Photography by Mike Baker » Where is my mind?

I was considering buying a netbook so that my wife and I could access the internet and email simultaneously, and with a 1 year old son, being able to get something done online quickly while not in the room we use as an office seemed a great idea. But why buy a netbook, when we are Mac users? Surely we could buy a second hand Mac laptop for a similar price? A good idea, if only I had picked a different laptop and buyer.

The internet is full of Leopard reviews, most saying the same things with the same screenshots. Ars Technica has gone in-depth, with a really good explanation of how things have changed under the user-interface. John Siracusa has written the definitive Leopard review for techies.

I’ve become an avid reader of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. With a tagline of “Dude, I invented the friggin iPhone. Have you heard of it?” and an About Me that says “I love beautiful objects. I love creating them. Negative people upset me.”, you can guess it’s irreverent style. It’s extremely well written, and I suspect the author comes quite close to the thoughts of his real-life counterpart at times.

I learned some useful things about Macs today:-

• You can break the boot process when installing Linux as a dual-boot machine just as easily as on a PC (doh!)
• The install CDs for Mac OS X don’t auto-boot when you turn on your Mac with them in the drive (double doh!)
• The small booklet that comes with a MacBook doesn’t tell you what to do when everything goes pear-shaped.
• To make the install CD boot, hold down the ‘c’ key when powering up (c for cd?)
• Making your Mac bootable again is then simply a matter of using the disk utility which is on the Tools menu once your Mac has booted

Hooray for the internet and having access to another machine.

A complete list of Apple Mac boot key combos.