Now that I've had three weeks back in the office, before heading back out on the road, it's time to catch up on my activities and observations of the last few weeks.
By the time I got back from the last trip, my accessories had arrived: a small Apple bluetooth keyboard, the Apple bluetooth MightyMouse, a VGA display adapter and the portable 802.11n wireless access point. I already had an old portable D-Link 802.11b WAP I've traveled with for years and thought this would be an opportunity to upgrade.
The first thing I did was hook up the Mac to my existing HP 2048w wide screen 20 inch monitor. What a difference for someone used to simply using a function key to switch between monitors. Like most things, I intentionally tried to do it on my own without researching how to enable an external monitor; I wanted to see how "intuitive" the Mac really is. I soon discovered that the default setting was to span both monitors instead of switching solely to the external monitor. A quick search of Apple support and I learned you have to close the lid, put it to sleep and then wake it up from the remote keyboard.
Ooops. I hadn't hooked up the keyboard and mouse yet.
OK, backup. Turn on the bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Nothing happened. More research on Apple's website. I went to the settings for bluetooth and was able to pair both after about three tries. In fairness, bluetooth is just as much of a pain in the Windows world, so no difference here. Both worked fine.
The keyboard is just amazingly sleek and looks cool. It works just as well too. And, it doesn't accumulate cat hair under the keys like most keyboards, because the keys are so tightly fit inside the aluminum frame. Yeah.
I was also surprised at how functional the mouse is and how easy it was to learn. Left and right clicks were easy...far easier than on the Macbook's built-in touchpad. I admit I had a two-decade misconception of the evils of a one button Apple mouse.
OK, back to the monitor. After putting the Mac to sleep by closing the lid, I was able to wake it up with the external keyboard. The external monitor now indeed was the only display. After selecting a higher resolution and doing a gamma adjustment from the Mac, I got it to look pretty good. But not as good as when connected to my Windows machines, by VGA or HDMI. Score one for Apple though by having a decent gamma adjustment tool built-in, as opposed to Windows where you have to use Adobe's gamma control panel, if you can copy it from a machine with Creative Suite installed.
Seeing the printers on my network was easy as well as finding my storage devices. In fact, the NetGear NAS device I have shows up as both an Apple file server and as an iTunes server. I love how Netgear pre-installed so many different protocols. That's how NAS should be.
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