Saddled with a mac - how to cope?

[Oaky]

I have a loan computer - apparently it's quite a nice macbok pro (my boss's comment "I thought I was the only person allowed to buy oneof those... whose was it before it was yours?")

Will I get used to it?  Short of installing Linux on it, what should I do to cope? I'm "uber-technical", and could be described as a power user of most things

how does "brew" correspond/interact/co-exist with the pointy-clicky interface to install stuffs?

I'm used to using both cygwin and anaconda on a windows machine to make it do command line and python like a linux vm, but I'm a bit lost in mac world... how real/potent is the terminal environment?

[Oaky]

It seems that I may have to use this thing for three weeks or more, so, how do I as a linux (and grudgingly windows) geek a) survive that and b)? what will convince me at the end of this to keep the macbook rather than the replacement?

Come on, mac dudes, convince me!

[Kim]

My first port of call would be a mouse with a sufficiency of buttons.  Closely followed by a better terminal app.

By that point I can ssh to a proper computer and don't really care about the mac stuff.

(You can tell I haven't spent a lot of time in OSX this decade.)

[Jaded]

If you are allowed money you could install Parallels or similar and run a virtual Linux machine.

[pcolbeck]

Is it not BSD underneath. The terminal CLI should be *nix enough for you to cope.

[Oaky]

The terminal CLI environment is, indeed, fairly comfortable.

I am failing to see where the CLI environment interfaces to the GUI environment... example: I can run up a GUI editor (e.g. VS Code) from the CLI on a file in that hierarchy, and it appears as, e.g. /usr/local/..... as expected.  If I open up the same editor and try to browse to that path, I don't see it.  I assume it must be hidden underneath one of the paths I can see, but I have no idea where.

[Jaded]

Does this help?
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/243322/set-path-variable-so-that-it-is-detected-in-all-applications-even-outside-termi

They have messed about with later OSX versions, and made them more secure...

[Pickled Onion]

In Finder, the root directory / is called Macintosh HD by default (it might have been renamed, but it's under Devices). However this only shows a subset of directories, most of the ones beginning with a capital letter.

You have several options:

1. in Terminal, create a symlink to somewhere you can see (note you'll need to give the absolute path when creating the link). E.g.
ln -s /usr /Users/pickles/usr
2. in Finder, Go → Go To Folder, or ⇧⌘G and type the path you want. You can then drag the folder to the side bar if you want to keep it for next time.
3. in Terminal type
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
then relaunch Finder twice (Force Quit... or ⌥⌘esc)

[perpetual dan]

Or if it a file type Mac understands “open foo.txt” should open the relevant application I think.

I use a Mac and treat it like Linux for half of my work. Brew helps with this.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Pickled Onion]

how does "brew" correspond/interact/co-exist with the pointy-clicky interface to install stuffs?

It doesn't really. brew is just like on linux, use it to manage your programming tools. Install standard Mac packages by dragging them into Applications, uninstall them by dragging to Trash.

It takes a few days to get used to the keyboard, but it makes sense: eg. fn+backspace for forward-delete. The separate cmd key is great, it means that ⌘C always means Copy, even in the Terminal, because ctrl-C is still available for Cancel, like on a proper computer.

[Beardy]

OS X running on a mac of some description is the closest you’ll get to a consumer productised computing experience. I’ve really delved into the inards because I’ve never needed to sort something out on an offsprings computer that should have worked because it denerslly just does. If,however you want or need to go under the covers, as others have said its more unixy than anything else.

[Oaky]

1-week progress report:  So far, I've managed to:-

• get (mostly) used to the changed interface
• install my Jupyter/Python environments

I've also yet to find any of my notebooks that I'd saved timings for that run any slower (despite this machine being an i5 rather than i7).

It takes a few days to get used to the keyboard, but it makes sense: eg. fn+backspace for forward-delete. The separate cmd key is great, it means that ⌘C always means Copy, even in the Terminal, because ctrl-C is still available for Cancel, like on a proper computer.

Funny you should mention this because I was going to mention my two peeves so far:

⌘X doesn't mean cut, if you are trying to cut and paste a file from one folder to another

Home and End appear to sometimes be Fn-<Left/Right Arrow> in some applications (terminal, Slack) but ⌘-<Left/Right Arrow> in others (e.g. Firefox text boxes).  (I guess this is an application issue)

[Oaky]

After moaning to colleagues about the lack of a Delete (as opposed to backspace) key, and being told that Fn-<Backspace> does the trick,  I have since discovered that it's also available as Ctrl-D (which is, after all, where it should be).  Impressed by this,  I checked and it turns out that all my favourite Emacs-like keyboard shortcuts are also here: Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-K, Alt-F, Alt-B etc. etc.

This could be a game-changer

[psyclist]

I've had to start using a Windows machine with the company I'm doing some work for this week. In Windows scrolling seems to be the wrong way, and it's taking some getting used to that scrolling occurs on the item with focus rather than where the cursor is currently positioned.

OSX is not all good, but I do find it more intuitive most of the time.

[Oaky]

I've had to start using a Windows machine with the company I'm doing some work for this week. In Windows scrolling seems to be the wrong way, and it's taking some getting used to that scrolling occurs on the item with focus rather than where the cursor is currently positioned.

OSX is not all good, but I do find it more intuitive most of the time.

Having used both 'click to focus' and 'focus follows mouse' models under various Unix and Linux variants over the ages, I didn't find that part too hard to adjust to.

I found the scrolling (going the other way) weird... For a while I thought it was ignoring or resetting the preference I'd set on the "Natural scrolling" checkbox.  Eventually I realised that it was keeping it, but the relation between what the scroll wheel on my mouse was doing and what the two finger drag on the trackpad was doing was reersed compared to windows.  Changing the "Natural Scrolling"  setting changed both of these, leaving them still in the opposite relationship to each other than I've come to expect.

That's something I will probably get used to, though,  as is the fact that scroll-wheel zoom also works in the opposite direction than I'm used to if I set natural scrolling so that the two-finger drag on the trackpad does wat I want.

At the moment, the biggest annoyance is that the (free) password manager I use on Windows, Linux and Android is not available for MacOS, (although there is a compatible program that will read/write the same file format, but it is a commercial option).

Also, for some reason, the AppStore doesn't like my apple ID.  It complains that my apple ID has been disabled (although I can log into other service including the apple ID itself with no problems) and so I can't install anything through the app store at the moment.  Apparently, googling around, this means I'm going to have to phone somebody at iTunes support.  (The only thing my apple ID has ever been used for is one single purchase of an album for my daughter's iPod nano).

[Mr Larrington]

App Store wants a valid credit card even if you only download freebies.  Has it expired since you last used it?

[Oaky]

App Store wants a valid credit card even if you only download freebies.  Has it expired since you last used it?

I'd suspected that, and indeed it had, but I updated it a while back:  still no joy.

[zakalwe]

Out of interest, how did you get on with it in the end?

I find that Macs are a really nice compromise between power user features (e.g., software development, terminal-based tasks) and a slick, polished, casual user experience (e.g., web browsing).

I use Linux at work, where I spend 95% of my time ensconced in a full-screen terminal window, and a Mac at home, where I spend most of my time doing casual web-browsing, with the odd bit of hacking on personal software projects.  I don't have any trouble switching between them.  Homebrew does a good job of providing the usual Linux software stack, in case you don't like the BSD toolchain (I don't).

By the way, there's also Homebrew-Cask, which allows you to install traditional desktop GUI applications via Homebrew.

[Oaky]

Out of interest, how did you get on with it in the end?

In the end I liked it.

I was still having the odd "hmmm how do I do ${X}?" moments, and didn't always find the answer, but overall I adjusted quite quickly.

I find that Macs are a really nice compromise between power user features (e.g., software development, terminal-based tasks) and a slick, polished, casual user experience (e.g., web browsing).

I use Linux at work, where I spend 95% of my time ensconced in a full-screen terminal window, and a Mac at home, where I spend most of my time doing casual web-browsing, with the odd bit of hacking on personal software projects.  I don't have any trouble switching between them.  Homebrew does a good job of providing the usual Linux software stack, in case you don't like the BSD toolchain (I don't).

I spend a large proportion of my time either in terminals doing command line stuff or doing Python stuff, mostly in Jupyter notebooks, so the Mac was as good as any platform for me.