Tag Archives: iMac

Writer’s corner: Working with words on a Mac

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Writing the "wicked" way

Writing the "wicked" way

I’ve been looking for the perfect word processor for the Mac for quite some time. When I first broke free of MS Word, I was loving the open-source community and I was all about OpenOffice.

Then, when I made the jump to Linux, I simply adored Abiword and wondered why I had dealt with the bloat of Word and even OpenOffice for so long. (I still use Open Office for other features, but don’t like waiting for the launch for a word processor.)

When I went to the Mac platform, I traded in my OpenOffice for a Mac-specific version of the same called NeoOffice. Frankly, I got tired of waiting so long for it to launch to jot down the idea that I was trying to wrestle, so I started looking for faster options. I looked at Mellel (which was reportedly a favorite of many writers). It came in one of my MacUpdate packages, which pleased me. I liked it ok. I used it for quite awhile. But it always seemed to be a bit lacking. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

I considered getting one of the “blackout” programs that turned the full screen into a writing surface without any distracting menus or pop-ups. I test drove a couple. WriteRoom (with the Windows version being DarkRoom) and even got the iPhone app for WriteRoom to try that one on the fly. Neither worked as I had hoped, I needed it to do a bit more than just blacken the screen for $25, so when the Mac trial ran out, I left it.

I also started looking into notes options that would launch quickly… something like the notepad gadget on Windows… but something with a bit more umph. From there, I discovered TextWrangler, TextEdit (which came with my Mac), and even played with Stickies (also came with the Mac) and a dozen or so others, all in an attempt to find a quick way to keep up with my notes.

I gave up finding the perfect tool(s) and hobbled along, busy with all the other balls I was juggling. Finding these holy grails joined the mass of items on the “I’ll get back to it” list. I find that locating the perfect tools (software) on a Mac can become a full-time hobby all by itself. There are so many options! There are dozens of options that I tried that didn’t even make it into the top contenders list.

But, recently, I found my perfect option. I have a four-pronged approach to the office suite thing – one is for quick notes on my Mac, one is for word processing and “darkening” my distractions, one is for full featured word processing (which I seldom touch these days) and one is mobile.

First, I have a quick-launching multi-note system in XPad. It offers a quick way to get the thoughts down and to make lists for specific projects, ideas and writing projects. It also offers a “slide out” list of all the mini-documents contained therein. It offers cool tools like fonts and highlighter and color options without cluttering the interface with more stuff than I need or want. XPad launches when I turn on my Mac and stays “at the ready” for me to use. And, it’s FREE!

Second, I have Bean. Bean is an oddly named, but beautifully built word processor that launches quickly and handles 90% of what I need. In addition to being there in a couple seconds (literally), it also offers bullets, formatting, highlighting and several advanced features. It even offers a “full screen” mode that blacks out the rest of my computer and helps me to concentrate on the business of writing. I changed the blue background with white text to the retro black background and electric green type of my youth. I love it. LOVE IT. And, it’s also free.

I keep a copy of NeoOffice on my machine, although I seldom launch it for anything other than the spreadsheet app. I don’t really do much with advanced features like mail-merge and the like, so I don’t need those “hefty” features because I don’t do admin work. And, I don’t want to sit and wait. I hate waiting for a program to launch. I despise it.

On the “mobile” front, I absolutely adore that feature-rich note system in Awesome Note for my iPhone. I love that it’s wherever I am, and that it’s able to sync with Google Docs — even the Google Apps version! So I can backup and restore my notes from any location. It’s richly textured and as graphically beautiful and visually appealing as it is functional. I may like bare-bones programs on my computer – clean and crisp is fine there – but on my iPhone apps, I expect beauty. I can’t explain that, but the graphics (even the icon for the app) seriously affects how often I’ll use an app. I’m iPhone shallow, I guess.

I’m a writer by trade — mostly a content and marketing writer for my clients. I write, do web work, and SEO submissions. That doesn’t take much word-processing power. It takes a little knowledge and a lot of creativity — and the ability to capture the creative sparks when they fly. I find that having to wait for my software to launch actually discourages my productivity. If it’s a quick launch, I’ll add a thought or an idea on the fly. If I know I have to sit and wait for it to launch — even for an additional 5-10 seconds — I think, “Oh, I’ll just remember this and jot it down next time I’m working on that.”

The fact is… I don’t remember and I’m not patient. I’ve quit trying to pretend that I will or that I am. I know my foibles and I now find the tools I need to work around them. Resistance is, after all, futile. It’s particularly so when fighting my own nature. These tools make my life better and my business stronger and for under five bucks, I have them ALL.

Even in this economy, that’s a GREAT deal!

Cool Mac OSX Tips I Learned Today

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I have been studying my Mac OS book today, along with doing some searching online for specifics I needed, and I even got an email from a peer’s son on how to overcome my frustration with the Mac’s lack of a right button.

I was in a generous mood, so I figured I’d share the ones that were cool enough that it made me go ‘ohhhh!’ outloud. Since I don’t notice when I do this, I rely on my daughter who immediately comes in from her desk (using any excuse to escape her math sheet today) to ask me what I’m ‘ohhh-ing’ about.

1. The mouse DOES have a right button! I’m going to copy my email from my friend Bron Robertson‘s son here, hopefully it will help others with this frustration. Never occured to me to look in preferences on this, it really didn’t:

Hi Angela,

Basically I read your blog about the iMac and you said how you can’t right-click without using the command key/two hands. This really annoyed me when I first got my iMac about a year ago, but I figured out after about half an hour that it’s really simple to change.

I assume you have the mighty mouse (as you got your Mac recently or at least more recent than me and I have it) as opposed to the old one. With the mighty mouse there are four buttons even though they’re covered so it just looks like 1. There’s a left button, a right button, a middle button under the scroll wheel and the side buttons on either side which you squeeze. As a default factory setting, and I don’t know why this is, Apple assign both the right and left buttons to do the same thing. In order to assign it a new function, you need to go into the setup, go to ‘mouse and keyboard’ I think it’s called (I don’t have my Mac here and can’t remember exactly) and then assign buttons on the mouse.

There’ll be an aerial view of the mighty mouse in the middle with arrows coming off. Just to give you an example, The controls I’ve assigned to my buttons are: ‘click’ for the left button, ‘command click’ for the right button, and ‘show all running apps’ for the side squeezy ones. For a click on the middle button/scroll wheel, I’ve assigned the ‘alt tab’ function you’ll probably be familiar with from Windows, just as a quick way of cycling between programs.

Hope this helps, all the best.

Josh

2. Clicking the title bar on any window twice makes it minimize. This saves me an enormous amount of stress while trying to get used to the controls on the Mac’s windows being on the left, rather than the right. Now, maybe there is some way to set a preference to have the sides swap, I don’t know. But, if I’m going to stay with the Mac I want to just learn the standard layout for this OS. (Also, using the options button and the double click on the title bar will shrink everything down to the dock at the same time. Nice!)

3. Keeping my desktop clear. I was searching for a program to do this last week, before I found out that it’s an easy fix using the preferences in Finder. Just go there and click on the general tab and uncheck the boxes you don’t want to see on your desktop. Keeping Finder in your dock means you can see all the disks hooked up to the Mac with a single click. I also changed the preferences on where my downloads reside. Since there’s already a downloads folder, I created my own “Repository” folder and put a shortcut on the dock. Using these two tricks keeps my information close and my desktop is clutter free!

Jumping Ship: Why I Ditched the PC and Bought an iMac

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I’m hard on computers. I’m always pushing the limits. I replace my hardware every 12-18 months. I have to. Heck, I wear off the letters on my keyboards every 6 months. My family laughs about it and no one ever wants my “used” keyboards.

I was sick and tired of rebuilding my system. I went to Linux to avoid the rebuild of XP that happened every 6-12 months, when the OS went from “speedy” to “getting slower” to “crawling.”

The only cure was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS. This process rendered me unable to earn a living (or sleep) for 2-3 days while I tried to pull everything back. It’s not like I wanted to rebuild my machine so often. I didn’t. It made me crazy.

The Move to Linux

With Linux, it was easier. Once you got it working, it usually stayed that way. And, if there was a problem, you could reload the OS and pull your data back in pretty easily. The only problem was when I started poking around in Terminal, sometimes a “tiny” change would hose my whole system.

After spending weeks “tricking out” my Linux box and making it function flawlessly to do what I needed, I took extra time to make it pretty. I like pretty.

Form IS Function!

My father fusses that I spend too much time customizing. We share technology “finds” and argue about computers/software/hardware a lot. It’s our “thing.” For him, computers are a hobby. For me, they are also a tool to get my work done. Sometimes I confuse the “hobby” portion of my work with the “income producing” portion and this causes me headaches.

My Dad swore I’d like Linux better if I’d go with the standard look and feel – and just regen in minutes (unlike Windows) if it started acting flaky.

That would certainly take less time for a new set-up, but I liked having a witch hat for my personal files, a hard drive with a lock icon for my data backups, a globe for my Internet, etc.

I like pretty — but I also like efficient. It takes me less time to glance for a visual clue and click than to read through a list of generic folders with the contents listed in text on at the bottom. As many times a day as I clicked each one, this is a substantial time savings.

Two monitors are better than one

I always worked better with two monitors in Windows, but I had real problems getting two monitors to work with Linux. I decided to fix it by going and buying two identical monitors – so there were no conflicting driver issues.  I didn’t care how much it cost anymore, I was tired of poking at my machine. I wanted it to work.

I was lured over to the Apple display at my local Best Buy by the huge monitor on the back wall. It just happened. Honest! The monitors were so pretty and BIG. I wiggled the mouse on one machine and what popped up made my eyes go wide!

Then I got angry.

The layout on the iMac was amazingly close to what I’d spent days building on my Linux box. And, I’d never touched a Mac. Not EVER.  I left in a huff, without my two new monitors.

Sacrifice or simplification?

In recent months, I’ve tried lots of paths to simplify my life, many of which only complicated things. I didn’t need a new computer, but I did need to get a better display. I did need something that would work for all the windows I keep open. I liked the multiple desktops of Linux, but I needed more real estate on my monitor.

My father suggested that I ditch the idea of two monitors and buy a single large widescreen. He spouted off the math on how I would gain by having a 24″ widescreen instead of two of the 19” square variety. He won. I decided to buy a single large monitor.

I went back to Best Buy. I saw the iMac again. It had a 24” widescreen monitor, and the iMac had the rest of the computer built into the back of this flat screen. It was fascinating. It also had one cord. ONE. “No more rat nests of cords trailing down the back of my desk,” I thought. It had pretty lines, it was sleek. And, if it was as enchanting on my desk as the iPhone had been in my pocket… I’d be in heaven.

I looked at the Mac Pro Box. It had more cords, I could get into that box and change things… then I realized that was not a good thing.

I returned my gaze to the iMac. I wouldn’t take it apart, because there was no upgrade – other than maybe a little RAM in the future.

I was tired of having my weekends sucked away by a computer hardware or software upgrade/crash issue. If I were really planning to focus on writing and online work, a Mac would serve as well as Linux or Windows, right? Maybe better, since it wouldn’t derail me from from my main focus to go on some hardware/software tangent.

Learning about the Mac

I had done a bit of research on the OS after my first encounter. (Late at night, so no one would catch me at it. I even cruised the computer section of the Apple site. Shhhh!)

OS X is Unix based, like Linux, only with a slicker interface and it comes “ready to plug and play.” This was becoming more appealing to me by the second.

I talked to some folks that had Macs. I ignored those who had never used a PC – those who spouted the same hatred about PCs I’d blindly spouted about Macs. I did pay particular attention to those who knew a little about Linux and who had been PC aficionados before going to the Mac. I kept hearing, “It’s bulletproof.” I kept hearing, “There’s no maintenance.”

I started to want one.

I finally decided that if I was going to buy a new monitor, I’d have to rebuild my Linux box. It’s one of those things about Linux, video stuff is tricky. And, if I had to spend the time to rebuild a Linux box, I could probably use that same amount of time to learn a new OS. A Mac OS. I justified my desires.

And that’s how I ended up buying a new iMac.

Travels with Mia

I’ve always named my computers (and my cars). They have usually been male gendered. My iMac, Mia, is a little different. Still just as strong under the hood, she’s a bit more concerned about her appearance. (She likes being pretty.) There’s room on my simple desk for more than just a computer… and there’s room under my desk for my feet! I don’t get tangled up in cords every time I try to plug or unplug something.

I’ve had her almost a month now and I’ve never regretted it. Not once. My father quit speaking to me for awhile and threatened, “Don’t say ‘Mac’ at me anymore!” But, aside from that, there have been no issues.

Having a Linux box made high-end tweaks in Mia’s Terminal much easier than they would have been if I’d only had PC experience — but most users would never even need (or want) that. I find that the tech community online for the Mac OS is strong and helpful like the Linux community. There’s even some crossover.

The time machine function does automatic backups – I really like that. Mia works beautifully with my iPhone and external drives (although I did have to reformat them initially). And the biggest payoff? I’ve had more time to handle the other areas of my business and my life that needed an overhaul.

These days, it’s more about the big picture and less about spending countless hours with the gritty little details in my life. The more “grit” I eliminate, the more clearly I can see my life and my business.

Of course, Mia’s nice big screen only improves the view.