Soo New to Macs, but man I am LOVIN it!

[spitkicker]

as you can see I am actually happy to have bought a iMac after being so skeptical for so long....

It doesn't seem like I'll be using my pc in a long long time...

During my learning curve I have hit a few bumpy roads that I hope someone can point me in the right direction too.

- When I try to set up time machine it asks me to choose a hard drive to back up to. But when I stick my usb connected 250 Western Digital External Harddrive, Time machine does not recognize that it is there. I know it works because I can drag and drop files into it and the hard drive shows up on the desktop.

Any thoughts on what's not working right and how to fix?

- Another one is when I use the remote control and open up that media center type program where the whole screen turns into a movie/ music/ picture view. Well while using the picture viewer, some orchestra music plays while viewing it. I go to iPhoto thinking that there's a setting to change my music, but it's not there. Is it possible to change the music?

and is it just me... or does it feel like I need to buy all these nice/ expensive component products just to get the full effect of my iMac.

for example: I really want to get a High Quality camera, Final Cut Express, an Ipod 80 Gig... this thing is opening all the doors to being broke for awhile.. lol

 

[motulist]

- When I try to set up time machine it asks me to choose a hard drive to back up to. But when I stick my usb connected 250 Western Digital External Harddrive, Time machine does not recognize that it is there.

Does the hard drive's icon show up on the desktop? Is it HFS+ formatted?

 

[GSMiller]

Welcome to Mac OS X. My friend got her MacBook yesterday, her first Mac, and she screamed for 30 minutes--I kid you not. But yea you want all of your other electronics to be as nice as your Mac. I say don't rush into buying all this stuff unless you don't already have it. I already had an iPod and a nice printer, I just needed a nice camera, one that would take widescreen pics so I could use them for my desktop wallpaper

 

[odinsride]

and is it just me... or does it feel like I need to buy all these nice/ expensive component products just to get the full effect of my iMac.

for example: I really want to get a High Quality camera, Final Cut Express, an Ipod 80 Gig... this thing is opening all the doors to being broke for awhile.. lol

Definitely. Since buying my Macbook back in May to test the waters, I've bought a Canon dSLR, Yamaha studio monitors, a Firewire audio interface, 2 Firewire Externals, a 17" Macbook Pro, 2 Ram upgrades, the new thin apple keyboard, the 160gb ipod classic, and quite a few more smaller accessories.

I am almost dry heaving at the thought of everything the MB has caused me to buy..but it's definitely worth it if you can afford it. I haven't once looked back to Windows/PC for my home computing needs (work is another story ) Enjoy your new iMac

 

[jellomizer]

- When I try to set up time machine it asks me to choose a hard drive to back up to. But when I stick my usb connected 250 Western Digital External Harddrive, Time machine does not recognize that it is there. I know it works because I can drag and drop files into it and the hard drive shows up on the desktop.
...
and is it just me... or does it feel like I need to buy all these nice/ expensive component products just to get the full effect of my iMac.
...

Well the downside for Time Machine is that the Disk needs to be formatted to a Mac Format the HFS+ for Time Machine to work. Because you can access your drive from the desktop I would figure that it will need to be reformatted... (after you backup umm.. Your backup drive) go into System Preferenes and choose Time Machine, Then it will ask you to choose a drive. Next to your drive it should say data will be erased or something like that. Choose the drive and after a couple hours for the first backup everything should work...

Well the more nice things you have the more you can do with the Mac... But that is true with Windows, Linux, ... Unlike Windows Home, OS X is actually a rather powerful OS so to fully utalize it you can make it do a heck of a lot. I wouldn't worry about trying to do everything the OS can do just do what you need to get done with it.

 

[spitkicker]

ok.. cool.. so I'm going to have to reformat my device... after backing it up...

That sounds like what I'll do then..

I'll back up the information i have on the drive now (about) 80 gigs worth onto my iMac.

Then reformat the drive

then put the stuff back as well as run time machine to back my stuff up.

Now after I reformat it into HFS+ would I still be able to plug it into my PC and use it as normal?


On a Side note... I think the number one thing that I want now for my iMac is a new Canon Camera. After of course I get Mac:Office and Adobe Photoshop for it.

I do some Artwork for fun so I am really excited to see how I can enhance my drawings...

 

[odinsride]

Now after I reformat it into HFS+ would I still be able to plug it into my PC and use it as normal?

No - you would need a program like Macdrive for Windows in order to read an HFS+ drive. If you want to share a drive between Mac and Windows, it must be formatted as FAT32, but then you have a filesize limit of like 4gb I think.