Filed under: Tips and tricks
TUAW Series: How I set up my Mac #1
By now you've probably all set up Leopard and plenty of you have shared your experiences of what worked (or rather did not) via our tips form: however we here at TUAW thought it might be fun to share our own experiences of the last week via a new mini-series 'How I set up my Mac'. Of course, a little bit of desktop sharing might be in order too so if you've gone the whole hog and customized your desktop then don't forget to add it to our TUAW Desktops Flickr Group pool. In no particular order, we start the our team desktop tour with our U.K. outpost.The Installation
I'll be honest: I rarely backup. Correction: I rarely do a full system backup. I fully backup my documents, website files and Aperture library (with my master files residing on an External HD by default) so the first order of the day was to create a bootable backup of TIger with SuperDuper. After that, a clean install was completed in about 15 minutes on my Core2Duo MacBookPro - although the speed was likely due to me opting to turn off almost every localization and printer driver in installation setup. I then chose to use the Migration Assistant (instead of truly starting again) as I'd done a fair bit of Application Support folder pruning prior to the backup, and once my iTunes Library had copied back, along with a Keychain and my Application preferences (for serial numbers) we were good to go.
The First Run
Oooooh. Look at the purty welcome video: OK, so it's a CG video, but it's a great way to get into the feel and mindset of Leopard. First port of call: the Dock. Even before I started reinstalling my apps, the dock just had to go. I'm most certainly not a fan of the 3D dock, and given that I was feeling lazy, I headed over to MacWorld and ran their AppleScripts instead of running the terminal commands to get myself the 'other' dock. Because I'd copied over my user account in the Migration Assistant, I had a populated with missing icons and applications they pointed to - which turned out to be quite a blessing in reminding me just what I actually needed to install. A few downloads later, I was set.
When it comes to issues, the main one has been Safari's 3 User Agent not being deemed 'compatible' with my online banking - a quick enable of the Debug menu, a change of it back to Safari 2.0.4 and I was all set. Just be sure to change it back, should you choose to meddle with the User Agent, as things like Gmail will display differently with a Safari 2 User Agent.
Essentials
- Camino
- iChat
- iTunes
- NetNewsWire
- Aperture
- RapidWeaver
- CSSedit
- Coda
- TextMate
- Transmit
- Pixelmator
- Yojimbo
- Keynote
- Pages
- Mail.app
- QuickTime
- Skitch
- TextExpander
Best new feature: QuickLook - although Time Machine would probably be a close second (I'm holding off on Time Machine until its Aperture issues are resolved).
Things you love: QuickLook, keyboard shortcuts assigned to 'Arrange by..." Finder view options, the sheer speed of the system, Spotlight now seems to be quicker than Road-Runner on Red-Bull, Stacks, enhanced Airport menu.
Things you dislike: That dock - although all is forgiven now I've got rid of the 3D effect, Mail Stationery (just why?!), the need to create folders of aliases to get custom stacks - there ought to be a System Preference pane for them.
Features you've changed your mind on: QuickLook. I questioned the point, yet now totally dig it - opening Preview seems like such an unnecessary use of processor cycles. Failing that, Spotlight: I didn't believe Apple would improve it as much as they have.
Your one feature request: QuickLook in stacks
Twitter-inspired 140-character review: "For something I thought would struggle to live to the Jobs hype, it's blown me away. Totally blown me away. Consider me an enlightened cynic"
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
PowerLlama said 8:20PM on 11-03-2007
A friend of mine has had bad problems with Camino. About every 3 hours it would completely lock up his machine. Couldn't use the keyboard or mouse and would give him the beach ball of doom. But it wouldn't be a kernel panic screen.
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john said 8:36PM on 11-03-2007
I'm not sure that problem is strictly related to Camino. I've had that happen twice since installing Leopard (clean install), and I don't run Camino. Beach ball, no kernel panic, no keyboard or mouse (I can move the mouse cursor but I can't do anything with it). Only thing I can do is power down and reboot.
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Adam Wilde said 8:37PM on 11-03-2007
I've been using Camino for several years (since it's Chimera days, I think) and as my main browser for at least the last two years. I've never experienced anything like the trouble your friend has. I'd suggest that he log his trouble on the relevant bugzilla page if he hasn't done so already.
Camino isn't perfect (I occasionally have to revert to Safari when Camino fails to download an image to my desktop for no discernable reason – something I still need to log as a bug someday). This is frustrating, but not frequent, and I otherwise find Camino very stable. And fast. And unbloated. And good-looking.
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Adam Wilde said 8:38PM on 11-03-2007
Addendum: my experience with Camino is all on Panther/Tiger, not Leopard yet.
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Kurt Williams said 8:45PM on 11-03-2007
Could I request a link to that desktop background?
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Aaron Sherman said 8:56PM on 11-03-2007
I would also like to request a link to that desktop picture. It's beautiful.
Is there also a color version of it?
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Mike said 8:56PM on 11-03-2007
I've had Camino issues as well, particularly with the scripting on Gmail. I turned off all scripting, re-started and re-enabled scripting, and no issues so far I'm running nightly build 2007110201)
The Skype issue is a problem too, and I'm waiting for Candybar and Peerguardian to get updated.
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Wilder K. Wight said 9:15PM on 11-03-2007
I can't believe so many people aren't even giving the new dock a chance. I like it. It grows on you. In fact, now I look at the old dock and it just looks kind of junky and blah.
A tip from a fellow poster allowed me to make the stacks icons look better on my dock. Just put a folder icon in the folder (applications, for example) and rename it "00" so it's always the first thing in the stack... That way your stack always looks like the folder.
C'mon guys. Changing the dock as soon as you install? That's so annoying. You're probably the same people who will order a great gourmet food that has been seasoned and spiced by the chef, and then you dump salt and pepper on it immediately before ever tasting it the way the chef made it.
TRY the new dock first. Give it a week before mucking with it.
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Chris Furniss said 9:15PM on 11-03-2007
No quicksilver? Aww.
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Fred said 9:38PM on 11-03-2007
Read How Lexmark Will support Mac Users :
Dear Fred,
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in our response to your e-mail. We make every effort to respond to each e-mail within 1 business day, but in this case we have failed to do so. I am truly sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and I appreciate your patience in this matter.
Here is your Service Request # 1-662980851.
Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the problems you are experiencing with your Lexmark product. To the best of my knowledge, there are currently no plans to develop Mac drivers to support this model. Thank you for notifying us of this request. I will forward your comments on to our development department, as it is only through input from you, our customers, that we can make these important business decisions.
If you have any more questions or concerns, please contact me at your convenience and I will be happy to assist you. (If I am not available, another representative will reply to you as soon as possible.) To respond, please select "Reply" in your e-mail software, and be sure that the past e-mail is included in this reply.
[AOL Users: In order to include the previous e-mail, you must highlight it with your mouse when you are replying.]
If you need to reply, please be sure to include in your message all information from prior e-mail messages & replies. If your e-mail client automatically deletes prior e-mail thread information, it will cause a delay while we look up your support history. If this is the case you may want to save the old e-mails as attachments and attach them to the current e-mail.
Sincerely,
Hidayatullah
Lexmark eSupport Team
http://support.lexmark.com
[THREAD ID:1-AYPZAR]
**********Original Message**********
Have you tested the x5470 on mac os 10.5 leopard? I try to print and the all my applications quit and ask if you would like to relaunch. are there any patches for the new os?
[LXK SD Email Action.Email Body]
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john said 10:21PM on 11-03-2007
@ Wilder...
I don't mind the 3D look of the Dock, but I hate how hard it is to see the app indicators. That blue LED thing just doesn't work for me. I changed to the 2D Dock because the indicators are so much easier to see, and the 3D thing, while kind of cool to look at, isn't worth the tradeoff in usability.
I like some of the 3D Dock mods I've seen that make the background darker so the indicators stand out more, but I'm just not that into mods, honestly. I've been tweaking computers for a long time (OS/2 Workplace Shell for Windows 3.1, anyone?) and the novelty of that wore off years ago.
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john russell said 10:42PM on 11-03-2007
I wasn't all that enamored at first with the new 3D dock, but it has grown on me just a tad. I considered switching to the 2D dock, but I really do miss the pix-perfect accuracy of the Tiger dock's borders. Those rounded corners, multi-pixel borders, and the unnecessarily wide "crosswalk" just really kill it for me.
I was looking inside of the Dock's resource folder, and I think it might even be possible to mod it back to its pre-Leopard glory.
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Dan Woods said 10:50PM on 11-03-2007
The only reason I don't use the Reflective Dock is that my Dock is always on the Right Side of the screen.
I started using a Right-Side Dock on my little iBook (1024x768 is tiny; I need as much vertical screen real-estate as possible. The Dock to the Right has stuck with me ever since.
From the screen shots of Developer Releases with a Reflective Side Dock; it doesn't look *that* bad, but they dropped this in the final. :(
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Rafe H. said 10:59PM on 11-03-2007
I agree with others, give the new Dock a try for a few days. The UI pros at Apple wouldn't have released it without a little thought.
Something that hasn't grown on me yet: the ugly VISTA-like transparency of the menus. I much prefer the transparency of the stacks.
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G said 11:47PM on 11-03-2007
Stationery. It's a template, it's not immobile.
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Tubby Bartles said 12:29AM on 11-04-2007
I left the new dock 3d, and after a week now I've completely adjusted - even the glowing dot to indicate something running doesn't bother me.
However, the translucent menubar and menus are bothering me more by the day. I hope somebody comes up with a good way to set those back to opaque soon.
(Other than that I've been very, very happy with Leopard. Favorite feature: clicking on "see you next tuesday at 12:15 for lunch" and having it automatically add to my calendar).
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ThaddyBoy said 12:37AM on 11-04-2007
I'd like to figure out how to use my other macs as Front Row sources. Other than that, I love my Leopard. It's everything I wanted in an OS.
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Victor Johnson said 1:43AM on 11-04-2007
I've got one for ya...I decided that I wasn't going to use Time Machine right off the bat, so I removed it from my dock. Well...now that I have enabled it, I don't have the icon to run Time Machine's restore process from any open window in my dock anymore, and its not located in my Applications folder. If I create a new user the Time Machine icon is present in the new users dock but with a ? mark in its place and it doesn't link to anything.
So have I totally screwed myself into having to format and reinstall?
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king said 1:50AM on 11-04-2007
i been having with ichat timing out and getting kicked off my wireless network every 45 to hour..
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Nick said 1:25AM on 11-04-2007
Leopard broke my install of Connect 360. See others with this problem here: http://jeff.henshaw.org/?p=139#comment-1549
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