New toy

[ffutures]

Thanks to autopope I now have my shiny new toy - a slightly used iBook G4, with which, so far, I am pretty pleased, and once I can teach myself not to hit caps lock instead of "a" I will be ecstatic. To celebrate I've splurged on WiFi access for the weekend (I'm at the UK national SF convention) so I'm not going to be quite as silent as expected.

I'd love to know why Apple made a couple of decisions; the one that particularly bugs me is that every other pad-mouse thing I've used has had a "tap it to enter a mouse click" option, this doesn't seem to do that unless it's deep in the setup menu, and I'm still no used to hitting the button below the pad. And WTF isn't there a "del" key as well as backspace? I daresay all will become clear in time. Got a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with it, but haven't used them in anger yet. Currently using Safari and encountering no problems, though I still haven't figured out how to make it full screen - no doubt it's blindingly obvious once you know how.

Anyway, here I am, assimilated by the Apple collective. Expect me to be asking a LOT of questions over the next few months...

Comments

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

If you enter the system preferences there is an option called "Keyboard and Mouse". In there you can press the trackpad, and change the settings.

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

Press the "trackpad" option is what I meant, and change the settings for the trackpad there.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that particular model, but some Macs have the tap on the trackpad for mouse click feature. If yours does, you can turn it on through System Preferences->Keyboard and Mouse->Trackpad preferences pane.

Having applications take up the full screen is generally a very non-Mac thing to do.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Maybe Steve Jobs has better eyesight than I do. I've compromised and pulled it across the full width for now.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Many thanks!

[parakkum.livejournal.com]

You have a backspace key? Fascinating. I'll have to check out the G4 back home, as my G3 iBook here has only a "delete" key.

Both PCs and the Sun here have backspace and delete, but I preferentially use backspace on the Sun, because it does what I'm used to delete doing -- delete the character immediately preceding the cursor. The Sun's delete key deletes the character immediately following the cursor, which trips me up from time to time.

Working on three kinds of computers is making me pretty keyboard amphibious, though.

[elementalv.livejournal.com]

Anyway, here I am, assimilated by the Apple collective. Expect me to be asking a LOT of questions over the next few months...

Welcome to the bright and shiny side of computing. Also, to delete characters to the right of the cursor (rather than the left), hold down the function (fn) key as you press delete.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Are you running OS X or OS 9? If you've got OS X you can click on the green button on the upper left hand corner of the window and it'll expand it out to fill the screen.

Here's a shocker for you: new PCs don't have backspace keys either. My Dell laptop only has "Delete." I'm fuzzy on it, but I think the backspace and delete keys used to work differently on a PC, yah? Backspace was backspace, but delete was a forward delete? Backspace/Delete on a Mac is all backwards delete, baby!

[dsample.livejournal.com]

1)The green button doesn't expand a window to full screen. It will adjust the window size to whatever the system thinks is its optimum size.

2) Whether it's called "Backspace" or "Delete" there is a key in the top right of the keyboard that backs the cursor up one space, erasing the previous character when typed. Some keyboards also have a "Del" key which erases the character ahead of the cursor.

[drplokta]

You're going to want uControl, which lets you use Fn+Backspace as delete, and also lets you scroll with the trackpad if you hold down Fn. Google for it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OS X - I thought that'd be what the green button does, but in fact it seems to toggle between two different window views with different vertical heights, neither filling the screen.

If new PCs don't have backspace I'm bloody glad I've got a couple of spare keyboards.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Anyone else think it's odd you're commenting here when we're in the same hotel?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, seems to work ok without extra software - many thanks.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Not me! :)

Exposé

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I see you've already learned how to to the 'click the trackpad' thing. I turned mine off, as I'm too clumsy not to 'jiggle' the mouse when I do that.

One useful trick, if you like to run with big windows, it to use Exposé to see all the windows you have open at once. You simply press the "F9" key, which tiles all your open windows on the screen at once. When you move the mouse over them the title is displayed, and you can select the window by either clicking or pressing "F9" again.

Re: Exposé

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - Nice one!