RickHap: thanks for the link. There are lots of perfectly legitimate reasons we should be able to easily move music from our iPods back to our computers, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to outlaw or ban everything that *could* be used in a criminal way (which is basically anything and everything). It’s pretty easy to hack around, so all the anti-copying effort does is raise the hackles of people like me. Oh well…

Dan: I’m writing more as we speak – stay tuned!

yeah thats what I ment, i didnt remember the spelling but i did remember the meaning of the Mouse

http://rixstep.com/2/20050321,00.shtml

I recently added a Macbook to my computer arsenal. It is a very good machine and there are numerous excellent programs for the Mac. Wireless networking is very solid.

Enjoy!

I’m definitely linking your story from my site tomorrow and I’ll follow your adventures :)

I haven’t played with iPhoto at all because I’ve got Lightroom (which is freaking awesome, as you know). I’ll be setting up the kids and Jen on iPhoto, though, so I’ll play around with it pretty soon. Yeah, I’ll check out the ordering options, that sounds neat.

Tom: I am starting to get used to it, but it’s still not my preference. It’s probably a Coke versus Pepsi kind of thing. ;) I will check out MacRumors – thanks!

I would recommend the MacRumors Forums (http://forums.macrumors.com/) for all your questions or problems you may need to ask about, or just for general discussion about Macs. Everyone is very nice there, and will quickly reply to any questions you ask.

And good luck with the Mac Pro and iMac, not that you’ll need it!

I also think that wireless mice are horrible for graphics professionals (or serious hobbyists.) The resolution simply isn’t there, and it MUST be, if you’re trying to grab a pixel.

I believe it won’t be long until you’re back to wired mice on the Mac Pro. The wireless mice will be fine for the iMac.

Have you played around with iPhoto at all yet? Dig through the stuff like ordering prints and books. You don’t actually have to order stuff, but it’s fun to play with. I frequently order large prints through the service, and it works very well.

The installs were easy, because I had used other systems where installs were done like that. In my opinion, the PC is the one that’s deviant here – Atari, Amiga and Mac installs are the way it should be done. I did find last night that some programs do more complex installs. And all the exploring stuff – yeah baby. :) It is fun, I really like the way OS X displays info and lets me see things in different ways. It’s all very intuitive as well (though I am referring to my books here and there).

Andy: Ew. ;) It’s actually not so much the mouse itself as the mouse tracking software. I hate mouse “acceleration” – hate it. Mouse acceleration is when your mouse moves at different speeds depending on how fast you’re moving the mouse – when you move the mouse fast, the cursor moves quickly, but when you move the mouse slowly, the cursor moves slowly. That feels hopelessly wonky to me – when I move the mouse, fast or slow, I just want it to move a certain number of pixels depending on how *far* I move the mouse, not how *fast* I move the mouse. In Windows, this is an option – you can turn mouse acceleration on or off. In OS X, this isn’t an option – mouse acceleration is simply turned on. I did some Googling on this yesterday, and confirmed there is no way to turn it off. Fortunately, both MS and Logitech provide Mac drivers for their mice where mouse acceleration is an option. Last night, I powered off the Mighty Mouse and hooked up my old MS wired Intellipoint and installed the drivers for it. Problem solved, until my Logitech gets here.

As for the iPod, yes, I could plug in your iPod and copy (i.e. steal) the music on it. And that would be wrong. But there are also legitimate reasons to download music off an iPod (for example, when I own the iPod and the music on it), so I think this should be possible to do straight from iTunes. I understand, though, that in this day and age with zealous record companies, this probably wasn’t an option for Apple if they wanted to contract companies to sell music through iTunes. I’ll bet if Jobs had it his way, though, the iPod would be an open device in this respect (judging off his comments on DRM in general).

If you experience frustrating delay in mouse functionality after startup or sleep for instance, you may want to opt for the $20 shareware mouse driver named SteerMouse from Japan. Logitech should buy them out and fire their own people – imagine exxpensive mice working better (or properly) with a shareware driver than with their own drivers.