Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Vista is out in the wild, and the commentators keep coming back to the Aero interface and how it supposedly lessens the gap between Windows and OSX.

Er… No.

In an interview, Guy Kawasaki was explaining what it was like to evangelize the first Macintosh. He said that he’d take it out of the case and start to demo it, and within 30 seconds he could tell whether they “Got It.”

He said, “If they didn’t get it in that first 30 seconds, they were never going to get it.”
So, what is “It?”

Life is complicated. So sit on a beach, admire a sunset, listen to some music — do such things to get away from the complication. Ironically, I find that sitting at my Mac is my escape from complication. Who would have thought that a box of technology would be so smooth and restful and flowing? Certainly not me when using a Windows PC. Taking the “Technology” out of technology: That’s good design. That’s “It.”

For some, there’s no difference between the showroom experience and their day-to-day experience of that system. For others there’s a world of difference; they tweak and finesse the look and feel of their machines to their liking. That’s me, one of the others. Re-arranging the furniture, adjusting the lighting until it’s… Just so.

This is easy on the Mac; not only because I’m starting from such a classy baseline, but because the geniuses who develop the tweaking tools have such good fundamentals on which to base their work — such as Core Image. You literally can’t make it ugly. What’s more, the OS is intelligent enough to never forget what you’ve done; it never randomly stumbles back to some default mode. Position a window just so, and it will always look that way.

I can’t easily adjust the hardware, but what am I looking at now? A white bezel of perfectly formed plastic, with a subtle Apple logo; no badges, grills, flashing lights, wires, chrome bits, labels… Nothing, and perfect as it is.

Sometimes I wish I could bring my Mac over to your place, just to show you how gorgeous it looks, and how smoothly everything works together. Not to gloat — just to say, “Look what you can do.”

You’ll either get it, or you won’t.

I can’t belive I only now discovered this feature; if, like me, you never never ever use the Caps Lock key, and you ocassionally hit it by mistake—now you can turn it off!

• Go into the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane, click on the Keyboard pane, and then once there you’ll find a button marked Modifier Keys.
• Choose Caps Lock and select No Action.

That’s it. Done!

Right now I’m on Day-One of a 30 day evaluation of an app called Scrivener. It’s a tool for writers that lets them build up documents a section at a time, dragging and dropping sections to re-arrange them, jumping into fullscreen mode to work on individual sections without distractions, assigning notes and clippings and status levels to those sections…

It does all of that, and a lot more, plus it’s just gosh-darned beautiful to look at as well. I just can’t leave it alone.

It’s the same sort of feeling I get, as when I’ve just gotten a nice new car, and I keep leaving the house just to sit in it and smell the leather and play with the audio system. And then I say, “Yes!” when I see how smoothly the cup-holders glide out from the dash.

Back in Scrivener I said, “Yes!” upon discovering that it auto-capitalizes sentences as well as the letter “i” as in: I think this is great.

Now, what to write…

Literature and Latte - Scrivener

Here is a quick selection tip that I recently re-discovered by accident: If you triple-click anywhere within a paragraph of text then the whole paragraph is selected. Now, if you hold on the last click and drag down you’ll see that subsequent whole paragraphs are being added to the selection…

The big-money tip is this: If you triple-click anywhere within a paragraph and then release the button, you can then scroll down a long page and then simply Shift-click anywhere you like within the last paragraph you want included in the selection. All text in between, and the whole of the Shift-clicked paragraph will be selected.

Try it. It’s easier to say than to do.

This is just a test. I’m using Airport on the Mac to share my internet connection with my PDA. So far, apart from the confined screen it’s a great experience!

Above is a look inside my Pictures folder. Some of the folders that it contains have been customized using the FinderIcon contextual menu plugin. To use the plugin you copy a small image to the clipboard (preferably 256 by 256 pixels) and right (or context)-click on a folder that you’ve created. From the Finder Icon sub-menu, choose Paste and bang, your folder will now always have the look of the image…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Look — FinderIcon

When I switched over to the Mac, one of the few things I did miss from my Microsoft days was fullscreen mode. It was available in the file explorer, Internet Explorer, and I think also in Outlook. I could hit F11 and the current window would fill the entire screen with the scrollbar on the extreme edge, for true distraction-free viewing.

Now, this hack is available to do pretty much the same thing on a Mac. Once installed it’s a simple matter to press Cmd-Enter to toggle the fullscreen mode, or select it from the Window menu…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Look — Megazoomer

In the early days of PCs and Macs, hand-holding books and articles would always say something to the effect of: “Don’t worry about hitting the wrong key or clicking the wrong thing; you can’t break it.”

Well, fact of the matter is, you can. By installing dodgy software or tweaking settings the wrong way, or by delving too far into the underlying guts of the operating system — things do get broken.

I think it was Andy Hertzfeld who said that he recently asked Steve Jobs what one thing he’d do differently if he could go back and introduce the Macintosh all over again. Without hesitation Steve said, “I’d lock out third party developers.”

The iPhone is, to all intents, Macintosh all over again. As obvious as a toaster. A bicycle for the mind. Beautiful and flawless. Don’t tamper with it.

In the great bell curve of users of technology there are always — and there always will be: three percent who will never get it; ninety three percent who sort of get it; and three percent who totally get it.

Now, of the three percent who totally get it, there is yet another percentage who want to exploit the living daylights out of it; these are the geeks. You could say that in the PC world the last three percent who get it are the Mac users, and the Mac geeks are the ones who add the add-ons, who write the scripts, who hack the terminal.

They can get their Macs to do incredible things, but their friends see what they’re doing and want to do that too, and the geeks have to say: “Well, it did take a whole weekend to set that up, and if you don’t know what you’re doing…”

Steve loves his geeks, but he keeps them at arm’s length. He only adopts their ideas when those ideas are truly big concept ones — like Cover Flow, and Widgets. Ideas that, once tried seem obvious, even to the get-its. Most of the non-big concept toys used by the geeks are merely noise to everyone else.

So, the iPhone is the toaster, the bicycle, in your hand. Don’t tamper with it. But don’t despair: Instead, leverage the idea that the iPhone will be the ubiquitous way to access the web, and develop iPhone-friendly webpages that extend its usability — and fit in with its look and feel.

Revolutionary?

A few days ago I heard about the iPhone and I looked at the screenshots, and I was somewhat impressed. I was also a little disappointed in the look of the interface; it just looked a little cartoon like.

Since then I’ve read three pieces from writers I respect. They all tried the actual device, and they all said that it turned them into silly giggling fools.

This is huge. Sometimes it does take a few days for something new to sink in. I read the transcript of the keynote and Steve Jobs was saying that he felt that this was going to be as much of a revolution as the introduction of the original Mac.

Now I understand what he means.

Back in 1984 when there were micro computers, and the IBM PC, and the first Mac, I attended a local computer expo. All of these machines were on display. Most people there were curious non-computer owners like me; we all looked at the micros and the PCs, but didn’t touch. We were afraid we’d break them, afraid to explore their features.

When we discovered the Macs though, there were literally cues forming to sit at each one. I watched as folks discovered the mouse, and then as they explored the interface by clicking, dragging and so on, losing all sense of time, having a ball.

These people found out for themselves how to interact with the interface, and then discovered that the interface responded logically to whatever it was they expected it to do.

Now in 2007, three jaded tech writers are having the same reaction, to a phone!

Go into a mobile phone showroom today and there appear to be three types of phone, and corresponding buyers: There are the super-cheap “Whatever” phones and buyers. They just want to make the occasional call. There are the “Looks Cool” phones that most go for; used mainly for calls, messaging, and the odd picture taking. Finally, there are the “Smart” phones, at the far end, probably behind glass. Probably just for business types — at least that’s the implication.

So, what’s happening in that showroom a year from now? There’s a crowd around the iPhones, which happen to be real and connected to a network, not hollow dummies with printed screens. They’re trying things on the phones, tapping and wiping and stretching — and they’re succeeding at what they try.

They’re getting a real kick out of it. Every time one of them says, “Hey, I just did this,” or, “Hey, I just did that,” one of the surly smart phone users claims that he can do the same on his.

“Don’t Care!” comes the chorus from the iPhoners. They’ve gotta have one! Today!

Doesn’t read Word docs? Who gives a shit?

Can’t install apps? Who cares? Just look at all the iPhone-friendly websites that have popped up.

Battery won’t last more than a day? What do I care? I’ve got to synch it to my latest tunes every day anyway…

Yes, revolutionary.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko :: You could call iPhone perfect

My first shock was the clown fish wallpaper; what the hell were they thinking? I hate to say it, but I get the impression that the company that brought us the computer for the rest of us, is building a phone to appeal mostly to the rest of them! Namely: Microsoft users who were impressed by the interfaces of Zune and Vista. Just because you have 64000 colors available, doesn’t mean you have to use all of them on the front page.

There’s a shot from the keynote doing the rounds that shows Steve Jobs off to one side and the iPhone on the big screen, showing its home screen with the rows of glossy rounded brightly colored buttons. Now imagine if the same phone was a Windows Mobile, in a shot with Bill Gates to one side, at the CES conference. I’ve no doubt that if that were the case, there’d be Mac fans commenting that it’s just another example of Microsoft’s heavy handed and gaudy interface design, unlike the clear and (insert the over worked phrase:) “minimalist” approach adopted by Apple.

Uses OS X. Well, no. It uses core animation techniques in the style of OS X, but it’s not OS X as we know it; there won’t be developer kits, there won’t be apps and addons. Steve has decided that a phone should do four or five things really well, and no more, because that’s what HE wants from a phone. This is his baby, and billionaires don’t use phones in the same way that most of us do. Truth be told, up to now he threw whatever phone he had to his assistant and yelled, “Get me Jonathan.”

Why “Uses OS X?” Because ten months from now when there are zillions of iPhones in use, Apple will release OS 10.5 which will use chunky button icons and whooshing effects on the new iMac. And the Headline will read:

From the Makers of the iPhone…