OSX for the First Time

Introduction

Here is this week's Tuesday post.

I started a brand new job and one thing didn't come up in the interview: they are a Mac shop.  I already accepted the offer, so I decided to learn how to use this MacBook Pro (I think).  It's definitely OSX.

You may be too young to have seen one of these.

Background

I'm a long time user of Windows, and started back in the MS-DOS days of having to make a custom 3.5" boot disk to have enough 640k memory (which Ought to Be Enough for Anyone) available to play games.  Needless to say, I'm (unfortunately) invested in Windows, and have some pretty cool stuff that I can do with my mouse.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, one way or another.

First Day

The first day was mostly struggling with the keys and initial setup.  It isn't Ctrl-C to copy, it's command(⌘)-C.  Basically, everything you want to do with Control on Windows you do with Command on Mac... except for stopping a process on a command prompt, that's still control-C.

The control key goes from best-friend to too-busy-to-keep-up status.

Also, the Function Keys aren't the Function Keys by default.  To press F3 you have to press fn-F3.  I've seen similar setups on Laptops but they usually have a "fn-lock" key.  I'm a programmer, so I use F3 (Eclipse -> Go to Source Declaration) about 20 times a day.  I've used a "non-fn" key about 5 times.

First Week

I discover the oddness and joy of the Magic Mouse.  It looks like a mouse that forgot to finish getting made, and I have to configure it to be able to right click, but I've started liking it.
I'd still like to Copy and Paste using my mouse like I have setup on Windows, but oh-well.

Apple Magic Mouse - See Credits section for attribution.

I have a three monitor set up (laptop screen and two monitors) - more than I've ever had on a Windows box.  This is really nice!  I have my command prompt on my small lap-top screen on the right, IM / Email on my left hand screen and the rest in the middle.

I had to struggle with the Dock (I was using a 3rd party Dock on Windows, so this was easy in general) when it would seemingly randomly move to another monitor.  It turns out, mousing down off of the screen brings the dock to that screen.  This can be done quite easily on accident, but once I know what's going on I can bring it back to my main screen pretty easily.

My left monitor starts randomly going black, and I look at many different solutions to the problem.

The system in general is pretty powerful (I think the company got a top-of-the-line model).

First Month

I upgrade the OS to El Capitan (trying to fix the screen issue as mentioned above), I thoroughly look at all of the System Preferences and I'm able to do regular, day-to-day work on it.

Conclusion

After a month of work-day use, it's starting to fade into the mental background.  It doesn't do unexpected things and it doesn't need excessive updates.  I'm not a 'convert' and probably wouldn't pay the extra money for a Mac.

It's definitely better than a "standard" Windows pre-install with McAfee (no link on purpose) and the other bloatware.

P.S.

For the small handful of people reading these, thanks!  You'll continue to find good content.
I'm assuming these reads aren't just bots...

Credits

Magic Mouse Image: By Yutaka Tsutano from Lincoln, United States - Magic MouseUploaded by Mewtu, CC BY 2.0