Home sweet home. Back today after a long weekend in Rome. Fabulous weather - sunny and warm without being too hot. Rome is an incredible place - so much history in one place. In fact, it almost seems like the history is holding it back a little. Like with English Heritage, I sometimes wonder why we preserve old stuff at the expense of new stuff. Maybe we should just keep 'stuff' that justifies its existence on it current merits?

Anyway, time for a mac update. Last time, I was being hassled by some niggly-first impressions. After a software update, everything now seems to be working. Now, software updates were what drove me from Windows - however, the mac version seems quite different. Firstly, they're much smaller, and the content is more usefully described - I felt much more in control.

So now Logic Express can handle the example song project. I also managed to connect my printer (attached to the old windows box - the mac couldn't find it, but pointed in the right direction, it seems to work now).

I've also sorted out Time Machine. This is the mac's rather awesome backup strategy. When running, it keeps a copy of your machine hourly over the last day, daily over the week, and monthly before that. This means you can resurrect a file (or setting, or the whole shebang) from anywhere in the history (a kind of repository for your machine, if you like). I have a ReadyNAS NV+ too, which after a painless upgrade to radiator 4.5, supports Time Machine - giving me a raided super-backup. I expect all this is possible under windows, but I never sorted it out - it was always in the too painful box.

The trackpad is better now. I changed the setting so you can tap the pad for a click, rather than push the thing in, and that makes me much happier. I need a bluetooth mouse though.

The only fly in the ointment now is no MediaMonkey. Not sure how I'm going to solve that one.

Summary - the mac is great, and I love it.

So the mac is here, and it's a thing of beauty indeed. I was hoping for the same feeling you get when you unwrap an iPhone or iPod - attention to detail through and through. And that's exactly what I got - for the unwrapping bit at least. Take a look - it's beautiful.

It's been a bit downhill since then unfortunately. I bought Logic Express pre-installed, and there on the desktop was a logic project "The numbers game". So I double-clicked it ( we won't talk about the trackpad yet - let's give it a chance) and hit play. The song started - good sounds through the keyboard speakers, more instruments coming through, song developing, and then suddenly...

"System overload" error box. Eh? That can't be right, can it? Either the brand new mac is not configured out of the box to play the example song project (attention to detail?), or the brand new fastest mac book pro available isn't up to the job (fairly poor choice for an example then). Either way, the sheen is a little duller.

After that, it was time to nip out for a swift diet coke with some other dads from school (good fun was had by all, even if I did have a rotten stinking sore throat, and a burning desire to get home and play with my new toy).

When I came back, there was a kung-fu panda dvd next to the mbp. I woke up the mbp, and was presented with the title screen of Harry Potter III, and a swirly rainbow mouse cursor (possibly the equivalent of the windows hour-glass). It refused to wake up properly, and since the dvd was full-screen, I couldn't access any behind the scenes trickery. Never mind thinks I, control-alt-delete to the rescue...oh. There is no delete key, and the alt key looks a bit odd too. I checked the beautiful, minimalist booklet that came with it, and eventually found the mac-equivalent key sequence: ctrl-option-esc. Cool, now where's the 'option' key...no key with 'option' on it, no keymap in the booklet. Sigh. A few random combinations later, and it turns out the 'option' key is also the 'alt' key.

That let me kill the dvd player, but then I couldn't eject it - as far as the mbp was concerned, the disk did not exist. Ok, I've had this before (twice, I think, in 20 years of Windows), I'll just get a safety pin, and ram it (carefully) in the hole next to the dvd slot...except (you're way ahead, aren't you?) there is no hole (perhaps it would spoil the beautiful lines of the case). A bit of googling, and it turns out this is a fairly common problem, with a variety of solutions. The one which worked for me was power-cycle with the trackpad clicked (obvious, eh?).

Writing this, I found ctrl-c, ctrl-v etc. use the cmd key instead on a mac. Something else to get used to.

I'm keeping my mac tips here. IT'll get better, I know it will..

Vista is being so mean to me, I've decided to punish it. For a long time now, it's been secretly downloading more and more stuff (no doubt I told it to, in a moment of weakness, egged-on by paranoia-inducing update service). Since Sunday, it's been trying to download around 50 language packs, about a gig each. I caught it trying to install Estonian (which I'm fairly sure I'll never need), and that set me off. I tried to cancel it, but no. It was having none of that. I waited for a bit, and it said it needed to restart (twice?). After the language packs, it said it could download a few new games and update to old games - 5 in all. Great. Might be worth. Kicked it off...20minutes to download/install 1 update to Texas Hold 'Em - just the normal MS thing. How could it possibly take that long?

Anyway, it's pushed me too far now. I can't carry on with that sort of behaviour. It's not even reasonable. It's time I taught it a lesson. So, I've ordered a mac. It's gonna be great :)