New iMac user!

faceman

Hi, first time posting to this forum! I took the plunge today and ordered an iMac from Apple! Im looking for to gettin my hands on it.

Can anyone recommend good websites and general tips for making the most of it? My mac knowledge is limited!

Thanks!

Urban Weigl

First of all, congratulations on buying the best PC on the market.

Secondly, could you be a bit more specific? If you've been using Windows exclusively, I recommend the book Switching to the Mac, Tiger Edition (by David Pogue). It's $15 at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Switching-Mac-Missing-Manual-Tiger/dp/0596006608/sr=8-5/qid=1169061543/ref=sr_1_5/105-1381300-5501241?ie=UTF8&s=books

What types of web sites are you looking for? To find Mac software, try www.macupdate.com and www.versiontracker.com -- there's some really high quality shareware for the Mac, and this can usually be found at these sources. For example: looking for a BitTorrent client? Search for "bittorrent" on MacUpdate.

Dont be at yourself

www.iusethis.com is also handy for keeping track of mac shareware.

For mac news, there's tuaw.com, mcnn.com, macrumors.com and loads more.

But in honesty, OS X is a doddle to use, you shouldnt have any problems. I didn't, and I'm an idiot.

faceman

thanks guys. yeah im an existing windows user who uses a PC for work (finance roll) and for leisure.

My technical knowledge isnt great tho, i dont know what bittorrent is!

Oriel

www.versiontracker.com

BuffyBot

faceman wrote:

thanks guys. yeah im an existing windows user who uses a PC for work (finance roll) and for leisure.

My technical knowledge isnt great tho, i dont know what bittorrent is!

My mother, who is the least technical person I know can use a Mac running OS X reasonably sucessfully. There is hope for all when it comes to all when Macs are involved it would seem

K.O.Kiki

My grandad can run iChat AV with no problems!
Another good idea is to just start lurking/posting here.

Ham'nd'egger

Man, welcome to the club.

If you needed any more persuasion, I was at a friends last night and her Advent laptop was running slow so I fired off Norton for her. One virus later (And several attacks on her computer), I had to tell her that she had to do this at least once a day to ensure her computer will be as free of bugs as possible, as well as updating Norton every day to keep it clean. And the face of her when I told her that Norton will want another €80+ next year was priceless! Give her 3 months and she will shell out for Vista, that will be over €300. And she has no webcam, another €50. Heh Heh, Windows are worse than Ryanair for the hidden charges!

The price of Macs is expensive enough but you get so much more for your buck that you end up saving overall, and your Mac will last longer, way longer than a Windows ran unit.

faceman

Hamndegger wrote:

....And the face of her when I told her that Norton will want another €80+ next year was priceless! Give her 3 months and she will shell out for Vista, that will be over €300. And she has no webcam, another €50. Heh Heh, Windows are worse than Ryanair for the hidden charges!

The price of Macs is expensive enough but you get so much more for your buck that you end up saving overall, and your Mac will last longer, way longer than a Windows ran unit.

Thats true, i was surprised when ordering when there was no need to add anything to the basic product to get started. (although i did order ms office, wireless keyboard/mouse and printer too) You could simply pick the standard package and you're away! The amount of times ive ordered a laptop/pc in the past (Eh well twice actually!) and you pick the standard "special" price but you know you're goin to be orders antivirus, more ram etc on top of that!

Bunnyhopper

Welcome to the club

Apple's own support pages are useful:
http://www.apple.com/support/

And if you're completely new to Macs then these are good:
http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/
http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Beginner%27s_Guide
http://paulstamatiou.com/2005/11/29/10-things-every-new-mac-owner-should-know/

Handy for downloads:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/

Useful forums:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/
http://forums.macrumors.com/

Have fun

triple h

hello faceman , I took the plunge (like you did ) 4 weeks before xmas. I love mac. It is fantastic..I was a windows person for 7 years.

I am like you too, i am not the best at tech stuff, so come in here ask questions, make a few posts. Everyday i come in here, most days i dont even login, i just read some threads and then leave, but come in here you will learn something.

Also i buy a copy of macformat every month. its a great mag.

Now, this is what to expect---1) you will at least come across 2 pc people that will say to you "you should have bought a pc"---my advice is to just let it go over your head because you bought a great computer system and they dont know what they are talking about.
and 2) it will take you about 2 weeks to get your head around the new change----but dont worry its easy to figure out and easy to use. in fact you will love the new way of doing things, really.

oh 3) after a few weeks you will know more about computer systems than you have ever known in your life time because apple explain how things work and its simple to understand and easy to use. In the pc world you are not told how to do stuff and you feel stupid and if you are told how to do something it is hard to understand and hard to use.

in this months issue of macformat some guy said that in a perfect world you would have an imac, an iphone, an ipod, an iwife, an ihouse and an icar. that was well said.

triple h

also faceman, as i said it will take you at least 2 weeks to get your head around the change of a new system, but I cant say when it is you will know everything about mac, i reckon a year.

Why do i say this, well i have a good few friends in spain and some came over this new year to see me. One of them has been an imac user for years and what he was showing me was amazing, this computer is something else, i am afraid i cant remember most of the stuff he showed me, but some day i will not only see it in action again, but i will be able to do it. lets just say no windows pc could ever do this amazing stuff i saw.

My friend from spain also put software on my computer --toast, vlc and transmission, i have to be honest i have not got a fecking clue what vlc and transmission do, but some day i will know. I will read up about it some day.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

---

AFTER A FEW DAYS WITH YOUR iMAC.

get firefox (its free) and use it instead of safari (these are like internet explorer for sufing the web)

install windows on your mac, you will hate it, but some places you go are windows only.

you will get a 30 day free trial for iwork ( i love iwork. i use it alot) and office for mac, open them when you are ready.

eirlink

triple h wrote:

hello faceman , I took the plunge (like you did ) 4 weeks before xmas. I love mac. It is fantastic..I was a windows person for 7 years.

I am like you too, i am not the best at tech stuff, so come in here ask questions, make a few posts. Everyday i come in here, most days i dont even login, i just read some threads and then leave, but come in here you will learn something.

Also i buy a copy of macformat every month. its a great mag.

Now, this is what to expect---1) you will at least come across 2 pc people that will say to you "you should have bought a pc"---my advice is to just let it go over your head because you bought a great computer system and they dont know what they are talking about.
and 2) it will take you about 2 weeks to get your head around the new change----but dont worry its easy to figure out and easy to use. in fact you will love the new way of doing things, really.

oh 3) after a few weeks you will know more about computer systems than you have ever known in your life time because apple explain how things work and its simple to understand and easy to use. In the pc world you are not told how to do stuff and you feel stupid and if you are told how to do something it is hard to understand and hard to use.

in this months issue of macformat some guy said that in a perfect world you would have an imac, an iphone, an ipod, an iwife, an ihouse and an icar. that was well said.

....and an iJob !!to pay for it all;)

McSandwich

The forums at www.applenova.com cover just about everything mac related.

MHP

And for local news/support/discussion go to www.clubmac.ie

parsi

If somehow you end up getting it shipped with OS X 10.4.7 don't upgrade to 10.4.8 unless you want your wirless performance to be hosed.

Also get used to the fact that you will have regular security updates (a bit like MS but since they are from Apple they are considered to be benefits rather than a sign of weakness).

When a new update comes around go to macintouch.com and see what others are experiencing before you update.

If you have a few computers in the house I recommend an airport express as a wireless print server for a USB printer - using Bonjour both Windows and OSX clients will be able to print happily.

Macjanitor and tiger cache cleaner are useful utilities to run maintenance scripts etc. Clam XAV is a handy virus scanner .

weeder

can you please explain to me and giv me some links about my wireless performance being hosed since my mac shipped with 10.4.7 and i updated to .8

Urban Weigl

I can confirm that there is NO difference with wireless performance between 10.4.7 and 10.4.8, getting exactly the same speed: about 25 Mbps using a Linksys WRT54GL access point, which is basically the maximum possible "real world" speed on 802.11g.

parsi

Have you an Intel iMac Core2 Duo ? cause us folks are having major issues -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=672212&tstart=75 ( a 75 message thread)

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=823897&tstart=15

I'm using a Linksys WAG54Gx2 which worked perfectly with my Mini and works fine with my DS, PC and laptop.

weeder

i have a mini btw

faceman

parsi wrote:

Have you an Intel iMac Core2 Duo ? cause us folks are having major issues -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=672212&tstart=75 ( a 75 message thread)

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=823897&tstart=15

I'm using a Linksys WAG54Gx2 which worked perfectly with my Mini and works fine with my DS, PC and laptop.

i thought these issues were limited and only effecting macbook users?

311

excuse me for butting in on this thread ,
I was just wondering ,does the mini offer the same operational benefits as basic macs or is it just a gimmic?
I've been using microsoft for about 17 years and want a change

weeder

_Brian_ wrote:

excuse me for butting in on this thread ,
I was just wondering ,does the mini offer the same operational benefits as basic macs or is it just a gimmic?
I've been using microsoft for about 17 years and want a change

get a mini, its what i did yes, they are just a basic mac but it has the same operational benefits as you call it

311

Sorry again for sneakin in on the thread ,thanks weeder.

What I meant by op. benefits was ,do they have the same ports and stuff for external hardware .

Cheers
Brian.

faceman

Well me iMac arrived today and im a happy customer! Havent a clue how to use it tho!

Dont be at yourself

excuse me for butting in on this thread ,
I was just wondering ,does the mini offer the same operational benefits as basic macs or is it just a gimmic?
I've been using microsoft for about 17 years and want a change

The Mini is a great introduction into the world of apple, and is fully functional. I would advise going for 1gb ram though, as the dashboard widgets etc can be a little unresponsive with anything less.

parsi

Just to add that my airport issues were resolved by the latest Airport Update (came out about two weeks ago - not the "enabler") and finally my iMac browses as quickly as my Mini used to.