design.
How do I use my Macbook to connect to the routers and switches? If the devices are on the network, it’s easy, use Terminal.app to connect through SSH or Telnet, but when I’m running up a new device, I have to use the Cisco rollover cable, with a USB to serial adapter. I downloaded and installed XCode 3.1, and then downloaded and compiled Minicom (which is a utility to control serial modems!). I also had to install a driver to create the link in /dev for the USB adapter when it’s connected to the Mac.
Fun n Games!
… but I’m loving the experience! The new laptop has really increased my enthusiasm and work output when I’m documenting, as it’s fun to type away on the Macbook for a few hours, especially whilst zoned out under the control of the iTunes Genius!