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Help Advice For Newbie To Mac

S

smudger10

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2015
1
0
Hi all,

Very new to the Mac and I’m finding the file system confusing but I do really like how well the Mac products work together.

My Mac is installed with Yosemite and I was wondering if anyone has some good advice on how to use the file system to organize files properly.

For example on a windows machine I would just click on my music folder and there would be all of my music, but on the Mac when I click on the music folder I get another folder then another one and so on, but eventually I get to what I want.

Any suggestions much appreciated.
 
For your particular example it comes back to Apple's thinking (and the majority of consumer use). They anticipate that you'll use iTunes to manage your music library, and as such the Music folder has a sub-folder for iTunes, which as you've found is organized in such a way that it's not very user friendly through Finder but works as a good backend for iTunes.

The same goes for iPhoto, although they've tightened that a bit over the past few years. The iPhoto file in /Pictures used to be a folder, very similar to iTunes, that served as a backend for iPhoto. You could browse through all of the subfolders and eventually find your photos but it was a lot quicker, and made life a lot easier for the standard consumer, to use iPhoto.

Hopefully that makes some sense.
 
i suggest youtube david a. cox tutorials

pcclassesonline.com.....all are free informative and great for us new apple cores
 
For files that aren't managed by iTunes, iPhoto, etc. (for example image files that you haven't imported into iPhoto), you can organize them the same way you did under Windows.

Start with the folders that are provided by default: Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, etc., then add as many subfolders as you like, and name files and folders any way that makes sense to you.

Note that Mac OS X sorts all names in a folder into one list, rather than putting all the subfolders at the top of the list like Windows. Some people prefer one way, some prefer the other, but everyone gets used to it.
 
Have you thought about creating a shortcut to the folders you are most interested in and placing them in a location that is easier for you to access? This would be similar to what people do in Windows as well. Hope you find what works best for you as there are several ways to help you resolve your challenges (that come with learning a new OS).

Cheers
 
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photos, music and books are stored differently as data bases, and most everything everyone has said is spot on. the only reason you would need to worry about them, is where to store the containers to ensure that you have memory to meet your storage demands.

the file management for the rest of your life, will be in documents, desktop and downloads.
 
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