new to mac - questions

1. I've been an OS X user for about ten years now and haven't even once had a virus, worm or trojan horse infection.
Even if the media is sometimes spreading wild stories about malevolent programs infecting macs, you'll eventually discover that you mostly have to allow the malevolent software to get installed somehow.
So you will need antivirus software even less, if you are an experienced computer user and know which files and websites to stay way from. Vigilance is the key word!

2. It's quite simple, if you are the admin:
- first connect to the network share you want to mount on startup
- upon connecting, check "Remember this password in Keychain", so that you won't have to re-enter the password manually each time
- then go to "System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items"
- click on the "+" to add a login item
- select your mounted network share from the Finder sidebar and add it

3. I don't exactly understand what you want to do, but maybe symlinks are what you are looking for!?

 

You don't need any 3rd party antivirus software to protect Mac OS X from malware. Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released 10 years ago. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.

Mac Virus/Malware Info​

If you insist on running 3rd party antivirus software:

• ClamXav is a good choice, since it isn't a resource hog, detects both Mac and Windows malware and doesn't run with elevated privileges. You can run scans when you choose, rather than leaving it running all the time, slowing your system.
• Sophos should be avoided, as it could actually increase your Mac's vulnerability, as described here and here.
• iAntiVirus has an inaccurate malware definitions list that includes many items that aren't even malware, so their detection accuracy is untrustworthy. This post will give details.

 

As for #3.
Unfortunately there is no solution as in Windows where you can map just about any folder to show up in a music library, but all the Movie, Pictures ... Folders are just symbolic links.

If you open terminal
navigate to the User Folder
cd ~
ln -s /Volumes/NetworkDrive/ ~/Music
will overwrite the current movie folder and now link to this new location.
Problem is you can only link to one location. Thus if you want to have some local stuff and the network stuff in the same folder you'd have to create the links inside the existing Music folder which is not exactly merging anymore.

 

Yes - it sucks if your iTunes library, Aperture masters etc. are on a NAS share.

Although you can drag your shared drives from Finder to startup items in preferences, I find it doesn't work very well, and is irritating (because it opens the shared drive in a finder window - which you then have to close again!).

There's an app called Mt.Mounter on the app store which automatically reconnects shares and works well once you figure out how to configure it.