Steven’s Notebook

Speaking of tutorials, here’s a “complete installation and configuration guide” for using your Macintosh as a server for all your Internet needs: ISP in a box v2

OS X vs. Windows XP. Now there’s a debate that normally spirals quickly out of control.
“You get more viruses.”
“You don’t have any games.”
“You’re harder to use.”
“You cost more.”
“Your feet smell.”
“Your mother wears combat boots.”
Fortunately, this site doesn’t go that way, and is surprisingly fair and balanced. They did a good job of not going […]

Here’s a Mac OS X tip I came across the other day that you may find useful. On your Tiger Install DVD is a Developer Tools package, including a little utility called FileMerge. It’s normally used to compare two text files. You’d just drag two text files into the drop zones and it would show you […]

Good news for any PM who’s also a Mac person in a sea of Windows users. The Omni Group’s OmniPlan is in beta, with an expected price tag of US$149. The best part of all (other than being a sweet-looking Mac app, of course):
OmniPlan can open and save Microsoft Project files natively

That should smooth some […]

The guys over at LifeHacker.com have noticed that Windows Vista looks a lot like Mac OS X. That doesn’t really come as much of a surprise, the way that software (in the larger, general sense) evolves; vendors see what works for other companies, “borrow” or “steal” (depending on your point of view) from each other […]

I’ve been asked by a few folks where the name for my new PowerBook came from.
World, meet my new PowerBook, named TullyMars.
First of all, for all the Windows users in the audience, it’s been a long tradition for Mac people to name their computers. Windows systems do have names, but PC users normally only notice […]

Way back when, in the dim dark recesses of time - the 1980’s - the first computers I used were of the Apple variety, Apple ][, ][+ and //e to be exact. My father tells of a time even before that where I would mess around on the TRS-80s at the mall Radio Shack, but […]

January 12: “Will we be able to run Windows on an Intel Mac?”
Today’s news: Apple Senior Software Architect Cameron Esfahani when asked whether Intel Macs should easily run Vista, replied “I don’t think so.”
Windows is a legacy OS. We don’t have legacy support.
Note the use of the word “easily.”
[later] never underestimate the power of the […]

Here’s a follow-on to yesterday’s OS X Terminal tip. Folks coming to OS X from the Unix/Linux world may be wondering about Terminal - why aren’t we just using Xterm? Xterm does exist on OS X systems but it requires X11 to run, while Terminal is a native application providing very similar capability. The differences […]

I’ve passed along a few Mac tips before…

Common Navigation Keystrokes in OS X, Windows
Formatting Big FAT32 Volumes
OS X Hints for Windows users

… and here’s one for Terminal. If you’re a vi or Emacs user and want to be able to use the mouse to move your cursor, visit Terminal’s Preferences and change to Emulation. There […]

Ever since Steve Jobs announced that they’d be moving to Intel chips, one of the major questions on people’s minds (well, geeks’ minds) has been “Will we be able to run Windows on an Intel Mac?”
The Apple party line at MacWorld seems to be “we won’t support that” - which is completely fair and understandable, […]

A few weeks back I was looking for a good comparison chart of “common” navigation keystrokes between the two operating systems. It turns out that David Pogue already had it online, I just didn’t think to look there or find the right words to toss Google’s way.
It’s a valuable resource for switchers, either direction: Missing […]

Ok, so I’ve got this nice big 190Gb external firewire drive. Both my Windows XP systems and my Macintosh have firewire, so I should be able to plug it into either system and use it, right? Well, kindof.
Formatted NTFS, the XP system could use it just fine. The Mac could read it, but not write. […]

Ok, I’ve got some answers to some Mac questions that were bothering me. We can just make today Mac OS X Hints for Windows Users day, perhaps the first of several.

Is there a way to lock the desktop? When I leave my desk, I’m supposed to lock the system - Control-Alt-Delete, then Lock Computer (or […]