January 19 2018, 13:51

I returned to Mac after working for several years on various PC laptops. It’s a strange feeling—a mix of admiration and irritation. Clearly, the shortcuts are different. I really miss FAR (I even managed to run it on Mac under Wine, but it’s still slow there).

There’s one difficulty I’m struggling with and see no solution to. It is quite frustrating. I have two large external monitors in front of me, connected to a MacBook Pro. First of all, the laptop’s screen itself isn’t needed when there are external monitors, but you can’t turn it off! It lies a meter to my right, and if something pops up there, I usually don’t see it at all. If I close the lid, everything goes to sleep.

Secondly, when you have a multi-desktop mode (i.e., you can switch with Ctrl-left and Ctrl-right between Skype, mail, and the browser), if I’m on the desktop with Skype on one screen and one of the browser windows on the native MacBook screen, clicking on the browser in the taskbar does nothing – Skype remains, and the browser opens on this MacBook screen. If it weren’t open there, then I would see the window on the big screen.

Now, the twist. I need another window which is currently hidden on the neighboring desktop on the large monitor. But it shows me a window on the small screen of the MacBook. What do I do to switch between windows of the same application? I press Ctrl-`. This command only works for windows on the same monitor. That is, if there are two windows open in the browser on monitor 1 and one on monitor 2, you can’t switch to the second with pressing—it’s only possible to activate the windows from the first with the mouse. Thus, these windows from the first are not visible, as they are on desktop #1, whereas I am now on desktop #2 with Skype. Basically, the only option is to press long on the browser icon and then choose the right window there. You can’t do it from the keyboard. They really overdid it 😦

And I also terribly miss Visio. As well as a file manager with search capabilities within folders and subfolders for files containing a specific substring and quick viewing of the needed file.