On Oct 12, 2004, at 7:29 PM, Ben Crowder wrote:
To those who are running or have run MacOS X:
I bought my Powerbook this morning and have spent a few hours tinkering with stuff. I feel rather like a newbie, though, and so I was wondering if you have any advice on good things to tweak (to make it feel more like Linux, at least in all of the good ways), major websites for info, etc. Feel free to reply off-list if you think it's off-topic for the list. :)
Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean "make it feel more like Linux"? Did you want a foot or a big K on your screen somewhere? :) In all seriousness, here are some programs that I have found that make things run smoothly and efficiently:
** Quicksilver (or if you would prefer to pay, Launchbar): What this app does is indexes Safari Bookmarks, applications in your /Applications, /Developer/Applications and other app directories, folders and files in your home directory, Preference panes, etc., and puts them at your fingertips with just a couple of keystrokes. For example, to launch iMovie, I hit Cmd-Space and type "im" and it brings up iMovie. It 's much easier than loading up your dock or picking through your applications folder when you need to launch an application. It is by far the slickest way of launching apps that I have used on any platform, period.
** Huevos: This allows you to do a google search by hitting a hot key (I have mine mapped to Cmd-Esc)
** MenuMeters: These little beauties put network, cpu, memory, and disk monitors in your menu bar to give you graphical feedback on what your system is doing
** Synergy: Puts a few buttons in your menu bar that allow you to control iTunes. Quicksilver also allows you to do the same thing with a plugin.
There are a couple of other features of OS X that I would also put some time into learning:
** Services menu: Services are a way of tying separate applications together to make it simple to perform common tasks. For example, highlight a piece of text and hit Cmd-Shift-Y. This will create a new sticky note with the highlighted text. There are lots of others that can really save you time.
** Applescript: OS X is by far the most scriptable OS I have ever worked with. Applescript is fairly easy to learn, and has also been given hooks to the unix command line (via a couple of commands like "do shell script") that allow you to harness your existing knowledge.
** Keyboard shortcuts: Along the same lines as the services menu, OS X has great keyboard shortcut facilities as well. Although some are different than what you may be used to, take the time to learn the new shortcuts as they will save you a lot of time. Particularly, become familiar with F9, F10, and F11 (the default Expose keys) Cmd-Tab (for pulling up the app switcher) and others that will make your life easier.
Welcome to the fold. :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Grant
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