---
title: Week 1 as a Mac User
teaser: Macs are cool.
tags: osx
author: Chad Pytel
published_on: 2006-04-28
---

Well, its been exactly one week since I first got my [MacBook Pro][mbp] (the
standard 2GHz model), and I thought I'd share some thoughts from a new Mac user.

[mbp]: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

1. _Macs are cool_.  From the way they look (both externally, and on the screen)
   to the way they work, Macs satisfy a lot of the need for something cool that
   a lot of tech people have, myself included.
1. _Macs are just slightly different enough to give you a few hangups_.  This is
   to be expected, of course, since its an entirely different platform, but
   there are some things that are slightly different and they really throw me
   off, particularly in the typing department.  The biggest one of these is the
   Home/End difference.  On Windows, the Home and End keys take you to the
   beginning and end of the current line, respectively.  On the Mac, the Home
   and End keys take you to the beginning and end of the entire document (and
   the crazy,crazy combination Command Left/Right takes you to the start and end
   of the line).  I've tried both the properties change you can make and the
   program [DoubleCommand] which will remap these to what I'm more familiar
   with, but it doesn't work for some reason.  Probably because I'm using
   [Synergy] and a Dell keyboard on my Windows box.
1. _iCal needs an upgrade._ iCal seems like an great program, and I really want
   to use it, but the fact that it can't publish and subscribe to the same
   Calendar, and the fact that <abbr title="Secure Sockets Layer">SSL</abbr>
   support is broken are deal breakers.
1. _I can't use Safari. Why?_. For the most part, I've attempted to make a
   concious effort to give the default mac way of doing things a try before I
   don't do them anymore, but for some reason I can't bring myself to use
   Safari, and I can't figure out why.  I constantly go back to Firefox.  It may
   have been the fact that tabbed browsing wasn't enabled by default, but I've
   fixed that and still haven't been satisfied.
1. _Mail.app is very good_.  I've switched from Thunderbird to Mail.app and not
   looked back.

[DoubleCommand]: http://doublecommand.sourceforge.net/
[Synergy]: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts... Can't wait to see what week 2 brings.