Directory Listing

In Windows, listings always start with directories, then files. In OS X, it's the other way around. No big deal, but at the start it can be a bit confusing, especially when one is so used to the way Windows is structured.

VPN

My wife is a workaholic and continues working after getting home. One of the thing she relies on to do this is the VPN connection into the office. I work with my wife in the same company. Our company uses the Nortel VPN client. This client is free for Windows machines and can be downloaded from a number of places in the net and also from the office intranet. For OS X, I can only find paid for versions on the net. I thought I'd try to find it from the office intranet, to my non-surprise, the intranet said that it has to be paid for. In any case, I have told my wife that I am not paying for this. So, that's the end of that.

In any case, MS Office Webmail works fine on Firefox, although it does not have the full functionality as when run from Windows IE (Mac IE 5 is the last version of IE for the Mac and does not work well with MS Office Webmail). This should be good enough.

This is the one thing so far which I could not replicate for my wife from the old PC.

Security Update 2008-002 v1.0 (Leopard)

I noticed today that there is a Security Update available
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008002v10leopard.html
downloaded it and executed it. Very smooth and fast. In less than 5 minutes, the security update was installed and machine restarted. I wonder if there is a concept of SP (Service Pack) for Macs and how long they would run.


I downloaded the Vista SP1 which was made available for download today. Tried to install it but got an 0x80070005 error. Went to the Microsoft website but could not find anything about it. Maybe I'll redownload the service pack at a later time and try again. Typical Microsoft, I suppose.

DVDs

One of the 1st things I usually do when I get a new DVD drive for my PC is to find an RPC-1 firmware for it. I've never had any issue finding RPC-1 firmware. Today, I thought I'd do the same for the MacBook Pro. Guess what, I can't find any. After googling a bit, I find that people used to be able to use VLC to bypass the Mac's region code but somehow when the drives were upgraded, this VLC function was broken and has never been fixed since.

This website http://macnewbie.wordpress.com/2006/04/21/region-free-dvd-on-macbook-pro-all-you-need-is-a-windows-xp-machine/ indicated that the solution is to use an XP machine to stream the DVD to the Mac. This kinds of defeats the purpose of having a Mac.

Just goes to show, the Mac still has a long way to go to match what is available on XP. It is also very unfortunate that Apple would still try to keep region codes working on the Mac. In this day and age of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

I'll continue to check for whether people managed to find a solution to this but it looks like I have to get my wife to watch DVDs via the XP machine and not the Mac.

Time Machine

Officeworks is having a sale on WD 1TB external HDD. They are going for $299. But they are only USB2.0. After giving it some thought, I decided to take one home. It was not on display and you had to ask for it and the sales personnel had to go to the back of the shop to get it. And the sales people would not leave it with you to check out and think about. I was thinking about it for several minutes and the sales person just refused to let the HDD out of his sight. Anyway, I decided to take it in the end.

Once I took it home, I plugged it in and the WD software showed up. Time Machine then prompted me whether I wanted to use it as a backup drive, I said yes and it started backing up. It took a bit of time, apparently, almost 80GB of the disk is already in use (for a 200GB machine, that's a huge chunk, I suspect a big chunk of it must be iPhoto duplicates.)

The issue with Time Machine is that it just takes over the entire disk. What a waste if I have a 1TB disk serving no other purpose than as a backup. So, I decided to see if I can use it on my Windows desktop. I plugged it in and nothing shows up. I went into Disk Management and saw it but it is not assigned a drive letter and is marked as something called GPT, not NTFS or FAT32. No idea what that meant. I tried to assign a drive letter to it but none of the right click menu items are active.

After googling a bit, I decided to go into CMD and do a DISKPART -> CLEAN -> CREATE PRIMARY PARTITION. After that, I went back into Disk Management and was finally able to assign a drive letter to it. Of course, this meant that the Time Machine backup information is all gone!

I took the disk and plugged it back into the MacBook Pro, again, it sensed it and asked whether I wanted to use it as Time Machine. I decided not to but instead went into Disk Utilities and Partition. OS X has a relatively user-friendly Disk Partitioning software, but not as good a PartitionMagic. For one thing, I can't see how you can do non-destructive partitioning or partition resizing, unlike with PartitionMagic. It also has a limited set of File System support. It only support the Mac File Systems + FAT (not sure if FAT 32 but I assume it is).

I decided to go ahead and partition the disk, I partitioned 331.51GB as backup (roughly 1.5x the 200GB disk size in the MacBook Pro), not sure if this is the right size but I'll read more about how Time Machine works and what better recommendation there are for sizing the Time Machine disk. Until then this should do. The balance 600GB I formatted as Win32.

I have not tried the WD HDD in the Windows desktop PC since then. But I am assuming I should be able to use it for storing Windows files. If not, I'll worry about it when I get to that.


I wish Apple would provide a bit more information (through prompts/help/whatever) about how to size the Time Machine backup and then prompt you if you want to partition the disk if it is quite big (or advise you that you may not have enough or whatever). Then provide you with a utility which can do non-destructive re-partitioning of the disk.

Ah well, maybe some day. I can't really fault Apple here, at least the partitioning software and Time Machine came with OS X. PartitionMagic is a separate purchase in Windows. And I don't do backups on my Windows machine, except the occassional copy to DVD, which can be quite tedious. So, overall, I guess OS X breaks even with Windows with regards to this.

iPhoto

As part of the 1st phase of migration from the HP/Windows laptop to the MacBook Pro. I had transferred all the photos into the user/photo directory in the Mac. iPhoto is quite user-friendly and I had no issues importing it into iPhoto and iPhoto actually creates "events" based on the old directory structure in which the photos were arranged in Windows. There are separate directories for each trip/event photos and iPhoto just took the directory name and use that to name the "event." Cool, I love it.

But I still have a gripe with iPhoto. It seems to have created duplicates of the photos in the iPhoto directory. But since the iPhoto directory structure is not so obvious (at least not yet), I am a bit concerned about deleting the files in the user/photo directory. But it is eating into the available disk space.

I will figure this out in the future.

USB Ports

This move to the MacBook Pro is proving to be a bit more expensive than I had originally planned. For a laptop this expensive, it only has 2 USB ports. I never planned how to manage the use of the laptop when I purchased it, I just assumed it should work like the old HP laptop. The previous HP laptop had 4 USB ports, which was more than enough for most purposes. But with the Mac, you realise that you will need an external mouse (2 button mouse). With the issues with the headset, I had to get a USB headset, that uses up 2 ports! And that's just for basic usage!

There are also other everyday needs, an external hard disk for backup/file transfers, USB key for file transfers, digital camera for photo transfers, ...

I had some old USB hubs, but unfortunately, after checking them, they seem to have issues. So, it looks like I had to plonk down more money.

My advice, think through your requirements before going for a MacBook Pro. You may need to spend more than you'd originally expected to be productive with it.

Issues with MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro has been with me for a week now. There are a couple of nagging things about. 1. The fan is really, really noisy. 2. I sometimes get a shock when I touch it. 3. It can get really, really hot. I am wondering if there is something wrong with it or if the MacBook is just really like that. But apart from these issues, the machine itself is pretty stable. Apart from Excel hanging, I have encountered no other issues at all so far.

With my previous HP laptop, no such issue at all. No fan noise, no shocks, heat is manageable.

I am wondering if I made the right choice moving from HP/Windows to the MacBook Pro.

Multi-Touch

One of the 1st things I found that was really great about the MacBook Pro is multi-touch. I saw the enlarge-reduce and rotate multi-touch gestures on TV before so I knew about that. But what was really great was that when you use one finger, the cursor moves. But if you use two fingers, you scroll! I loved that.

But I found that double tapping on the trackpad is not equivalent to left clicking, like in Windows, by default. I later found out that this is a configurable option, which is great!

I am loving the Mac trackpad with its multi-touch support. I wish all PCs worked like this!

Importing Calendar and Contacts into Entourage

As mentioned in the previous post, Entourage is not Outlook and there is no straightforward way to migrate from Outlook into Entourage. After a lot of googling and trial and error, I finally accidentally stumbled upon the best way to do this. I was lucky that I had imported Outlook Contacts and Calendar into Address Book and iCal already.

Address Book

Open Address Book, select all entries. Incidentally, I haven't found an easy way to do this yet. In Windows, I would press 'Shift'+'Ctrl'+'PgDn' until I hit the end of the list. In OS X, I just have to press 'Shift'+Down key all through the list.) Drag and drop the entries to the Desktop, then drag and drop them into Entourage Address Book. And that's it. You can't drag and drop across applications, it will not work. You must drag it from Address Book to the desktop and then into Entourage for it to work.

Calendar

This took me a bit longer to figure and I can't remember exactly what I did. I believe I

File -> Export

Then drag and dropped the .ics file from the desktop into Entourage.

Again, dragging and dropping between applications does not work. I had to use the desktop as an intermediary in both Address Book and Calendar.

Another Keyboard Disappointment

In Blogger, you can find these instructions at the bottom of the edit panel

Shortcuts: press Ctrl with: B = Bold, I = Italic, P = Publish, S = Save, D = Draft

I still have not figured out what Ctrl refers to in this case. I tried 'Command', 'Option' and 'Control', those keys together with 'FN', and none of them seem to work. Something to research and play around with.

I also miss the 'Ctrl+Backspace' and 'Ctrl+Del' keys from Windows. I hope there are equivalents with OS X.

And a File Management Disappointment

I have not figured out how to do easy file manipulation on the desktop, namely file renaming. In Windows, I would select the file, press F2 and type away. In OS X, it seems like you need to 'Control+Click' -> Get Info, and then edit the details from the Get Info window. Kind of roundabout, I would say. Maybe there is an easier way, another thing for me to find out.

Mac Office 2008, Entourage Incompatibility and Excel Causing Mac to Hang

Finally, I got around to installing Mac Office 2008. Being an 'Office' application running in Mac. I thought I should have this easy since I had imported the Outlook 'Contacts' and 'Calendar' into the Mac already, via 'Address Book' and 'iCal' respectively. But I was wrong.

1. I found out that there is no Outlook in Mac Office 2008, it has Entourage. After a bit of googling, I found out that Entourage does not share a code base with Outlook but is rather an offshoot of Outlook Express 5 or something along that line. It does not use the PST file format but .mbox.

2. It does not make use of iCal or Address Book at all. After googling a bit, I found that you can purchase plug-ins for iSync which will allow you to sync across the Mac Apps and Entourage but after having so much already, I was not in the mood to pay extra. One thing I found out along the way, there are not as much freeware for the Mac as there are for Windows. Most Mac utilities I found are shareware, you have to shell out cash to use them.

3. I imported some of the Excel spreadsheets from Windows and found that there are compatibility issues between the 2 platforms, most of it has to do with the way dates are managed across the 2 platforms, which is fine. But it is still annoying. I also find Mac Excel to hang very often. I did an auto-update but it did not help at all. All I can do is just keep rebooting.

4. This brings me to another point, Excel hangs the entire Mac. Something which I had not experienced in Windows since Windows 2000. It actually hangs the entire machine and the only way out is to turn the machine off and on again. This is just unforgivable in this day and age. I am not sure what those Mac zealots mean when they say this is the most stable platform, much more so than Windows. I just don't see evidence of that.

I'll see how Excel performs over the next few days. If it keeps hanging, I might have no choice but to shell out for iWorks 08 and see if a native Apple application will do better. As they say, 'Sucked in.'

More Keyboard Disappointments

I am still getting used to this Mac Pro crippled keyboard. I still get confused as to whether 'Option' is equivalent to 'Ctrl' or whether 'Command' is. It is very confusing, having a 'control' key does not help clarify the confusion. But I managed to figure out the following equivalents between the 2 platforms:

- 'Command'+'Tab' = 'Alt-Tab' in Windows
- 'Option+Left' or 'Option+Right' = 'Ctrl+Left' or 'Ctrl+Right'
- 'Command+Option+Esc' = 'Ctrl+Alt+Del' (roughly, it does not start up the full task manager in OS X, but it lists active applications which you can then 'End Task' (Windows terminology) or 'Force Quit' (OS X terminology'

But I still find myself switching between 'Option' and 'Command' as I keep forgetting which one does which.

Another issue I discovered with the keyboard is that the function keys, i.e. F1 to F12, are assigned for OS X special functions. That is, media keys (play, pause, volume up, volume down, etc.), expose, dashboard, monitor brightness, etc. And these are the default fuctions. To get at F1, you need to press 'FN'+'F1'.

As discussed before, I found out eventually that PgUp/PgDn can be simulated using 'FN'+Up and 'FN'+Down. But these all just mean an additional key to press, which can get quite awkward if one has to press mtuliple keys simultaneously, e.g. in conjunction with 'Shift' or 'Option', etc.

In Windows machines, especially laptops, will have special media keys so the F1 to F12 keys can be used unhindered. The 'FN' key is usually used in conjunction with the Fx keys for special functions, e.g. monitor brightness, which should be the case, since people use the Fx keys quite frequently within applications and having to press 'FN' simultaneously with the Fx keys is just too clumsy. Is Apple just too cheap to provide additional special function keys? For the amount of money paid, they should have included it. Anyway, another thing to get used to.

Importing Windows Outlook Calendar into iCal

This one stumped me a bit longer than Address Book. Outlook only exports to CSV but iCal is not able to import CSV. Thunderbird does not have a calendar utility. I downloaded and installed Sunbird but in the end, after a bit of googling, I managed to find outlook2iCal, which can be found here http://outlook2ical.sourceforge.net/ Just follow the instructions described in the website. Finally, start up iCal

File -> Import -> Import an iCal File

and that's it.

Importing Windows Outlook Contacts Into Address Book

Part of the migration process is to move all the Outlook Contacts and Calendar entries into the Mac. I targeted the Address Book and iCal to begin with. It took me a while but the easiest way I settled with is to install Thunderbird on the Windows PC, import Outlook contacts into Thunderbird, then export it out again as LDIF, then import that into Address Book. A bit roundabout.

I started off exporting the Outlook Contacts into CSV then importing that into Address Book. But after doing that I found that the field mapping is not automatic and it was so tedious doing the mapping, even after all that mapping work it turned out that the "" delimiters just made a mess of the address book. I gave up on this after a while and looked for other possibilities which is when I found the commonality of LDIF support between Address Book and Outlook Contacts.

So, in summary:

- In Windows PC, start up Thunderbird
a) Tools -> Import -> Address Book -> Outlook
b) Tools -> Address Book (this starts up the Thunderbird Address Book application)

- In the Thunderbird Address Book application
a) Tools -> Export -> LDIF
b) Specify the export file name

- Transfer the exported address book to the Mac. Start up Address Book
a) File -> Import -> LDIF (select the imported LDIF address book file)

Sit back and enjoy!

Videos and Another Disappointment

Next stage is to check out whether the videos can be streamed from the main home PC. I knew from reading forum posts that there are no decent codec pack for the mac like there is for the PC. I use Klite Codec Pack, which can be downloaded from here http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm.

I also use VLC on the PC, but only as a 2nd choice. I prefer to use either Cyberlink PowerDVD or Windows Media Player with Klite Codec Pack. The main thing with these 2 media players is that you can fast forward and still have intelligible dialogue, up to 2x speed. You can't do that with VLC although I've read in some forum posts that the VLC team is working on it.

But it looks like I have no choice on the MacBook Pro other than to use VLC, which is still fine because my wife does not watch videos in fast forward like I do.

Now, to my next disappointment, the headphone and mic jack, my headset jack would not fit into it! I tried a Sony earphone and it also would not. I also tried my wife's headset and it also would not. Finally, I tried the iPod white earphone which came with my iPod, it fits very nicely. This is not good. This means I can only use Apple earphones and Apple does not make headsets, at least I am not aware of it. Major disappointment.

Disappointment

The next stage in the migration process is to move all of my wife's data over to the MacBook Pro. File share was not an issue as I found out when I 1st started up the MacBook Pro. My wife has over 50GB of data to transfer, so I just set up the transfer and left it on all night.

The next day, I woke up and found that the transfer was aborted due to some permission issue. In Windows, the transfer would not abort and would continue after it asks for "Abort, Continue, Retry" or something to that effect. Disappointment no 1.

In any case, I then had to go back in and compare what is already in the Mac and what was not transferred over and copy them over manually, directory by directory, file by file. Major tedium!

During this process I found another issue, while looking at the file listings and selecting files, I realised that the MacBook Pro does NOT have the PGUP and PGDN keys. (I later found out after going to Borders to check out some OS X books that the same function can be provided by using FN+Up key and FN+Down key. For the amount of money I paid for the machine, I expected it to have those 2 darn keys!!! In any case, I had to select files by using the up and down keys. Disappointment no 2!

I had not thought to look at the keyboard a bit more carefully prior to this and realised that it also does not have the INS and DEL keys. There is a DELETE key where BACKSPACE is expected to be. I had noticed when I was browsing Apple's website that the 17" model does not have a numeric keypad unlike the 17" HP laptops. I just thought that Apple's keboard design department was el cheapo. I didn't realise how much they depart from "standard" "modern" keyboard design principles!!! I guess they have not heard of numeric keypads on laptops. The keyboard is definitely better than the ones I used to use on ANSI terminals in the 80s but is definitely behind the times!!!

Other disappointments. When I clicked on the clock at the top right of the desktop, it shows you a tiny weeny calendar which you can't even manipulate! I find the menu bar at the top very disorienting as well. But these are minor issues which I am sure I can get past at some point.

Start Up

I turned on the machine, it asked for the user name and password, my wireless router settings. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wireless networking worked so nicely and on 1st try. It even saw my Windows shared folders.

At present, I have my desktop PC as the main server for our home. That's where the printer, scanner are connected to. It is also connected via ethernet cable to my Netgear router. I also have shared folders where all the family videos and music are located. Whenever my wife wants to watch a video, she streams it wirelessly direct from my desktop PC. I was pleasantly surprised that I will not have to spend too much time setting this up! 1st phase of migration complete!

Unpacking

I unpacked the laptop as soon as I got it. I just love the quality of Apple packaging. The package came as a bland brown corrugated box. I thought that does not look like Apple packaging but realised later on that the actual latop box is inside the box.

Got a Mac

My wife's laptop was due for an upgrade. So, on Feb 27, the day when the new MacBook Pros became available, I went online and committed myself to being my wife's Mac support resource. I received the laptop on Mar 5, 1 full week of anticipation.

For now, I intend to stick with my Win XP desktop. At least until the Mac becomes "the" gaming platform.

I ordered the basic model with glossy screen, the spec sounds decent enough. My wife old laptop sports a 1.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, so it's quite a bump in speed.

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB memory
• 200GB hard drive
• Double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB