IT guy just bought a Mac. How do I . . . .

5) What dvd decrypter do you use to rip DVD's.

Handbrake is a great software to use because it can be converted into many different formats.

9) If I remove a rarely used app from the dock, where would I go to launch it?

In Finder you will find Applications on the left or click on whatever you hard drive is called (default is Macintosh HD) and it's Applications in there too. This is also the root directory.

1) I want "explorer" to show in the icons in list form for all "folders" and stay that way even after I close it. I dont want it to go back to those large icons.

Click on Macintosh HD on your desktop.. select how you want it to appear. hit the apple key (command) + J to open up the view preferences. Select "use as default". (see picture 1)


2) I dont understand the folder heirarchy? dont get how folders work. Can I see the root of C:. what I see doesnt seem to truly be the root?

There is no C drive. There is only "/" That's the root of your drive. Within there is your Application folder, System folder, User folder, and Library folder.

4) Does an admin have root privelidges
Not 100%. But don't worry, OS X will ask for a password if it needs it.. and there's no reason to run as root.

5) What dvd decrypter do you use to rip DVD's.
Handbrake


6) Parallels or Synergy (dont bother with this one, I'm sure its covered in the archives)
VMWare Fusion. Parallels is emulation, synergy is physically running a 2nd PC.

7) I dont want to use quicktime. Can I save in another video format?
Quicktime isn't a video format, it's just the player. You can use iTunes, VLC, or... that's about all I can think of right now.

8) I want a PC Card, SD car reader. Is the card slot a PC Card slot in my new Macbood Pro
I got myself this to fix the very issue.

9) Whats the best way to open MS specific docs? I realize that open office is free and good. But I have a friend who works for MS. i can get a copy of Office 08 for free. My concern is that it will be a HUGE pig. I may not want it even if its free.

Office 04 on a PPC mac was the best. Office 08 is slow, but it works well enough. It's less then a gig. Alternatively, you could try iWorks

9) If I remove a rarely used app from the dock, where would I go to launch it?

Click on Finder, select "Applications" from the site. It'll be in there. OR, you can hit command+spacebar to bring up Spotlight, and then search the computer for it,

10) I dont want to use iphoto to organize my pics. I've got a very detailed file structure that works for me. The "events" idea of managing pics doesnt do it for me. Can I just set up a file structure and work like I always have? Its worked for me for the last 8 yrs, I dont want to dchange

Yes, tell iPhoto not to import photos and to keep them in their own location. see picture 2. Alternatively, you can not use iPhoto at all and just view them with Finder. Double click on them to open them in preview, or select and hit spacebar to open in quicklook.

11) I want to use ivideo but I Do NOT want to work with .mov files because they cant be viewed full screen by PC people I send them to unless they BUY QT. Is this possible?

I believe you mean iMovie, and Yes. Have PC people open them in the new version of Quicktime, iTunes, or Winamp, or WMP.

3) can I see unix // system folders (/stand, /dev?)

I have no idea what /stand is, but in general, yes. You can always see them from terminal; there are also ways to modify Finder to show them to you. You can also use apps like PathFinder...

http://michaelkrol.com/2007/12/21/hidden-files-in-os-x-finder-no-terminal-hacking-with-path-finder/

if you'd like.

4) Does an admin have root privelidges


No, not exactly. They have elevated privileges, but they don't have root privileges at all times. They still need to escalate for some things (e.g. using sudo).

8) I want a PC Card, SD car reader. Is the card slot a PC Card slot in my new Macbood Pro

No, it's not. It's an ExpressCard/34 slot. So you can find an ExpressCard SD reader or else get a USB one (e.g. my SanDisk MicroMate works fine with my Mac).

9) Whats the best way to open MS specific docs? I realize that open office is free and good. But I have a friend who works for MS. i can get a copy of Office 08 for free. My concern is that it will be a HUGE pig. I may not want it even if its free.

If you're using MS Office 07/08 Open doc formats, you really want to just use Office 08. Otherwise, meh, do whatever. I personally really like Office, although I'm still on 04.

9) If I remove a rarely used app from the dock, where would I go to launch it?

Open the main Hard Disk (Macintosh HD) and click on Applications, or click on Applications from the left side of the Finder window, if you left it there. You can also put the Applications folder on the right side of the dock so that it expands out of the dock for you to find apps. And finally you could type part of the name into the spotlight bar.

10) I dont want to use iphoto to organize my pics. I've got a very detailed file structure that works for me. The "events" idea of managing pics doesnt do it for me. Can I just set up a file structure and work like I always have? Its worked for me for the last 8 yrs, I dont want to dchange

Yeah, this is right in the directions, so I'm sure you can figure it out yourself.

You may find this guide useful and this if your looking for progs & apps

3) can I see unix // system folders (/stand, /dev?)
Use terminal to make hidden files and folders visible/invisible.

to see hidden files

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
to hide hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

9) Whats the best way to open MS specific docs? I realize that open office is free and good. But I have a friend who works for MS. i can get a copy of Office 08 for free.

Neooffice works quite well. However, I prefer Office 08. Mainly because when choosing fonts from the formatting toolbar it shows a preview. While in Neooffice I did not see this option. Yes there are other ways to see previews but they are more time consuming.
2) I dont understand the folder heirarchy? dont get how folders work. Can I see the root of C:. what I see doesnt seem to truly be the root?

More completely you select your hard drive root in terminal with /Volumes/"Hard Drive Name"/

1) I want "explorer" to show in the icons in list form for all "folders" and stay that way even after I close it. I dont want it to go back to those large icons.

It's called Finder. This ones already been addressed. Set it to list view, then ctrl-click, or go to View, or Cmd + J to bring up View Options. Set as default.

And it's called Finder.

2) I dont understand the folder heirarchy? dont get how folders work. Can I see the root of C:. what I see doesnt seem to truly be the root?

There is no C:. There is Macintosh HD, unless you named it something else. In Finder, click on Macintosh HD, and that's the root of your drive. Look into Unix folder structure. It's just like that. It may seem confusing going through Finder, since it's set up to be simple to the average user who doesn't need to think about stuff like this.

3) can I see unix // system folders (/stand, /dev?)

There is no native way to set Finder to show hidden files. Usually, they're not things you need to be worried about, unlike in Windows where even a normal user may need to mess with them every once in a while. If you do want to see them, there are hacks. Also you can just go into Terminal and execute

cd /
ls

And you'll see everything. Then just cd to wherever you want to go to explore.

4) Does an admin have root privelidges

Not by default. And it shouldn't, for security reasons. If you really need at some point, you can enable to root user, or you can execute root commands as admin from the Terminal by using the sudo command.

5) What dvd decrypter do you use to rip DVD's.

Handbrake.

6) Parallels or Synergy (dont bother with this one, I'm sure its covered in the archives)

Haven't heard of Synergy. I use Fusion and am very happy with it. Parallels is quite similar, but I like Fusion.

7) I dont want to use quicktime. Can I save in another video format?

Do you mean Quicktime .mov format? No, you don't have to save in it. I rarely do. For compatibility, mp4 is the best.

If you don't want to use Quicktime at all, download VLC or MPlayer. If you want to use Quicktime for viewing movies in avi or wmv, you should download plugins called Flip4Mac and Perian.

8) I want a PC Card, SD car reader. Is the card slot a PC Card slot in my new Macbood Pro

Don't know this one. Sorry.

9) Whats the best way to open MS specific docs? I realize that open office is free and good. But I have a friend who works for MS. i can get a copy of Office 08 for free. My concern is that it will be a HUGE pig. I may not want it even if its free.

You're correct in your concern. MS Office is bloatware. Unfortunately, some people need it for 100% compatibility. That doesn't sound like your case. I used NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org for Mac without X11...until OpenOffice.org's native Aqua version for Mac comes out of beta) for a long time. NeoOffice will give you 99.9% compatibility with opening and saving as MS Office formats, even the new ones.

Personally, though, I really like iWork. It's a much more lightweight app than MS Office, but very powerful. I prefer Pages to Word, and Keynote blows Powerpoint away. Numbers is still lacking next to Excel, though. You can open MS Office documents, but if they're complicated, it may not get them exactly right. You can also export to the Office 2003/4 formats. It's a very nice office suite, and much cheaper than MS Office.

I'd say iWork for usability + NeoOffice for compatibility is the best you can get.

9) If I remove a rarely used app from the dock, where would I go to launch it?

Click on Finder, and then Applications. They're all there. Alternatively, you can use Spotlight to launch programs, too. Just hit Cmd + Space and start typing the first few letters of the application and it should come up pretty quickly, and then hit enter. If you prefer mouse to keyboard, you can drag your whole Applications folder to the right side of the dock and make it a stack, and launch programs from there, just by clicking on the Applications folder in your dock. You can also use a program like Quicksilver, which I highly recommend. You can launch apps quicker than with Spotlight, and make triggers for all kinds of things, like play/pause iTunes from any other app.

10) I dont want to use iphoto to organize my pics. I've got a very detailed file structure that works for me. The "events" idea of managing pics doesnt do it for me. Can I just set up a file structure and work like I always have? Its worked for me for the last 8 yrs, I dont want to dchange

This ones already been covered, too. I still think it's best to just let iPhoto handle the grunt work of organizing, but if you don't like to, just go to Preferences and turn off iPhoto's importing them. Then you can just use iPhoto to view them from wherever. Or you could just not use iPhoto, organize them as you wish, and then view them all with Preview...

11) I want to use ivideo but I Do NOT want to work with .mov files because they cant be viewed full screen by PC people I send them to unless they BUY QT. Is this possible?

iVideo? Do you mean iMovie? The latest versions of Quicktime let people view full screen without buying QT Pro. They must be using an old version. Saving as .mov should be fine if they have a fairly recent version of Quicktime.

You can export as mp4 if you want, though, which is what I do. When exporting as a Quicktime format, where it says "Compress movie for...." just change it to "Expert Settings" and you can change it to whatever format and quality you want after you click "Share." Again, I suggest mp4.

Oh...I should mention I still have iMovie HD, so in iMovie 08 it may be slightly different.

donmei said:

Guys,

Thank you for all the great info. Just to clarify one thing. When working with videos, I want to save them in a format that is NATIVE to a windows Pc. i.e. it can be viewed by pretty much anyone with win2k or above and a reasonably recent version of Windows Media Player with no special plug-ins.

.mp4 should meet that need. Can I set iMovie so .mp4 is the DEFAULT file type?

Click to expand...

Well, since you'll be exporting to mp4 instead of saving in the traditional sense, there really isn't a default export file type... Just when you export it, choose Quicktime->Compress for "Expert Settings." I believe on expert settings, it usually defaults to mp4. You can further customize the quality, etc., and then those settings are automatically saved for next time.

NEW ??
1) My NAS is set up with FAT32. All my music and photos are on it. (backed up to an off-line usb drive every couple of weeks) Will that formatting work with the MAC? I'm hoping so. I specifically did not format it with NTFS for compatability reasons?

2) Would the Mac been able to mount it if it was NTFS?

3) Is it easy to map a drive to a NAS box.

Thanks again. if I deserve a RTFA then flame away.

Don

Click to expand...

1) FAT32 should work, believe, for exchanging files between Macs and PC's. Will you have a Windows PC using it, too? If not, just format it as HFS.

2) Macs can read NTFS but not write, I think. You may need special software even to read it, but I'm not sure.

3) No idea.

.mp4 should meet that need.

I think you're familiar with the idea of a video container standard versus a codec? Like in Windows, .AVI is a container, but knowing that a file is an AVI doesn't tell you the video and audio codecs, so it doesn't tell you whether you can play it or not. MP4 is also a container... the video in an MP4 is supposed to be in either MPEG-4 part 2 ("MPEG-4") or MPEG-4 part 10 (H.264). You should be able to do either by default, but you want to make sure which you want. I think the issue you may be running in is that a Win2k machine may not have H.264 on it?

This doc provides more details.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/mpeg4/

1) My NAS is set up with FAT32. All my music and photos are on it. (backed up to an off-line usb drive every couple of weeks) Will that formatting work with the MAC? I'm hoping so. I specifically did not format it with NTFS for compatability reasons?

Yes, that should be fine.

2) Would the Mac been able to mount it if it was NTFS?

By default, read only. There is free software that allows pretty good read-write compatibility (MacFUSE).

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071228215232264

3) Is it easy to map a drive to a NAS box.

This is Windows speak again. There are no drives and you do not map drives in Unix. But it should be very easy to mount, from the Go To menu item, I think?

donmei said:

ok. Well, I have a godaddy hosted web site. Can I use iWeb to publish to that, or is it restricted to .mac only?

Click to expand...

You can use most of the iWeb functions hosted anywhere. For instance, my iWeb homepage:

http://www.phhp.ufl.edu/~mkrishna

Here's a quick tutorial (I think there are better ones): http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/iwebserver.html

donmei said:

ok. Well, I have a godaddy hosted web site. Can I use iWeb to publish to that, or is it restricted to .mac only?

Click to expand...

Anything with FTP will work.

I want to use ivideo but I Do NOT want to work with .mov files because they cant be viewed full screen by PC people I send them to unless they BUY QT

This isn't true anymore, Quicktime 7.2 or later (we are now on Quicktime 7.4.5) supports Full Screen for free.

donmei said:

2) Would the Mac been able to mount it if it was NTFS?

By default, read only. There is free software that allows pretty good read-write compatibility (MacFUSE).

Click to expand...

If it's shared via SMB you can read and write to it as long as you have appropriate permissions. Just like any other SMB shared device. IO control at that point is at the SMB protocol level, so it does not require being able to mount that specific filesystem type.

Oh you'd have to do ls -a I believe to show hidden files.

If you want to see what your mount points are (effectively your c: d: etc) type mount. Oh and ssh and scp are installed by default.. so you can scp files to a server as well.

donmei said:

I've been using the MBP for week or so now.

It seems everytime I get infuriated with something I do a search and find that there is an easier way to do whatever I'm trying to do.

So here's an easy one:
How do you do a find of the screen content when in safari?

Equivalent IE command would <ctrl> F?

Click to expand...

cmd + F

A lot of Windows shortcuts that combine Ctrl and another key, can be done with cmd + the key.
(the command key is the key both sides of the space bar)

Great thread. What a wealth of information for someone who is crossing over to MAC OS from Windows. Easy to understand, easy to read. I even learned a couple of things as well.
Oh, and welcome to the world of MACs donmei.

donmei said:

Thanks Scotty,

Heres a couple more for the experts:

1) In IE you can right click on the back arrow and see a list of where you've been. This allows you to skip back several pages without having to step backwards through every page. Does Safari have something similar?

Click to expand...

Just hold your mouse button down over the back (or forward) button to get a menu of previous sites.

2) <alt><tab> allows you to scroll through your open apps. <cmd><tab> does a similar thing. But if you have 2 Safari windows open, it doesnt let you toggle between safari instances. Is there a keyboard shortcut that lets you switch between apps, INCLUDING multiple instance of Safari?

Click to expand...

No. It's either apps OR windows within an app. It might be good to get used to Exposé. However, the command to switch between the windows of a currently running app is Cmd+`.

3) If you open multiple tabs in a single instance of Safari, is there a keyboard short (in looking at the safari dropdowns, <cmd>{ accomplishes this. But it requires both hands. Is there a "single handed" shortcut for this? Remember that { is actually <shift>[

Click to expand...

Not by default, but you can re-map any keyboard shortcut you want in OS X. Just go into System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts.

On a laptop keyboard, only the "backspace" Delete key exists. You have to use Fn+Delete to get forward delete. Apple's wired keyboard has a dedicated forward delete key.

As to the "image from a webpage into an e-mail" thing, just click and drag. You can click and drag while invoking Exposé if you need to, so... that's the best way to do it. You could also just right click it and choose "Copy Image," like you do in Windows now.

donmei, it seems like you are much more accepting of "doing things the mac way" than others. I see a lot of switchers getting frustrated because it's not working like Windows...and they don't get that it's not supposed to work like windows.

You seem to have a firm grasp on this concept. Kudos to you and your new MBP (very nice choice, by the way!). Good luck...this is a great forum!