My First Mac

In 1984 I got my first computer, the first 128K Macintosh. It came with two applications—MacWrite and MacPaint. Within an hour I was busily pounding out a chapter in a book I was writing. Learning MacWrite was fast, using the tutorial in the manual. MacPaint, for those who remember, came with a pamphlet of a manual, mostly pictures. Essentially it was so much fun to use, one learned it by doing. There was a synergy between the two apps. MacPaint encouraged exploration and a learning by doing that carried over into using the more heavy-duty-appearing MacWrite and made learning that faster.

There was a single 128K floppy drive, no hard drive. An application plus the files of work done with the application all fit on the single 128K disk. Attaching a second floppy drive upped the ante considerably. Every few years since then I’ve upgraded when the improvements became compelling enough. Typing this on a PowerBook G4, heavily customized. Maybe a new Mac next year.

—Henry Korman

The first time I worked on an Apple Computer was in 1982 on an Apple II Plus bought by my high school. It was wonderful to use a computer with 48K of RAM and a screen with 40 by 24 characters or 280 by 192 pixels.

I found a PowerBook G3 Wall Street just before its last journey in the garbage can. It works fine except it doesn’t have a battery, so it works only wired to the sector. As I don’t have the wifi card, I use the Ethernet connector or my MacBook Pro with a crossover cable, so the G3 can also access its DVD drive.

—Jean-Jacques Cortes

PDFClerk Pro 3.9.3

I should have pointed out that even though Mac OS X’s built-in Print dialog can do basic imposition, it only works when the pages are not printed on both sides of the paper, i.e. not duplex printed. The Print dialog simply shrinks the pages onto one page without re-ordering them, so when duplex-printed the pages come out in the wrong order. PDFClerk’s imposition feature is much more capable.

—Linus Ly

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Useful review. Thanks.

It would be interesting to see a head-to-head comparison of PDFClerk, and PDFPen and PDFPen Pro (from SmileOnMyMac Software). PDFPen Pro costs more—€70 (I am a licensed user) but adds functionality like OCR for scans, PDF form creation, etc.

—Alun J. Carr

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There is also Christoph Vogelbusch’s truly excellent Create PDF booklet, which is totally free.

—Paul

Qaptain Qwerty: When I Was Your Age

Oh that’s funny. I often threaten to bellow the same thing at the young varmints:

Why, when I was your age, I had to walk through cyberspace on 300bps snowshoes!

—Avery Ray Colter

MacMuser: Relevant Eloquent Pleading

I’m the sole Mac user (some say McUser) in my office. Support is provided by me. I bought my Mac (a MacBook Pro) so I’d have access to the tools (mostly writing tools) that I can’t bear to be without.

I catch grief because problems must be a “Mac Thing.” I still can’t get Mail working with Exchange (not that I really want to, but the support person doesn’t want IMAP enabled)…

You catch my drift…

—Dave Thompson

Apple Keyboard

I just converted to this keyboard from the original one on my Power Mac G5 (hard disk recording setup), and my fingers are still rejoicing two days later. The only thing I can think of that would improve this keyboard would be possibly a cupholder, or a GPS unit, or something like that. By the way, I brought this thing to work with me today, and it works flawlessly with the Dell OptiPlex PC that I use here.

—Wayne Turner

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After saying that I’d never trade my Apple Pro keyboard, I find myself now with a Macally Bluetooth keyboard. What sold me on it is the fact that it has the exact same keyboard layout as the Apple Pro keyboard. It’s such a shame that Apple is forcing that tiny keyboard on people that want Bluetooth. If the full-size keyboard had been available as a Bluetooth model I would’ve bought it. As it is, my money went to Macally instead.

—Kevin Bradley

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