[NightshadesMac]

I can say that the comments by spinoza2 made sense in that the decision to remove the number pad centered around the idea that a wireless keyboard should be as compact as possible. Also, if the research is to be believed that so few people actually use the number pad it would make perfect sense for it to be eliminated for the wireless.

I, however, still have one dissenting comment about it. I would like the choice. I realize it would require extra resources in order to provide this choice but Apple is one of the most profitable corporations on the planet. I'd like to feel as though I'm actually living in the 21st century where infinite choice is available and not be hindered by the old ideals in business. Apple must be doing something right but I still feel petulant about it!
:D

[FredTheOldGuy]

I don't remember everything Spinoza said about the number pad, but I do
remember disagreeing with much of it. I like the number pad. I am
just now starting to use the Mac computer and from what I can tell so for Mac
doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas. But I have used wireless keyboards
for years, and I like for them to have number pads. Not because I use the
number pad for typing numbers but because I prefer the more analogous position
of the arrow keys on the number pad and I like the additinal navigational keys
incorporated into it (I have in mind the Logitech wireless keyboard for the PC
that I'm using right now). Additionally, I like to type with the wireless
keyboard in my lap, and the number pad povides the width needed for a
comfortable fit. :-)

BTW, thanks to everyone for all that information a couple of days
ago. Turns out I really like that button on the iMac mouse (is that the
"mighty mouse"?, and is that the ball that everyone is having trouble
with?) And I was just pain blown away when I first zoomed in on a web
page, just reflexively using the same key-and-mouse action on the Mac that I
would use on a PC. Now I've got to go get iWork and iLife and maybe .mac
and really start having some fun! Oh, yeah, and then there's iMicrosoft Office
and . . . well, this little "transition" is proving to be
pretty expensive. Oh, and BTW, does anyone know of a password program for
the Mac that works like Roboform?

[dougoftheabaci]

Fred,

Never used Roboform but the best password and serial number holding program for mac is 1Password. I don't use it much myself but I keep hearing great things about it and I'm sure others will attest to it's brilliance.

As for iLife, iWork and .Mac... iLife you should already have. Comes with every Mac. It's iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, Garage Band and iDVD. No need to buy what you already have. As for iWork, I vastly prefer it over Office and OpenOffice, if only because for people like me (designers) and for normal users it's much more user friendly. However, aside from Keynote, the Office equivalents are more powerful for enterprise level work. That being said, Powerpoint has nothing on Keynote. Every time I've done a presentation with Keynote when presenting next to people with Powerpoint I always get at least one moment where the crowd goes, "Wow..." and I wish I could claim that was because of my skills, but that really isn't the case.

As for .Mac, I'd wait to see what they do come Tuesday (or is it Monday?) when Steve does his keynote address at WWDC'08. Everyone is saying they're revamping the service. Decide after that if it's what you're interested in.

Anyway, welcome to Mac!

[horacious]

Fred,
Regarding the cost of the transition, try using iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) before splashing out on MicrOffice for Mac. I have ditched it now completely, having found iWork a lot faster and much more pleasurable to work with. Most usual functions are better in my experience. The only drawback, if you send out a lot of Word documents out, is to have to 'Export as... Word' instead of just saving. Same with Excel files. Then there is also OpenOffice, a free office applications suite which now is native on the Mac and is well developed with support from Sun Microsystems. Perhaps would be best to allow for some time to get used to the small behaviour differences between apps. and systems - new ways may turn out preferable.
Glad you are enjoying your new Mac.

[Dylstra]

When I first made the switch to Mac I ditched Word. I had been tinkering with Open Office on my PC, but when I got a Mac I was put off by having to use X11 to run it, so I went for Neo Office (http://www.neooffice.org). Even though, as horacious pointed out, Open Office now runs natively on Macs, I can strongly recommend Neo Office (Neo Office is based on Open Office, so we are well into 'personal preference' territory).

I guess the point is that, once again, as horacious correctly pointed out, there are many fantastic programs that can replace Word at a fraction of the cost - even free, such as Open Office and NeoOffice.

[FredTheOldGuy]

Dylstra,

I confess that I downloaded the Open Office program. So far i don't see much there to write home about, but then it is intended to substitute for Office and nothing more. I do create documents that can run into hundreds of pages that have to meet a very specific format requirements and contain a graphic element or two (primarily a box around the text of a page and my own company's logo), but I can probably do without some of that. I also have to generate page-image ASCII files, and I don't have a clue how well Open Office would handle that chore.

For now I'm running XP under Fusion, an amazing feat in and of itself if you ask me, so I'm using my own Office Professional in that. One Microsoft program that is vital to my work simply doesn't run under Fusion, though. Has to do with serial port emulation or some such. A surprise has been to find that Office runs significantly faster under Fusion's XP emulation than did it did on my AMD 3800+ PC. The sales rep told me that it would run slower under Fusion than under Boot Camp. Perhaps it does, but it runs plenty fast enough under Fusion.

I've still got tons and tons and tons and tons to learn. But just the first few simple pointers I got from this group got me over my first hump. I'm starting to really like this computer, but there are some things I wish I could port over from the world of Microsoft. For example, I can't seem to view the directories and files on the hard drive. That makes me feel very much out of control. But eventually I'll acclimate. I have to. And I find that there are a lot of programs that I use that don't have Mac versions.

I'll shut up. This is so far beyond the topic of aluminum keyboards that I shouldn't even depress the "post message" button, but . . . .

[FredTheOldGuy]

Thanks for the info. I'll hold off on the .mac (I don't have a clue what it is anyway) and I've copied the 1Password link to my desktop!

[folklore]

FredTheOldGuy said:

I'll shut up. This is so far beyond the topic of aluminum keyboards that I shouldn't even depress the "post message" button, but . . . .

Sure, it's off topic, but one thing we Mac folks tend to enjoy is helping out new Mac users. I think it has to do with our overall enthusiasm for the platform - Mac users genuinely enjoy using their Macs. And regardless of when we started using Macs, many of us have fond memories of learning to use our first Macs. It's fun to relive those memories vicariously.

The overall friendliness and helpfulness of Mac user forums surprised me a great deal when I switched to OS X a few years ago. I've now come to depend on the forums for help when I get stuck. If you run into a problem, take a look here at Macworld's forums, and at MacOSXHints.com (for starters, there are others).

[dougoftheabaci]

.Mac does a couple things. For one you get a little hosting, and as a hosting provider Apple isn't the best, but I've dealt with worse (I'm looking at you 1&1). But it also has things like preference and file syncing and online backup, which is quite handy. Of course all the things you get with .Mac you can currently do at other services, to varying degrees and usually with a bit of tech-play, for cheaper.

Personally, I don't currently see the appeal unless you're specifically using iWeb to make your websites, in which case it's a good choice. Otherwise it doesn't appeal to me.

[spinoza2]

Fred, there should have been an iWork trial on your new iMac, or at least on the disks that came with it. Pages is part of iWork, so do give it a try since it can handle large docs very well (I regularly work with docs of over several hundred pages in multiple languages). The real plus about iWork is that it closely adheres to the Mac OS X interface guidelines, so you end up learning one general interface, more or less, for all of iLife and iWork. This makes learning and working with these apps a lot easier.

If you want to gain a sense of what .mac can do, take a look at the Website I'm building at http://www.blumenbach.info . The site is under serious development right now, so excuse the mess (and don't tell anyone about it, at least not yet...). Pretty much everything that makes up this site was done using the Apple hosting service .mac and iWeb (along with the rest of iLife). I personally consider .mac one of the most useful parts of Leopard, since I consider it an integral extension of the operating system.

.mac is really your window to the world, it's what allows you to share ideas and projects with others. I guess you could say that .mac is like Facebook or D-Space on steroids...

[gballey]

{quote}I can't seem to view the directories and files on the hard drive. {quote}

On the Mac, the Finder performs the functions of the Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer).

Click on the desktop to bring the Finder to the foreground, and press COMMAND-N. That will open a new Finder window. Note that OPTION-COMMAND-N will create a new folder in the currently-viewed folder).

If the toolbar and sidebar don't appear in the new window, click on its lozenge-shaped button in the upper right corner (it's a toggle).

The default toolbar tools are:
left/right arrows - as you navigate through folders, these will take you forward or back.
4 view buttons - select icon view, list view, column view, or coverflow view (play with them to see what they do). Type COMMAND-J to change details of each view's format.
Quick Look - click to invoke Quick Look on the selected object.
Action (gear) popup menu - lets you select actions to take on selected files/folders (available from contextual menus, as well)

Use the Finder's main menu View-Customize Toolbar... command to add more standard buttons. You can also drag apps and folders to the toolbar.

In the sidebar are lists of icons you can use to determine what is displayed in the main part of the window:
DEVICES - navigate to any mounted volume.
SHARED - navigate to servers or disks that are shared from other computers on your local network.
PLACES - initially contains some frequently-used locations on your disk. You can add your own favorite folders, documents, or applications to this section by dragging them from the main part of the window - they will appear in every Finder window sidebar from then on (you can remove them from the sidebar by just dragging them out).
SEARCH FOR - you can think of these as virtual ?smart folders? that will display all files/folders that match some predefined criteria. There are some provided by default, but you can create your own custom smart folders by saving spotlight searches (type COMMAND-F in the Finder to open a criteria-driven Spotlight search window).

Use the Finder's main menu Finder->Preferences->Sidebar to control what classes of things appear in the Finder sidebars.

Double-clicking a folder in the main part of a Finder window will open that folder, either replacing the current folder window or opening a new Finder window, as determined by the setting in Finder->Preferences->General->Alwaysopenfoldersinanewwindow checkbox.

This should get you going. :-)

Good luck!

-Gordon

[folklore]

dougoftheabaci said:

>

Quote

Personally, I don't currently see the appeal unless you're specifically using iWeb to make your websites, in which case it's a good choice. Otherwise it doesn't appeal to me.

The Web Gallery thing through iPhoto and iMovie is cool. The pages it produces are very pretty and it's no more difficult than using an album (at least in iPhoto, I don't do much with video). It's not as customizable as I'd like, but it's dead simple to do.

[Dylstra]

Hi Fred,

Not to sure about much of what you said (no idea about generating page-image ASCII files, for example), but I did write my thesis (which went to 150 pages or so) using NeoOffice, though at the time I was having trouble using Endnote 7 with it so I did the final formatting in the 06 version of Pages. (I had to export it to Word from NeoOffice, take it to my PC run Endnote, then bring it back into Pages - not the sort of inconvenience you need when a deadline is looming! However, the new Endnote is more compatible with NeoOffice, so it looks like I'll be using that to write my PhD.)

Actually, all it seems that I am able to comment on is that both Pages and NeoOffice can handle long documents. Dagnammit, I felt like I was going to be more helpful than that... :)

[decisivemoment]

It's an unforgiving beast indeed if you have a heavy touch -- super hard and rigid and I am sure the key switches are not designed to take being crushed between a heavy finger strike and a rigid slab of aluminum. But treat it like you treat a laptop keyboard with a lighter typing style, and it will treat you nicely back. What I find difficult is switching between the aluminum keyboard and a conventional one.