I haven’t had a Mac for several years, and the ones I had before I mostly used for photographic pursuits, doing all my other work under Windows. Therefore, I am an Apple tyro. So, if I say anything boneheaded in this post, please let me know and I’ll make corrections.
Typical Apple packaging, stylish and elegant, but with plastic sheets stuck on everything. Powered right up, with a marginally more complicated than Win 8, but really pretty simple, configuration process. Just like the new Microsoft, Apple makes sure you sign in with your cloud (in this case, Apple) ID so you’ll be sticky. The track pad is full of tricks, but I like the stick on the Lenovo computers better. I tried to pair an Apple Magic Mouse with the computer by following the instructions (turn off the computer, turn on the mouse, turn on the computer, wait for the Setup Assistant window to pop up) but got no Setup Assistant window. I went into the System Preferences, clicked on Mouse, and paired up. A few minutes later, I wasn’t paired any more. I paired again. After using the mouse for ten minutes, my hand began to hurt. It’s too flat for me. I turned it off and plugged a Microsoft USB mouse in. The computer recognized it as a mouse, and loaded a generic driver.
I set up a couple of printers. The process was more automatic than the equivalent set of operations in Win 8, but no faster.
I updated the OS and all the apps that wanted updates; that took about forty-five minutes over a 3 Mb/s Internet connection.
I installed Microsoft Office, which I’d bought with the computer. Microsoft didn’t ship a DVD in the box, just a card with a 25-character string on it and a URL where you could go to download the software. When I got there, after making me enter the 25 characters and identify twisted renditions of random characters – not easy, I didn’t get it right the first time – Microsoft said I had to log on to or create a Microsoft account to continue. Well, that was a problem. I’d already used my Microsoft account to sign up for Office 360, and I had had problems mixing other software with O/360. I decided to create another Microsoft account. That worked OK, except that I had a devil of a time confirming that account. I couldn’t cut and paste the link, and when I clocked on it took me to a page that said that I had the wrong email address. Probably a cookie left over from when I logged in with the first account. I finally figured out how to log out and back in with the new account without making my browser lock up (probably Microsoft’s punishment for using Firefox instead of IE. The download took forever. After a couple of hours, it looked like it had stalled, although I couldn’t figure out a way to get Safari/OSX to show me the download rate. I rebooted the computer, and Safari/OSX picked up the download from where it had left off. Demerits for the slow downloads, which occurred later at other web sites. Praise for automatically restarting the download; I’ve never seen Windows/Firefox/Chrome/IE do that.
The Office 2011 installation program refused to continue with Safari running. I shut it down, and the installation went fine. I brought up Outlook, configured the Exchange server access, and it downloaded the contents of the mailbox without a hitch.
I bought the $100 five disparate device Norton 360 bundle, downloaded that, and installed if, turning off Safari as requested. It didn’t add a menu entry for accessing anti-spam to the Outlook menu bar. Is that the way it’s supposed to be? I don’t know.
This having to turn off the browser to install programs is kind of a drag, especially since the key you need to install the program is usually in a browser window.
I tried to join the computer to the Windows domain. Everything looked like it worked, and I got a green light, but the Finder didn’t show a bunch of computers, and I couldn’t log onto any server. Also, when I rebooted the Mac, I wasn’t able to see a network logon option, only the local one. Is that the way it’s supposed to be? I’ve no idea.
I tried to Install Chrome, but the Safari downloads all failed. I installed Firefox, after another loooong download. Now with Firefox installed I was able to see the download speeds. I tried to download Chrome with Firefox and watched it get anywhere from 20% to 45% of the way through the download and stall. I had WiFi turned on as well as wired gigabit Ethernet through the Thunderbolt adapter. I pulled the adapter, so I just had WiFi, and tried to download Chrome again. That worked fine. Does the Mac OS have some trouble with two simultaneous ways to access the same network? That seems a little strange. I performed some local large file transfers to a Synology server.
With the Wi-Fi only, the data rate is respectable:
However, with WiFi and wired Ethernet on, the data rate is substantially the same:
When I turn the Wi-Fi off and leave the wired Ethernet on, the data rate is just about the capacity of the gigabit Ethernet pipe. The Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter is doing its job:
I bought and downloaded Iridient Developer. I pointed the Finder at one of the Synology file servers, and wasn’t able to see any files. This is an indication to me that the MacBook isn’t logged on to the Windows Domain. I logged on to the file server by entering a new set of credentials. I found a couple of raw files on the server, dragged them over to the Mac desktop, and let go of the mouse button. The files copied with no problem. Then I tried to open them in Iridient Developer. No dice.
I invoked Get Info with a right-click on the file, and saw two things that, to my way of thinking, shouldn’t exist simultaneously. The file permissions allows R/W access by everyone, but I didn’t have permission to access the file.
I added myself explicitly, and it opened right up. Is all this because of my only being sort of logged in to the Domain?
It’s going to take some time for me to explore the subtleties of Iridient Developer, but so far I really like what I see. The design paradigm for Lightroom seems to be do as much as you can behind the scenes, and don’t burden the user with all the details. Iridient Developer takes the opposite approach, being quite transparent in its actions. I like that.
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