All the Good Titles Were Taken - Chris Scott » Apple

Why I Won't Be Keeping the iPhone I Stood in Line For Eight Hours to Buy

Chris Scott — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:48:46 +0000

I wanted the iPhone. Really wanted it. Lusted after it. So, when Dan asked me if I wanted to stand in line with him yesterday at the Millenia Mall for one, I said "hell yeah!" or something to that effect. That was a week ago.I currently have a Treo 680 and my first concern with the iPhone was no 3rd party apps which meant I wouldn't have an SSH client or Terminal Services client on my phone like I do now. I manage servers so these are handy. As I thought about it though, I've used each of these apps once or twice in the past couple years so this wasn't a show-stopper.

As last week went on and more info. came out I got even more excited and was going to buy one. Then David Pogue's FAQ came out on Thursday and I found out that you can't use the iPhone as a bluetooth modem. Uh-oh. I travel for work about once a month and have a fairly flexible vacation schedule that means I'm out of town for long weekends nearly that often. When I can't get an internet connection, the slow EDGE dialup through my Treo saves me.

I can't give this up so I asked the Apple Store employees who were going through the line yesterday after their afternoon briefing answering questions about this to confirm it. Sadly, it is true. This is the show-stopper. My time in line wasn't wasted since I had already asked my Dad if he wanted one if I got one so I'll be taking that over to him today and living vicariously through his activation and awe.

I know some people think I'm crazy (hi, Mom!) for standing in line all day for something I won't even keep, but I had a blast and would do it again in a similar situation. The Apple Store employees were awesome and kept the Smart Waters and Starbucks coupons flowing and were eager to help us out and answer any questions they could.

As soon as Apple enables the iPhone as a bluetooth modem, I'll buy mine.

Technorati Tags: iphone, iphone launch

iPhone Mania!

Chris Scott — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:59:16 +0000

OK, it is actually pretty calm here at the Millenia store:

10 Things I've Finally Gotten Used to in OS X -- Confessions of a Switcher

Chris Scott — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:32:22 +0000

About 7 months ago, I replaced my Dell laptop running Ubuntu with a new 12″ Apple iBook. At that time, I was still using a Windows XP PC at work. The more I used OS X, the more frustrated I became because I had to unlearn my Windows ways. Luckily, Dan was a big help and kindly told me that I needed to just learn to do it the Mac way.

About two months ago, I replaced my PC at work with a Mini. So, now it has been about 7 months that I've been using OS X and two months that I've been using it exclusively for day-to-day activities (I still use Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows for servers). This is a list of ten things that I have finally gotten used to in OS X, mostly keyboard shortcuts:

Cmd+Delete instead of just Delete to delete a file. It makes it harder to accidentally move a file to the Trash compared to Windows. Now, when I use Windows I'm afraid I'm going to accidentally do Shift+Delete and permanently delete a file.
Cmd+Backtick for switching windows within an app instead of Ctrl+Tab. For me, this makes more sense in OS X than Windows since Cmd+Tab switches open applications--OS X uses the same modifier key (Cmd) for similar actions.
Home and End keys don't do the same thing as Windows. This one took a while to get used to.
Delete is a backward delete. On my iBook, Fn+Delete is a forward delete. On my Apple keyboard the small Delete (by the End key) is a forward delete.
Cmd+D duplicates a file. When you want to make a quick copy of a file, this is nicer than the Windows alternative of Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V to copy then paste the file.
Exposé. Finally, a good use for F9-F11.
Cmd+H hides the current application.
Cmd+Q to quit an application. Breaking the habit of clicking the X to close an application to a bit of training. Having all those dock icons still showing a triangle under them when you thought you closed them helps :-)
Adium. I used Trillian on Windows. Adium is the best replacement I've found. If only file transfers worked…
Browsing folders in Finder. Now that I'm used to it, I like this method better than Windows Explorer. Like every other Mac user, there's many a thing I could bitch about with regards to Finder but that's another article.

i'm finally cool

Chris Scott — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:26:04 +0000

Thanks to my employer (the best ad agency in Orlando), I am now cool again since I found one of these in my stocking:

OK, they didn't actually give me a stocking but hey, its literary license so I'm rolling with it.

I've been playing around with it for a bit now and it is very cool. The video quality is nice and now I can take Tiki Bar TV with me.

scrolling one screen at a time in Thunderbird and Firefox on OS X

Chris Scott — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:44:31 +0000

I got my Mac Mini at the office last week. It came w/a standard mouse, not the Mighty Mouse. Since I'm addicted to the scroll wheel, I replaced it with a Microsoft Wheel Mouse I had laying around (yes, blasphemy!). The mouse works great but one thing that the drivers for OS X don't give you that the Windows drivers do is a setting on either scrolling one screen at a time or X lines at a time. Since I spend most of my day in Thunderbird and Firefox this was annoying. Even worse, I found that in Thunderbird it caused me to skip over messages in my Inbox folder when I scrolled through it so I "found" some emails.

Anywhoo, here's the fix: In your Thunderbird and Firefox prefs, set mousewheel.withnokey.action to 1 instead of zero. That tells those apps to scroll one screen at a time.