Bought my first mac (tho i'm still a PC)

[wellington1869]

So I bought my first mac - an ibook g4, 1.3ghz, 1.25mb, with leopard installed. Got a *great* deal on it via craigslist, couldnt pass it up. (Just over $200!)

(Now dont get me wrong, I'm a PC and always will be We're all creatures of our first language. But I want to become a bit more bilingual so thought owning one is the way to go. Nothing like cultural immersion to pick up a new language.

Never really used a mac before in any substantive way.  Any advice? (Its a bit like going to a foreign country, lol).

[wellington1869]

I think the first thing I have to remember is to NOT rub it on my bum, under any circumstances.

[lam47]

OSX is great and pretty straight forward. The software package they come with is also very good for day to day use.
Keep an eye on the case though as they do like to overheat and crack. I would recommend a proper stand or at least some rubber feet that are taller than the 1mm it has on it.
Amazing price! Will make a nice internet companion.

[iMav]

Of course, the beauty of the PC is that you can become proficient with many OS's (or "languages" as you put it) without additional hardware.  Remember, PC does NOT equal the nasty.  

That being said, I really like OS X.  I had a 12" iBook (last gen, 1.33Ghz G4, 1.5GB ram) that I liked quite a bit.  But the allure of the intel Macs, being able to virtualize all my favorite OS's AND have OS X available was too much for me.

[wellington1869]

Keep an eye on the case though as they do like to overheat and crack. I would recommend a proper stand or at least some rubber feet that are taller than the 1mm it has on it.

hey lammy, thanks for the tip. I have cooler pad with fans for my dell, I think i'll pick up a separate one for the ibook.
(I've seen a lot of mac hardware failures in the office at work, along these lines. The overheating thing especially, and a variety of warped cases.)

Amazing price! Will make a nice internet companion.

yes, what *luck*, I couldnt believe I snagged it. The going rates for this on ebay are $350-$400.
Yes, this is basically my 'netbook' I'm planning to use it that way, trips to the library/starbucks and web browsing. It does have a great form factor (12" and fairly thin). I might have to pick up a new battery for it.

[wellington1869]

I had a 12" iBook (last gen, 1.33Ghz G4, 1.5GB ram) that I liked quite a bit.  But the allure of the intel Macs, being able to virtualize all my favorite OS's AND have OS X available was too much for me.

I figure I'll cut my teeth on this one and if all goes well in a year or so I'll upgrade myself to a macbook if I want. After that, who knows, maybe linux!
If windows is English, I figure osx is spanish (fairly easy, sort of similar, useful in certain neighborhoods).
But I think learning linux would be a bit like learning german. (really complicated, lol, for not having a regularized 'grammar' and not spoken nearly as much as the other languages in this country anyway . But gives you a certain cache if you know how to speak it

[bhtooefr]

1.3 GHz and 1.25 GiB RAM? This a 14" model? (A 1.33 GHz 12" model can't have 1.25, AFAIK.)

I paid $300 for my 12" 1.2 GHz a year ago... with a dying HDD. And I had to replace it.

Never again will I replace an iBook HDD if I can help it.

[adamrice]

This being a keyboard-oriented forum, I'll just point you at Quicksilver and let you take it from there. The simplistic explanation is that Quicksilver is a keyboard-based launcher. But in fact it's an endlessly deep rabbit hole that can do all kinds of neat stuff quickly, and all from the keyboard.

Textwrangler is a good text editor to get you started, but you might want to move up to BBEdit or Textmate

Other advice: Explore your hard drive from the root on down. Keep your apps in the Application folder (or subfolders). Keep all your personal data in your "home" folder. Don't mess with the Library folder, and definitely don't mess with the System folder. Have fun.

[wellington1869]

1.3 GHz and 1.25 GiB RAM? This a 14" model? (A 1.33 GHz 12" model can't have 1.25, AFAIK.)

I paid $300 for my 12" 1.2 GHz a year ago... with a dying HDD. And I had to replace it.

Never again will I replace an iBook HDD if I can help it.

possible that its a 14" model, I'm going to pick it up at 6pm. I'm buying it either way at this price tho  I would have preferred a 12" model of course, but 14" is small enough to throw in my backpack too...

He said it was 12" though, and for what its worth, crucial.com says the 12" should be able to take 1gb in the slot (with 256mb built into the motherboard)

[edit: come to think of it, it might be a 12" with 1.2ghz with 256mb on the motherboard and 1gb in the slot]

[wellington1869]

This being a keyboard-oriented forum, I'll just point you at Quicksilver and let you take it from there. The simplistic explanation is that Quicksilver is a keyboard-based launcher. But in fact it's an endlessly deep rabbit hole that can do all kinds of neat stuff quickly, and all from the keyboard.

Textwrangler is a good text editor to get you started, but you might want to move up to BBEdit or Textmate

Other advice: Explore your hard drive from the root on down. Keep your apps in the Application folder (or subfolders). Keep all your personal data in your "home" folder. Don't mess with the Library folder, and definitely don't mess with the System folder. Have fun.

thanks for the tips! much appreciated

[wellington1869]

Just picked it up. 1.2ghz, 1.25gb, 12", ibook, power adapter with extension, leopard, and -- w/ new battery! yay.

Wont have a chance to play with it till this weekend, for now I'm just basking in the afterglow of a great craigslist steal

[iMav]

Never again will I replace an iBook HDD if I can help it.

Heh.  I replaced the hdd in my 12" iBook.  That was freakin' RIDICULOUS.

[lam47]

I replaced the metal lid on a powerbook G4. Cant believe how much I had to take out to get to it.

[wellington1869]

ok, managed to get an hour and a half to myself so of course decided to play with the new toy.  (I think thats the longest time i've ever spent on a mac so far in my life, lol).

My very first impressions (in this new country):
-i dont know the language so of course everything is slightly frustrating
-that said the people are all smiles and pretty friendly (and pretty) and generally make me feel like a gurgling infant with soothing noises and no sudden moves (yep, thats apple )
-so I was more or less able to figure out how to do basic things. So far I've looked up the specs, installed trialware of omnioutliner, deep notes, text wrangler (it was free), writeroom, few other things, and did try them out. (why on earth do downloaded apps create a disk image and then mount it and etc?).
-omnioutliner, i'm sorry, *rocks*. Definitely a major tourist attraction in this country. I expect circus ponies notebook (which I'm also looking forward to trying out soon) will also be pretty nifty. Also devonthink will probably impress me. Writeroom is far more polished than its pc equivalents.
-that said, man, this is one expensive country to live in. Orange juice is $10, and each of those programs if I were to actually buy them would set me back - no joke - literally several hundred dollars altogether if I wanted to actually buy all the software I wanted to use on this thing. I mean *come on*, I mean for christs sake, good grief.

Sure there are things I can nitpick about (windows dont automatically maximize, argh! controls are on the left instead of the right, being right handed I always feel like I'm "reaching over" to close windows! etc). Oh, and people drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right! bizarre!
But of course a lot of that is just habit.

In thinking about where a mac might fit into my workflow though, one thing I'm getting a feeling that it will likely play the role of a netbook and not take over as my main machine, mainly because I dont get the feeling I can do the kind of hardcore research and presentation I can do on my pc (admittedly this is my first trip here, but thats my initial feeling), mainly because of the sheer variety of free/cheap programs I have on my pc to do research and presentation which I'm not getting the feeling I can match on the mac really. That said, for writing up rough drafts the mac is probably the much simpler and smoother machine, more of a task-focused feeling with it. So hey, I was looking for a netbook anyway and this fits the bill quite nicely. I just have to figure out the easiest way to get my rough drafts back over to my pc (and get my research notes over to my mac)

Anyway, these are superficial impressions after just an hour and a half. A postcard if you will from a stranger in a strange land

[zwmalone]

ok, managed to get an hour and a half to myself so of course decided to play with the new toy.  (I think thats the longest time i've ever spent on a mac so far in my life, lol).

My very first impressions (in this new country):
-i dont know the language so of course everything is slightly frustrating
-that said the people are all smiles and pretty friendly (and pretty) and generally make me feel like a gurgling infant with soothing noises and no sudden moves (yep, thats apple )
-so I was more or less able to figure out how to do basic things. So far I've looked up the specs, installed trialware of omnioutliner, deep notes, text wrangler (it was free), writeroom, few other things, and did try them out. (why on earth do downloaded apps create a disk image and then mount it and etc?).
-omnioutliner, i'm sorry, *rocks*. Definitely a major tourist attraction in this country. I expect circus ponies notebook (which I'm also looking forward to trying out soon) will also be pretty nifty. Also devonthink will probably impress me. Writeroom is far more polished than its pc equivalents.
-that said, man, this is one expensive country to live in. Orange juice is $10, and each of those programs if I were to actually buy them would set me back - no joke - literally several hundred dollars altogether if I wanted to actually buy all the software I wanted to use on this thing. I mean *come on*, I mean for christs sake, good grief.

Sure there are things I can nitpick about (windows dont automatically maximize, argh! controls are on the left instead of the right, being right handed I always feel like I'm "reaching over" turn close windows! etc). Oh, and people drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right! bizarre!
But of course a lot of that is just habit.

In thinking about where a mac might fit into my workflow though, one thing I'm getting a feeling that it will likely play the role of a netbook and not take over as my main machine, mainly because I dont get the feeling I can do the kind of hardcore research and presentation I can do on my pc (admittedly this is my first trip here, but thats my initial feeling), mainly because of the sheer variety of free/cheap programs I have on my pc to do research and presentation which I'm not getting the feeling I can match on the mac really. That said, for writing up rough drafts the mac is probably the much simpler and smoother machine, more of a task-focused feeling with it. So hey, I was looking for a netbook anyway and this fits the bill quite nicely. I just have to figure out the easiest way to get my rough drafts back over to my pc (and get my research notes over to my mac)

Anyway, these are superficial impressions after just an hour and a half. A postcard if you will from a stranger in a strange land

You should try growl (http://growl.info/)  it makes the whole experience even better

[wellington1869]

oh, and I have to add I really like the keyboard on it (and I even like the 'vanilla white' color of the whole thing). Anyway the keyboard action is really nice (scissor keys i'm assuming) and I think much better than the newer 'chicklet' keys they came out with. For my taste anyway. Its definitely better than the keyboard on my old dell road warrior.

[wellington1869]

You should try growl (http://growl.info/)  it makes the whole experience even better

interesting, i'll check it out. thanks for the tip!

[bhtooefr]

I could see myself using OS X as my main OS.

But, I hate the Apple hardware, and can't get OS X running right on my ThinkPad.

[wellington1869]

I could see myself using OS X as my main OS.

But, I hate the Apple hardware, and can't get OS X running right on my ThinkPad.

I still dont understand why apple doesnt open up its hardware to third party manufacturers.
Prolly cuz its stock price is at $100 and MS is at $16  Nevermind.
But honestly if MS ever exerted the kind of control over software and hardware that Apple cheerfully does, everyone would be up in arms about fascism.
Its hard not to compare MS and Apple's quite different strategies though. But I'm glad they both have their place in the computing world and are in some kind of competition. OSX is why win7 is going to rock

[bhtooefr]

Well, the thing is, having a closed ecosystem means that they don't have compatibility to worry about.

Much of the reason why Windows has as many problems as it does is because of the sheer variety of hardware it has to support.

[wellington1869]

Well, the thing is, having a closed ecosystem means that they don't have compatibility to worry about.

Much of the reason why Windows has as many problems as it does is because of the sheer variety of hardware it has to support.

very true.

[zwmalone]

Well, the thing is, having a closed ecosystem means that they don't have compatibility to worry about.

Much of the reason why Windows has as many problems as it does is because of the sheer variety of hardware it has to support.

Now... I remember playing hell when I made the switch from OS 9 to OS X and other people (I can't afford Intel hardware, so this doesn't apply to me...) who had problems with hardware and such that didn't work after the apple-intel transition (we may have a reverse Intel to PPC transition given the fact that OS X is going fully 64bit and Intel may not be able to manufacture 64 bit processors for much longer...)

Macs have compatibility problems too, but given the userbase size and the general lack of day-to-day problems the Mac's compatibility issues doesn't get nearly as much press as something Microsoft-related would...

[wellington1869]

anymore tips for this mac newbie? (thats me). Stuff I should try? Your fav programs or utilities...?  Common pitfalls I should avoid...?  
I actually bought the macs for dummies book, lol.

what do you use for custom hotkeys and shortcuts?

Is applescript easy to pick up?

Oh, also, do you usually put your mac to 'sleep' or do you shutdown? Most of my mac friends tend to put it to sleep but its got to need a reboot now and then, no?

[zwmalone]

And it's not really as closed as we think it is...   Once you factor in 3rd party hardware and drivers, third party apps and user caused destruction the "closed" model falls apart...
If apple really wanted to do a "closed" model they could do it like the iPhone and make every app have to be reviewed for quality and compatibility...

[zwmalone]

anymore tips for this mac newbie? (thats me). Stuff I should try? Your fav programs or utilities...?  Common pitfalls I should avoid...?  
I actually bought the macs for dummies book, lol.

what do you use for custom hotkeys and shortcuts?

Is applescript easy to pick up?

Adium, KextHelper (I don't know how useful it would be on a non OSx86 system but it is my favorite ), Growl, WriteRoom, Quicksilver, MacTheRipper, uTorrent, Firefox, VLC, a few others that I can't think of right now...

EDIT: Bean is a good text editor...

[wellington1869]

Adium, KextHelper (I don't know how useful it would be on a non OSx86 system but it is my favorite ), Growl, WriteRoom, Quicksilver, MacTheRipper, uTorrent, Firefox, VLC, a few others that I can't think of right now...

EDIT: Bean is a good text editor...

thanks

do you put it to 'sleep' or do you shutdown?

[DarthShrine]

do you put it to 'sleep' or do you shutdown?

I have a Unibody MacBook and other members of my family have iMacs. On the MacBook I'll usually just put it to sleep during the day while I'm out, but if I'm taking it to school with me I'll shut it down (not sure why I even do this...). When I'm finished with the iMacs I usually just press the power button which also puts them to sleep.

[adamrice]

I'll second Growl, Adium, and VLC. I keep Firefox around but use Safari as my daily browser. I use Text Expander as a keystroke expander. I use a combination of Quicksilver and Applescript for some custom hotkeys, but OS X lets you customize  hotkeys assigned to menu items as well (inside the Keyboard preference pane, oddly enough), so I use that where appropriate.

I recommend Onyx for changing a number of the Mac's hidden preferences. Graphic Converter for image-munging--it doesn't do much Photoshop can't do, but it does it faster, and excels for batch-mode conversions. My spreadsheeting needs are fairly light, and I'm a big fan of Numbers over Excel. You can write equations that explain themselves, which is huge.

I find Applescript is hard to get the hang of. I can take existing code and tweak it, but have a hard time starting from scratch, so I'm limited to simple stuff.

Unless you're going to be away from your Mac for a week, don't bother shutting it down. The hard drive is parked when it's asleep, and that's the only thing you really need to worry about (not sure if Wellington's model has the accelerometer or not).

[bhtooefr]

I don't believe the iBook has it.

Although, if Apple's accelerometer is anything like IBM/Lenovo's... I ended up disabling the accelerometer on my ThinkPad, because even at minimum sensitivity, it triggered all the time.

[wellington1869]

thanks guys.
I'm very much in tourist mode  Its fun.

[nerp]

I'm contemplating getting an iMac for my living room to use as a basic household computer in a common area. For keeping wires at bay, it's great. It also makes sense for a standalone computer tucked on a desk or in a piece of furniture. It would let me use a model M, too, so that's nice. The problem is, I already own a bunch of computers and have absolutley no need to replace any of them.

[wellington1869]

Played around with it a lot yesterday and today. As might be expected, some things are neat, some things are *incredibly frustrating* (I particulary dont like things like the overdependence on the mouse (which is a systemic feature of macland I'm finding), the penchant for relying on Search rather than file/folder structure (what I call the "check your brain at the door 'delicious' style approach"; sorry, I'm an old-timer epistemology guy), Window navigation issues (for example, no shortcut for maximize?! No shortcut for un-minimize?! Good god help me). I found some things quite intuitive and some things not so much; anyway I'll write up my feelings on both over at wordhack at some point soon. And add my two cents for posterity as a PC guy visiting macland

I'm glad I got it though, and I think it would be neat to become comfortable in both countries.

[adamrice]

Wellington: You might be interested in witch for more direct window access. The whole "window maximization" thing is almost a cultural difference between the Mac and Windows. With rare exception, windows aren't intended to take over the desktop on a Mac, and in most apps, a new document window will open to be the same size as the last one you closed.

Folder hierarchy is mostly up to you. Apple does give you "starter" folders in your Home folder, and there's no harm in using those, but you don't have to, and you can add as many subdirectories to them as you can stand. In the App folder, some of Apple's apps become invisible to the System Update utility if you move them and some don't (this has always bugged me), and I've always been superstitious about moving anything into/out of the Utilities directory, but I've reorganized my apps directory quite a bit to no ill effect. In 10.5, if you use iTunes and iPhoto, it treats their libraries as alternative file structures, so you can access music by playlist or photos by album (etc) from some other apps.

[wellington1869]

thanks adam, I'll check out witch (I think its 20 bucks tho!

[bhtooefr]

I don't minimize windows, myself, when on the Mac.

One thing about the Mac is, the idea of a window and the idea of a program is distinct. Command-Tab switches programs, NOT windows. Command-~ switches windows within a program. I seriously wish I had that on Windows.

I just use F11 to show the desktop.

[DarthShrine]

I don't often minimise windows, but I do Hide them often (command-H). Gets them out of the way for the moment by hiding them and putting them at the end of the task list, but they're still easy to get back to.
I Close windows (command-W), but leave the program running quite often too. If you look in the Window menu for a program, it will usually tell you what shortcut gets you back to the main window (eg, command-option-1 in iTunes).
And lastly, the only program I maximise is Mail, and that runs in a separate Space on its own (since I'm on Leopard).

[wellington1869]

I don't often minimise windows, but I do Hide them often

I was wondering what "hide" did. So its sort of like alt-escape on windows (moves the program to the bottom of the z-order). Not that i've *ever* used that.

Also on windows I guess the "hide" feature is sort of there. If you minimize a program, alt-esc (instead of alt-tab) will cycle only thru the unminimized windows.

One thing about the Mac is, the idea of a window and the idea of a program is distinct. Command-Tab switches programs, NOT windows. Command-~ switches windows within a program.

ya, this confused the hell out of me for a good 24 hours.

The 'distinct program' thing seems to me a very major philosophical/cultural difference between the two countries.  It gives a kind of task-focus that I'd like to see more of on windows (for instance, the windows interface can get pretty 'busy' if you have lots of programs running and they beep and blink and often force their windows to the top of the stack even if you didnt want them to). Whereas that never happens on macs cuz a lot of programs "behind" the current one, even if they pop up a window, it stays behind the current program and doesnt come forward until you hit command-tab. On the other hand, its kind of a pain sometimes and adds additional keystrokes unecessarily. So whether its convenient or not depends on what you're working on I guess.

 I seriously wish I had that on Windows.

could prolly rig it up on autohotkey pretty easily.