Okay, no, I lied.

But it appears, after Steve Jobs keynote yesterday (or last night Australian time), that Mac OS X Lion is going to be very iPad-esque.

From the “sneak peak” posted on Apple’s website (here - www.apple.com/macosx/lion/), all I can say is wow!

I think this is really exciting. I’ve been a Mac-supporter for about a year and a half now, and rave to anyone I can about the increase in productivity (or atleast, the perception of) of using a Mac. Apple have got one thing down pat, simple interface and navigation design. And it’s one hell of a winner.

The new features, atleast from the sneak peak and the keynote, include:

• App Store, for Mac – bringing the success of the iDevice App Store to the Mac itself, could be interesting, and I wonder how many $1.99 apps I’ll waste my money on, like with my iPhone 4…
• Launchpad – attempting to bring the home screen interface from iPhone and iPad to the Mac, this could be interesting. I like how you are able to organise apps in folders etc also, just like the iPhone…
• Full screen apps – I don’t quite understand the need for this one on a Mac, except for their opinion that it’s less distracting, true that.
• Mission Control – I like it, similar to Windows 7 (I think even Vista had similar functionality?). Makes it easier switching between programs, especially if you have heaps open, ALT+TAB (or Command for the Mac users) can be a bit annoying when you have alot open.
• Facetime – alot of people (read: iPhone haters) have alot to say about how stupid it is to have video calling on an iPhone, that only works with, well, the iPhone… And only whilst connected to a wireless network. Perhaps some more attention to the iPhone side of things might help here, as well as Windows clients for Facetime. Standards based video calling built in to the iPhone would also be nice, so atleast you could have inferior quality video calling with your inferior friends (who are only inferior because they don’t use an iPhone, of course)

One thing I’d really be interested in seeing, is the ability to run iPad and iPhone apps natively in OS X… Having a desktop version of the Facebook application, for instance, could reduce the amount of time I actually sit on Facebook. Angry Birds, however, could be dangerous as a desktop app…

Well, recently I started using a Logitech bluetooth mouse, and the problem popped up again. This time, it wasn’t so easy to fix by just installing Logitech’s software.

So the answer is this – thanks to osxdaily.com/2010/06/02/kill-os-x-mouse-acceleration-from-the-command-line/

In your terminal:
macpro:~ user$ curl -O ktwit.net/code/killmouseaccel
macpro:~ user$ chmod +x killmouseaccel
macpro:~ user$ ./killmouseaccel mouse

This turned out to be quite entertaining.

Pay close attention to the small, tiny, colored text on the left hand side, and you will see there’s a Mac Screensaver you can download, which replicates the web page display as a screensaver. Install and set it, and wait for your screensaver to pop up… This could be quite anti-productive, whilst I sit here waiting for the screensaver timeout to pop up my screensaver to save me from boredom!!

Author: Amy Hoy & Thomas Fuchs
Website: twistori.com
(Because I’m Awesome) Stars: 4.5/5

Cue, gfxCardStatus. I stumbled across this app yesterday which promises to let me change the GPU “on the fly”, without logging off!

Installed the app, and it shows an icon in the “system tray” (or whatever you call it in Mac land). When you click the icon, you have the menu option “switch GPUs”. After a few seconds, and the rotatey rainbow ball thingo, it allegedly changes the GPU.

In my case, I haven’t been able to verify this actually works. However, it does offer a menu option to show which GPU is currently in use, and the system tray icon will also change from an “n” to an “i” and vice versa, depending which GPU you are using.

I read on Cody’s blog that this was originally developed for newer MacBook Pro’s with the nVidia GT330 GPU, and it works perfectly in that realm. I own the older, late 2008 MacBook Pro with the nVidia GeForce 9600M GT and 9400M GPU’s.

Author: Cody Krieger
Website: codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/
(Because I’m awesome) Stars: 3.5/5 – only because it doesn’t seem to work on my older MacBook Pro

EDIT: Waiiiiittt. It’s working now! 4.5 stars

Take for example, how to boot up a CDROM or USB drive…

Turns out, a guy named Dan Rodney has compiled a list of frequently used keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, alot of which I seemed to figure out on my own, and then the rest..

Anyways, linky-dink  here – www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html

Still trying to find a way to send Page Up / Page Down / Home / End using VIM over SSH in Terminal… Instead, fn+Up Arrow (aka page up) scrolls the terminal window, and fn+Left Arrow (or maybe it’s right) mangles stuff up, instead of shooting to Home / End. Maybe Putty or something similar is the answer to this…

Except for this one little problem… I love the MacBook’s trackpad, I really do, it’s bloody amazing… But occassionally I have the urge to use a REAL mouse (such as those epic moments where I want to run CounterStrike virtually using VMWare Fusion)…

Here’s the kicker. I love Microsoft mice. Therein lies a rather odd combination of hardware, a MacBook with a Microsoft mouse… One would think, that it’s just a regular mouse, and you can plug it in and away you go. Sure. You can do that… But… Not without a world of pain. Seriously, I totally turned off the idea of plugging in a mouse and using it, when I realised that I have to literally push the mouse from one side of the dinner table to the other, just to move across half the screen!!! The response to moving the mouse and what happens on screen is just ridiculous!!!

Until now… So I got fed up with it and decided to Google the issue. Low and behold, I’m not the only one. Turns out it’s a problem with Microsoft mice, and it can be fixed.

So I went off to Microsoft’s website, and headed to the mouse and keyboard section, and proceeded to download IntelliPoint for MacOSX 10.4-10.6 (www.microsoft.com/hardware/download/download.aspx?category=MK&type=Mouse&sku=BX4-00003). Installation was simple, just your normal next next next next… The restart.

After restarting, it didn’t seem to do anything. So I headed to System Preferences and noticed the Microsoft Mouse icon at the bottom. Under the Pointer Options tab, I ticked “IntelliPoint pointer speed” and wound it allllll the way up. Low and behold, my mouse is working like a REAL mouse again. Thank you Microsoft, I guess…