Comment by roelbondoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roelbondoc | Hacker News Reader

I'm a ruby/php developer who works on a Macbook Pro 9 hours a day and I've learned to work w/o a mouse. Took a while to get used to, but now I keep my mouse in my desk drawer and only pull it out if someone borrows my computer.

First it starts with the setup. At work I have an external monitor and keyboard. I keep my MBP to the right so I can use the touch pad here and there when I can't use the keyboard for certain things.

Here are some tips/programs/plugins I use:

1) Vim (not macvim) and screen - This dynamic duo is the greatest invention. I recommend it to anyone who has the time to learn. Once you do, you'll never go back.

2) Vimperator - Firefox plugin - This one has changed my browsing experience for the better. Once you learn all the commands you'll be flying through pages.

3) Remap your CAPSLOCK key to ESC - Once you start using vim and vimperator, the esc key becomes more useful. I remapped my CASPLOCK key to ESC so its quicker to reach. I used the program called PCKeyboardHack.

4) Learn your keyboard shortcuts.

6) Try to replace programs you use often with console versions. For example I dont use any gui programs to access databases. Diffs/text search/file searches are all done through command line.

7) Spotlight - I don't use Dock, sometimes I forget its even there. I would disable it if I could.

8) pbcopy - command line program that you can use to copy to your gui clipboard. Try piping contents of a file to it. Becomes very handy.

Most of my day I spend using Vimperator and Terminal. So it's easier for me to not have to use a mouse.

For vim and many other old programs ctrl+[ is equal to escape. So what I've done is map caps to control which lets me easily hit things like ctrl+c, ctrl+u or when needed escape. Mac also comes with a program that can map caps->ctrl in the keyboard section of system preferences.

> Spotlight - I don't use Dock, sometimes I forget its even there. I would disable it if I could.

While my replacement isn't spotlight (I just use Proxi with a bunch of switch-directly-to-application-X hotkeys), I don't use the Dock either and would disable it if I could do so easily, without losing Dashboard, Spaces, and everything else that runs as part of the Dock process. (Although I actually still use command-M and Witch to minimize and unminimize windows to & from the Dock via the keyboard.)

In Tiger there was a nice hidden preference that allowed you to put it at the top of the screen, under the menu bar, where it would only come out if you really wanted it to (because the mouseover activation row was only one pixel tall and not at the top edge of the screen but rather the bottom edge of the menu bar), and was thus effectively pretty much disabled. Sadly, that option disappeared in Leopard. The best alternative I've found so far is to make the Dock really really tiny -- you can make it smaller than the System Preferences GUI will let you via 'defaults':

  # defaults write com.apple.Dock tilesize -int 1

7) +1 Spotlight or Quicksilver if you prefer. There is also Alfred http://www.alfredapp.com/

If you listen to music while working, I also find Coversutra http://www.sophiestication.com/coversutra/ or Bowtie http://bowtieapp.com/ very useful.

There's also LaunchBar. http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

+1 for Launchbar.

After going back and forth between Quicksilver and Launchbar for a while, I eventually settled on Launchbar because I found it to be a bit faster. I think Quicksilver is more powerful, but I never really used the additional capabilities so it ended up being a pretty easy choice for me.

Even after Spotlight was added to OS X, I stuck with Launchbar because it takes a few less keystrokes for many tasks and it has search templates (so searching Google, a dictionary, or a thesaurus requires only a few keystrokes). Quicksilver can also do something similar, I'm not sure about the other options.

Google has a new launcher that I think is developed by the dude who made quicksilver (who now works at google afaik)

http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/

I'd like to add that you can control the Dock with the keyboard as well. You need to enable it in System Preferences, and by default the keycomby is really stupid, but I mapped it to ctrl+cmd+space. You can even navigate stacks with it. For me works better than Spotlight.

Also, you probably wouldn't use the Dashboard, which _can_ be disabled.

I'm not trying to besnarky, but why even use a MAC. It seems like Linux is a better fit and less expensive. MAC is really about the UI, and if you don't take advantage of that you are just left with an almost Unix environment.

I appreciate that you're trying not to be snarky, but that's a vast oversimplification of the differences between Mac and Linux.

Can you explain why?

I'd rather not. It's off-topic and a dead horse if there ever was one.

To me it's really nice UI + convenience/simplicity of use + all the command line goodness. I use it for a couple of reasons:

- simplicity and reliability (I'm on mac since 2006) - it just works, for everything I do actually

- an ecosystem of tools that are decently priced and very simple and reliable (such as 1password, knox, deskshade...)

- interop with our (i)phones

- the UI is really pleasant to my eye (fonts)

- I'm still in love with TextMate after all those years (Allan if you read this, take your time)

But then everyone is free to use what they like, no need for the neighbours to use the very same platform :)

Not to pile on, but It's "Mac", short for Macintosh. MAC is, as far as I can think, only for Media Access Control (as in MAC address).

That said, my first thought for the low barrier to no-mouse would be Linux as well, but as others have said there is more to OSX than just a pretty face.

yeah, sorry. entered from my "auto-correcting" android phone. too lazy to fix.

Considering the time most of us spend on a computer, the cost differences between a Mac and a PC are negligible over the lifetime of the purchase, people should use what they prefer and what they're most productive with.

A $300 to $500 difference over two or three years of primary usage is probably a difference of pennies per hour of usage, and that's assuming that you won't waste more time maintaining a Windows or Linux install and that you're equally productive on each OS, which generally isn't the case.

A common misconception about the OSX UI is that its main virtue is visual. For me, an equally-prominent virtue is the far-superior ability to control it using the keyboard and a universal scripting framework (applescript/automator). No linux WM that I know of has such a unified UI paradigm.

I think "MAC" is a kind of makeup: http://www.maccosmetics.com/

The computer is capitalized "Mac": http://www.apple.com/mac/

try tmux instead of screen. Supports vertical splitting. tmux is in macports.

The latest version of screen also supports vertical splitting.

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