Well I finally bit the bullet and picked up an iMAC. I use to work on MACs years ago. Not a lot of experience but enough to get buy. Decided to pick one up today and now just trying to teach myself all over again the joys of the apple world....if only they didn't rip you off by making you pay for a .mac account if you want to use the ichat feature, etc...

 

you are officially off my Xmas list

 

*waits for ensuing flame war *

 

I just built my first Linux machine.

 

Heathen!

or worse yet...

Mac lover!

lol

Just kiddin! Enjoy your new toy...did they ever do anything about backwards compatibility?

 

Feel free to ask about any questions you might have, I switched over to using OS X as my main OS in 2003 but still work on Windows and Linux quite a bit too.

Some general advice. Don't expect it to run like a Windows machine. Try to find the proper OS X ways of doing tasks. This is one of the things that throws a lot of owners off is that they expect it to run exactly like Windows did.

Use the built in programs, they are generally pretty nice. Address Book is very handy for me, as I have everyones phone numbers in there synced to my Bluetooth phone. iPhoto has all my general photos in it that I take with a point and shoot digital camera, and from there I export what I want to the web. Safari works as a browser decently, if you find a site it isn't happy with, try Camino browser. It's built on the same web code Firefox uses, but it acts like an OS X app.

As far as the .Mac stuff, iChat uses either a @mac.com address or a normal AIM login. I use it for video chat only though with a normal AIM account, otherwise I use Adium to do just normal IM on all the networks.

What specifically are you wondering about with backwards compatibility? OS X ran 99% of OS 9 programs through "Classic" as long as you have a PowerPC Mac. The newer Intel Macs won't run Classic, but do run any OS X app even if it was only made for the older PowerPC machines. Microsoft Office is something I use that is still PowerPC only, but works fine on my Intel based Macbook Pro.

 

well having used Linux at work for over 6 years, Linux at home for browsing, email and what not, and Windows for entertainment (games, videos, etc) i decided i needed something new and got a Mac-Mini

i loved the interface but felt that my hands were tied in SO many ways.. i couldn't even play freakin' movies at full screen without paying 29 bucks for quicktime pro, which i thought was a load of BS..

anyway no regrets.. i still love it, but wish i could use it more efficiently!

oh.. and now i'm in love with the Vista aero interface..

 

Yeah, the quicktime thing sucks. A license should just ship with new systems by default. I got lucky, and my Apple Reseller back in Colorado just paid for a license for me with how much business I gave them over the years. As far as the other hand tied comments, under the hood it is BSD, and tons of things can be done. It's just a little more modern in the layout of things and the use of LaunchDaemon for everything. Look into MacPorts to bring in more of the open source stuff you probably know from the Linux side. Mac OS X Hints is also a great site for all kinds of tips, from changing annoyances, to tweaking things.

 

sweet.. thanks for the tip drakino!

i already have VLC player, but it has a couple interface issues that need to be worked out

 

i love my macbook. i am a college student and this is a very handy and reliable computer. no stress, just turn it on and go.

as for windows, i guess if you want to play games it's good.

 

well right now I have spent most of my day trying to format my external hard drive to work with the iMac. What a pain this has been. I know it needs to be Fat32 if I want to read/write to it on both Windows and Mac o/s, but, I only want to use it on the mac. It is a 300 GB Seagate drive in a Vantec case. No problems with the drive itself, but when I use disc utility to try to partition it, erase it, or whatever, the app hangs. I put it back on Vista, made 3 Fat 32 partitions and the mac can see them fine, but I don't want 10 flipping partitions on the drive. I just want 1. Anyone know of a good mac application that can do what I want?

 

How does the enclosure connect to your Mac? Not sure why it's locking up Disk Utility, thats all I used on my 320gb external drive.

One workaround might be to try it off the install DVD. Put that in your disc drive, and reboot. Hold down the C key to boot off the DVD, and once it gets to the installer, look in the menus for a Disk Utility option. Try formatting it from there.

It can also be done from the command line, but that should be what Disk Utility is doing under the hood.

 

got it sorted out. It was the drive itself. Replaced with with another drive and it works fine. I tossed this one into a Firewire800 enclosure as well. Man, I didn't think there would be that big of a transfer speed difference from USB 2.0 and Firewire800....very nice!

 

Cool, glad to hear it's working. And yeah, even firewire 400 is nicer over USB2, even though their speeds are similar. USB just eats up too much CPU time to talk to devices at full speed, firewire is more in line with internal drive interfaces. Having both options on the enclosure is great.

 

Congrats on your purchase, and glad to see you got the problem solved! There is an initially annoying learning curve to switching from Windows to Mac, but in general it's well worth it.

I bought a G4 Mac Mini about 1.5 years ago with the intent of using it as a home theater computer, and I ended up falling in love with the OS... Needless to say, the Mini never ended up getting hooked upto the TV.

I sold the Mini a couple weeks ago and just replaced it with a Macbook Pro. It is 99x better and faster than the Mini it is replacing...

Don't listen to the mac haters... Most haters hate, and they have no idea why. They will tell you Macs suck, but they won't be able to give you a good reason as to why. They will tell you Windows is so much better and had so much more software.

More software, perhaps. But the limited amount of software available on the Mac is generally better than the huge variety available for Windows. Take Adium, for example. It's the best chat program ever. Way better than AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Gaim, Trillian, etc.

The only thing I think Windows has that's better is photo management software. I really love to use Picasa to organize my photos, and the Mac's equivalent, iPhoto, is nowhere near as powerful or as easy to use.

Anyways, congrats on your purchase, and ignore the haters. Lets us know if you have any questions on your new mac!

 

Sweet Choice man!!! I bought a 20" iMAC around Christmas time and haven't lloked back since. There are SOME things that work better on the PC, that is why I still have my laptop but dang the Mac OS is nice.

The biggest thing I have learned is that the Mac works 90% like the PC with the exception of having to close the programs using the header nad not the X button on the window. Also the apple button (the one with the funky square looking thing) acts much like the control button on windows apps. So apple + c is copy, appl + v is paste, so on and so forth.

Good luck man and enjoy. Also have you noticed how much clearer and crisper the Mac screen is than that of a PC?

 

So far so good. I picked up the Canopus ADVC110 converter the other day. So far it works pretty good but still trying to figure out iMovie. Why they made the video edit part so dumb is beyond me. They give you an option to zoom in on the time line but you can't edit the video on the time line (to cut out a piece). You have to use the small arrows right below the video and they seem to move in 5 second increments. Had a problem with the system not shutting down properly (hanging at blue screen) but I got that sorted out very quickly.

Thanks for the tips. I figured out the copy, paste, cut shortcuts the first day I got it. There are times I keep forgetting to close the program from the header but I am getting use to it. I am still very happy with the machine, only complaint is the 24" model should come with a better video card than the nvidia 7300. Heck, my laptop has the 7800GT and it is 9 months old.

 

What, cant game good enough on the 7300?

 

well oddly enough even the detail in WoW is not as good as I would have expected it to be...but it does look pretty good at 1920x1200 res

 

crank it down to 1600x1200 and then turn the detail lvl up a bit. Should help some.