BrianJarrett.com

I love my iMac.  I’ve written about that in the past.  I still love my iMac.  However, something just didn’t feel right about the mouse.  At first I thought it was just getting used to a new computer so I gave it some time.  (Of course I use Linux and didn’t have the problem.) Then I thought it might just be the wireless Mighty Mouse’s weight or drag across the desk.  So I put the mouse pad back which didn’t make a difference.  I also removed one of the batteries to make it lighter.  None of this helped.  Then I thought it might just be the Apple Mighty Mouse itself.  I replaced it with another mouse I had at home, then with another.  No luck.  My arm and my wrist began to hurt.  I felt like I had a depth perception problem or I was just crazy.

After about two months I finally just looked on Google.  I searched on something vague, like the mouse didn’t feel right or something like that.  Lo and behold the answer to my question was there; it was the mouse acceleration curve.

Turns out, somewhere along the line between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.5 Apple decided to quietly change the acceleration curve on the Mac.  The result is an acceleration cliff; the mouse moves quickly and then, right before the target it slows down…to a crawl.  Normally the mouse would slow down incrementally, gradually, allowing the person to place the pointer directly on the target.  Once the mouse slows down it creeps across the screen.  This was causing me to overcompensate and making my arm ache after a while.

Turns out I’m not the only one who has problems with this.  Traci, on the other hand, can’t seem to notice a difference and has no problem at all.  Some Mac heads will defend this behavior because of an undying allegiance with the almighty Apple.  That’s bullshit.  Linux does not suffer from this problem; the acceleration curve provided by X is just right like *gasp* Microsoft Windows.  Turns out Microsoft got this right.  They’ve done a lot of work on pointer ballistics and have put a lot of thought into the mouse on their systems.  I’m not part of the Apple cult; I love my Mac and I’m fond of Apple but they screwed this one up.  They don’t even offer a way to modify the curve, just the cursor speed.  Those are not the same thing.

Fortunately after some searching I found …read more »

In a previous post way too long ago I lamented about there being no viable alternative to Outlook.  As a result, Traci and I were stuck using Outlook 2000 to keep and sync our calendars.  I attempted to use Horde for a while but without a viable method of syncing our PDAs it was a no go.

Enter Vista and two brand-new copies of Outlook 2007, setting us back about $160.  We were still on Outlook but now the new Outlook was even more bloated and slow, and its e-mail client still couldn’t seem to figure out how to manage IMAP mail any better than its predecessor.  Now we had more frustration than less.  Then Traci bought an iPhone, replacing her Palm Z22, but still used Outlook (this time via MobileMe).

Outlook persisted, like a virilent fungus growing between the toes while I burned the midnight oil looking for a replacement that would do everything we needed.  Evolution looked good but I couldn’t get it to sync with the PDA on Windows.  I couldn’t just ditch everything and move to Linux either.  OpenOffice had a stagnant project designed to replace Outlook but I gave up on that.  Syncing Horde didn’t seem any more of a reality either, particularly with the new iPhone.  We needed something special, something unique and capable to make this a reality.

Then came the iMac.

We bought Traci’s iMac first and as she …read more »

I finally pulled the trigger; I’m now a Mac user. About a year ago Traci’s laptop’s video card mysteriously died so we bought her a replacement desktop computer. We were tight on cash so we bought a low-end Dell running Vista. I’ve lamented since then on my frustrations and disappointments with Vista and Traci absolutely despised it. It was then I began to think once again seriously of moving to Linux and avoiding an upgrade to Vista, but I found that Linux still just wasn’t quite there on the desktop yet. It was closer than it had been in the past but still not what I needed.

As a result I decided to take another look at the Macs. It had been a few years and since then OSX had been released and the prices had dropped some. Long story short, I began to think seriously about a Mac and began researching what it would take to switch from Windows. I found that it was easier than ever to make the switch.

So after about a year of Vista Traci finally had had enough. We decided to pull the trigger about two weeks ago on a new iMac for her. We received it on a Friday and had her completely moved over to the Mac by Sunday morning. After spending the weekend with her Mac I decided it was time to make the switch myself and ordered mine.

I originally thought I wanted the 24″ display but after working on Traci’s I decided 24″ might be a little too large. I instead opted for the 20″ display but increased the hard drive to 750 GB and the memory to 4 GB. I also bought the wireless keyboard and mouse …read more »

So, why a Mac? Well, I’ve done a fair amount of thinking about this decision and have come to a few conclusions. I need to upgrade within the next two years. My current box, although still quite snappy, will continually become slower and slower as software and operating systems (Vista, in particular) become more processor and memory intensive.

First of all, I had to consider my options. I have three options really; Windows, Mac, or Linux. I know there are other operating systems out there but for my personal machine at home none of the other options make sense. Given these three options I first needed to identify what I really wanted. Part of me, at least the non-conformist in me, wants to buck Microsoft completely. Sorry to disappoint all you Linux apologists out there but Microsoft is and will continue to be a major force in the computing world for some time to come. There is no escaping Microsoft completely, especially if you’re coming from a Windows world and have already come to use some Windows-only software.

But I still want to …read more »

For the past 8 years I’ve been toying with the notion of switching from Windows to either Linux or Apple. I consistently dismissed the idea either because Linux wasn’t quite capable of supporting the switch or because Apples were just too damn expensive. Granted, Microsoft has made significant improvements in Windows stability (and even security) over the past several years so the impetus to switch isn’t quite what it was in the Windows 98/Me days. Windows XP was actually a pretty decent attempt at Unix by Microsoft, all things considered, but it’s still Microsoft at its base. Security sucked in XP and doesn’t seem to have improved drastically in Vista, unless you call nagging the end user to death security.

Speaking of Vista, that’s really what’s sparked this whole thing…again. My wife’s laptop decided to burn out its video card so rather than fixing it immediately we came across a good deal on a new Vista desktop for her. After we got it home we ended up replacing the printer (incompatible with Vista) and bought two new copies of Outlook. My scanner won’t work with Vista either, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross another day.

After spending some time …read more »