Rosher.Net

I must stop telling people “I’ve gone over to the dark side…” I got a very old fashioned look from the otherwise really helpful and friendly bloke in the Bristol Apple Store yesterday, where I’d gone to pick up the Magic Trackpad I forgot to order with the rest of the kit. lol

[note: the Magic Trackpad is about fifty quid from Apple, but only forty quid from Amazon… something to think about – but I only just noticed so clearly I didn’t!]

So… currently the iMac is doing the business and the PC is in a pile under the window, popped back on whenever I (quite frequently) find I’ve missed a setting, a forum password or a file. I’m loving the huge 27″ screen and the clarity of the whole front end. I’m loving the lack of wires and cables and extension speakers. I’m really loving the silence – when the screen is dark I wonder if the thing’s died. It hasn’t of course, but it’s so very quiet. So quiet that when the HDD flicks it sounds like a little grunt, like it’s gently coughing to get your attention. But not enough to distract when iTunes is playing – I wasn’t sure how I’d get on with the internal speakers, but for a desk top machine I’m missing nothing in terms of quality or stereo seperation.

I am finding the keyboard a trial. The @ is in the wrong place, as are a few other keys, and I find myself hitting the right shift instead of the return key. This will resolve as I learn the ways of this new electrik brane. On the other hand, this magic trackpad is superb.

Obviously, after years of PC use, I have a few old faithful programs I rely on. Some of these have come with me, and some haven’t. And the same goes for some of the hardware…

The printer was fine of course; it’s a network printer and doesn’t rely on any direct connection. I no longer need the 7.1 system, or rather I’m choosing not to miss it and it will be on eBay in goodly time. The web cam is totally redundant, there being an HD device in the screen of the iMac.

It took a while – mostly because of learning new ways of working, to get the Canon 7D camera connected. I loaded up the original software CD and updated it from the Canon site, but needed to assert the properties within Image Capture before it would auto-import to Macintosh2, the HDD (not Macintosh1; the SSD). The Canon CanonScan LiDE 30 N1240U scanner appears currently not to connect at all. Which is a bugger.

Software is mostly ok. I’ll probably get the Office for Mac DVDs from work, as I qualify for the Home User Program and the most impressive suite of Office software will only cost me a tenner – lots less than any other I can find and I’m mostly ok with using Office. For photography I always used Photoshop Elements and my copy of PSE10 came with both PC and Mac disks. The iMac came with faceTime, obviously, but I use Skype and that installed fine, as did the Twitter widget.

Most of my web sites are now based on WordPress. It works so well as a blog and as a CMS that I find there’s little need for anything else. Both my home site and my blog sit in WordPress and so do both the Parish Council web site and the Burial Ground web site. However, I inherited the Druid Camp web site and it was built using DreamWeaver. I have a copy of that for the PC… not sure what I’ll be doing in future – may need to build a Druid Camp WordPress site!

Suddenly realised my previously indispensable recording package Total Recorder Professional is only available in Windows flavour. Checked on the HiCriteria web site and they suggest Audio Hijack Pro from someone called Rogue Amoeba. Presumably there’s some friendly demarcation going on there…

I’m currently looking at Mac Family Tree for my genealogy. I’ve dropped a GEDCOM copy of my Rosher Family Tree files (some 3000 entries) across the network and I’m seeing how different MFT is to FTM (Family Tree Maker – pretty much the ‘industry standard’) Unlike PSE, if you want the Mac version of your PC program you have to pay again, and downloads were only available if you lived in some place called America…

I’m so good – I’ve only put two pinball table programs on the iMac so far…