April 19, 2005
Mac-izing
I've finally gotten a powerbook from work. I'm still learning the different key shortcuts, but all-in-all, I have to say I'm loving my new mac. So far, here are the things people have suggested that I use:
Of course, there's the whole mail issue. Some people like Thunderbird, some Maill.app (a.k.a. Apple Mail), some like Eudora. Currently, all my email is served from an Exchange server, so I'm just trying to use Entourage. Someday, I'd like to move to Thunderbird, but I can't seem to get it to work with Exchange just yet.
Also, still trying to figure out the right theme to use for Adium. I want something like the bubbles, or the other cool see-thru type layouts. But, I have a ton of contacts, so I have trouble moving the whole app up and down when i need to. I suppose it'll get better with time, but for now, I'm just using one of the layouts that looks "traditional".
I know a lot of people like Safari for web browsing. But, I love Firefox and have used it for months on windows. So I've reset my default browser to be FF instead of safari.
I think the resetting of the default browser was the only weird thing in terms of User Interface so far. I had to go to the Safari Preferences to set the default browser to Firefox. Not bad, just a little weird. Why does Safari control what the default browser is?
I think my biggest desire is a good calendaring app. iCal seems cool, but I can't seem to hook it up to my Exchange/Outlook calendar, nor can I sync it with Yahoo Calendar. So... I'm a bit lost on why I should adopt yet another calendaring thing.
Anyways, let me know if there are killer mac apps out there that I should use.
Posted by dave at April 19, 2005 09:02 PM | TrackBackHey Dave,
At least a few of us use some scripts to sync Exchange to iCal. The basic idea is fetchmail your Calendar folder, munge the output slightly, upload the result to a web server, subscribe iCal to that.
Unfortunately, this isn't a roundtrip solution, you still need to use webmail or Remote Desktop to add things to your calendar.
I'll email you my scripts tomorrow, if I remember.
Posted by: Kevin Scaldeferri at April 19, 2005 11:02 PMFor text editing I recommend TextWrangler.
Firefox rules.
And you need this;
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/marco/pimpzilla/.
pearCalc. Handy.
http://www.pearworks.com/pages/pearcalc.html
This may sound like heresy, but I recommend a Microsoft Optical Intellimouse with 5 buttons. The Mac driver is good and you can map copy/paste to a couple of those many buttons.
Remote Desktop Connection can be useful.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient
I am always on the lookout for a good note-taking/productivity app, and I found "Notes" quite useful:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9605
It allows to quickly (quickly is the key word here) take notes of anything and file them under subjects. What I find more useful is that you don't need to save everytime - it automatically remembers any character you type ;-)
Very simple - very useful
Posted by: Michael at April 23, 2005 03:03 PM