Mac N00B
- Thread starter T-Wash
- Start date
ontwosticks
Member
congrats on making the switch! so a few tips about macs are in order i'm gonna try and dig deep for some good ones considering my parents just switched and i've been helping them out all week.
1. if you want to view a document, photo, video, or anything before you take the time open it, select it then press spacebar. It'll open a quickview of document and you can scroll through its pages and stuff.
2. SET UP TIME MACHINE! While macs have a better track record than pc's for longevity, my mac's hard drive died once before i had set up time machine and I lost a bunch of work, movies, music. To set up make sure you get a big enough external hard drive to cover your whole hard drive a couple times so you'll have backups from way back.
3. Get a couple free programs. Flip4mac will make it so you can view .wmv files on your mac in safari or firefox. Get a program called stuffitexpander. It will take all those pesky .zip and .rar file and open them safely for you.
4. If you use torrents to download (do it, don't use kazaa or the like), download the client called transmission. it's mac specific and offers tons of customization options.
5. If you want to make your life easy incase your hard drive does die. Download a program called carbon copy cloner. it makes archive able backups that you can boot from to get all your stuff back at once (time machine can't do this) but you have to have fire wire hard drive.
6. If you use itunes a lot. theres a program called youcontrol tunes that puts iTunes controls in your top bar, it's really convenient.
7. If you have friends with macs, file sharing and screen sharing are pretty awesome. Although I think you have to be on the same network to scree share, if you know your friends ip adress you can file share by typing vnf:// then their ip number in the searbar in safari.
8. explore every aspect of the preferences to find out all the customization options.
9. Know that it is impossible to open .exe files while using mac osx.
10. If you're going to download movies online, you're going to need a couple programs to get the files to work properly in quicktime. You'll need a program called perian. and a divx player/converter.
11. Control click does the same as a left click on a normal mouse. yes macs have a left click. Also, in this department, you can set it up to use two fingers on the mouse pad to scroll so when you have one finger your mouse moves and when you put down two fingers and move up and down or side to side it will scroll.
12. iChat is really cool now, you can use wierd backgounds and video chat with multiple people at once. Assuming they all have macs.
13. This is useless but fun. there is a program called mac saber that uses the motion sensor in your laptop to make lightsaber noises.
Ok well thats all i could come up with. To help a brother out heres links to most of the programs mentioned.
http://www.flip4mac.com/download.htm
stuffit expader
http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffitexpander/index.html
carbon copy
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
youcontrol tunes
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
perian
http://perian.org
divx
http://www.divx.com
Transmission
http://www.transmissionbt.com/download.php
Macsaber
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21732
hope this helps a lot, good luck with your new mac. pm me if you need any help with stuff.
1. if you want to view a document, photo, video, or anything before you take the time open it, select it then press spacebar. It'll open a quickview of document and you can scroll through its pages and stuff.
2. SET UP TIME MACHINE! While macs have a better track record than pc's for longevity, my mac's hard drive died once before i had set up time machine and I lost a bunch of work, movies, music. To set up make sure you get a big enough external hard drive to cover your whole hard drive a couple times so you'll have backups from way back.
3. Get a couple free programs. Flip4mac will make it so you can view .wmv files on your mac in safari or firefox. Get a program called stuffitexpander. It will take all those pesky .zip and .rar file and open them safely for you.
4. If you use torrents to download (do it, don't use kazaa or the like), download the client called transmission. it's mac specific and offers tons of customization options.
5. If you want to make your life easy incase your hard drive does die. Download a program called carbon copy cloner. it makes archive able backups that you can boot from to get all your stuff back at once (time machine can't do this) but you have to have fire wire hard drive.
6. If you use itunes a lot. theres a program called youcontrol tunes that puts iTunes controls in your top bar, it's really convenient.
7. If you have friends with macs, file sharing and screen sharing are pretty awesome. Although I think you have to be on the same network to scree share, if you know your friends ip adress you can file share by typing vnf:// then their ip number in the searbar in safari.
8. explore every aspect of the preferences to find out all the customization options.
9. Know that it is impossible to open .exe files while using mac osx.
10. If you're going to download movies online, you're going to need a couple programs to get the files to work properly in quicktime. You'll need a program called perian. and a divx player/converter.
11. Control click does the same as a left click on a normal mouse. yes macs have a left click. Also, in this department, you can set it up to use two fingers on the mouse pad to scroll so when you have one finger your mouse moves and when you put down two fingers and move up and down or side to side it will scroll.
12. iChat is really cool now, you can use wierd backgounds and video chat with multiple people at once. Assuming they all have macs.
13. This is useless but fun. there is a program called mac saber that uses the motion sensor in your laptop to make lightsaber noises.
Ok well thats all i could come up with. To help a brother out heres links to most of the programs mentioned.
http://www.flip4mac.com/download.htm
stuffit expader
http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffitexpander/index.html
carbon copy
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
youcontrol tunes
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
perian
http://perian.org
divx
http://www.divx.com
Transmission
http://www.transmissionbt.com/download.php
Macsaber
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21732
hope this helps a lot, good luck with your new mac. pm me if you need any help with stuff.
T-Wash
Active member
^ Thanks for that man. It's gonna take me awhile to get through all of that. Just a quick retarded question. How do I remove some of the icons from the bottom toolbar. Also I'm using Firefox and I know if you use the command button and then click on a link it will open a new tab but is there any other way just to open a blank tab? Also In Firefox how do I get to the settings to change my preferences?
ontwosticks
Member
all your preferences will be under the name in top left hand corner. or push apple key then comma and it will open the preferences. to get a new tab you just push apple key then T. to remove icons from the bar either just drag them off or control click and then click remove from dock.
HiroProtagonist
Member
Download VLC.
It can do pretty much anything with video and audio.
Some examples: It can re-encode weird audio formats to play on your ipod (video too?). If your soundtrack is off by a little bit you can add delay... And i havent found a movie that it wont play.
It can do pretty much anything with video and audio.
Some examples: It can re-encode weird audio formats to play on your ipod (video too?). If your soundtrack is off by a little bit you can add delay... And i havent found a movie that it wont play.
Love_Wins.
Active member
It only closes the current window though, (W=window)...apple+Q will quit the application.
Xave
Active member
another useful command-letter thing is command-H
it hides the application youre using, making it invisible so you can access another one, or your desktop. to switch between apps, just press command-tab and hold command, so you can browse between your app icons by pressing tab again.
If you want to come back to the hidden app, just command-tab until you're on it, and it will reappear. Useful if you dont want your mom to see what youre doing as she suddenly comes in your room.
it hides the application youre using, making it invisible so you can access another one, or your desktop. to switch between apps, just press command-tab and hold command, so you can browse between your app icons by pressing tab again.
If you want to come back to the hidden app, just command-tab until you're on it, and it will reappear. Useful if you dont want your mom to see what youre doing as she suddenly comes in your room.