I had the same problem with the tabbing as you, until someone told me about a setting to change. System Preferences/Keyboard & Mouse on the keyboard shortcut tab, at the bottom, there are two radio buttons. Change the selected button from "Text boxes and lists only" to "All controls".

That should solve your problem.

bab

to get context menus place 2 fingers on the mouse pad and click, or press <CTRL> while clicking.

both of those are considered the alternate click on mac (right click on windows)

Experience the joy of Expose and I promise you will never go back. If you are having trouble switching try some of David Pogue's books: Switching to the Mac & Mac OS X Leopard.

I'm using my Logitech bluetooth wheel mouse that I use on my windows machines. The right button works great for context menus. Plus I can use the wheel for scrolling and I set up the wheel button to open the dashboard.

Have you figured out two-finger tap is right click? (It's also a setting under trackpad) That's my favorite feature.

Forget MacOS, grab bootcamp and intal Vista on it. Since Vista SP1 I've no more random bluescreens :)

Brian,

Thanks! That did it!

jja,

I know about that, the problem is that I can't get it to do anything interesting when I do that.

For example, command + click on the finder, safari, etc does nothing

Oren, I'd really appreciate if you follow up on how it goes using the macbook pro. I need a new laptop and keeping flipping back and forth about getting one. What hardware config did you get? I'm looking at $3700 (US) if I get it from apple with 4gig memory and 7200rpm hard drive (plus warranty). That seems like a bit much when I can get a similar lenovo or hp for around $2000.

Ayende - thanks for this entry and I look forward to the future ones regarding your Switch. I've long considered getting a Mac, but I'm so brainwashed towards the Windows Way that I was afraid I'd just get frustrated at the differences. So it's helpful to read another power user's transition.

Ken,

Yes! The config was what did it.

Pieter,

If I wanted a windows machine, I would have gotten something else.

Ayende,

I did the transition nearly 2 years ago, and agree the key combinations are a little foreign to start with, but you'll be surprised...

Today I barely even notice when I switch. When I'm on OS X it's Option, Command, etc, and when I switch back it's Windows. I'm a keyboard shortcut fanatic, so there is no doubt it was awkward to start with.

With VMWare Fusion, you can now map cut/copy/paste in Windows to the same as OS X (Command+C, etc), so if you are working in both OS X and Windows at the same time, it is much more convenient.

How about home / end, etc :-) Text selection with the keyboard is quite different too.

Overall the experience has been a pleasure, and I'm about to refresh my Macbook Pro with a new Penryn model (since I have one of the original Core Duo machines).

Hi Ayende,

is it any option do make .NET development on OSX ? Or how do you plan use Mac, is it even possible as .NET developer (I don't mean virtual machine with Windows inside OSX or what)...

Or you just don't use Mac for development ?

Thanks !

One word: QUICKSILVER (http://www.blacktree.com/), install this gem and you will not only have access to the application menus of ANY application but MUCH MUCH MORE, and once you get used to it, you will having to settle for Launchy on the PC :)

typeof.net ,

There is Mono, and MonoDevelop

Reading your article I wanted to suppose you'll try Quicksilver. Gabe beat me to it :-)

So I'll just second his opinion, really try Quicksilver. You'll get addicted to it once you figure out what it can do ...

How are you going to develop in .NET on your Mac? i'm thinking about getting a Mac too, but i'm wondering how you're going to use VS.NET (i assume you don't want to miss Resharper ;) )

I am going to play with MonoDevelop, but mostly I am thinking about Fusion

Keep Safari from opening many windows on you ... open terminal type

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

hit enter

restart safari

Good luck with the switch!

Ayende,

Take a look at these keyboard shortcuts. It is only a matter of getting used to... After a while they will be all natural:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html

Remember ;-)

Command-W is your friend in every window...

As the others recommended... discover Expose, Quicksilver and Fusion... While you are at it why not also TextMate...

However Alt+Insert used by Resharper in VS.NET in Fusion is a pain to type on MacBook's keyboard :-/

Try to install XP instead of Vista if you have only 2GB of RAM. The VS.NET's is a little sluggish with Vista sustaining it.

Regards,

Robert

I am also a newbie Mac user. I got iMac about several weeks ago. At the beginning, I was lost. I tried to figure out to make mouse and keyboard working in the similar way as in Windows. However, I realized that Mac's design has their reason. In short, Mac OS and Windows are two difference OS systems. I think I should learn how to use Mac first. It will worth the effort and time.

I am some experiences about Mac and I tried to put these in my blog at http://davidchumac.blogspot.com/. I like to explore more about Mac. I really enjoy reading other people's scripts to make Mac easy to use.

Regards,

David

Ayende,

If you want a Windows machine you don't want something else:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136649-page,3-c,notebooks/article.html

:)

As a new Mac user I feel your pains :)

If you haven't already, you should install QuickSilver. That's the most amazing program I've seen for the mac so far and I only wish Windows had something like this.

Its a sort of application launcher so you can do almost anything with a few keyboard clicks...

I switched to Mac back in December (iMac at home, then a regular MacBook for work in Jan). All the things you mentioned were a challenge, but you'll find they soon fade away. The biggest problem I have is getting my brain to re-calibrate when quickly switching between Vista and OSX (using VMWare Fusion) :)

For me, the most fun part of being a mac owner is experiencing a new community, with different perspectives, ideas and tools.

The most challenging part is working out which parts of my software life I want to run in OSX, and which I want to continue to rely on Windows for.

I'm curious about the motivation to get a Mac when you are reasonably comfortable with Windows, where you can personalize even the explorer shell and there is good free software.

I'll search for the post where you explain that, good luck with the experience !

Dan,

I want to get new ideas.

The best way to do this is to move outside of my comfort zone.

Great, I'll love to hear those ideas !

Anyway, with virtualization changing your OS it's not a traumatic experience like the good(?) old times

@Ayende

"I want to get new ideas"

Hallelujah, he will stop bashing MS team and will start bashing Mono team.

Also a new mac user, dual booting leopard and vista.

Mentally mapping the cut/copy/paste shortcuts when switching OS's on the same box is a challenge.

For the "out of the comfort zone" thing, take a look at quartz composer (installed as part of xcode)... cool visual programming language for video/image processing. Also allows easily programming OpenGL shaders and comes with a bunch of nice examples.

The objective C language is really interesting.

Also, check out MacPorts: http://www.macports.org/

Glad to see other .NET developers take the step to MacBook Pro as well :-)

I have the configuration of Mac OS X with VMWare Fusion and XP now a couple of weeks and I'm very impressed with it.

I quickly found out that the 2GB of memory was barely enough to run VS in Fusion in parallell with some Mac apps so I decided to upgrade to 4 GB. Now I can even run Ubuntu in another Fusion :-).

What impressed me even the most of all was the multitouch pad, which has really proven to be a mouse replacement! During the first week I still took the time to hook up my MS mouse, but now that I'm comfortable with the two- and even three finger movements I don't need it anymore.

Indeed, the window/application management and keyboard layout are the biggest worries to overcome as a Windows/Linux user. BTW, why does the maximize button not work on certain windows? And how can I see a hierarchical view of my foldersystem in Finder?

Exposé and QuickSilver are still on my TODO list

Hey I joined you :P I have bought the top end MacBook (not pro, as I am not rich enough)

Actually even the macbook is a great machine. And I realize you can use your bootcamp partition as a VMWare Fusion VM, very cool.

http://www.philoking.com/2008/01/26/windows-vista-ultimate-in-bootcamp-and-vmware-fusion-redux/

Now if you need full horse power, boot to Windows native; when you need to just do a few clicks in windows, go with Fusion. I guess such flexibility is amazing. The only thing you lost is the ability to snapshot (thats actually big, but hey we don't have it when we are using the physical anyway)

Hey I think you are talking about Ecto? Seems you have spell that wrong :)