Slashdot Mirror
Windows to Mac Migration Guide/Advice?
Harpa wonders: "Having spent more years than I care to count living and working with various Windows machines, I'm about to get my first Apple (an iBook). While eagerly waiting for the machine to be shipped, I'm starting to realize that changes I'm going to have to deal with may involve more than getting used to one less mouse button!I'm wondering if any Slashdot folk can help. What does an old-time Windows user have to learn/unlearn? To what extent can my Apple live happily with my existing PC's, my printer, my network? Everything I've found so far seems to be either geared for people who've never used a computer before or for existing Mac users. Is there any info available that supports us 'converts'?"
There are a number of conversion utilities/packages which I will let you Google for. :)
Otherwise just don't expect it to be like Windows.
And VersionTracker along with the Apple OSX download page will be your new friends...
http://www.apple.com/switch/ talks about switching from Mac to PC, and includes answers to FAQ's on pages like: http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/ and http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/index2.shtml
Just about any USB mouse will work on a Mac, so if you have an existing USB multi button mouse on a PC, try it and you may find it works fine (and the Mac will allow to set the right button to do contextual menus etc).
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy and intuitive everything is on the Mac Platform. When I switched (about a year ago now). I'd say within a week I'd totally forgotten all of my windows ways and was happily hitting up the Apple key to get at the context menus.
Congratulations on your iBook purchase, you'll be one of us "holier than thou" Mac snobs that you've always hated in no time!
"I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away." --Jack Handy
Your network should just work. OS X out of the box is set to use DHCP. It is easy to configure the networking parameters if necessary, and it supports network profiles so you can have different settings for home, work, and at the lanparty or whatever. Through Samba, it supports Windows file sharing. There is a "Network" pane in Finder that lets you browse your network similar to Network Neighborhood. You can also mount NFS, SMB, FTP, and other wacky filesystems. It is as easy as going to Go->Connect to Server... in Finder (or Cmd-K).
Is your printer USB? Does it work with CUPS? If OS X doesn't directly support your printer, slam it into one of your Windows machines and use networked printing. OS X can do it via CUPS' IPP, LPD, etc.
I would suggest grabbing a Microsoft Intellmouse Optical with scroll wheel, though. I can't stand the Apple mouse.
You might want to throw iTunes on all your Windows machines and take advantage of Rendezvous, so you can play all your music on all your machines.
I would also suggest getting Microsoft Office 2004 for OS X if you do any work that involves word processing, slideshows, spreadsheeting and charting, etc. It is a very slick package and I like it much better than Office for Windows. Oddly enough, the features in the OS X version are slightly different.
Some third-party software you might consider getting (check for it on VersionTracker.com):
* OSXvnc - So you can connect to your Mac remotely. Might not be as important on a laptop.
* Quicksilver: A really nice application launcher that lets you just hit Cmd-Space and start typing the name of any app, contact, photo, etc on your system to open it.
* SSHKeychain: Never enter a SSH passphrase again
* Remote Desktop Connection (http://www.microsoft.com/mac): Good for connecting to your XP machines from your Mac.
* Roxio Toast Titanium: Decent CD/DVD burning software
* If you like multiple desktops, get Desktop Manager
* Chicken of the VNC: A VNC client
* Camino: If you don't like Safari for some reason, this is Mozilla with a pretty Aqua UI
I went from being an Apple hater from the pre-OS X days to now loving my Apple PowerMac G5. Recently, I even got sucked in enough to buy an iPod, Apple Cinema Display, etc. I hope you enjoy your purchase.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
If he's getting a Powerbook, he might as well forget about Home/End/PageUp/PageDn altogether. (damn you Fn button). If you're a hardcore windows user, the keycommands differences are worse than the single mouse button.
Also get used to being more careful about buying things like printers or scanners.
And if your office uses VPN, you'd better pray.
Found one! :) It's at http://www.oxygen-inc.com/premium/InsaniSoft/iEx.h tm. Not quite as cool as Expose, since it only shows thumbnails and not resized windows that are still being updated, only smaller... but it's a start, and it's free!
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
The other replies refer you to the Apple Switch site and it is valuable. The Versiontracker site and the versiontracker suite are well worth the annual fee. You will have Apple's automatic software update for OS and Apple Apps and then you have the versiontracker product that supports BOTH Apple and third-party apps. It's invaluable.
I really find the OSXlist a great resource.
If you have Micro$oft data, bite the bullet and buy their office suite (if you can claim student or educator status, the price for three installs is below $200.00) and you have transparent exchange between platforms.
As for the problems that will crop up, the best utilities are Techtool Pro 4, xupport and Diskwarrior.
Networking, printing and email are a snap. If your printer isn't supported in native OSX 10.3.5 then look into the free CUPS and GIMP print apps. I can print to anything but a daisywheel....
I like Logitech trackballs over 3 button / scroll-wheel rodents - but I own and use all. A Right-Click is CTRL-Click on the single button rodent.
Finally, get a copy of the keyboard shortcuts (Xupport has a list) and learn them. The productivity increase is at least 10:1 when you learn the shortcuts.
Enjoy!
What? I'm a visually impaired user and depend on key combonations for the most part. While it is true that there are less key combos in OS X, they aren't horrible. In fact, a lot of them just need enabled. Keyboard access is an option. With the work being done on Universal Access, I've seen a little bit of improvement in the key combo access as well.
The printer and scanner bit is good advice, but I'm currently looking for a new printer and any of the ones I've been interested in tout OS X support. It doesn't appear to be that big of a problem for new stuff.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with the VPN bit. OS X supports L2TP over IPsec and PPTP out of the box. The Cisco VPN Client is also available for OS X. Search for it at VersionTracker.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
How to uninstall a program.
I looked everywhere. No friggin uninstallers for practically anything. There was the occasional one from the odd app., but most programs had nothing.
Then I asked someone. You throw the Application icon away. That's it. The vast majority of the apps. files are stored within a package which appears as the app. icon. aside from a few preference files, there's nothing else left.
No hidden DLL's, no registry to clean. It was freaky.
2. You will learn keystrokes. The GUI is clean and simple but to do things really quick you learn keystrokes.
3. Less icons. I think is due to the nature of executables but there are fewer icons. In Windows almost every file is an icon (unless hidden). In Mac, the only icons that you see with applications are the ones you need to click on to execute.
4. Adopt Unix user conventions. OS X is based on Unix. You need to have a root (admin) account and an everyday use account. If you need to do anything that requires admin privileges (installing software), OS X will ask you for your admin password seamlessly.
5. Be hands off when installing hardware. The operating system will recognize and install without much intervention. Although Windows has gotten better about this, I feel it asks me too many questions about what it needs to do. If it doesn't recognize it, check on whether it is properly installed.
6. If you really want to tinker, learn Unix and open a terminal window.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As someone who switches between W2K at work and OSX at home on a daily basis, the biggest ongoing problem I have is keyboard shortcuts - I'm forever using the wrong modifier key
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Important URLs:
Important Apps:
That's the jist of things i give them. Besides that. play with expose. it is godlike. i recommend setting the screen corners for maximum efficiency. Besides that, the best thing you can do is to just play around with the apps and system until you're comfortable
- tristan
My advice as someone who switched about a year ago is quite simple.
:)
Just switch. Stop using your PC immediately. If there's something you think you can only do on your PC, you're probably wrong. In my experience, I was able to find freeware mac programs to do the tasks I was accustomed to doing on the PC in a matter of minutes (oh the joys of drag-and-drop to install)
Of course, for me, this wasn't exactly volluntary for me, as the Hard Drive in my PC semi-crashed two weeks after I got the mac (was able to get data off thank god, but the drive was toasted).
Had I not switched to my mac (and just had my PC laptop on me), I'd be scrambling to replace the drive immediately. I eventually replaced it about 8 months later
Honestly, if you try to use the two in tandem, you will instinctively clutch to the PC with which you're more familiar, and you'll end up being less happy in the long run.
And since it seems like the thing to do on this thread, here's a list of software I use
--OS X Mail -- the built-in mail client is top-notch and has awesome spam filtering. use it.
--MS Office -- It's actually BETTER on the mac. There's really no good alternative at the moment and I have no complaints.
--iTunes -- accept no substitutes
--Adium -- Equivilant to trillian on the pc but with a nicer interface and 100% free/GPL
--Transmit -- FTP client. Shareware. Don't know of any decent free ones.
--iCal -- another apple app. simply amazing calendar manager. very simple and powerful
--SubEthaEdit -- great simple text editor with syntax highlighting and a cool collaboration feature. Free.
--JEdit -- More complicated editor for the bigger PHP projects. For those of us afraid of emacs.
--QuickSilver OR LaunchBar -- interesting information organization/retreival tool. check them out. they're quite interesting
--Toast -- Commercial app for burning CDs. for 95% of data and audio CDs, OSX's built-in support is good enough, but Toast is nice to have for burning more obscure cd formats.
--Acquisition -- world's best P2P client ever. forget anything you ever knew about gnutella.
--Azureus -- Great BitTorrent client
--Safari/Firefox/IE -- All have their ups all have their downs. I use safari / firefox most of the time. safari has annoying javascript and css problems, but is otherwise perfect. firefox doesn't intergrate into the OS nicely. IE is outdated, but unlike the windows version, doesn't suck too badly.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
They cover things like take control of buying a mac, take control of your airport network, take control of your mail app, take control of customising panther, etc.
They're generally pretty short, but they're focused on one topic, and will cover that one topic in much more detail than a chapter in a bigger book would.
They're also published by the people who do the excellent Tidbits magazine. You can find them here: http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
There's no simple way to focus the menu from the keyboard like when you hit the "Alt" key in Windows or Linux.
In System Prefs, select Keyboand & Mouse, Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and check "Turn on full keyboard access". Press control-F1 to get into the menu, type the first letter(s) of a menu item to activate it.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Under System Preferences/Keyboard & Mouse have a look at the "Keyboard Access" tab. You can turn on full keyboard access that allows keyboard navigation through menus and some other UI features (Dock, Windows, Palettes etc).
I'm using 10.2, I assume that this hasn't been removed in later versions...
One of the things I haven't seen here that I like to do is drag the Applications folder to the right-hand side of the Dock (Between the Trash and the bar that separates open apps from the other dock items). Once you've done that, Ctrl-Click (or Right-click) on the Applications icon in the dock, and you'll get a nice pop-up menu of all the Applications available on your system. You can repeat this with any folder, so you can easily get to the contents, without having to drill-down through Finder windows.
One tip I have not seen here is this: Assuming that you go with an aftermarket mouse. And assuming that this mouse has the clickable wheel. I suggest you configure said clickable wheel to execute the F9 function of expose' (all windows). This has resulted in a HUGE increase in productivity for me. It makes the already wonderful Expose' twice as natural and speedy. I can find any of a dozens windows in less than a second. If you go with a mouse with even more buttons, the F11 feature is nice to have at your fingertips also.
To be fair, he's getting an iBook, not a Mac desktop. I use a Logitech 6-button mouse with my Powerbook whenever it's at a desk, but it's simply not an option on the road.
The extra three buttons? Expose. I have an Intellimouse Explorer; I've mapped the larger of the two buttons on the left side to "All open windows"; the smaller of the two buttons is "Show desktop". This is extremely useful. Apart from anything else, it means that I can be mousing around, and with one click, I can change my window to anything else that's open; I can access any document I want; ... The third button? That can be mapped to "Application Windows". I haven't had as much need for that particular ability, though, which is why I'm not rushing out to buy a new mouse.
Once you start using Expose, you'll not want to go back to Windows. And that's just one good reason to have a Mac...
I like how, on the Mac, it makes break vs copy in the terminal a no-brainer. On Windows, I'm always in doubt which modifier I should use to copy text from a terminal. Is it shift-del (maybe ctrl-ins, I forgot) or ctrl-c?
On MacOS X, cmd-c is copy, ctrl-c is break.
I suspect what he means is the results of certain key combos are 'weird' to non-Mac users. For example, 'Home' and 'End' in most PC environments takes the cursor to the beginning and end of the current line, whereas under MacOS they take the cursor to the beginning and end of the entire document.
On the Mac the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys scroll up and down, but they don't move the insertion point (the cursor). In most text-editing applications, combining the Command key with the arrow keys will move the insertion point to the beginning or end of the line or document.
You should try a few things and see if they work for you:
1.-Try using list view and opening and closing the triangles for expanding/collapsing
2.-Try column view
If this doesn't work and what you want is a view that lists only folders on one side and everything on the other I guess there might be one, but I can't think of it (search for "explorer" in macupdate. I seem to recall someone wanting to do an equivalent of this ini Cocoa).
You sould also try Path Finder. It's a Finder replacement that has almost everything a power user would ever want (including a terminal drawer in every item window)
Eduo
One thing I find very different is that Windows and it's associated applications force the user to think of their info as being stored in files, whereas many Mac OS X apps (iPhoto, iCal, iTunes, etc - esp the Apple apps) really make life easier for you if you can start to think of things just in terms of data - this is a song, this is a picture, this is a movie - rather than files.
Some 'swithcers' find it frustrating that they have songs that they listen to in iTunes that stop being part of iTunes when they move the files around. Here's a hint - DON'T MOVE THE FILES AROUND. Turn on the "copy files for me" preference and let iTunes worry about where the files ARE, you just need to listen to SONGS. When you import new music from a CD it's all right in your library, if you get a new song (through some unknown process) drag the song off [someplace like the desktop], and drop it in your iTunes library - iTunes will copy it to the music library for you (you can do this with multiple songs at once) and you don't have to know where it goes or when it's done.
That's just one example.
Just pretty much stop thinking about files altogether or you may end up being frustrated with where everything is and how hard it is to manage everything yourself. The beauty of it is that Apple knows how hard it is to manage a filesystem by yourself, so they set most things up to do it for you.
Also, set up an Administrator account, and an everyday use account, and a Guest account. This is the minimum for any machine (it only takes a second to do and it really easy)
The adminstrator account will be used very rarely. I hardly ever use mine.
The everyday account will be used 'everyday' for day-to-day stuff. If you need to install programs or change settings that require admin access, you'll either be prompted to enter the password (usually) or be asked to login as the administrator (less often) but either way you'll be aware that you're giving something administrative access to your machine and you might not always want that (depending on which program we're talking about or which setting change.)
The Guest account will have no password and will allow other people to use your machine without access to YOUR files (unless they're in your SHARED directory) and they won't be able to change any settings on your machine (unless you give them your admin password).
Some might say this is more complicated than using windows, setting up all these users, but the thing is with windows, although they do provide these different levels of security it's very poorly 'policy-ed' (?) You really can't do ANYTHING with windows without admnistrator access, so most people just set themselves up as the admin. Besides it's really not that complicated.
Another benefit of this users system is that it will force you to keep your files/info/data IN YOUR HOME DIRECTORY which a lot of people find a strange concept. USE YOUR HOME DIRECTORY. DON'T STORE FILES IN OTHER PLACES. It sounds authoritarian but it makes a lot of sense once you start doing it. You really shouldn't save things anywhere but inside your home directory, and if you're using your 'everyday' account, you'll be forced to do this.
(PS All this info is based on my experience as a tech at a university where the school had no particular "Mac Policy" so the techs came up with one ourselves - ie: lots of practical experience)
1.) If you know Unix, you'll be right at home 2.) Minimize/Maximize/Close are on the left, not the right. You'll constantly be confusing the two (and on your Windows boxes, too) 3.) Your current Windows hardware should work fine on the network. Maybe a minor hassle to set up (not always, esp. if you use DHCP), but not much of one. 4.) If you don't like modified-clicking with the apple or control modifier, you can buy a standard two-button USB mouse (with scroll wheel if desired) and plug it in.
quobobo said To be fair, he's getting an iBook, not a Mac desktop. I use a Logitech 6-button mouse with my Powerbook whenever it's at a desk, but it's simply not an option on the road.
but what *is* an option is SideTrack.
i have that 6 button mouse built into my iBook thankyouverrymuch! (click, tap, +4 corner taps)
the only time i use the external mouse is when i'm using the 'book in bed, and using the track pad means contorting my arm (which hearts just thinking about it!)
To quobobo: what up? i haven't seen you around the 'net lately... shoot me an email!
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
- Create a folder called Test. Put some files here.
- Go to another location and create another folder called Test. Put some different files here.
- Drag the first Test folder to where the 2nd one is and drop it there. OS X will ask you if you want to replace the contents.
OS X replaces all the contents of the folder, not just copies over the different files."The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Although I started off my desktop career in the late 80's with PC's using DOS and Windows 2.11, I've used Macs in DTP and grpahics jobs and Windows in programming jobs and in my last job was a Windows admin. At home I use both, but chiefly Macs with OSX.
The things I think you'll need to know:
1.As many others have stated, get a 3rd party multi button mouse. Right button works just as it does in Windows.
2.The GUI will probably seem easier after a while. It is definitely cleaner than Windows. You'll get used to the menu always at the top in no time as it's like a maximised app in windows.
3.The dock will be one of those things on the Mac that shows you a profound difference between Windows and OSX. Just drag apps that you want to have permanently there to it and others that you don't just drag off the dock. Drag 'n drop is a fundamental feature of the Mac.
4.Since there is no start menu, you might miss having your applications available at a click. Just drag the applications folder to the right side of the dock separator and you can then right click on the folder there to access your apps. This works with all folders.
5.You'll probably be using Expose extensively soon. Try the keys F9, F10 and F11 to get a fell for what it does. It's a great way of grabbing a file you need in an application.
6.Cmd-Tab is the way of switching applications. Both here and in Expose, drag and drop make it very useful.
7.OSX uses a lot of meta keys and combinations. Cmd, alt, ctrl, shift and the space bar in various combinations work in various ways, but usually consistantly in various apps, such as alt-drag in the finder to copy a file or cmd-click to select various non consecutive files in the finder.
8.The finder has a columns view that is not available in windows. Some prefer it, some don't. I do. try alt dragging the little area below the scroll bars.
9.The finder lets you place favourites in the area to the left. In order to navigate the finder by keyboard, use cmd-up arrow to move up the folder hierarchy.
10.Minimising places windows on the right side of the dock. alt-double click will place all that applications windows in the dock.
11.Cmd-h will hide an application from view, including its minimised windows form the dock.
12.What are control panels in windows are the system preferences in osx. The app with a light swtich icon. It is considerably simpler to use than Windows contorl panels.
13.The firewall is on by default, and networking services and file sharing are configured here and are fairly simple to do compared to windows. You'll be able to set up a windows share to get data from your windows computer.
14.Printer setup is also easy. Just plug it in usually.
15.You'll need a root account on rare occasions. This can be set up using the Netinfo manager utility in Applications->Utilities.
16.The terminal is a full fledged unix commandline environment and is extremely useful for power users. Bash is the default shell.
17.There are many many sites out there that offer advice and troubleshooting. One that springs to mind is osxhints. The MacNN forums also offer really good help for newcomers.
Lastly, good luck.
Or, to put it a better way, OS/X uses much more of your desktop real estate. You will not be able to easily enjoy having your foreground application in the foreground as you might under Linux or Windows. Icons will clutter the screen irrespective of your foreground app.
Unless you do one of the following very easy things:
1.) Make your foreground windows bigger
2.) Make the dock auto-hide
3.) Quit the Finder
It's hidden somewhere else. Good luck finding it. Don't think you can right click for it either.
Yeah, in that reclusive APPLE MENU. Exactly do you right-click to sht down in Windows, anyway?
You'll basically need to open an application then go through another procedure to maximise it
Like clicking the zoom button on the window?
I wasn't thinking about gaming. My point was that if you're going to change OS's, shouldn't there be a reason? Despite the "offtopic" moderation it's just common sense that one investigate the difficulty of making a switch before rather than after a purchase.
CTRL + click usually gives you a context menu like you'd expect wtih a right-click in Windows.
All shortcuts use the Apple key, not the CTRL key.
Closing a window does not quit the application. To quit ethe application, you have to, well, quit the application (almost always File/Quit or Apple+Q).
Menu bars are almost always attached to the top system menu bar, not to the window.
To find a file like you would with Start>Search (or Find depending on OS version), you click on Finder in the dock (bottom of the screen), and then type your search term in the field on the top right portion of any Finder window.
Terminal is the application that provides a command prompt like Start > Accessories > Command Prompt. However, this is a Unix prompt, not a DOS prompt!!!
System Settings is the application that is the equivalent to the Windows control panels. Get to System Settings from the Apple menu (top left of the screen - click on the apple icon).
Most folder have rough equivalents:
Program Files = Applications
My Documents = [username]/Documents
c:\ = Macintosh HD (or / in terminal)
c:\Windows = Library (that's a *real* rough equivalent)
If you have an app you use a lot and want on the doc, just drag its icon there. Don't want it on the dock any more? Just drag the icon off.
There is no good way to maximize a window in Mac world.
You probably want to "Hide" rather than minimize windows. Apple+H. That's just my preference.
Apple+Tab = CTRL+Tab
Somethings never change. F1 = Help.
Good luck!
On windows, I've been more of a "right-click, copy, right-click, paste" sort of guy, whereas, on the mac, with no right click, I go for the command-c, command-v stuff.
I know, it sounds trivial, but there are a lot of useful key-combos on a mac. For all the complaints of a one-button mouse, I find with the key-combos, the lack of extra buttons doesn't slow me down. In fact, one benefit is that the key-combos are much more consistant in OS X than windows. Command-Q always quits. Always. Every program. Command-S always saves. Windows has this sort of thing, but there are quite a bit of programs that don't cohere to the convention in Windows.
Otherwise, this is the advice I can think to muster (yes, I'm thread-hijacking):
"The icons are actually on the right side of the desktop, where they won't be covered up by every window you open!"
Or, to put it a better way, OS/X uses much more of your desktop real estate. You will not be able to easily enjoy having your foreground application in the foreground as you might under Linux or Windows. Icons will clutter the screen irrespective of your foreground app.
Are you trying to imply that the icons in OS X are ALWAYS in the foreground? Cuz if you are, you are stupid. Just wondering.
"'Shut Down' is not under 'Start'"
It's hidden somewhere else. Good luck finding it. Don't think you can right click for it either.
What the hell are you talking about? It's under the Apple menu, which is available 100% of the time, is always in the upper left hand corner of the screen, no matter which application is open. And you can't shut down Windows using right click, so I don't know why you brought that up at all.
You'll basically need to open an application then go through another procedure to maximise it
This is just an outright lie. You can click on the button at the top of your window that has the "+" sign in it.
"I can do anything a Windows user can!"
(Macs have a version of MS Office available for them, however it does not contain the same range of productivity applications that are available to Windows/Office users)
Um... MS Office for Mac contains all the regular MS Office with the exception of Outlook. Instead, MS offers Entourage, which is quite a bit BETTER than Outlook (2000; I haven't used Office XP yet.)
"My Mac never has technical problems!"
(This is a fallacy. The Apple Mac is quite capable of generating application errors and crashing, just like any other *nix based system.
The statement "My Mac never has technical problems" contains no fallacies. It a statement of fact and as such is either true or false. I own a Mac, and have never had a hardware issue with it. In my experience, Apple's computers are better constructed and engineered machines than Dells or other mass-manufactured computers.
Expect to wait several months for spare parts. You will not be able to buy parts off the shelf and install them and have them work.
This is simply stupid. Video card slot: AGP 8X Pro. Hard drive: serial ATA. Memory: DDRAM. Peripherals: USB or Firewire. Monitor connector: VGA. Expansion slots: PCI-X. If your CPU goes bad, order it from Apple. They have the highest rated customer support in the world.
Crack smokin' crackah.
Actually, you'll be able to use Thunderbird in OS X as well. There's an OS X version of Thunderbird available on the Thunderbird site as well as the Windows and Linux versions.
Multi-button mice for Macs have been available for a very long time. The code has the ability to deal with them, however Apple just doesn't ship any. This allows the power user to do their thing and keeps it simple for everyone else.
You can disable that. Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery"; Uncheck "Automatically Restart"
Of course, nobody knows about it because it takes a fuckin' 400-page novel to describe how to do it.
The image is a dream, the beauty is real. Can you see the difference?
You can also disable it in the boot options menu by pressing F8 while your computer boots up. Choose Disable Automatic Restarting. It is funny to hear people talk about how XP is so great because it never BSoDs, but then ask for help with their computer restarting on their own :)
it's a chord instead of a dedicated key, but Fn-Delete does this.
Apple has a fairly complete list of short cuts in the their HIG. Defiantly worth checking out.
So far people have mentioned that apps under OS X generally don't quit when you close the window, although there are exceptions (System Preferences come to mind), but rather remain loaded in memory until you 'Command-Q' or 'File->Quit'. But that can get a little confusing. Here's what you need to know to surely quit that app - click on the Dock icon, but don't release the button; hold it until a menu pops up. If it says 'Show in Finder', well, then the app ain't running. But if the app is running, then you will get a menu that, at the very least, will have a 'Quit' option at the bottom. Personally, I dislike the Dock, but this is one feature that is quite handy. One can quit any running app at any time from any other app, regardless of the number of windows related to that app. Sure, you can do this in Windows by closing out all app-related windows in the task bar, but it ain't as elegant or easy.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
After you highlight text in Cocoa apps, in order to drag, you must click-and-hold in the highlighted text for at least a half second before moving the mouse. If you immediately drag as you click, you just highlight a different section of text.
It sounds annoying, but it actually gives you two options in one action: click-and-highlight, or click-pause-and-drag. You end up using the pause to find your drag target, and soon you don't have to think about it.
If you can't see the desktop, hit the F11 key after you start your drag to uncover the desktop (Exposé!) so you can do your drop; hit F11 again to bring your foreground window back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _>8
Too many errors in one post (make fewer).
I have put together a list of software that I recommend using (for common tasks), after evaluating several alternatives. Also, there is a detailed discussion about how I moved my mail archives over to the Mac, with pointers to appropriate helper software. Admittedly, some of this might be easier nowadays. Hope it helps.
mdwh2 I bet does not have a mac.....
.NET for windows included for free with the OS, only it uses java rather than VB. if u r big in VB get realbasic).
I converted off of my SGI-320 running windows 2000 about two years ago to a G3-900 mhz iBook, and I have not looked back.
I currently have an Gateway, running XP Pro, A Tosiba Satillite running SUSE 9.1 Pro, and my G3. I additionally have an HP running SCO OpenServer 5.0.4 but let's not talk about this one, I am ashammed (it's for work). So I can give u some perspective on all the major current OS's.
The drag-and-drop in mac is far more refined than in windows, pritty much anything can be dragged to anything else (even down to listboxes & stuff like that).
OSX has a lot of eyecandy, that does take up a lot of resources, but they can be turned off. The only thing I was displeased with was the memory that I shipped with was too low (I started with 128mb, and then added another 512mb). The new ones are better on memory, but avoid using vertual memory like the pauge, or reformat your drive so that there is an actual swap partition. I also upgraded to 10.3, with the development suite (kind of like a full version of
The other thing that windows people cannot grasp the concept of is a document based application. Almost everything in OSX is that, and Nothing in windows is (except VB6 in MDI mode). The idea is simple. Each window is a document. if you close a window, that document closes, not the application. you specifcally have to quit the application (open-apple q) to exit it. Most windows users leave lots of applications open, and then complain when the mac slows down.
In my experiance, OSX is the cadillac / mercedes of all os's in the world. It does everything, does it well, and is comfortable, and easy to use, but does not get wonderful gas mileage. Windows is like the chevy of the os's, in that it starts most of the time, sorta looks pritty, usually runs fine down the road, starts off with crappy gas mileage, and gets worse as time goes on. Linux is the kit car. It can be cheap, it can be expensive, it can get crappy gas mileage, it can be an econo-box.
my iMac also has dual head support, video out standard, and gets 4 hours of battery life. The toshiba gets about 25 minutes just long enough to go from one plug to the next.
the whole OSX concept is make it simple, and elegeant. For example: I want to burn a cd or DVD. I put the medum in, drag files to it, and eject. it asks me if I want to burn it, I click yes. Another example: I want to make a movie using some film on my camcorder. I plug the camcorder in, it says I have a camcorder, and it has video on it. do you want to import it. I click yes. It opens the iMovie application, imports the clips, sets the contrast levels, and makes the clips corectly. I drag & drop into the order I want, and add a whole mess of really cool effects, then do file -> export (I usually export as a DivX AVI so all my friends can see it). my SGI when I plugged my camcorder into it, rebooted.
So how is having the computer lock on a blue screen better than having it restart? Does it mean the document is *not* lost?
The "Automatically Restart" option is certainly not a data-saving option, but it sure is good for getting you back to work in a timely fashion.
± 29 dB