it’s been just over two weeks since I’ve made my switch. I thought I’d share some thoughts.
First, I don’t miss Windows. I’m amazed at how quickly this box does things, and it has 1/3 the memory I had in my Windows laptop. I leave everything running all the time (Mail, Browser, Word, itunes, etc) and almost never see a beach ball (mac’s equivalent of hourglass).
I almost wish I had bought a new Mac, as I feel like I’d have more support from
But everything hasn’t been peachy keen. Some of these are disappointments about things that work differently, some are flat out problems.
Update: Some of these remaining problems are already fixed and I’ve included updates as appropriate.
- [Solved] Although I can get the builtin Mail client working with Exchange, I can’t get Entourage working with it at all. No errors, it just does nothing. (I needed to tell it to use a secure connection. The Mail client just figured that out.)
- [Hopefully Solved. I did this.] I connected a Mac Bluetooth mouse to my laptop, but it gets disconnected when I sleep/wakeup. I have to reconnect it in system properties. Yuck.
- I tried to connect a Plantronics Bluetooth headset but it didn’t work. It said it was connected, but couldn’t get it to play sound. Mind you, I connected this same headset to my Windows PC no problem. AND when I had it connected, my Bluetooth mouse starting acting sluggish! As soon as I deleted it’s config, my BT mouse started working again.
- I found iMovie to be far from intuitive.
- [Solved. I installed Flip4Mac beta.] The regular versioin doesn’t support Snow Leopard yet.] I can play AVI files in Qtime, but not WMV files. (It complains saying that QT has to be installed first.)
- Since I have the “tap equals click” turned on with my touchpad, I’m constantly accidentally dragging and dropping things. Hate that when that happens. [This happens a lot less when I use the real mouse, of course.]
- There is a bug in the built-in Mail client that displays that I have unread messages when I don’t. If I close it and reopen it, the number goes away.
- [Solved. it’s unaccepted appt requests!] I still have no idea what the number hoveriing over ical means. it’s not appointments today. What is it? Appointments this week? I’m clueless here.
Still happy, though.
Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at Sullivan Strickler, which helps companies manage their legacy data
It’s flip4mac that gives that error.
This beta works:
http://dynamic.telestream.net/downloads/download-flip4macwmv-beta.asp
The number hovering on the iCal icon is the number of invites/updates in your iCal app. Click the little inbox/mail icon in the lower left corner of iCal and acknowledge all changes/invites. That should make them disappear.
I feel better now. Thanks!
indeed, no default WMV out of the box, you need to install flip4mac (silly name, i know) which is recommended by apple and microsoft (just go to either site and you’ll be redirected to flip4mac). the player is free, if you want to create wmv files you’ll have to pay though, but you probably do not want wmv creator abilities.
the direct link is here:
http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm
Perhaps this is the solution for issue #7:
When you delete an E-mail without reading it, it is counted for as an unread email. As soon as you close the mail application, the mail trash is emptied and the number is reset.
Nice try. ๐
The pref’s say that I don’t delete trash and the Dock count is based on the Inbox only.