iMAC experience

For a company with an enviable record in the design of technology, Apple can certainly make mistakes. A lot of users have never been happy with the so-called 'Mighty Mouse', which seems to function rather erratically at times. Certainly, the one I have is no where near as positive in use as the Logitech wireless mouse I was using with my PC - in fact, as it will work just as well with the iMac. I may well switch.

Imperfect as it may be, the mouse is at least ergonomic - the same cannot be said for the keyboard, which is a design disaster. The keyboard measures just 28 x 17.5 cms - the num pad has gone, the arrow keys have been minimised and incorporated into the space normally occupied by other keys on the main board, the main navigation keys, such as Home and End, Page up and Page down have gone, there is no Delete key - instead one must use other key combinations to achieve the same result. Also, because of the small width of the keyboard, ones hands are brought together in the centre of one's body, instead of being spaced apart at about shoulder width, as the best ergonomic keyboards are.

In this respect, if in no other, Apple lags way behind Microsoft. I've been using one of the Msoft ergonomic keyboards for some years - in fact, I think it was the first one they introduced and one can now get several, not only from Msoft but from other makers - some of whom, unfortunately, don't operate in the UK. But wouldn't it be ironic if I had to attach a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard to the iMac and thereby destroy the beautiful unity of design?!

I figure that one of these days we are going to see a class action brought against Apple as a result of the all the RSI cases their keyboards must be generating.

Switching

One of the reasons I've been quiet on the Weblog is that I've been in the process of switching from PC to iMac. I've been thinking of this for a long time and using an iMac briefly recently, decided I had to make the effort. I had become fed up with getting that 'Sorry this application has to close, would you like to tell Microsoft?' message and I seemed to spend more time waiting for the machine to boot up or applications to open (or re-open) that I decided the switch was necessary.

However, it takes time, including putting VMFusion on to the iMac so that I can run Windows. Now, why would I want to do that, given the problems? Well, it is essentially only for one program - Homesite, my HTML editor, which isn't available for the Mac. The last version, 5.5, was put out about 8 years ago and I think that Adobe has probably abandoned its development. In the software industry, 8 years is a long time to go without a new version.

I've been using it since it was shareware produced by Nick Bradbury - he and his program were bought by Allaire, which was bought by Macromedia, which was bought by Adobe, which will be bought by... who knows? I find that blogs and discussion groups devoted to Web design on the Mac all have individuals who have been using Homesite as long as I have and who bewail the fact that nothing for the Mac is anything like as good. I can testify to this - I've tried out just about every freeware, shareware and priced html editor for the Mac and not one of them is anywhere near as good.

Why Homesite hasn't been ported to the Mac is a mystery - perhaps Bradbury's latest development, TopStyle, which is an xhtml, html and css editor, which looks very much like Homesite, will make the transition.