Gilesdwrc

I'm in love with my new iMac, 24 hours in.

I've figured out spaces, installed firefox and MS Word, and hooked it all up to my network printer/scanner. Now, tell me all your little tricks, what might I miss?

No suggestion to dumb, Have'nt used a mac in years before this.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

great aren't they

corradoboy

Ditch Spaces and just use hide (alt click on anything other than what you want to hide). Command/Tab will pop up the Application Selector to bring whatever you want back, or just use the dock. I find Spaces annoying and as useless as Expose. If you can work tidily then neither is any benefit IMHO.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Ignore him
Spaces is great when you are working on multiple projects, but yes it can be used better with a little bit of diligence.

You can spend hours downloading tons of great programs for your mac, some free. If you havent got it as a trial, office 2008, then grab the free opensource OpenOffice

Start playing with iphoto and have a look at Photobooth, it is a lot of fun

wiley

iTrader: (63)

was thinking of a mac, too lazy to learn

wiley

AllanB

Nothing much to learn far more intuative than PCs and you don't waste time trying to get stuff to work.

I personally cannot see why anyone would choose to use a PC apart from gaming. Perfmance of XP on a Mac is as good if not better than many PCs if you really need to run Windoze.

AllanB

corradoboy

My sentiment exactly. I think people are brainwashed as they get used to them at w*rk or simply follow the masses. But, would you decorate your house like a corporate office ? Would you ditch the kettle for a vending machine ? Would you sit in your own home in a hi-vis vest and steelies ? No ! So why bring the office environment into your study and then suffer all the woes that the IT geeks at w*rk struggle so hard to rectify constantly when you can run a fast, efficient, stable, attractive, reliable alternative which is perfectly suited to the home user, as well as being the mainstay of the art/graphics/print/photo/music industries. Most Mac users use both and CHOOSE Mac. PC/Windoze owners usually have a 30 second click around on one in PC World and make their minds up there and then, a bit like driving a Ferrari around a carpark and deciding it's rubbish because the rear visibility is poor, the clutch is too hard, as is the steering and it's too noisy. They're missing the point by not even trying it properly, but it's their loss

darlodge

What would be the point of running Windows on a Mac? You would just be buying into the Apple brain washing sales tactics of buying a Mac because they are pretty.

I have to say I like Mac's and PC's, but for 2 very different reasons. I've always been a Windows user and IT admin for 10 years and it is only recently that I have had to adapt and use Macs as the design arm of our business decided to start using them and I can admit, I've become a bit of a convert to Mac's. I've never been against Mac products at all but have never needed to learn how they work.

If someone has never used Windows or a Mac the Mac Operating System is easier to use than say Vista. However if all a person has ever used is a Windows terminal there is a bit of a learning curve but it's not difficult at all.

Just sick with what you are happy with.

Darren

Markus

Tricks and tips, as with a PC, make a backup. Time Machine is part of the OS, so give it a go.

As for other tricks and tips, make sure you've gone in to the Mouse and Keyboard preferences and configured the mouse buttons, for example, I've got mine setup as follows:

Left = Primary Button
Right = Secondary Button
Scrollball click button = Button 3
Side buttons = Button 4

Don't use Messenger for Mac, get Adium instead, it supports not only MSN Messenger, but ICQ, iChat, AIM, Jabber, Yahoo Chat, GoogleChat and probably others I can't think of right now. Why use it? Well, I find the Messenger interface to be very large and clumsy, whereas you can fully customize the Adium interface, and by default it's a lot smaller than Messengers.

If you've got any specific questions, then fire away, as between the Mac lovers here, we should be able to help you out

corradoboy

Ooh, can't stand the side buttons active I use the ball button for App Switch.