lewro’s blog - 2.1 - web designer beginner

Why is iPhone the best organization tool for me? In my case it has a lot to do with the fact that I swapped my Windows laptop for a MAC. This radical change made me thinking what software am I going to use from now on. And this is what I came with. I swapped MS Word and Excel for Google docs. So far so good. I have been using Google docs for a some time now and I have not find a case when I would need more functionality. I can image that it would not be enough for companies where you need to use Word for example for generating templates which are then merged with the contact data from database and so on but for my daily work it is enough. Google sheets has all the basic functionality like using formulas and simple charts but it is not enough for creating complicated analyzes when you need to connect couple of documents and calculate complicated formulas long as your screen width. But again, for daily work it is absolutely enough. And do not forget that it is free.

Replacing Outlook - Email, Calendar, Tasks

Talking about email it gets little bit more interesting. I am using Gmail as my main email so I have online access to it from any computer. But at home I use Mac-Mail which allows me to use my Gmail account in its nice interface. Another application I use on the MAC is iCal which keeps a track of my Calendar schedule. As you can see I use lots of Google applications and it is not difference with calendar. I use Google Calendar as well and that is nice synchronized with my iCal and what more when use upcoming site and decide to attend some conference or event, with a single click the event is stored in my Google calendar which obviously shares the data with my iCal. And here comes the coolest thing. I can access all these information on my iPhone. Either I check the iPhone applications for iMail or iCal or I can use Safari to connect to internet and check the data online on my Google apps. The last part of MS Outook I have replaced with online service are Tasks management. I have created an account on Basecamp. You can only have one project in the free version but there is a possibility to create a group of tasks and that is what I use as replacement for projects. I named every group the way I named my projects in Outlook and keep all the tasks in that group/project. This application is again accessible over iPhone which gives me a good control during the whole day. Even in such a trivial tasks as shopping list when you stand in the supermarket and you can not remember what is that you suppose to buy.

Google maps on iPhone

I would never think that this is one of the applications I will be using a lot but living in London this is a top think. The city is so big and I need to use map very often. Google maps give me the comfort I need when I am lost or looking for a place in areas where I have never been before.

RSS

It is not over wit Google aps yet. I also swapped my Firefox RSS extension for Google Reader. This way I can read my favorite RSS feeds on the go true my iPhone or at my work computer. If you think that Google Reader does not look very pretty. I agree. Fortunately you can use Firefox extension called stylish and apply any CSS you want for it.

It is all merging very nicely together and I enjoy it a lot but if you have some suggestions about any other online applications which I could use let me know. I will be happy to hear from you.

It has been about 2 week since I bought my first Mac (MacBook Pro). Today I would like to share with you the experience of windows user who swap his pc with mac. I was Windows user for last 12 years and I was pretty confident with all related tasks around windows. Installing, configuration, backup, managing user profiles, using shortcuts etc. and it has all changed now. You might be asking how does that feel.

Firstly I would like to say as designer. The mac is a masterpiece beautifully designed and I can hardly think what would I change if I could, and do not get me wrong, I am talking here about the design of the laptop and the operating system - Leopard. Coming to functionality and usability of the system there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Pros and cons, comparing MAC with PCs

I have already mentioned, talking about design the MAC is for me absolute winner. I can find lots of things where I would say windows and mac are on the same level for me. For example main menu navigation. I really like the way all the applications are using the main top menu but on the other hand I quite like the hierarchy of the windows menu starting with start button. I would also say that different approach of close, minimise buttons on both systems looks good and works fine and it is really hard to say which approach is better. The main think I do not like on mac is the way the windows are open at the background and sometimes it is really hard to find out which ones are actually open if I use equivalent of windows ctrl-tab. There is an function called expose which shows all the open windows at the same time on your desktop which is pretty useful but it is not the same as ctrl-tab and it makes you wander why is ctrl-tab not showing all the running windows. The other thing I am not happy about is the way Windows media player works on the mac. I know it is not probably not Apple’s fault but being user it is bad experience to watch media on the internet true this player. There is also lot of things I will have to get use to but I would not consider them as negatives. As you can see I have not find a lot of bad things about mac but I have found lots of good one. Let me tell you about them.

Time machine

This is a backup of software what I was always looking for. I do not have to do anything and everything is mirrored om my external hard drive (500 gig). No configurations, no scheduled tasks. It simply takes all the worries from your shoulders.

Quicksilver

This is not Apple’s product but it runs on the mac only. It is super cool application which allows you to start all you programs from one place just typing first letters of the application. And that is not all. You can use quicksilver for example to compose and send email without actually opening your mail software or you can edit documents and save them in certain location or remove them etc. I have not explore full potential of this application yet but I am already very impressed.

Adium

This is another software which has not been made by Apple but runs on the Mac only. It is a chat application which allows you to see all your contacts from icq, msn, yahoo, gtalk etc. in the one window and talk to them at the same time. There are similar software for Linux and even for windows, they do not look so cool as Adium but works the same way.

Spaces

Lets go back to Mac and Apple products. Spaces is brilliant tool when you want to have cleaner working environment. With spaces you can have different desktops with different applications open. For example you can do your coding and Photoshop stuff in one window and you can have running your Lastfm radio in the second desktop and your browsers could be open in the third one and so on. It almost feel that the resolution of your screen is 5000×5000px.

Web server and PHP

Another very useful thing on the mac is that it comes with apache web server and php. They are not running by default but it is not that hard to find out how to let them work.

So let mi summarize it. I have spent 2 weeks without windows and I am not really missing them. The mac gives me such a joy to work with that I am not surprise when I hear all those big Mac fans talking about their machines. The experience is really different. Some people saying that once you swap pc with Mac there is not coming back. That is the way I see it now but who knows what is going to be in one year time. I will write about it.