Mac OS First time mac user... Advice needed

[beanstalk_230]

Hi

I just bought a macbook and wanted advice to where to get started from so as to fully utilize the potential of the machine.

Kindly advice about tutorials or guides that I should really go through to get a good hang of the system.

Regards

P.S. I find the unavailability of thumbnails of folders in the mac very annoying especially while browsing photos and videos. Any solution to the above problem?

 

[Powersurge]

Hi

I just bought a macbook and wanted advice to where to get started from so as to fully utilize the potential of the machine.

Kindly advice about tutorials or guides that I should really go through to get a good hang of the system.

Fully utilize the potential in what way? Be more specific, if possible.

Also, have you been through the basics here? It's the best place to begin.

Also, if you are curious as to which programs to use generally, i highly suggest you read through this thread.

 

[nitant]

Well for starters, install Quicksilver. Then you wont have to goto Applications to start programs.

Change Command to Control and Control to Command in Keyboard Preferences (This will get CTRL-V/CTRL-C to work)

Try PathFinder. Very good Finder replacement with Cut support and Directories above files.

Perian will help you with all the codecs for QuickTime.

MS Office for Mac sucks, but no other choice.

mac-bb.org will help you get the latest Mac "Releases"

Apart from that: Dont try to use Mac like Windows, but instead learn to use Mac for what it is. Soon within a week or two, it will grow on you.

 

[Smith]

Change Command to Control and Control to Command in Keyboard Preferences (This will get CTRL-V/CTRL-C to work)

Apart from that: Dont try to use Mac like Windows, but instead learn to use Mac for what it is. Soon within a week or two, it will grow on you.

Ehh? That only makes it more complicated. Especially when using spotlight and many other things.

 

[rravikantt]

I find the unavailability of thumbnails of folders in the mac very annoying especially while browsing photos and videos. Any solution to the above problem?

You can set the view to cover flow. Here instead of clicking on each and every pic to see its content, you can quickly scroll through the entire pics or videos.

Best option is to use Picasa. Picasa displays the pics in thumbnails by default. You can directly edit, delete or manage pics from picasa itself.

 

[Maestro]

The Apple website is probably the best place to start. They have a huge collection of tutorials and how-to's.

I agree on switching Ctrl & Command, if only for the fact that if I spend a long time in Snow Leopard, I tend to use the same combos in Windows as well.

 

[bikalpapaudel]

^^

I agree on switching Ctrl & Command, if only for the fact that if I spend a long time in Snow Leopard, I tend to use the same combos in Windows as well.

Change Command to Control and Control to Command in Keyboard Preferences (This will get CTRL-V/CTRL-C to work)

That's fine for a Hackintosh user who also uses Windows often, not for a Mac user.

The placement of the modifier key -> Command button (which you hit by the more active/powerful thumb) is much more apt as compared to Control (where you generally use your Pinky), to facilitate reaching out keys for shortcut combos. And this is even more essential on the Mac where you have all sorts of shorcuts and possibilities via the keyboard.

Well for starters, install Quicksilver. Then you wont have to goto Applications to start programs.

Un-necessary. People just follow the herd and get Quicksilver because others tell so.

While I obviously agree on it's utility for an experienced power user, it's little use for beginners. We now have Spotlight for launching Apps. With Leopard you can have an Application folder stack on the Dock which makes things easy. There's one by default in Snow Leopard.

MS Office for Mac sucks, but no other choice.

I think MS Office for Mac is one good product, although I'd wish there were OneNote available for the Mac too.

BTW NeoOffice and OpenOffice are excellent replacement suites for the non-demanding casual user.

And there's iWork -- which wont exactly fit in with enterprise level requirements of MS Office compatibility -- but it is fabulous in itself for Pages and it's world's best presentation app, Keynote. I'm sure Numbers is good too, for what it's meant.