New Mac owner - happy, broke and confused!

Congratulations!

The Apple Store classes are great for beginners - and you can't beat the price.

For a handy, fun, browse-as-you-have-time guide, I'd suggest:

"Mac OS X Killer Tips", by Scott Kelby

It won't teach you everything, but it is a great guide to various shortcuts.

If you have a bookstore nearby, browse it for Mac books - the best books are always personal to each user. Another fine one is:

"Mac OS X: The Missing Manual", by David Pogue

And, as far as the iPod is concerned: not only is it a great way to listen to music, but you can also copy files to/from your Mac with it, making it a nice little transfer and backup device as well!

Have fun learning, and feel free to post questions!

BTW, there are a ton of good websites to visit to learn OS X tips from. A few of many:

http://www.macosxhints.com/

http://www.atomiclearning.com/macosxpanther

and

http://www.mac.com/1/learningcenter/ [if you got a .Mac membership]

Hello, and welcome to the club! Although I have not been to the classes they have, I can say, unless you are really confused when it comes to computers, it should be fairly easy to learn about. At first, I would be really careful about what you do, I had to format the computer several times when I switched after stupid mistakes; simply because I would download Speed Download, then not know how to install it (still don't know how), and try to delete it, mess up safari or whatever browser I had, and this happened twice I think. So stay away from that

Also, a good time to plug my new Mac community, http://macsight.com
Not many people yet, and not much conversation, but I thought I would tell you nonetheless.

By the way, I purchased the Missing manual, and Killer Tips when I got mine, got some good info out of those. Also, although it is a strange setting, you can probably look up many features of OS X over at http://xvsxp.com (it's a comparison between OS X and XP, but has many useful things in it too.)

And, of course, you can check our own site, for example, try here. Have fun!

Also if you're new to Mac OS X ... Apple+Option+Esc is the key combination that lets you shut down a program that is frozen. It also lets you restart the Finder (if something beyond just one program is frozen or doesn't display correctly)

Hey congrats.btw does it really get that hot in 30 minutes?.

jsw said:

The Apple Store classes are great for beginners - and you can't beat the price.

Click to expand...

(even though I'm not a beginner) I've been thinking of taking one of those classes.

Do you have any more info on them?

Like instead of a beginner, what about an 'average' or a 'expert' class?

Congrats on the purchase, I, too, have a new 12" Pbook. I switched like you, having been completely unfamiliar with OS X. I picked up David Pogue's "OS X: THE MISSING MANUAL," and found it PERFECT for figuring things out. Check out what everyone else reccomends too, but damn I think the Missing Manual will get you caught up to speed pretty well and then you can fly off to other stuff from there. Good luck!

Regarding heat issues, I really don't know what to tell you. Somedays I get my Pbook running hot as hell, other days it's cool as ice. I can offer a few hints/tips, but honestly I dunno how consistent it is in getting the fan to cool down.

Everyone says you can leave your Pbook on for weeks on end without turning it off or annything. Well, I put mine into sleep mode every night (and many times during the day), and after a week I reset (just a plain reset). I did this the first time I was getting tired of the excessive fan + heat, and for whatever reason it managed to ease the fan and heat to be nearly non-existant. At least for another week or so. I did it again and it worked, but it doesn't always work.

I downloaded a program called MacJanitor yesterday that allows me to run the system cleaning tools that the Mac would run if I had it on all night. So I ran all the tools (daily, weekly, and monthly), and later that night I've got heat + fan issues again. I try resetting, doesn't work. I wait till next morning (this morning) to see if it'll be fine, turn it on and soon the fan is going wild again. I reset, just to make sure, and it doesn't do it. So I fix file permissions (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility), and put it to sleep and it's been running like a dream ever since.

Doesn't make much sense to me either, but whatever works I guess.

musicpyrite said:

(even though I'm not a beginner) I've been thinking of taking one of those classes.

Do you have any more info on them?

Like instead of a beginner, what about an 'average' or a 'expert' class?

Click to expand...

Sorry - just saw this.

I was wrong to say that the classes were for beginners - they're really for people to learn a given subject area. For example, if you look at the schedule for my local Apple Store, it's clear that they provide a wide variety of classes. I'd certainly say that they appeal to anyone who wants to learn that class's subject, and the demonstrators have, in my experience, been good enough to answer most questions but not usually complete gurus - so, the "expert" user might not learn much. But any non-expert will leave with a pretty good grasp of the subject.

Edit: Apple Stores vary in their subject matter. For example, the apple Store south of me has this schedule, which has more "expert"-type stuff.

colinp said:

... I wait till next morning (this morning) to see if it'll be fine, turn it on and soon the fan is going wild again. ...

Doesn't make much sense to me either, but whatever works I guess.

Click to expand...

My fan is a lot more predictable ... it goes crazy if I surf on web-sites with lots of animated flash ads

jsw said:

Sorry - just saw this.

I was wrong to say that the classes were for beginners - they're really for people to learn a given subject area. For example, if you look at the schedule for my local Apple Store, it's clear that they provide a wide variety of classes. I'd certainly say that they appeal to anyone who wants to learn that class's subject, and the demonstrators have, in my experience, been good enough to answer most questions but not usually complete gurus - so, the "expert" user might not learn much. But any non-expert will leave with a pretty good grasp of the subject.

Edit: Apple Stores vary in their subject matter. For example, the apple Store south of me has this schedule, which has more "expert"-type stuff.

Click to expand...

Yea, (about the learning a specific subject area) I went to my sisters school a couple of weeks ago, the IT dude there was giving about 2 dozen people an hour lesson on how to use iPhoto and to make it work with a digital camera. God it was boring. If I was a beginner, I would have though that this was really cool/helpful, but meh..

I've gone to a coupld of 'beginner' classes for Macs, BASIC, Java, UNIX, and algebra, and after about 20 minuts I was board to tears...

And it sucks, I don't know *anybody* that is knolegable about the things I like. So I have no one to ask in person how do you do this, or how do you do that. I have to get all my info from the internet (macrumors, apple.com, ect.) and books.

musicpyrite said:

And it sucks, I don't know *anybody* that is knolegable about the things I like.

Click to expand...

For example?

Nutella said:

Well, I did it! My poor PC (which I was sentimentally attached to) died a sudden premature death, luckily I had backed up most of my important stuff. So I went to the Apple store and got myself a Powerbook 12", which I'm typing on now - miracle of miracles, I was able to turn it on LOL, get my mail and connect to the internet. But other than that, I'm totally lost! I don't know what to press, how to manage my files, etc.

Click to expand...

If you were at all interested, I've found the .Mac Learning Center to be really helpful. (Checks website) And after checking, it appears that anyone can now use it! Wow. (Unless, of course, it's recognized my computer. Hmmm...no, it says "Log In" at the top.) Maybe they're hoping people will see what can be done with .Mac in order to snag more customers. Anyway, I went through the lessons on Panther, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes. Very helpful for beginners.

http://www.mac.com/1/learningcenter/

Also, you say that you're afraid of messing something up and that you want to be careful. Honestly, I think that's the exact opposite of what you should do. OS X is pretty forgiving and very, very intuitive. A lot of what I learned came from just playing around. Just check the Trash periodically to see if you deleted any goodies.

Squire

As a fellow switcher I would recommend: "MAC OS X for Windows Users: A Switcher's Guide" by David Course. It certainly helped me.
Vanilla

Here's a site with about 25 small QT movies to learn the basics.

http://www.atomiclearning.com/macosxpanther

for ipod questions check out

http://www.ipodlounge.com

great source of information and a great community like macrumors

Well at least you are happy, I am the later two, lol

Don't worry so much about breaking something. Remember, this is the Mac we're talking about, not Windows!

jsw said:

For example?

Click to expand...

UNIX, Java, BASIC, PCs hardware, and especially Macs.

I think it's because I don't spend any time around people, I spend it around computers.


And by knolegable, I meant someone who knows just as much or more than I do.

Edit: oh yea, this excludes the Apple re-seller store.