A little shy of a year ago I got my first Mac. I figured it would work well for business use: easy access to the command line and Unix core, but not requiring the fussing that Linux does.

Some things are surprisingly easy on the Mac:

• set up desktop background image rotation
• remap the keyboard (eg. capslock to control)
• building presentations in Keynote

Many things are just downright impossible on the Mac:

• open in one space an application which is already open in another space
• alt-tab through applications just in the current space
• hit the control key with your right hand (there is no control key on the right side of the keyboard)
• change your username (you better get it right the first time)
• eject a cd without powering on the computer (there is no pinhole eject)
• resize a window from anywhere but the very bottom right-hand corner of the window (really annoying when that corner is off the screen or you just want to make a window taller)
• “right-click” using just the keyboard (most laptops have a “right-click” key)
• directly access a particular menu bar menu using just the keyboard
• open a playlist in iTunes
• use the keyboard to jump to the end of a row or column in Numbers
• open a .log or .tab file in Numbers

Other annoyances:

• closing the last window of a program doesn’t end the program
• the program “Finder” is always open and running
• although program windows can be moved to separate virtual desktops alt+tab always cycles through all open programs
• ships with old versions of common UNIX tools such as grep

Things that are just kind of weird:

• keyboard shortcuts are all rearranged

Configuration

Fix function keys

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard -> Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys

Set touchpad tap to click

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad -> Tap to Click

set mouse to be two-button

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Mouse -> Secondary Button

Enable Secondary Click

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad -> Secondary Click

set mouse middle click to be button three

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Mouse -> Button 3

Set tracking speed (trackpad)

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad -> adjust Tracking Speed to Fast

Set tracking speed (mouse)

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Mouse -> adjust Tracking Speed to Fast

Enable Spaces

System Preferences -> Expose & Spaces -> Spaces -> Enable Spaces

Non-schizophrenic Zoom

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad -> Screen Zoom Options -> Only when the pointer reaches an edge

Allow browser to tab into all form elements

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> All Controls

Disable F-key hijacking

System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts (uncheck as necessary)

Fix screen from auto-dimming every 1-2 minutes

Allow TextEdit to save .txt plaintext files

TextEdit -> Preferences -> Plain text

Date in Munu Bar

Use iStat Menus

Replace obsolete grep

Just download, build, install, and replace /usr/bin/grep with the new binary.

Some things you’ll need to know:
- Default document root is /Library/WebServer/Documents

Software

Cyberduck

For FTPing

Adium

All-purpose IM client

Eclipse

Firefox

Of course

GIMP

(but which build?)

Picasa

Otherwise there is no way to get photos off my digital camera

Skitch

The ultimate screenshot utility–more useful than you might think

Transmission>

For downloading large files quickly

VMWare Fusion

MacPorts Stuff

HexEdit
wget
phpMyAdmin
Subversion
MySQL

Start MySQL with /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqld_safe &

The MySQL socket file is at /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock

To start mysqld at boot time you have to copy support-files/mysql.server to the right place for your system

Apache

Document root is /opt/local/apache2/htdocs

The Apache config file is /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

Comment out LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so in httpd.conf, since that seems to be broken in the MacPorts install.

Add these to your mimetypes:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Add index.php to the DirectoryIndex:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

alias apache2ctl='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl' and apache2ctl start to get started!

###########################################################
# A startup item has been generated that will aid in
# starting apache2 with launchd. It is disabled
# by default. Execute the following command to start it,
# and to cause it to launch at startup:
#
# sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist
###########################################################