Mac stuff
I just got my new super-thin keyboard cover. (I forgot to remove my old one when the Mac went in to have its motherboard replaced, and when the Mac returned, keyboard cover was gone. But they’re less than $3—except for this one: 1/5th the thickness of the silicone keyboard covers. Imperceptible.) Very nice, though it doesn’t seize the keys quite as much as the other cover: this one more just lies on top of the keys. Still, perfectly serviceable.
Mac is pretty aggressive about pushing software. I get regular emails (from which I’m sure I can unsubscribe) for various apps. And it works because the apps are in general free or available at a cheap price, plus instant delivery. Cool model.
After getting the computer back, the touchpad seems much more hair-trigger. I frequently (every few minutes) will find that the cursor’s jumped somewhere else as I type, and the end of the word I’m typing can appear anyway or (if the cursor jumps outside the data-entry box) nowhere. I don’t much like that.
I think I figured out why the new “natural” scroll direction that OS X Lion favors is so unnatural. That scroll direction works fine on the iPad and the iPhone: your fingers on those devices work directly on the screen, so to move what you see on the screen (and what you’re in effect touching) in a downward direction, you (naturally) pull your fingers down.
But on the MacBook, your fingers are on the trackpad, not the screen, and the intermediary position of the trackpad—between your fingers and the screen—changes the mental model. Your fingers now are not on what you see on the screen, and when you move your fingers down, you are (naturally) trying to pull the screen down so you can see text below what appears on the screen: the fingers in this case are not pulling the “paper” but the “screen”, and when pulling your fingers down the trackpad, you anticipate that the screen will similarly go down (and the text that appears in the screen will go up). Lion’s default setting violates that expectation.
Out of curiosity, why do you need a keyboard cover? Do you live in a very dusty environment or eat/drink over the keyboard? I had a keyboard cover many years ago but found the tactile response very unpleasant. I’m sure they have improved greatly since then.
Steve
12 August 2011 at 9:31 am
The tactile response is great. I use my Mac in my lap while sitting in my chair, often while eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and the first day I was using it I dropped some crumbs onto the keyboard. I was able to blow them away before they disappeared into the cracks, but: lesson learned. I got a keyboard cover immediately.
LeisureGuy
12 August 2011 at 9:37 am
I figured it was something like that. You’re breaking the Prime Directive of Computers….the Mac police may come after you.
Steve
12 August 2011 at 4:44 pm
LG, have you looked to see if your pad settings have been reset to “normal” or “factory” or whatever they were on when you took delivery? The speed/sensitivity should be adjustable to your particular liking. After all, it IS a Mac!
Bill Bush
12 August 2011 at 4:47 pm
Oh: yeah, I knew immediately that when they replaced the motherboard they changed the settings back to what they call “normal” scroll action—I had indeed unchecked that. I assume that perhaps a new motherboard simply restores defaults—I gradually became aware (from the cursor jumping about) that the box for “tap” the touchpad had been checked again as well. Both are now unchecked, and everything is working fine. I unchecked the scroll thing immediately—it’s pretty obvious when the text moves in the direction opposite to what you expect—but I only now realized why a scroll direction that seems natural on the iPad and iPhone (with your fingers on the screen) seems so wrong on the MacBook (with your fingers on the trackpad).
The “tap” setting I didn’t focus on immediately—it was an annoyance, like a buzzing fly, that I would fix and continue without thinking. But once I thought about it, I realized that I had unchecked the “tap” setting, and that had fixed the annoying behavior. So that’s working right again as well.
LeisureGuy
13 August 2011 at 11:00 am