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Saturday August 26, 2006
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 One month into my new Mac life, and I'm feeling much more at home. I can't say I'm fluent in OS X "mannerisms" yet, but in terms of learning a foreign language I'd say I'm roughly conversational. (For those of you who don't know, I'm a PC guy who just recently switched to a Mac last month.) I've written up my experiences thus far on pcmag.com, Switching from PC to Mac: Culture Shock.
Last week, on a tip from a colleague, I installed Quicksilver, a free application that's designed to streamline the OS X interface with shortcuts as well as automate some repetitive tasks. Quicksilver converts preach that it's mind-altering and life-changing, but I'll hold onto my judgment until I've taken it out for a full test drive. I bring this up for one single reason: It's perfectly representative of the Mac culture. First off, Quicksilver is free, like so many great Mac apps out there in the wild. Second, like a lot of OS X apps that weren't produced by Apple, it's not intuitive. (This is the scourge of free and premium software alike.) And third, it's strangely philosophical. Will it change my life? I doubt it. But any application that touts the writings of Lao-Tze in its About dialog stirs my curiosity. In fact, the material from Lao-Tze really sums up my recent experiences with my Mac, so for S's and G's, as they say, I've elected to frame the rest of the column around this text. Here's a quick snippet--
Act without doing, work without effort.
Isn't that what the OS X Automater is for? According to its Help file, "Automator is an innovative personal automation assistant that makes it easy to automate repetitive tasks." This sounds brilliant. Too bad it's not "easy" to use. However, I have found it useful to download workflows (that's what a set of automated tasks is called in Automater) that other people have written. So far my favorite downloaded workflow helps me sync digital photos between my hard disk and my network-attached storage (NAS), which another workflow helps me to mount.
--Stepping through the rest of the lines (pictured on the right) and comparing them to the reality of OS X, I have to ask: Why is iTunes so frustrating? What's a decent backup solution? Where's all the antivirus? And, now that I can rip DVDs, what's the cheapest way to rip video out of those VOB files? To read the rest of piece, check it out on PCMag.com.
(And, while I'm not on the subject -- Hey Phoenix, did you hear us give you a shout on PCMag Radio?)
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August 26, 2006 3:37 PM
Oh I heard, and thank you! Don't worry, I'm already subscribed to the podcast. ;) Great podcast, of course, and I'm one of those people who hates the phrase "web 2.0" as well, I specifically loved that part. I have to admit though, MySpace will probably be around in 5 years, but I'm sure that sites like Friendster and Tribe and Facebook will all be long long gone in 5 years, people will remember them fondly once they graduate from high school/college, and there'll be something else new and shiny to fill the space, I think. Another "killer site," so to speak. That being said, let me know what you think of Quicksilver! Everyone keeps telling me that I absolutely have to have it, my Mac fanatic friends, when they find out I don't have it on the MacBook Pro I bought a few months ago are startled and somewhat angry at me (which is really odd...) but no one's really been able to tell me WHY it's the killer app, especially considering the many MANY configuration options for it. I'll be really curious to see what you think, coming from the Windows world!
August 26, 2006 3:41 PM
I forgot to mention this, but looking for apartments by Obit is creepy sure, but it sounds effective! :D Also, I can't say I know ALL of the 101 top sites, but I know MOST of them. ;) I should send in my resume!
August 28, 2006 12:57 PM
That hasn't been updated in years. You should have used ffmpegX, which is also free, and imports and exports just about every format, including h.264. Not terribly intuitive, but it works.