Tools

One of the things that struck me, when I first considered getting this iBook, was the apps that were available for Mac. I remember the days when the lack of good apps for Mac was one of the main reasons to stay away from it. Now, here I am, I own a Mac and most of the tools I use, are not only not PC ports, but aren't even available for Windows.

NoteTaker isn't available for Windows
iTunes isn't available for Windows
Kung-Log isn't available for Windows
Safari isn't available for Windows
NewNewsWire isn't available for Windows
Fetch isn't available for Windows

The biggest problem I'm running into now is that I'm going to blow my next pay check on software. I've already got two or three trial versions sitting on my machine, and I need to get those paid for with this next pay check. The only complaints I have so far are the video options and the Office layout. The office problem I hope will be resolved by me poking around at settings and figuring things out. But, for the moment the text comes up a bit light in Word which causes me to have to strain to read things. And the delete feature in Excel is annoying. I'm used to being able to just highlight a block of cells, hit delete and it's gone. Instead, it looks like I've got to highlight the section, then pull down the edit menu, slip over into a sub menu, and then hit clear contents. I wouldn't mind having to simply remember a new set of keystrokes, but there doesn't seem to be a keystroke for deleteing a group of text. That's annnoying.

The video side might be fixed in a month or two when I drop down the cash for the full version of quicktime, so I'll hold off on making a full bitch now. But, not being able to go full screen on quicktime is annoying. Esspecially since every other video package out there has a full screen option available for it. Of course I do need to do some more hunting around for video stuff. Download codecs annd that kind of stuff so I can play my fansubs on this machine. That will deffinetly make this laptop a nice buy. Being able to watch a little fansub when I'm visiting my folks or listen to some music. I'm already enjoying being able to carry my ipod around instead of having to lug a big pile of CDs. And my car already looks cleaner, not having jewel cases scattered all around.

So, yeah to Apple. I never thought I'd buy one, but now I'm happy that I did. Posted by Matt at March 25, 2003 08:14 PM