Timers, alarms and stopwatches

Sometimes, all we need is a little added motivation, like an egg timer or alarm, to challenge us to remain focused and get to the finish line. If that’s the case for you, a simple online alarm clock or timer can help boost productivity.

• Naked Alarm Clock. A simple and free online alarm clock, Naked Alarm Clock makes it easy to lose yourself in the task at hand without worrying that you’ll miss your next appointment.

• Your Meditation Timer. If you get annoyed with more-traditional-sounding alarms, a meditation timer might be music to your ears. A soft gong or Tibetan bell can let you know it’s time to change tasks.

• Online Stopwatch. For every type of timer imaginable, look no further than this Online Stopwatch.

Pomodoro timers/trackers

The Pomodoro Technique involves breaking work up into timed 25-minute chunks (known as pomodoros), separated by short breaks to help improve concentration. There are several apps based on the idea.

• Focus Booster. This app helps eliminate the anxiety of time and enhances your focus using the Pomodoro Techinique.

• Pomodoro (Mac only). Another Pomodoro supporter, this app helps you to avoid procrastination and get things done.

Time monitoring/tracking

For the analytical among us, more-detailed automated time tracking and monitoring may do the trick for increasing productive time online.

• RescueTime. This tool lets you track your Internet usage while also allowing you to voluntarily block distracting websites.

• TrackTime. This app allows you to track the time you spend on projects, as well as your web-browsing habits.

Time-out/break reminders

Sometimes the problem with getting things done isn’t our lack of effort but rather constantly overextending ourselves. This is where a forced break or time-out can help.

• Time Out (Mac only). Time Out gently reminds you to take breaks on a regular basis.

• SmartBreak (Windows only). SmartBreak also reminds you to take breaks when working on your computer for long hours.

Website-blocking tools

For many of us, the Internet is filled with tempting distractions that keep us from the task at hand, which is where website-blocking tools come in handy.

• StayFocusd (Chrome extension). This productivity extension for Google Chrome restricts the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.

• Anti-Social (Mac only). Anti-Social keeps you focused by turning off the “social parts” of the Internet, such as Facebook, Twitter and any other sites you specify.

• Freedom. This app locks you away from the Internet for up to eight hours at a time.

• SelfControl (Mac only). SelfControl blocks email and websites for a predetermined period of time.

Concentration/work environments

For those of us who need complete isolation in order to get focused, there are certain tools that hone in on a single task until the job is done.

• FocusWriter. FocusWriter provides a simple, distraction-free writing environment.

• Think (Mac only). This tool limits your attention to one application at any time to keep you from getting distracted.

• Quiet (Mac only). Quiet allows you to focus on a single window while simultaneously fading out others.

• Haze Over (Mac only). This app helps you stay focused on your main window by dimming inactive windows.

• Concentrate (Mac only). Perhaps the most robust of all the apps, Concentrate allows you to create “activities” (for example: design, study, write) with customized actions that run every time you concentrate on a given task.

• Isolator. This tool helps you concentrate by covering up your desktop, its icons and the windows of other applications.

While the Internet has its advantages when it comes to work, it can also be a distraction. But with the right app to help maintain concentration and focus, it’s a lot easier to stay on track and get things done.

What are your favorite focus-boosting apps and tools?

Photo courtesy Flickr user BY-YOUR-⌘

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As well as uploading files, it can also automatically upload screenshots (in a similar manner to the GrabBox application I wrote about previously) and save snippets of text as text files, making it possible to turn a directory on your server into an easily sharable pasteboard.

A screenshot can’t really show how simple it is to use, so I made a short screencast:

(Via One Thing Well)

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For Mac-using remote workers, the Mac App Store presents a major step forward in making sure that we always have our tools with us, no matter where we are.

When I know I’ll be working from someone else’s computer, I mentally make a checklist of all the software I’ll need to download and install before I can get up and running. In some cases, this is a simple process, but in others, it’s quite difficult. It can be a considerable headache to depend on trial or demo versions of the software I need.

Now, however, the App Store allows us to install apps associated with our accounts to any Mac. This represents a major change for the better in the way we can work. Imagine signing in with your Apple ID and quickly and easily making a temporary workstation feel just like home. It’s a vision that’s now within reach, without the need for a remote server or enterprise support.

As long as you’re using the software for personal use, you should be able to log into the App Store from any Mac and download the apps you need. Once you’re done, you can just uninstall your software, transfer any stored data to a thumb drive or to storage space in the cloud (if it isn’t already automatically synced, as with apps like Evernote) and go. You’ll be able to spend less time on setup and configuration, and more time actually getting work done.

So the App Store makes Mac software more portable, and it also makes it more discoverable. It will be a lot easier to find the right app for the job, and will simplify making sure that clients and co-workers have access to the same tools as you do. Eventually, when Apple introduces Mac app gifting, you’ll be able to provide teammates with the tools they need on demand, and they won’t need to pick up the cost.

The current Mac App Store is only the beginning. It’ll be built-in to OS X Lion, which means eventually it’ll be on every Mac you encounter. And it’s likely that apps won’t be the only thing you can grab from the cloud. User accounts, preferences, application data and documents; evidence suggests that soon it’ll reside on the web for easy access from wherever you happen to be.

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It’s easy to install; each computer is assigned a unique identifier. Users can then create password-protected private networks, or join existing ones through an AES 256-bit encrypted connection. The unique identifier is in the format x.x.x.x, so it looks like an IP address to the operating system. Thus, once the Hamachi network has been set up, you can use standard tools to communicate between machines. Shared drives will display in Explorer or Finder, and you can use Remote Desktop Connection or Apple’s Screen Sharing app.

Until recently, the Hamachi client for Windows has been way ahead of the rudimentary command-line tool that was all that was available for Macs. That’s changed. The new Mac version 2.0 sports a spiffy GUI, plus some features that were previously Windows-only, including a way of sending private chat messages between connected machines. There’s also a beta command-line version for Linux.

Hamachi is one of several related products from LogMeIn. We’ve talked about LogMeIn Ignition, for accessing computers from mobile devices; LogMeIn Central, for managing multiple machines in a corporate environment; and web conferencing system Join.me. The LogMeIn website has a wizard for helping users decide which product is appropriate for their needs.

Hamachi is available for $199 per year. The license includes the ability to create multiple networks of up to 256 computers. There is also a non-commercial version that’s limited to networks of up to 16 computers, and a 14-day free trial.

How do you and your colleagues connect remotely?

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• ExpressionEngine for website design.
• Billings for quoting, invoicing and time tracking.
• Kaleidoscope finds differences in text and image files.
• Versions project manager for Subversion.
• DrawIt vector drawing application.
• TextExpander typing shortcut utility.
• FontCase font management application.
• ExpanDrive allows you to access SFTP/FTP and Amazon S3 files from within Finder.
• Postmark delivers and tracks transactional email.

It also features some additional tools, including;

• Pictos scalable, royalty-free icons.
• Gedy’s Social Icons vector shapes of social networks.
• Mijingo video training for ExpressionEngine 2.
• Keynote Kung-Fu wireframe toolkit for Keynote.

The bundle is valued at $626, and is available for $79. It will be available through December 31.

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My post garnered a lot of comments in response with some great tips and tricks from readers that I thought I would share with you.

The “Black Hole” of Minimized Windows

One of my issues was getting used to the Cmd-Tab functionality of Mac, compared to the Alt-Tab of Windows. While similar, the Mac Cmd-Tab doesn’t restore minimized windows; I’ve been struggling with the “black hole” that minimized windows seem to disappear into. You all came to the rescue though with these handy tips and tricks.

By far the most popular suggestion, and the one that I ultimately ended up using, is to use the “Hide” command or the Cmd-H shortcut to hide windows rather than minimize them. Not only does this remove the window from view but it also shifts the focus to the next application in the stack. This actually helped solve another issue, too, because I was still occasionally bitten by seeing what I believed to be the active window on my screen but having the Application Bar really focused on something else. Hiding the application works to resolve both issues for me.

There is one caveat, though (and I guess this could actually be seen as desirable): if you’re using an application like TweetDeck that is hidden and something happens that prompts a notification, it will bring that application to the forefront. I find this to be pretty distracting so have learned to continue to minimize those windows rather than hiding them.

Another very popular suggestion was to use the add-on utility Witch, which promises to make window switching fun.  I tried an evaluation of this utility and found it really useful, but found its plethora of options bit overwhelming, so I’ve settled on the more conventional shortcut hiding method. With Witch it is possible to completely customize how items appear, enable pop up previews and change the appearance of the app switching windows. I have a feeling that as I continue to become more comfortable and my needs increase this is something that I will be revisiting.

Other folks in the comments discussed using a combination of Exposé and Spaces. While I do like Exposé, Spaces just doesn’t seem to click with me. If I could segregate apps, or instances of apps, into different Spaces for different tasks, then I think it would be more useful to me.

Where Am I? How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned that I missed being able to see the full path for the current directory in Finder.  Commenter Ted provided the solution: In Finder, open a folder, go to the “View” Menu, then click “Show Path Bar.” This was exactly what I was looking for and really makes the structure of my data make more sense to me.

Where Did I Put that Menu?

With the separation of the Application menu and the program window, I got particularly perplexed when working with a second monitor attached. Having to look to another screen to the see the menu of the application  I’m currently using just never seemed right to me. Many of you suggested MenuEverywhere, which adds a staggering number of ways to add menus to just about anything, while another suggestion was Secondbar is more of a single tasker by adding a very useful duplicate of the menubar on the second screen.

Much like with a PC, I am finding that there are a staggering number of utilities designed to fill gaps and provide extra functionality to the OS, and a staggering number of ways to work with and around your process. I am thankful for all of your suggestions and hope you find them useful as well.

Share your Mac window management tips below.

Photo by Flickr user neys, licensed under CC 2.0

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Notebook sharing is an incredibly useful collaborative feature that has been available in the Evernote web app for a while now, but it wasn’t available through the desktop client. In the Evernote 2.0 beta, you get “in-app sharing,” which means that you can share notebooks, as well as view notebooks that have been shared with you, right from within the Evernote for Mac interface (shared notebooks are available through the “Shared” tab in the left-hand panel). Note that while most of the notebook sharing features are available to everyone, you can only elect to allow other users to edit your shared notebooks if you’re a Premium user.

Notebook stacks are a new way to keep notebooks organized, providing a way to visually group notebooks; they work a little like folders. You can now drop related notebooks into their own stacks (so I could have a stack for WebWorkerDaily-related notebooks, for example), then view or collapse them as needed. Stacks are synced with the rest of your notes, so once this feature is supported in clients for other platforms, your stacks will also appear there.

To get the beta, you  need to click on the “Update to Beta versions” checkbox in the “Software Update” tab in Evernote’s preferences and then check for updates. Today’s release may still be unstable or buggy; you certainly shouldn’t rely on it for critical work. There’s no timeframe for when the Windows version of Evernote will get these features, although Evernote says it’s in the works.

Let us know what you think of Evernote 2.0 Beta for Mac in the comments.

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The thing I really like about Alfred is that it provides an interface to everything on my Mac and on the web: I can run programs, search favorite sites, find and browse files. It’s powerful but also very simple. The complexity and advanced functionality is there when I need it but for running something quickly or a fast Google search, that functionality never gets in my way. These layers of functionality are really well implemented. And the app is completely hidden until I call on it.

For example, a shortcut of option+space brings up an empty Alfred window. A couple of letters typed into the window offers me some simple web search options:

Even the results are easily accessed with unique key combinations for choosing among them.

If I’m looking for local files a “find” command changes the search:

It learns which items I access frequently so they appear in the search results ahead of others. For example, Text Wrangler, my editor of choice, now appears ahead of TextEdit because it is the one that is used more frequently. These little details make the program a joy to use.

I really like the way that I can use Alfred as a window to web searches, especially for frequently searched sites. It’s set up for the biggies like Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and Twitter and such, but I can add other options to the mix as well, like my CRM app.

One of my new favorite features that I just discovered is the ability to search by Spotlight Comments. By using consistent tagging there I can group like applications together by searching by tag. For example, a search for media could display iTunes, Rdio, last.fm and all the various players I have on my system.

While Alfred itself is free, there is the option to add a Powerpack option to it for £12 ($19). The Powerpack adds some great features like direct file system navigation, browsing from within the launcher window and the ability to perform actions on files beyond opening.

The additional features of the Powerpack are handy but even the free version is quite functional and well worth checking out. Alfred is a free download for Mac OS X 10.5+, while the optional Powerpack can be bought at any time through the application or from the web site.

Alfred is the doorway to my Mac. What do you use for launching and searching on your computer?

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Anxiety presents your tasks as a simple to-do list in a small semi-transparent window that can hover over the other apps open on your desktop. It’s integrated with Apple’s other applications that posses to-do functionality; double-clicking a list item reveals the task in iCal or Mail for extended editing. Simple shortcuts allow you to see your full list externally.

It’s highly customizable, so you can tailor its appearance and functionality to match your own preferences and workflow, including toggling the application dock item and menubar item, enabling list sorting and setting the list window to disappear when inactive.

Personally, I will stick with Google Tasks for my simple task management needs, because I like being able to access my tasks from anywhere and I use Gmail and Google Calendar through my browser instead of Apple’s apps. But if you use iCal and Mail and want a very lightweight, simple to-do list manager that’s tightly integrated with them, Anxiety is worth checking out (despite its somewhat strange name).

Anxiety is a free download (donations appreciated). It requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5+.

What task management app do you use?

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I find there are two different schools of thought when it comes to PKM and organizing all of the bits of information that we compile; it seems that the tools are either page-based or note-based. Page-based tools, like ConnectedText or OneNote on Windows, use a page metaphor to store related bits of information. You can often embed notes, images and files but they are all inherently tied to a “master page” that “owns” that data. I like to think that I work this way — with the ability to have discrete and tidy pages for clients and projects, all defined and ready-to-use. When I picture my information, that is how I see it. I looked at a couple of page-based options like this for my Mac; my favorite being VoodooPad by the wonderfully named Flying Meat Inc. If I had ended up choosing a page-based manager, VoodooPad is the “no-brainer” choice.

However, my reality is somewhat different than my vision when it comes to organization. I’ve got a snippet with notes from a meeting here, a phone message here, a bunch of URLs, a password for an FTP site, and it’s all been entered on whatever page I happen to be on — all with the intent of moving and organizing later. But they don’t get refiled, moved or organized, which means I cant find them at a later date.

So I decided that It’s time to embrace the chaos, find a tool that works like I do, and not like I think I need to. I decided it was time to look at note-based information managers. This type of app is based upon the ubiquitous capture of anything that you need to store. A block of text, a picture, a receipt, a PDF, a URL, all in a simple note document.  Notes can be tagged, filed, sorted, based upon any number of criteria. Each note is a distinct piece of information and through efficient organization and search, hopefully you can pull them together as needed.

This is a crowded field, so I looked at a number of options before ultimately choosing Yojimbo. I looked at Yojimbo with high hopes based on Will’s great review from back in September. He was spot-on in highlighting the cool usability features that it offers. Even though I found the functionality, look and feel very similar to some of the others I looked at, one of the big selling features was the presence of a screencast video on the website. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to take the time to learn all about the products that I was looking at but I found the head start that I got by watching the video left me feeling more comfortable with it than the others. It was one of the first programs that I trialed and I found myself liking it quite a bit.

There were, and still are a few things I wish it did better or differently, but I found that all of my notes about the other products I was looking at ended up being being stored in Yojimbo, together with meting notes and other snippets of info. I don’t think it was conscious decision that I had made my choice until my trial had expired and I was faced with exporting my data in to another product. Yojimbo isn’t my perfect PKM; it just outlasted all of the others I looked at and sort of just fell in to place.

With that said, it isn’t that I don’t really like Yojimbo. It has a great mix of simplicity and power and I was able to start amassing information quickly and easily and then build my organization around it. The tagging is brilliant and it is just so easy to get data in to the system. I am also slightly addicted to the “print to Yojimbo” option as a means to get receipts and other info captured nicely in PDF format.

Choosing a Personal Knowledge Manager was among my highest-priority projects as I am collecting so much information since my transition, tips and tricks, utilities, software, training, blogs and other resources, all along with my normal day-to-day work, and I didn’t need the headache of information overload on top of everything else. Without my even noticing, Yojimbo stepped in and saved the day.

Yojimbo is a Universal Mac Application requiring Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later. A 30-day free trial is available and if you find it as useful as I did, it will run you $39 to license.

Did I make the right choice? What do you use to keep all of your information organized?

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What would you use Fake to automate?

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Fire up Fake and you’re presented with two windows: a browser window, which looks pretty much like a regular Safari window with the addition of a sidebar, and an “Action Library” window (on the right of the screenshot above), which contains all of the tasks you can automate using the app.

The browser window works just as you would expect — you can load web pages, click links, submit forms. The interesting bit is the automation. To automate a task, you just drag actions from the Action Library and place them sequentially in the sidebar. There’s a huge array of things that you can get it to do, from fairly basic actions like loading a particular web page, opening new tabs and taking a screenshot of the page, to more complex stuff like filling out forms and executing JavaScript.

As you drag actions to the sidebar, you’ll see that — depending on the action — you’ll need to fill out certain values. For example, when opening a web page, you’ll need to provide the URL that you’d like to load, and when filling out forms, you’ll need to tell it what field to fill out and what values you’d like to insert.

The sequence of actions can be reordered just by dragging and dropping them in the sidebar, and you can remove actions by deleting them.

Once you’re happy with your sequence, hitting the play button at the top of the sidebar sets Fake in motion.  It runs through your actions in sequence. You can watch its progress in the browser window if you like, or leave it and get on with other things — it plays a ping sound so that you know when it’s done. It allows you to save sequences of actions that you’d like to reuse.

Fake does have some pretty powerful features — you can set up loops and run AppleScript, for example — some of which are probably too complex for non-developers to figure out. But if all you need to do is automate loading up a page, filling out a form or two and perhaps taking a screenshot of the result, its drag-and-drop interface should make it easy enough to use for almost anyone. The sequence shown above took no time at all to put together, for example, and gets Fake to load up the WebWorkerDaily site and take three screenshots, each 60 seconds apart.

Here’s a short demo video showing Fake in action:

Fake 0.2′s currently free to download. However, the site does note that it is a time-limited demo that will expire on August 1. I’m presuming that when it reaches version 1.0, it will become a paid app. As Fake’s not yet finalized there may still be some gremlins to iron out, and it is missing documentation, although the interface is so well-designed you shouldn’t really need it.

What do you use for browser automation?

(via Daring Fireball)

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Such an absence was just a minor annoyance for me until recently, when I upgraded to Snow Leopard and it broke one of the apps I’d installed so that every time I booted up my computer I’d be issued with a bunch of warnings about it. Totally removing the offending app was proving tricky, so I looked to see if there was a program available to help — and discovered TrashMe.

It’s very much like what I’d expect OS X’s own uninstall utility to be like, if it had one. Open up TrashMe and you’re presented with a Finder-like window with a large trashcan in the center.

To uninstall an app, drag its icon to TrashMe’s trashcan. TrashMe then presents you with a list of all of the files associated with that application, enabling you to trash them all in one go (by default, TrashMe sends them to the trash, but you can elect to delete them instead).

That’s pretty much all there is to it. If you’ve got into the bad habit of simply dragging applications into the trash, then you might like to enable TrashMe’s “Smart Mode” (disabled by default), which can detect when you do it and automatically suggest related files to delete. There’s also a feature that enables you to detect orphans (files which were used by previously removed applications), although you need to be careful using this feature as you could potentially delete useful files.

I highly recommend TrashMe as it makes cleanly removing applications and all their associated cruft easy. TrashMe is freeware and can be downloaded from the JibApps website.

What do you think of TrashMe? Let us know in the comments!

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It’s a busy space, Goober competes with desktop multi-IM programs like Pidgin, Adium, Trillian and Digsby; web-based services like Meebo; mobile apps like Fring and Beejive; and programs that add social networks to the mix, like Socialite. It also wants to compete with services that add voice and/or video chat functions, like VoxOx and Nimbuzz. The elephant in the voice and video communication arena, of course, is Skype, which has just rolled out a Windows-only beta of group video chats. Google Talk already offers video chat, and its acquisition of Gizmo5 will certainly result in upgrades to Google Voice. And Goober also gets to compete in the silly name contest.

So why do we need another multi-protocol communication service? Goober claims it has the following advantages over Skype and other VoIP providers:

• Users can call more countries (277), although Goober doesn’t offer incoming landline calls like Skype and Google Voice.
• Users can chat with users of protocols including ICQ, MSN, Google Talk, Jabber,
  AOL, Yahoo and QQ.
• The program integrates with Facebook and Twitter.
• Goober will offer six-way video conferencing on both PC and Mac (during the beta, conferences are limited to four).
• Outgoing call costs are 25-50 percent less, with calls in the US and Canada offered at a “record low” $.01 per minute.

I’ve tried the Mac beta, and while it’s usable, it’s not as elegant as the app from Nimbuzz (although it beats VoxOx’s ugly interface by a mile). The cluttered interface is not enhanced by obtrusive, animated banner ads.

Entering one’s IM and social network accounts is simple enough, although one must provide passwords, as there is no support for oAuth or Facebook Connect. It is possible to enter more than one account from the same service, but I wasn’t able to use Google Apps credentials to add Gtalk accounts.

Its tools for managing contacts are limited. Goober allows users to create groups, but if a contact appears twice (for example,  as a Gtalk and Facebook connection) the entries can’t be merged. One can’t sync or import address books, either.

I’m disappointed that Goober doesn’t support Growl, having opted instead for non-standard on-screen notifications. Goober also has mobile and web versions, but these are really different products with less robust feature sets.

For Mac users, Goober offers video conferencing options not (yet) available on Skype. For daily IMing, though, I’ll probably continue to use Adium.

Goober is offering the first 5,000 people to download the beta of Goober 3.0 a free voucher for $5 in credit. Try it, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Thankfully, in many instances, I found I was able to start with a direct Mac version of the Windows software I was already comfortable with and using productively. For browsing purposes I’ve been using Google Chrome on the PC for months, so I jumped on to the Mac version and got to business as usual. I’ve installed Firefox and have briefly tested Safari, but I’m quite happy with Chrome, even if it still retains its beta status on the Mac.

With the browser comes access to all of the web-based services I use that make up the bulk of my tools, including CRM, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, as well as the help desk/ticketing systems that I use for my job. I use Thymer for task management, but Things and OmniFocus will probably get some evaluation time as I’ve always been quite curious about them.

There are also quite a few programs where it was just a matter of installing the Mac version of my existing tools. I use Jing for screen grabs for blogging, tech support, jokes and even short screencasts for training or support. Functionally and visually it’s identical on the Mac. I know that Skitch and LittleSnapper are popular alternatives but I’ve always been quite pleased with Jing.

Skype is a staple for IM and video chats for both work and personal use, so a switch to the Mac client was a requirement. Functionally it’s virtually identical but the interface is different enough that it required a bit of an adjustment period.

I’ve long been a fan of Dropbox for syncing all sorts of things between my computers as well as quick file transfers between friends and clients. Again, the availability of a Mac client was a requirement and I’ve found it to work equally as well. I do miss the ability to just double-click on the Dropbox icon in my status bar but rather now needing to explicitly choose to open the folder. Once I settle on a program launcher though that will cease to be an issue.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter and have been using TweetDeck for a long time to manage that service. I like the ability to create the custom searches I need to track as well as being able to post to Facebook as well as to some of the client accounts to which I contribute. I knew that the cross-platform nature of the Adobe AIR meant that a Mac version of TweetDeck was available. I briefly experimented with Tweetie as it’s one of those programs that Mac users have always raved about but quickly moved back to TweetDeck — if for no other reason than I was more comfortable with it.

The nature of what I do, along with my natural curiosity, means I’ll probably continue to look for alternatives and to explore the Mac-only options that exist in these categories. But the availability of Mac versions of my favorite tools meant I was able to get myself up and running quickly.

How much of what you use could be easily transferred to another platform?

Image by stock.xchng user mab_design

One of my biggest concerns was adjusting to a touchpad after many years of using a TrackPoint. While the multi-finger touch options are really useful, especially for browsing and such, for heavy text work, I still keep reaching for my TrackPoint, because removing my hands from the keyboard for navigation doesn’t feel natural. I also find myself inadvertently zooming in and out because of the pinch motion.

I find the MacBook Pro’s keyboard to be functional, but the flat keys still don’t feel right to me as I have always liked a sturdy tactile IBM keyboard. At this point, I think I’ve nearly reached my same typing speeds, so I don’t believe it’s adversely affecting my productivity, but it still feels awkward.

Conversion to using the Cmd key from Ctrl for shortcuts hasn’t been a huge issue for me, but relearning the new shortcut keys for text selection is an ongoing process (thanks to everyone for the tips in the comments of my previous post). I’m also finding that having to use Fn+delete to match the behavior of my old delete key still trips me up quite a bit.

The screen is probably the most significant upgrade from my old laptop. Even though it’s smaller in size, the widescreen format and higher resolution let me see more of websites and documents, while the brightness and clarity of the display is just astounding compared to how my dull and off-color my old screen was. It’s a joy to work with and everything just seems to look better.

The hardware itself is quite light and manageable. I love how quickly it wakes up and makes itself ready to work. The long battery life is quite nice and while I haven’t really tested or timed how long it lasts I find that for my regular work flow it really won’t be an issue for me.

The biggest issue so far has been the change in software. While many of my day-to-day staples have Mac counterparts, they often work differently. Sometimes even just the UI differences are enough to just make me feel “off.” For the rest of my software, where a direct Mac counterpart isn’t available, I’m still finding replacements and learning them. I was prepared for it to be an ongoing process, though, and even though I am taking a productivity hit, it’s also giving me the opportunity to evaluate and review a lot of software that I had only been able to read about prior to my switch.

Overall I am finding the experience to be enjoyable and positive. There are a lot of quirks, a lot of frustrations, but some nice features and benefits as well. I can’t say I like it better than my PC, but I’m not hating it.

How was your transition to Mac?  How long did it take for you to be hooked?