Well, here we are, my first update from the new Mac. I was going to post this earlier but 1) I was having too much fun playing with the Mac and learning all the ins and outs of it and 2) my broadband connection died last night so I’m only getting around to it now – in between watching Smokin’ Aces and listening to Rachmaninoff.
So, yes, the Mac arrived “on time” on Monday morning and was VERY easy to set up. I’ll cut to the chase…I’m a Mac convert. I’ve liked Macs for a long time but I’ve never had the funds to do a complete transfer over from PCs; I still don’t, which is why I’ve only bought a Mini rather than a Mac Pro – that’s to come at a later date.
It is slightly confusing to be using two mice and two keyboards but with some sort of order and practice I’ll get there. The Mac keyboard is especially lovely to type on, despite the @ and ” keys being the wrong way round, that does catch me out quite often; with this in mind, I think I may even transfer my novel over onto here, just so I can use this keyboard. However, the mouse does seem to be a little bit dim-witted when trying to make fine adjustments. I don’t have the same problem with my PC mouse and I tried swapping them, ending up with the same results. Not sure what the problem is but this may make Photoshop work quite tricky. Time will tell I suppose.
I’ve spent most of the day networking the PC and the Mac together and transferring the 16 odd gigabytes of websites and photography over from PC to Mac. I think once Christmas is out of the way, I’ll be able to get back to work. I have a few websites to make to pay for the Mini and get myself a new television, so it’ll be interesting to see how well the Mini copes with it.
There was a slight moment of shock, the reason for which I am still a little confused about, when I realised my photography looks totally different on the Mac than it does on the PC. As you can see in the above left picture, the monitor on the right (Mac) looks much bluer than the monitor on the left (PC). The camera didn’t pick everything up but the Mac monitor seems to be generally much clearer, crisper, brighter and slightly more saturated.
I’m not sure whether it’s the colour profile, the graphics card, the age of the monitor or even the build of the monitor – glass vs matt – but it’s certainly something I’m concerned about. Many of the ‘darker’ pictures I’ve taken now show up incorrectly exposed and the colour on some of the others looks a bit off. I think I may have to either invest in a monitor calibration tool or a new monitor for the PC. We shall see.
On the whole though, I love it. Advice? Buy a Mac!
In other news, a friend of mine showed me a fantastic musical double-act earlier today, called Igudesman & Joo. A comedy concert I suppose you could dub it; their show seems to contain equal amounts of humour and classical music, very cleverly combined.
For more info and videos, visit www.igudesmanandjoo.com
Also, I use Firefox on my Mac which, if you don’t, is a great browser. Check out Stephen Fry’s blog to find out how best to ‘pimp your browser‘.
