my noob thread

[slug420]

hope this is alright, im sure all of these questions are answered elsewhere on the forums and certainly online and I am looking for answers to all of them but I wanted to start a thread for all my dumb questions since i think they are all 2 second answers for someone who has been using a mac for more than 7 minutes

just bought my mac pro, brandy new to apple, been a pc user for years and years



can I not right click on links in firefox? to click like "open in new tab"?

are the end and home keys on my keyboard not supported? I am using a logitech wireless desktop setup that i had on my PC. It has the apple logos on the the apporpriate keys and is working so far very well, just annoyed at not having use of home, end and hold-shift-to-highlight. Like when my cursor is in the URL bar in firefox, i normall hit end or home, then hold shift and press the other to clear whatever is there...

in iChat can I rearrange my groups how I want? I am just using it for aim and i have like 7 user groups and have a certain order the groups are listed in as well as the order of the users within those groups, can i do this all manually or is it only alphabetical or something in ichat?

I am running dual dell LCDs....how can I change the background on the 2nd screen and/or select one image to span both etc etc...

I bought 4GB extra ram from OWC. installed and seems to work really well...where can I see how much RAM is installed...and is there any system utility to test the ram and/or its performance?

what are active and/or hot corners?

further silly questions to be posted as i come up with them

 

[72930]

can I not right click on links in firefox? to click like "open in new tab"?

You can enable right click in System Preferences. +Click opens the link in a new tab

I bought 4GB extra ram from OWC. installed and seems to work really well...where can I see how much RAM is installed...and is there any system utility to test the ram and/or its performance?

Press the Apple in the top left -> About this mac....Activity monitor tells you whats going on

what are active and/or hot corners?

Hot corners are when you set a corner to perform an action (e.g. moving the mouse to the bottom left activates Expose, which is normally F9)

 

[samh004]

in iChat can I rearrange my groups how I want? I am just using it for aim and i have like 7 user groups and have a certain order the groups are listed in as well as the order of the users within those groups, can i do this all manually or is it only alphabetical or something in ichat?

I would think you can, but can't check as I am not on my mac right now. If you have selected your buddy list, click in the view menu, or one of the ones nearby and there should be a way of changing the order there, maybe even manually if you de-select the options listed.

I am running dual dell LCDs....how can I change the background on the 2nd screen and/or select one image to span both etc etc...

When you open system preferences, go to screensavers/ backgrounds and a new window should open on the second screen, slightly different as it wont have the "show all" button or the search bar, but will allow you to choose a different background.

Sometimes this new window appears behind the main one in the main screen, move the main one around to see if it's hiding.

 

[slug420]

awesome, thanks for the quick responses....

my backgrounds window on screen 2 was just behind another window...

about the right click....i have right click enabled in general system preferences, as i can use right click everywhere else, its just in firefox it doesnt seem to work when im hovering over a link or something...ddid you mean in firefox preferences?

another question: sometimes my mac seems to give me the generic PC speaker monotonous beep for an extended period of time (10-30 seconds maybe?) it happened once when it was trying to open an avi file that it ultimately wasnt able to open, and then just now I tried to draf 75 gigs of data from one drive and drop it into another drive (both internal SATA, source drive is windows formatted)...it just beeped for 30 seconds and then started copying...whats the deal with that?

 

[slug420]

interesting turn of events....it seems the right-click is working in firefox, but for some reason, the firefox window is like in "always on top" mode it would appear since the popup when i rightclick pops up behind the firefox window, thus being invisible and inaccessbile


also, the beeping i mentioned.......looks like its coming from my APC, UPS backup....i dunno why its doing that but it is...not a mac issue though

 

[JNB]

also, the beeping i mentioned.......looks like its coming from my APC, UPS backup....i dunno why its doing that but it is...not a mac issue though

Please don't tell us you don't have a laser printer plugged into it!

Honestly, though (assuming that's not the answer), if the UPS is more than 18-24 months old, you likely should replace the batteries in it.

 

[epiphany]

also, the beeping i mentioned.......looks like its coming from my APC, UPS backup....i dunno why its doing that but it is...not a mac issue though

Good thing, because in 21 years of Mac use, I had never heard the beeping you described.

 

[apfhex]

just annoyed at not having use of home, end and hold-shift-to-highlight. Like when my cursor is in the URL bar in firefox, i normall hit end or home, then hold shift and press the other to clear whatever is there...

The Home/End keys don't have the same function as they do in Windows. For the particular action you describe, use Shift+Up/Down arrow keys. When you're in a text document, Command(Apple)+Up/Down will move the input cursor to the top or bottom, respectively.

how can I change the background on the 2nd screen and/or select one image to span both etc etc...

You can't have one image space both, you'd have to split it in half to make two different image files. When you open up the "Desktop & Screen Saver" System Preferences, a second window should automatically appear on the second display allowing you to choose the wallpaper for that display.

what are active and/or hot corners?

A hot corner generally means that something will happen when you move the mouse to that corner. You can set hot corners for Exposé actions or to activate the screen saver, for example.

 

[slug420]

few more questions/issues. these are mostly just things that kind of bug me (coming from PCs) and i am curious if they are possible in osx and/or what the "mac way" of doing them is....

when i right click on a file in finder or go to the menus, i dont see "cut" copy paste rename delete etc etc options

theres no filmstrip or thumbnails view for browsing folders with tons of media files

the preview and/or slideshow features for looking through images dont seem to allow you to press delete to delete a file youd ecide you dont want

Is there an awesome mp3 player for osx like winamp? I saw some mention of macamp but cant tell if im downloading an old crappy version from someone's old website or the more recent version...

what is the preferred OSX VNC viewer?

 

[trainguy77]

Is there an awesome mp3 player for osx like winamp? I saw some mention of macamp but cant tell if im downloading an old crappy version from someone's old website or the more recent version...

iTunes is the way to go.

 

[slug420]

so im starting to look at itunes and when i dragged a bunch of songs into a playlist it said like "copying 1 of 14" at the top and went through each song...is it copying them somewhere where they will be taking up HD space? i doubt that it is but it seems odd for it to not be instantaneous to just add songs to a playlist

 

[epiphany]

when i right click on a file in finder or go to the menus, i dont see "cut" copy paste rename delete etc etc options

theres no filmstrip or thumbnails view for browsing folders with tons of media files

the preview and/or slideshow features for looking through images dont seem to allow you to press delete to delete a file youd ecide you dont want

Right click on files in finder: you do see "move to trash", "Copy", "duplicate", "Get info", right?. You can either rename in "Get Info", or faster, just highlight the icon name and rename.

For thumbnail views, go View>Show View Options>Check "Show Icon Preview" (and up top select whether you want this to apply to all folders)
Otherwise, put them all in your Pictures folder and use iPhoto to manage image files.

 

[slug420]

iTunes is the way to go.

so i have been doing a little more looking into this...is itunes seriously copying every mp3 i add to a playlist into a folder under itunes->itunes music? This seems ridiculously inefficient...what other audio players are there for osx?

again I go back to winamp on windows...its kind of a shame to go from crappy slow windows PCs where I drag songs into playlists and they are instantly queued to a muuuch faster mac pro where I have to wait a few seconds for files to be copied (thus taking up twice as much disk space) before being queued.

 

[Luis]

so i have been doing a little more looking into this...is itunes seriously copying every mp3 i add to a playlist into a folder under itunes->itunes music? This seems ridiculously inefficient...what other audio players are there for osx?

again I go back to winamp on windows...its kind of a shame to go from crappy slow windows PCs where I drag songs into playlists and they are instantly queued to a muuuch faster mac pro where I have to wait a few seconds for files to be copied (thus taking up twice as much disk space) before being queued.

You can delete the original copies of the mp3's after iTunes finishes copying them... You can also change the destination of the music files in iTunes Preferences. I would recommend you to stick with iTunes...

 

[szark]

You can turn off iTunes' copying feature in the preferences:
Uncheck Preferences-> Advanced-> General-> Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library

And, if you haven't discovered it yet, Fn-Delete will delete the character to the right of the cursor.

 

[slug420]

interesting...

So it sounds like A) a different mindset than im used to where instead of dragging songs into my playlist when I want to listen to them, I keep all my songs - thousands of them - in itunes at all times....and just add them to different playlists as i want to listen to them....

or B) disable the copy option in preferences in itunes and presumably use itunes like the winamp I am used to...

im inclined to go with B but what do you long time mac users with large music collections tend to prefer? None of my music came or comes from itunes.com so im not sure if that makes approach A a little less applicable...seems like it might

 

[WillJS]

interesting...

So it sounds like A) a different mindset than im used to where instead of dragging songs into my playlist when I want to listen to them, I keep all my songs - thousands of them - in itunes at all times....and just add them to different playlists as i want to listen to them....

or B) disable the copy option in preferences in itunes and presumably use itunes like the winamp I am used to...

im inclined to go with B but what do you long time mac users with large music collections tend to prefer? None of my music came or comes from itunes.com so im not sure if that makes approach A a little less applicable...seems like it might

I think that when it's copying, its just moving all your music files to Music/iTunes and I'm sure most of us use iTunes.

 

[Cameront9]

interesting...

So it sounds like A) a different mindset than im used to where instead of dragging songs into my playlist when I want to listen to them, I keep all my songs - thousands of them - in itunes at all times....and just add them to different playlists as i want to listen to them....

or B) disable the copy option in preferences in itunes and presumably use itunes like the winamp I am used to...

im inclined to go with B but what do you long time mac users with large music collections tend to prefer? None of my music came or comes from itunes.com so im not sure if that makes approach A a little less applicable...seems like it might

Go with option A. It is SO MUCH EASIER. Don't EVER look through all your songs in folders in finder--there's no point. Let iTunes do it for you. You will need to have your music tagged correctly, though. I've got 3319 songs in iTunes right now. I can't imagine trying to manage that with folders.

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

I think that when it's copying, its just moving all your music files to Music/iTunes and I'm sure most of us use iTunes.

understatement of the century!

but seriously, iTunes is the way to go, you can have an infinite amount of playlists, just drag and drop any amount of songs from the library.

win-amp is an amazing program, way better then WMP, my player of choice on PCs, but iTunes is the all in one wonder, it slices, it dices, etc. etc.

 

[network23]

interesting...

So it sounds like A) a different mindset than im used to where instead of dragging songs into my playlist when I want to listen to them, I keep all my songs - thousands of them - in itunes at all times....and just add them to different playlists as i want to listen to them....

or B) disable the copy option in preferences in itunes and presumably use itunes like the winamp I am used to...

im inclined to go with B but what do you long time mac users with large music collections tend to prefer? None of my music came or comes from itunes.com so im not sure if that makes approach A a little less applicable...seems like it might

My personal style is to not copy, but move. All of my music (90% is my own, 10% from iTunes) is in my iTunes folder, which I let iTunes manage. That way I only have one folder to back up so I don't lose any of my music in a disk failure, and music files are easy to find if I need something outside of iTunes. The delay you are seeing is temporary. Once a file is copied, it won't need to be copied again and your access will be instantaneous.

Don't think of the iTunes folder as a playlist, but as your music library, which is what it is. Then you create playlists by dragging files to those playlists you create. Those aren't copied or moved. The original files are just referenced by your playlists.

Also, be sure to investigate Smart Playlists. I don't know if Winamp has anything like that, but they are incredibly cool. Almost all my playlists are smart playlists.

 

[AdeFowler]

Welcome aboard slug420 (nice name )

All good questions, and some great answers also. Try to remember that it's not Windows, it's a mac. Not everything's better, but you should try to embrace it all the same. Check out:

http://www.apple.com/support/

for loads of tutorials and help.