About Mac & Apple (English)

Blog about Mac and Apple.
Author: Leopold Birkholm
Starting date: 12 of June, 2011.

June 19th of 2011
I have learned that in the English language you write the day after the month. In mine native language, you right day-month-year or vice versa. This blog over my experience with Apple and Mac will also heighten my knowledge of how to write English text.

I do not play games on a computer much. Some old, cheap games perhaps and chess. I like chess. I found that MacBook, or rather the operating system, comes with a chess program already installed. The chess program is alright for me. Nothing fancy, just a straight chess game. Not much tweak or anything of the sort. I like it.

I find the Preview program annoying. It do not show PDF files in the way I like which is in full screen and zoomed to the width of the document. Perhaps it is a setting I have missed. I have therefore installed Acrobat Reader X version 10.1.0. 

In A.R., I hit +L, the A.R. goes in the full screen mode and then I hit the +(+) until I get resolution I want.

When viewing photos in Preview I need to mark the photos I wish to see in order to be able to flip through them, even if I open photos from the same folder. In Windows XP, Vista or 7, that is done automatically. But in Windows operating system, I cannot edit the photos without having to install additional software. That ways up the downside of not be able to automatically flip through photos. Besides, the only thing you need to do is when you wish to view all photos in a folder is to hit +A and then +O to start viewing all in the same folder.

The ability to edit photos in the program Preview is perhaps a bit limited considering Adobe Photoshop or similar software, but for my need it is quite fine. The software suite iLife ’11 often comes with your Mac computer or you can buy it for 49 US $. There you find iPhoto ’11 wish let you trim you picture into the size you wish. That together with the ability to change into black and white sums up pretty much my need for editing photos.

I will come back to iLife ’11 in another post, as well the writing possibilities with the iWork ’09 suite and comparison with the competitions of Open Office or Microsoft Office 2011.

I am impressed by how well the battery is holding up. To my knowledge, this is the battery that ship with the computer. The battery is about five years old and still it gives me two problem free hours of browsing and writing. I can also rip a DVD to the hard drive without problem.

I would not recommend you doing this yourself, since it perhaps it is considered illegal in the country you are residing in. I do this to test the computer doing something hard on battery power. The DVD is mine own, I do not mean to disturber it.

And the result of this test, it is surprising. I run the rip and after a while, the program is done. The battery is still happy and I can continue browsing a good while. My new PC from HP, a G62, is not able doing the same thing. I am thinking to write a blog over that computer, mostly because of the operating system. Perhaps a review over the laptop also. But that is a matter to consider in a separate post.

When typing, I am impressed over the keyboard. I have a European keyboard, a Swedish one. The setup is a wee bit different from an American or British one. Please, look at the picture below:

My Swedish keyboard
I like the feel of the keyboard. I find the keys easy and the response is quick. A tip that I read somewhere else is to regular wipe down your keyboard with a anti-bacterial tissue.  That makes the keys feels like brand new ones. The fact that it is also hygienic is just the bonus for me. In contrast I have the HP G62 keyboard. I do not feel as sure when I type on that one. The keys are more together and I find that confusing.

This wraps up my second note over my expernice with Apple and Mac.

Thank you for dropping by. More to come.
//Leopold

12 of June, 2011 
This blog is created with the purpose of logging my exploration of Mac OS X Snow Leopard with a MacBook from the late 2006. I have bought three books to help me explore this operating system and the tools Apple provides:
What about the machine then?

I bought a MacBook from late 2006 for the price of 2 590 SEK or about 400 American dollars. The exchange rate is about 6,50 SEK for each American dollar as I wright this text.

Everybody loves bullet points so here is it for my MacBook:
I mentioned a mechanical hard drive. If you are wondering why I stress on that it is a mechanical one, you can read about the difference between an mechanical and a solid stat drive here.

This ends my first input of my experience with Mac and Apple. More to come.

// Leopold
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