Attention Mac users: A cry for help

[Rocketman248]

Hey guys,

I've gone and done it now. I made the big switch and ordered an Apple iBook. I've been wanting a Mac for several years now. Now, i'm finally getting one.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for me. I won't be using it for rocketry. I'm going to be living in Japan for three years so all my rocktry activities are kind of on hold. I'll be using it for music and photography. So if anyone has any advice for a first timer, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Justin Horne]

Click desktop.
Click the help dropdown menu.
Click Mac Help
Click "New to Mac OS X?"
Click "For Windows Switchers."

Enjoy! You won't regret it!

 

[thomasrau]

Fear not, MACs are easy to use, after all if apple has to post this on their website then they have to make the OS as user friendly as possible.

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86816

Lets not forget my favorite spoof ad

https://apple.whipnet.net/

 

[Jase]

You'll like it Rocketman!

I've been using a powerbook for work for the last year and it's gonna kill me when I have to turn it in when I move departments in December.

For any tech help with it, this site is the best that I have found: www.macosxhints.com.

 

[Adam Selene]

Buy a copy of Mac OSX The Missing Manual, by david pogue. pricy but worth it!

 

[rocketkid88]

I've had an iMac from my school for three years now, i'm going to hate having to give it up.
It started out with OS9 on it, and then got upgraded to OSX.... osx is sweet and is real easy to use, IMHO. Just fool around with it, and you'll catch on quick.
iTunes rocks... learn how to use it right away

 

[Chuck Rudy]

I'm gonna assume the newest OSX will still make the crossover into Mac Classic, which was O9......so go here https://www.physics.hmc.edu/GL/compuroc/croc_article.html and you can fly while you're in Japan. While you're there email the author and give him a push (incentive) to finish up with the OSX CompuRoc....

The Mac is an awesome machine, if you have to use peecee programs look on the Apple site for VirtualPC (it was owned by Connectix, but sadly MS has taken it over :-( )......it will run peecee programs and the Mac is of course a UNIX box.

So it's the best of all three worlds. If you do video dont' forget to check out iMovie......it's a ton of fun. Good Luck!!

Chuck

 

[Rocketman248]

One more question. What's the best way to get all my music and pictures from the Dell to the Mac? Can I use an external hard drive?

 

[Chuck Rudy]

If you can burn them to a CD, then the Mac should accept the files. After they are on CD put the CD into the Mac and......

Either -------If they are all disorganized create a new folder. To do that just click anywhere on the desktop, go to "File" "Make folder" and a new folder will appear on the desktop. Name it whatever you'd like. (IF they are one folder on your CD drag the entire folder onto the Mac desktop skip and move 2 paragraphs below)

Open the CD, inside the CD window take your mouse and starting in an upper corner click your mouse and hold and keep it held to the bottom and opposite side of the window. All files should be darkened. You can let go, then find a comfortable spot to grab one file (they will all follow) and drag it to your new folder on the hard drive and when the new folder turns black let go of the mouse button. If you click and hold on a Mac mouse it's like using the second button on a peecee mouse........there are no buttons on a Mac mouse, thankfully. Actually there's not one button on a Mac mouse.

Then--------Double click the folder, double click your selections and it should crank up iTunes and start playing the file with the iTunes window open and the info on your song in the iTunes library window. IF NOT then just click on the file once to turn it black, Go to "file" "get info" and a box will open. That box has all the info for your files, remember it's there.

Then find "open with" and there will be a selection box for the audio file, iTunes should be one of the options. Then click "change all" just u nderneath the box and every similar file will be changed.

When you're in iTuned don't forget to turn on visuals, it's too cool.

 

[Chuck Rudy]

If you have any problems with doing what's listed on my last post feel free to email. Some things to thing about.



MS Office is a necessary item, since they fired all the peecee engineers and have Mac engineers writing the software it actually works the way it's supposed to. Word and Excel are a necessity.

IE is also written by Mac engineers, it's almost bulletproof. But work will decline as Apple has introduced Safari. If you have a seperate email program try to buddy up to Safari, as Apple will integrate it into several other pieces of software.

Virtual PC is now done by Microsoft, which may explain some folks having a few more problems with it......I don't know how they are writing this but the Mac engineers should be involved to keep the pee cee engineers honest, but I don't know who is writing this program.

Mac is a large part of the Japanese market so any problems, barring fonts and language, should be no problem.

There is a shareware program called GraphicConverter X by Lemke software, it's well worth the $35......and while it will work without purchase, all the hidden stuff comes alive when you pay the fee. If you do any photo retouching etc, it's a necessity and transforms even the most cryptic photo formats, like Atari ST .pic files from eons ago.

iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes are fabulous freebies on the Mac.......only my pro SLR is not recognized on iPhoto because of it's special format.....all others, just plug and play. The built in DVD burner eliminates the Frankenstein effect on your desk and works rather well, and if you have Toast, you can save a lot of space on the hard drive after you've finished that masterpiece.

Enjoy, and if you have any problems, drop me a note.

 

[graylensman]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Macintosh!

All the advice you've been given here has been great. One point - I think GraphicConverter is now a freebee with your new Mac - at least it is on my G5 runnning Panther. Check in your Applications folder and see.

Safari's great, but not every website plays nice with it; my section's YahooGroup doesn't like it when I try to upload photos with Safari, but works just fine with Internet Exploder.

Oh- and if you've got GarageBand, you might as well expect to have no life for at least two weeks - it's THAT fun!

 

[Rocketman248]

Thanks for the responses. However, I have over 30 gigs of music and pictures. That's a lot of CDs.

 

[Chuck Rudy]

Crossover cable.

 

[Adam Selene]

Originally posted by Rocketman248
One more question. What's the best way to get all my music and pictures from the Dell to the Mac? Can I use an external hard drive?

if you already have an external hard drive with the dell you can just plug it into the MAC and it will be able to read it. you could also put the internal drive from the dell into an external case and use it with the mac that way.

 

[Adam Selene]

Originally posted by Chuck Rudy
If you have any problems with doing what's listed on my last post feel free to email. Some things to thing about.



MS Office is a necessary item, since they fired all the peecee engineers and have Mac engineers writing the software it actually works the way it's supposed to. Word and Excel are a necessity.

no they're not.
APPLEWORKS works just fine, reads MS files and i believe it comes with your iBook. if not it's pretty cheap.

 

[Chuck Rudy]

Originally posted by Adam Selene
no they're not.
APPLEWORKS works just fine, reads MS files and i believe it comes with your iBook. if not it's pretty cheap.

Unless Apple has done something Appleworks did not allow for two way transfer. It's one thing to read, quite another to read/write and another to export for reports etc. Appleworks is fine in the Apple community, but, in the rest of the world you must be compatible. Since I have not messed with Appleworks since OS9 I could be a bit behind on it's capabilities.

 

[Adam Selene]

Appleworks can output MS filetypes if you need to. but not everyone needs to. i never do. if you're sending a file to someone to read PDF is the way to go and you can make a PDF of any file by clicking print and then clicking save as PDF.

Granted, some people really do need M$ office, but why spend hundreds of dollars for it if you can use Appleworks?

 

[Justin Horne]

I don't like Appleworks too much.. I came with mine, but I just ended up buying the student version of office.. Much better, imo.

 

[graylensman]

keep in mind what you need to do. If all you're doing is working on your Great American Novel, then TextEdit may be all you need. And that's FREE.

 

[Jase]

You can also check out www.openoffice.org.

It's open source software and free to download. I've heard many, many good things about it.