macs at work

[fxit_man]

Mighty Mouse - right click just has to be enabled in Mouse options.

It is not a physically separate button, but you just click down to the right side of the mouse (on the right of the trackball) like you would do on a normal mouse.

 

[koffiejunkie]

I don't use my Mac at work (Use a Linux desktop there) but I do use it to work from home occasionally or when I travel for work.

1. Email. Words cannot describe the pain i've gone through. I tried 4 different progs. All ***. Conversion from outlook a nightmare for all of them (we needed to keep the old mail).

Well, if a user's only experience of e-mail is Outlook, it's gonna be tough. If a user's experience is anything other than Outlook, Outlook is easily confused with the spawn of satan. It's freaking horrible. It gets in the way. It uses the space on your screen in the least efficient way. It generates mails that are enormous given the content they contain. I can go on, but I'll spare you that. As for conversion, again, Microsoft uses a propriatory format that deliberately makes it damn near impossible to get anything out of it. That's a Microsoft problem, not an Apple problem. You have the same problem when moving to just about any other mail client, even on Windows.

Including picures and resizing them in the body of the mail... nightmare.

Drag, drop. Up pops a menu on the status bar with different size options. If the "resizing" you're referring to is what I think it is, that's actually only when you have Outlook set to use Word to generate e-mails. Which means you're sending a word document. Which means, if you're sending mail to someone not using Outlook, they're probably getting something that looks like Picasso on acid. I get these all the time at work.

2. Freehand MX.

It's funny, pretty much everything they made sucks. Flash. Dreamweaver. Yeah, I know it's nice to use, but it's a pain in the ass for people supporting it.

Unforunately, freehand MX has been discontinued and i believe replaced by illustrator, but hard to get my wife to learn a new product. (Adobe still sell Freehand MX which is a cheek)

Yip, see my previous comment. They should fix it or axe it.

3. Users will miss the right click on the mouse.......

Oh come on. Every mouse Apple has built for the last five years can right click. It's just not enabled by default. The latest crop has a surface that can act like a trackpad too with gestures and everything - it's freaking awesome. The trackpad can handle up to four fingers. I have mine set to take one finger tap on the trackpad as a left click and two finger tap on the trackpad as right click. And it's not a hard tap, it's barely touching it. The only time I actually use the trackpad button is when I'm continuously clicking on the same thing and don't want the mouse pointer to move. I don't know what more you could possibly want.

 

[macboer]

Thanks for all the comments. Seems like most of these type of threads are destined to end up in either :
"The apple mouses(mice?) CAN RIGHT CLICK YOU *********)
or
"macs are not for gaming"
Which still doesn't answer my question but anywho.LOL

 

[SmartKit]

It's because its control and click for right clicking. Don't confuse the poor guy.

Ag, I meant control/Mac key... However, he had no idea what a right-click was. None.

 

[SmartKit]

Mighty Mouse - right click just has to be enabled in Mouse options.

It is not a physically separate button, but you just click down to the right side of the mouse (on the right of the trackball) like you would do on a normal mouse.

You honestly believe most people are aware of this?

 

[syntax]

I would like to know if there are some people out there (most probably in the design industry) who has experience of macs in the workplace. How is(?) your experience and what kind of problem do you REGULARLY (if any) experience? This could also involve apple servers.

Printing is easily the biggest headache, followed by decent exchange synching (although i hear SL has resolved this???)

 

[koffiejunkie]

macboer, this really heavily depends on what your needs at work are. If you're in a Windows domain and you have applications that use some sort of domain authentication, it might be tricky to set up. Where I work everything is AD and the windows desktops are automatically authenticated that way. But when I do bring my Mac in, I have no trouble connecting. Our internal IT have enabled IMAP and SMTP authentication on the exchange servers, so I can use Thunderbird, which is really the best application for handling the volume of mail I deal with (several hundred per day). The rest of my work revolves around a web application that actually lists Firefox and Safari only as supported browsers, and a terminal for ssh. I really haven't come across anything I can't do.

 

[bwana]

To be fair bwana your average Mac user doesn't know how to use the mighty mouse. I asked a guy who's been designing for five years to either right-click or use the command/Mac key and click. He honestly asked me where in the application he could find this key.

Does that look like a mighty mouse to you? You can use any usb mouse, as demonstrated by the Acer mouse in the pic.

That guy you described is also hardly the typical mac user.

sigh..

You can attach a PC mouse to mac to give you a left and right click..... But the Mac Keypad mouse on the macbook has only one button. The mouse you buy with the apple logo, only has one button... Seems that they only really want to you to use one button...

Which macbook is that? If it is a newer one you can assign a right click to the right hand side of the pad in the system prefs.

If you come from a right-click world, you can configure a right-click area on the trackpad or simply press with two fingers.

 

[Sputnik]

You honestly believe most people are aware of this?

Two-button click
Magic Mouse functions as a two-button mouse when you enable Secondary Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

Source: http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/

 

[Sputnik]

Printing is easily the biggest headache, followed by decent exchange synching (although i hear SL has resolved this???)

That printing is the biggest headache is simply not true.

 

[bwana]

Printing is easily the biggest headache, followed by decent exchange synching (although i hear SL has resolved this???)

Why?

 

[SmartKit]

Does that look like a mighty mouse to you? You can use any usb mouse, as demonstrated by the Acer mouse in the pic.

That guy you described is also hardly the typical mac user.

Which macbook is that? If it is a newer one you can assign a right click to the right hand side of the pad in the system prefs.
http://www.apple.com/macbook/features.html

I know yours isn't a might mouse, but it's the standard mouse that comes along with the Mac. It it isn't changed by IT chances are they use it - so my conclusion is that many, many Mac users use the single button mouse.

And yes, this guy is absolutely 100% very much your typical Mac user. Desktop publishing, graphic design, architects are very big on using Macs, unfortunately the users know little to nothing except about the application they work in. In fact they're lucky to find the power button. MOST Mac users, as are MOST Windows users, are not power users.

 

[SmartKit]

Two-button click
Magic Mouse functions as a two-button mouse when you enable Secondary Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

Source: http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/

Sputnik, once again I will tell you that 90% of the Mac users I work with wouldn't know how to turn the damn thing on if the guy in IT hadn't shown them it. Trust me they don't even know where system preferences are.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Sputnik, once again I will tell you that 90% of the Mac users I work with wouldn't know how to turn the damn thing on if the guy in IT hadn't shown them it. Trust me they don't even know where system preferences are.

To be fair, that's true for the vast majority of Windows users too. The ridiculously basic and stupid stuff I had to bill clients for when I did on-site support is testament to that.

 

[bwana]

Sputnik, once again I will tell you that 90% of the Mac users I work with wouldn't know how to turn the damn thing on if the guy in IT hadn't shown them it. Trust me they don't even know where system preferences are.

There must be something really 'special' about the mac users you encounter because even my mom figured it out on her own.

 

[SmartKit]

To be fair, that's true for the vast majority of Windows users too. The ridiculously basic and stupid stuff I had to bill clients for when I did on-site support is testament to that.

And I said as much to bwana in my previous post. I just make the comment in response to a lot of "but it's easy to change" comments. Easy for you? Sure. Easy for me? Sure. Easy for 90% of this forum? Definitely. Unfortunately, as you are obviously aware, most end users are lucky to be able to tie their shoes in the morning.

 

[SmartKit]

There must be something really 'special' about the mac users you encounter because even my mom figured it out on her own.

I think the Almighty has given me my end users to atone for some major sins I must have committed in a past life.

 

[wow4life]

We allow Macs on our company networks (and they are BIG networks). I use one with no problems whatsoever

 

[Sputnik]

Sputnik, once again I will tell you that 90% of the Mac users I work with wouldn't know how to turn the damn thing on if the guy in IT hadn't shown them it. Trust me they don't even know where system preferences are.

I think this is an awful generalisation. Sure, there are some idiots about, but 90% of people that don't know how to push a button is just ridiculous. If you can do facebook status update, then you propably managed to swithc the thing on.

 

[macboer]

Before i owned my iMac iwas pretty much a Noob when it came to computers. OSX actually MADE ME A GEEK. weird hey?