11.11.08
I have been using my black Macbook quite a bit since I got it (about 70% of the time I guess). Some things I have noticed so far:
- I still don’t like taking my fingers off the home row keys to use the touchpad. Two finger scroll is nice but really it’s not that much better than the scroll area on a normal touchpad. The large touchpad is definitely much more usable than the tiny one on my PC, but I still prefer the pointing stick (except for scrolling)
- The alt-tab vs alt-` thing is driving me nuts. I still haven’t figured out the keyboard shortcut to switch between tabs in FF or Webkit.
- The menu bar system is totally messed up. Why does mail.app have to have the same menu bar for the main window as well as e-mail windows? I was using iPhoto and I had to click around until I could figure out why a menu item was disabled. Really frustrating and really bad UI.
- The whole concept of closing all the windows, but having the app still run is a mixed bag. Being able to alt-tab to apps which don’t have any windows open works sometimes, but sometimes it feels broken. At the very least, when you close the last window the app should move to the end of the alt-tab list.
- There isn’t a really good browser. Webkit is faster than firefox, but then firefox has the better featureset. Why is firefox so slow anyway? It’s plenty fast on my PC which is really slow compared to the mac.
- I miss my windows apps, namely GOM Player (kicks VLC’s butt), Picasa, Faststone image viewer, and Notepad++. It seems that lots of things which are now free on PCs still cost money on macs. Namely good image viewers and text editors.
- The 13″ widescreen is OK. It is almost the same width as the 15″ normal screen on my PC, but just not as tall. I always feel like it is not tall enough.
- Still getting used to keyboard navigation when editing text. Not as aggravating as it used to be, but still annoying.
- The anti aliasing is still bothering me.
- When Ayaan reaches up and grabs the lid of my PC, I just grab it and pull it back. When he grabs the lid of my mac I feel like it is going to snap in half.
Overall, if my PC is nearby I will use that. If my mac is around, I will use that. Not really feeling the “OMG Macs are so awesome” love yet.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Ramblings at 10:35 pm by Osman Ullah
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10.29.08
So I have been kind of hesitant to try macs for a few reasons:
- They are very trendy and “hip”, which usually makes things less attractive to me
- They are expensive, and my PC has been working pretty well for me
- I have workflows and a good environment set up on my PC, not to mention some expensive software (MS Office, Adobe Photoshop)
- I am used to using PCs…been using them since my dad bought us a 33mhz 486
- Any time I spend briefly on a mac drives me a little insane because of the keyboard shortcuts and other differences
- I am not a big fan of trackpads. I really like pointing sticks.
However, as of late, I have been flirting more and more with the idea of a mac. I finally decided to try one out:
- Most of the colleagues who I really respect for their engineering talent and intelligence love their macs
- I want to develop an iPhone app or two, and the only way to do it is with a mac
- My PC has been giving me a real headache as far as hardware issues. Software wise, it’s been fine but the hardware problems are starting to drive me up a wall…the computer is almost 3 years old now.
- Newer macs have really large touchpads with multitouch which seems like it could be better than using a pointing stick
- Apple says 50% of students are using macs. If this is true, it really says a lot about the long term prospects of the platform. Something developers, including myself, should be watching very closely.
- I need a mac to develop iPhone apps.
So the real reason I got one was out of necessity. I figured I would try it out as a secondary machine and see how I like it. I got a pretty sweet deal on a black 2.4ghz macbook. Well, lo and behold, my inner geek came out as soon as I opened the box; I started to settle in. Add / remove some dock icons, customize my terminal, set up mail and firefox, etc. I think I am going to try to use it as my primary machine.
Some initial observations:
- Macbooks don’t have home/end/pageup/pagedown buttons. I was not aware of this fact. So far it has not been an issue but once I start to do some real work I fear it might drive me up a wall.
- The text anti aliasing is a little weird compared to my PC. I think I am starting to get used to it, but if I pay attention it makes me squint.
- The keyboard shortcuts are really frustrating. Muscle memory is hard to break. Only after 4-5 hours I am finally remembering to hit command-L instead of command-D for the address bar in Firefox. Again, once I start doing some serious work, we will see how it goes. I think it can be overcome in a day or two with some perseverance.
- I love the fact that is UNIX under the hood. Being able to open up a terminal and have access to all the UNIX goodness is pretty awesome.
- I do like the touchpad. It is large enough to go across the screen in one swipe, and the multitouch behavior is very cool and convenient. Still getting used to right-clicking though.
- I still don’t know what I am going to do about my MS Office and Photoshop. There is always the last ditch option of bootcamp or a VM like Parallels / VMware…
- The screen is a little annoying…the viewing angle is really, really narrow. From what I have read, this is not an issue with Macbook Pros. Also the screen is a little on the small side. Very useable, but I think I would definitely benefit from the larger screen on an MBP.
So overall my experience has been pretty positive so far…a few grumbles here and there but I think it will be a good relationship. If I decide to stick with it, in a few months I may need to sell this macbook and upgrade to a unibody MBP for the 15″ screen. That remains to be seen, because one of my main gripes about macs is the price. A little deal hunting on eBay and craigslist can alleviate that problem. It’s also easier to justify the price when the new unibody macbooks seem like they are really well built.
Posted in Development, Flex, Ramblings at 11:18 pm by Osman Ullah
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02.13.07
So while I was working on this theme I was trying to anti alias the corners that are “cut off”. The only way to do this of course, and still have one image which can be used for different colored boxes, is a transparent PNG. I had it working great, but things weren’t quite looking right in IE:
After trying multiple times to fix it, I found this story which explains a fundamental pitfall of PNG: The Sad Story of PNG Gamma “Correction”
Posted in Development, Ramblings at 9:46 pm by Osman Ullah
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02.05.07
Well, not really. But Charlie Brooker sure does.
Posted in Ramblings at 7:52 pm by Osman Ullah
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01.28.07
Hmm. So for some reason I have not figured out yet, I decided to start a blog today. I don’t even have a name for it yet. Seeing as I am not the type of person who likes to hear himself talk, nor am I the type who would keep a journal, nor am I the type who typically speaks without being spoken to, I’m not quite sure I am blogger material. I guess we’ll see. I’ve read it is important to keep posts short. Well that’s not going to happen for this one. It doesn’t really matter since nobody knows about my blog anyway, I suppose. I don’t even know who my target audience is going to be.
As mentioned before, I don’t quite know what possessed me to start a blog today. I have been encouraged to start a blog, mostly for professional reasons. Well, all for professional reasons. But the thing is, most of the stuff I would want to talk about is about my life outside of work…deeper topics like the state of the world today and the state of our society. Things that will make a difference. Because when it comes down to it, while the software I work on impacts the lives of millions of people (I still can’t fathom that actually, maybe that is part of the problem), what really gets to my soul is that a lot of people can’t afford to eat or go to school, or even live. They have to figure out what to do so they can wake up the next morning, not how to get their hands on the next version of AIM. They probably haven’t even heard of it. It’s happening in my country, in my society, and in larger magnitudes around the globe, which in today’s world really is also an extension of my society. I feel like addressing that is more important than coming up with a cool new way to send files to your buddies. Alas, I don’t know if I can really write about that and be relevant and/or interesting.
I guess on the flip side, I am a software engineer who loves to work on UI. I do not mean to belittle everyone who is working so hard to build this new society on the internet. It has totally changed the way we communicate…activism for change in the world is proliferating on the internet, through blogs, through IM, through message boards, through communication. With these tools, we can change the world. So I guess through work I am starting to be a part of that. Although I am not sure what file transfer and new buddy icons have to do with it. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of importance–maybe I just haven’t figured out what I have to offer to the UI developer community. My peers feel that there is something there, and I guess I do too–I just don’t know what it is yet.
This is getting quite long; I didn’t expect this to happen. While I haven’t really spent much time thinking about what I have written, I know it has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while. Maybe I am the blogging type after all. Although I don’t know if it’s interesting to anyone besides myself. If I am going to keep this up I definitely need to learn to not be so long winded. And then there is still the question of what this blog is going to be about…
Posted in Ramblings at 2:30 am by Osman Ullah
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