Four Months on a Mac after 30 Years on a PC

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After nearly thirty years on a PC, my first computers being a TRS-80 and a Coleco Adam, I made the switch to a Mac a few months ago.

Since I travel a lot, I bought a 13" MacBook. While I wish I had opted for something a bit larger, that's not the main problem that I'm having. Actually, I'm having a couple of problems.

Right click

In trying to find a workable equivalent to a right-click on a PC, for such things as bringing a new browser window up in another tab, the MacBook is aggravating, if not impossible to work with.

I would gather that this is done by using two finger on the mousepad, since that seems to work about 50% of the time, but at least half the time, it will activate whater the cursor is on, whether it be a program or a hyperlink, forcing me to use the back arrow to go back to the original page and try it again, sometimes five or six times before I can get it to do what I want. Maybe there's a trick to that but, if so, I haven't figured it out yet.

Rather than seeking ways to get the Mac to act like a PC, I'd rather figure out how to do things the Mac way, but thus far this one has alluded me.

Since my job involves Internet directories, this is something that I need to do often and it's more than aggravating when multiple tries to get a hyperlink to open in a new tab are unsuccessful, so when I really want to get something done, more and more often, I am reverting to my PC.

I did finally buy a mouse for my MacBook. In doing so, I bought the Apple mouse, although I understand that pretty much any mouse is supposed to work on a MacBook. However, all of the mouse buttons do the same thing, activating whatever it is that my cursor is on, which I could do just as easily with the mouse pad. I'm sure there's a way to control what the mouse buttons do on the mouse but I'd really rather learn how to do such things using the mousepad.

Sometimes when I use two fingers on the mousepad, it acts like a right-click on a PC, but at least half the time it acts as if I had asked it to activate whatever my cursor is on, and I haven't been able to detect anything different that I'm doing with my fingers in order to bring on one or the other response. Rather, it seems to be more like flipping a coin.

Locking up

One of the chief reasons why I have wanted to change to a Mac for years now is that I have heard how much more reliable they are, but mine locks up more often than my PC does.

By locking up, I mean even in doing simple things like moving from one web page to another in Safari, it will sometimes refuse to do so. It's not locked up in the sense that nothing is working. When I click on a hyperlink or enter a URL into the navigation bar, the little whirligig thing will move around for awhile, then stop, without navigating to the page, or giving me an error.

My PC, sitting next to it, will navigate to the same page without trouble, so it's not a site or server problem; and when I try to go to a different page instead, the same thing will happen. When it does this, when I click the red x-button, the window won't close; however, I can click on the "Safari" menu item and close it that way.

I see this more often in Safari, I think, only because that's the browser that I use most often, but I have had this occur in Opera and Firefox as well, so I don't think it's a browser problem.

Problem after closing my MacBook up for the night

Rather than shutting my computer off when I go to bed, I prefer to simply close the cover and have everything that I had been working on the night before waiting for me in the morning.

I use an extra monitor with my MacBook so that I can have a second project loaded on the second monitor and move between the two. This works fine while I'm working, but recently whenever I close my MacBook for the night, it has been moving everything - the navigation icons and whatever I had been working on in the MacBook's monitor - over to the the second monitor.

It didn't used to do that. It just started doing that a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know what I might have done to get it to do that, or how I might be able to get it to stop.

When I open the cover on my MacBook in the morning, everything is on the second monitor and my MacBook screen is black, forcing me to reboot the MacBook in order to restore some sanity to it, which defeats the purpose of not simply shutting the MacBook off every night to begin with.

Quite likely, these are problems that have more to do with my not knowing how to use a Mac, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. The locking up part concerns me because it wastes a lot of my time, and one of the advantages of using a Mac over a PC has traditionally been to avoid such problems. As it is though, it seems that my MacBook gets tired of loading web pages after about eight hours or so and refuses to do so until I reboot, or at least close out the browser.
 
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todd51

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I feel your pain with the right-click, but trust me, you'll get used to it. I have a MBP and the two fingers on the trackpad works all the time for me. I'm not sure why it doesn't work that much for you, are your fingers two close together? I know when I try it there is usually around a half-inch of space between my two fingers, and the MBP recognizes it. I bought a small USB Logitech mouse for when I have a desk available, that way I have an acutal right-click button. I know the Apple mouse has a right click, but I'm not a fan of it.

Not sure what to say about the locking up except short of running a program called Onyx (google it). It's a great tool for clearing out all caches and it automatically will perform the monthly, weekly, and daily maintenance scripts that run in the middle of the night. Which won't happen if you put your MB to sleep every evening. After running Onyx, repari the permissions through Disk Utility. Hopefully these steps will help resolve the minor freezes and glitches your having.

I also have another monitor hooked up to my MBP, but I never close the lid on it. I assume the MB will respond to that as you only wanting to use one monitor, so it will move everything over to the external monitor? I usually just click on the little Apple logo in the upper-left corner and choose Sleep. That or I let it go to sleep natrually after a set period of time.
 
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I'm going to skip your right-click issues. Suffice to say that command-clicking a link will open it in a new tab. As far as the trackpad goes, practice makes perfect, no matter what kind of laptop you have.

As for your browser isssues...it's tough to tell what exactly the cause is. It could be a JavaScript issue on the pages you're using, it could be a plugin issue on the pages you're using, it could be that you have too little memory for all the things that you're trying to do. Unless you can isolate the circumstances better, we can only guess.

As far as your sleep issue, what's happening is:
1. You have your laptop in dual-display mode (internal and external)
2. You close the laptop while leaving it connected to the external display, and it goes to sleep
3. Something wakes the laptop up while it's closed and connected to the external display.
4. The laptop realizes that the external display is the only one that's visible, and treats the external one as its only display.

You can fix this by either finding out what's waking the laptop up while it's closed (Cat?) or by leaving it open while you put it to sleep (so that it'll still have both displays available when whatever-it-is wakes it.)
 
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What you're probably experiencing as far as the 'right click' issue (or two finger trackpad click) is dependent on where your mouse cursor is at and what's under it. If I 'right click' whether that be with my external mighty moues (making sure I have the index finger off the right side) or two-finger 'right click' and the cursor is sitting on top of a bit of text or a hyperlink, it'll want to highlight that text and bring up a menu that is text related. If I want to 'right click' or two-finger the trackpad to get the context menu that has to do with safari doing things like reload the page or save it etc. I need to put the mouse over something in the page that has no text or a link. I.e. a blank area of the page. Same with other apps and in Finder.
 
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It's control-click, not command-click for right click, right?
 
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On the sleep issue: You could always, instead of closing the MacBook's lid, select "Sleep" from the Apple menu. Even if the "cat" did mess with it, it'd still go back to sleep eventually and not just go to the external monitor.
 
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It's control-click, not command-click for right click, right?

No, it's command click to open a link in a new tab. Control click will emulate a right click mouse press - which would bypass the worry about two finger tapping. Command click is easier for me I know to click a link and it opens in a new tab. Only site I've had trouble with command click has been msns home page where it seems to somehow break command-click and you have to right click to get the menu to force a link to a new tab.
 
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If you want to open a link in a new tab just press command T and then drag the link onto the tab, that works for me.
 
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kfander, regarding right-clicking, I think it could be a couple of things.

1) You might need to tap your two fingers on the trackpad in a different way. I notice that for some things, it works best if I tap hard and quick, other times it works better if I actually press my fingers firmly.

2) Because of your other issue, I'd say it's possible that you have a defective machine, or you need to do a clean reinstall or check your memory or verify the disks or something because it shouldn't be locking up you like that. I've had my MBP for over a year now and it's still quick as lightening.

If you do use a Mighty Mouse, in System Preferences, go into your Keyboard and Mouse settings, where you can assign the buttons to do what you want.

Keep in mind that the Mighty Mouse isn't for everyone. While I've had no real problem adjusting to it, I know a lot of people hate it and think it's a terrible mouse. So you might have better luck with a different kind of mouse.

As for the monitor/sleep issue, I think Technologist was right. If you're using a Bluetooth mouse or keyboard, it might be sending stray signals now and then which wake up the computer, which puts everything onto the external monitor, which is the only available one when your MBP is closed.

This happens to me in the night when my cat jumps onto my desk on his way to his favorite window. But it could also happen if the mouse is moved just so, or like I said, it might just be farting out a signal that wakes up the computer.

If this is the case, you could turn the mouse off since mice seem to be more sensitive and susceptible to this than keyboards. Of you could move any Bluetooth devices (it could be any device nearby) away from the computer or something.

But first I'd see about finding out what's wrong with your computer because it definitely should not be that slow. Hopefully you can get it to a Genius bar.
 
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Thanks everyone. That was quick, and between all of you, I think you've solved the sleep and the right-click problem. I'm not sure about the locking up problem since I haven't downloaded Onyx yet but I will try it. I have four cats so it's quite likely that one of them feels the need to wake my MacBook up during the night. I hadn't thought of that because it never happened during the first couple of months that I had it but it's been about that long since I've had the mouse so I suppose it's only natural for a cat to play with a mouse. I will try putting it to sleep before closing the cover and shutting the mouse off - I don't use it much anyhow. Thanks very much.
 
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You don't need Onyx to verify and repair your disks if you want to try doing that for now. Just open Disk Utility from your Utilities apps folder, select your hard drive in the pane and click "verify" and "repair" if needed.
 
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Right click:

What about a Logitech (or similar) USB Mouse?
 
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Problem mouse

I too had problems with the Apple mouse - and switched to my old Logitech wireless mouse after a day of wrestling with the Apple product. It's curious that Apple, which produces such a great computer can't seem to get its act together with peripherals. The mouse is a disaster - looks very pretty, but useless. One of the members says that some people have difficulty in getting accustomed to it - but why should anyone need to get accustomed to a standard bit of hardware? A mouse ought to be a mouse for heaven's sake. Also, if you have a desktop machine the new keyboard is basically a laptop keyboard freed from the laptop - a number of keys are missing and ergonomically the device is a nightmare. Finally, the DVD drive has no eject button and that has caused me problems in only three months of ownership.

Wonderful machine, crap peripherals - when is Apple going to sack its design team and find people who know about function?
 

cwa107


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Wonderful machine, crap peripherals - when is Apple going to sack its design team and find people who know about function?

LOL... Welcome to the world of Apple, where design always supersedes functionality.
 
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MacInWin

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I too had problems with the Apple mouse - and switched to my old Logitech wireless mouse after a day of wrestling with the Apple product. It's curious that Apple, which produces such a great computer can't seem to get its act together with peripherals. The mouse is a disaster - looks very pretty, but useless. One of the members says that some people have difficulty in getting accustomed to it - but why should anyone need to get accustomed to a standard bit of hardware? A mouse ought to be a mouse for heaven's sake. Also, if you have a desktop machine the new keyboard is basically a laptop keyboard freed from the laptop - a number of keys are missing and ergonomically the device is a nightmare. Finally, the DVD drive has no eject button and that has caused me problems in only three months of ownership.

Wonderful machine, crap peripherals - when is Apple going to sack its design team and find people who know about function?

You do know about mouse settings in System Preferences, right? ;D I use the Apple USB mouse with my iMac and have it set for right click to act as "secondary button," which is exactly what a two-button mouse would do. So the mouse works just fine for right click when I need it. You can also control what all the other aspects of the mouse do when activated.
 
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I love the Mighty Mouse. For me, it works great all the time. The only thing you have to remember when using it is to lift your index finger off it when you want to do the secondary click. Otherwise you'll just get a secondary click. Do this and it will be a great mouse.
 
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When i finish at night - MBP running 20" Monitor - i hit Cmmnd Opt Eject to put it to sleep at once and in the morning can continue where i left off. Mighty mouse has 3 Proximity Sensors and one switch, so it senses where your finger is to decide which click you want, hence those getting unexpected results with 2 fingers resting on the case.
 
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I've had no problems with my Mighty Mouse. Just because it takes some getting used to doesn't mean it's poorly designed. It takes some time getting used to driving stick if you've only ever driven cars with automatic transmission... doesn't necessarily mean the car with standard transmission is poorly designed.

An iPhone takes some getting used to if you've only ever used traditional cell phones with buttons. Why can't a phone be a phone for heaven's sake?

I agree with you about the keyboard though. I got the previous version of the wireless pro keyboard, which has real keys set in tiers, a numeric pad and an eject button.
 

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