Going (Mac) Pro

Hoping to cut down on the amount of hardware on (and especially under) my desk, I managed to requisition a new Mac Pro workstation. I’ve adjusted fairly well to the “Intel Inside” brand of Mac-living — I’ve had my MacBook Pro since May. I’m generally pleased with Windows running under Parallels Desktop. I think I can finally decomission my Dell Dimension WinXP box and go completely virtual.

It’s also a lot harder to bruise your knees on a virtual machine.

Though several key vendors have yet to ship Universal Binary versions of their software, I’ve managed to muddle through okay thanks to the wonders of Rosetta, Java, and the Open Source world.

Since this system is a new start, I’m planning on blogging my efforts to get my development environment — ColdFusion, Parallels, SQL Server, MySQL, Eclipse — migrated from my trio of systems (Dell Dimension / Dual-G5 PowerMac / MBP) to the new box. Hopefully this will generate enough breadcrumbs to help blaze the trail for others who come after me.

Right-clicking on the MacBook Pro

Apple brought two-finger-tap right clicking to the MacBook line with the 17″ MBP and new MacBooks, but the first gen was left out, or so I thought. It turns out the *hardware* is there in the 15″ MBP, but the driver didn’t include the functionality. The driver shipping with the newer MacBooks merely accesses capabilities what was already there in the hardware.

Stumbled on this yesterday… Someone has brought two-finger right clicking to the first-gen MacBook Pros:

Right Clicking on a MBP

Seems they managed to repackage the newer drivers and get them working on the older MBP!

Can’t find my way Home

When I joined the IST Solutions Institute this fall, I found myself in a Macintosh-friendly environment for the first time in a decade.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart (or head) for the much-maligned platform — its elegance and consistency appeals to me. Since Macromedia was nice enough to recently begin seriously supporting ColdFusion development on OS X, I jumped at the chance to try working on a modern Macintosh.

My first shock after switching platforms was discovering my dependence on the Home and End keys in Windows. The fact that I couldn’t hit Shift-End to highlight from the current cursor location to the end of the line drove me nuts. Figuring that I could not be the only person to notice this, I did some digging and I finally found a solution.

On most Macintosh-native applications, the same effect can be achieved by holding down the Command (or Apple) key and using the right-arrow (for End) or left-arrow (for Home) keys. If you want to select the text instead of just moving the cursor, hold your Shift key down as usual.