Can I burn DVDs on a Mac?

BlackEdelweiss

I am trying to decide whether to buy a Mac or get a new desktop, the Mac is looking very good so far but I am trying to justify the price. Somebody told me you cant burn dvd's on a mac, is this true?

Should I get a Mac, are they that good? Probably the wrong place to ask this question!

maringo

I'd go Mac over pc every time. Of course you can burn a dvd on macs - don't know where you heart that tbh.

Having used pcs and macs over many years in the course of work nothing beats the Mac every time. :):)

BlackEdelweiss

Thanks, I thought it would be strange if they left something so basic out. I have a few other questions but I dont want to start another thread for them. Is there a MS Word compatible software installed on the MAC or that can be downloaded free, if I buy a mac it will blow my budget out of the water so I cant afford to buy anything else, probably not even the electricity to run it.
Which is better, the magic mouse or magic trackpad? I am used to using a mouse but like the idea of the trackpad, I would be using CAD on the mac so I dont know if that would be hard.

maringo

Some people use Openoffice on mac - its free open source similar to ms office as far as I know but have a check on the web - lots of help out there. Another good point with macs is that they don't seem to be targeted as much by viruses as windows systems are.

You can just plug in any mac compatible mouse or use the trackpad. So its not an either or. You'd get used to trackpad very quickly. Apple sell refurbished on their site so that might be worth checking out as they are guaranteed. Have a look around an Apple shop and get them to give you a detailed demonstration as you are maybe a possible customer?

BlackEdelweiss

I checked out the refurbished ones available but they are all higher spec than I can afford. I will have to enter the market at the most basic level, 21.5" iMac. I can get the student price which is €60 off which is better than nothing. I was in PC world today but the guy who I was talking to knew nothing about them so he wasent really convincing me to buy it when what I really wanted was somebody to tell me my life would never be the same once I got a Mac. I might try again tomorrow and hopefully get someone else.

redman85

If you can wait then do. Its only a few months till the next iMac is released.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac

maringo

Might be worth visiting some of these as a prospective customer - if they still exist - if they are interested in selling they should be prepared to demonstrate and maybe give you a bit of a hands as a potential customer. But advice to wait from previous poster sounds good.

http://apple-store.in/dublin/

taylorconor95

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

I was in PC world today but the guy who I was talking to knew nothing about them so he wasent really convincing me to buy it when what I really wanted was somebody to tell me my life would never be the same once I got a Mac.

From my experience looking for mac-related items in PC world, I usually do a bit of research on the net and go in and quiz them before i buy, I always know more than they do. That a why if i'm ever getting a mac or apple product again it will be on apple.com or in Victoria Square

mathepac

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

... what I really wanted was somebody to tell me my life would never be the same once I got a Mac. ....

Your life will never be the same once you get a Mac.

I find less time is spent figuring out how to do things and more time just doing them. I don't need to be "Apple certified" to string a server and a few workstations together and get them working. Similarly printers, scanners, hard-drives and other peripherals - they just work, with zero time spent "under-the-hood" in fact the less time spent "under-the-hood" the more reliable the entire set-up will be.

You might even find time for a chorus or two from Guy Clark ...

Freddie59

mathepac wrote: »

Your life will never be the same once you get a Mac.

Agreed. I got one in June 2010. Never looked back. Of course you can burn DVDs I use Final Cut Express for editing and iDVD to create the Video TS file.

Then use Toast to burn it. Simples!:D

You can use Open Office as pointed out. I prefer the Magic Mouse to the trackpad myself. But that's down to personal preference more than anything.

One caveat; it takes a while to get used to OSx if you haven't used it before.;)

BlackEdelweiss

Can I use my existing external hard drive on the imac or is it rendered useless if I dont have a pc?

Sad Professor

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Can I use my existing external hard drive on the imac or is it rendered useless if I dont have a pc?

Yes, any external hard drive will work with a Mac. But to use it properly you will need to re-format it as HFS+ which is the filesystem used by OS X.

BlackEdelweiss

What does that mean for the data I have stored on the hard drive though. I have quite alot of photos etc on it.

Freddie59

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

What does that mean for the data I have stored on the hard drive though. I have quite alot of photos etc on it.

The Mac will read the external Hard Drive as is. Transfer the data to the Mac, then reformat the HDD, then retransfer back to the newly formatted drive?

brav

Just a quick note regards burning DVDs, while macs can burn DVDs they no longer come with the software iDVD, which was used to create menus etc and burn movies which would be compatible for regular DVD players etc.

If you want this you would have to either source a second hand copy of iDVD or use some software by someone else, not sure if Toast can do this

ZENER

brav wrote: »

Just a quick note regards burning DVDs, while macs can burn DVDs they no longer come with the software iDVD, which was used to create menus etc and burn movies which would be compatible for regular DVD players etc.

If you want this you would have to either source a second hand copy of iDVD or use some software by someone else, not sure if Toast can do this

iDVD and iWeb are included with the iLife '11 DVD but they have not been updated since iLife '09. Apple still feature iDVD in the tutorials for iLife '11 on their site. I don't think you can get iDVD from the App Store though but open to correction on that one.

Also Microsoft Office is available in a Mac version from the store or any Apple reseller like PC World or CompuB.

Ken

Edit: It seems newer releases of iLife '11 in fact don't include iWeb or iDVD !! I have an older release of iLife '11 which does include them. Any chance Steve Jobs will be reincarnated soon . . . .

Sad Professor

iWeb and iDVD no longer come preinstalled on new Macs, so they are for all intents and purposes discontinued.

BlackEdelweiss

Well I took the plunge and ordered my 1st iMac. Blew my budget by about 95% on what I was originally going to spend on a new desktop, not sure exactly how I ended up here. I had never even considered a mac up to last week. I hope I justify the cost and make use of it.

Stainless_Steel

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Well I took the plunge and ordered my 1st iMac. Blew my budget by about 95% on what I was originally going to spend on a new desktop, not sure exactly how I ended up here. I had never even considered a mac up to last week. I hope I justify the cost and make use of it.

You won't regret it, congrats!

Freddie59

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Well I took the plunge and ordered my 1st iMac. Blew my budget by about 95% on what I was originally going to spend on a new desktop, not sure exactly how I ended up here. I had never even considered a mac up to last week. I hope I justify the cost and make use of it.

Enjoy! But remember what I said about OSx....;)

BlackEdelweiss

Its here!!! 1st post on a Mac.:)

mathepac

Congratulations and welcome to the iTribe.

Freddie59

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Its here!!! 1st post on a Mac.:)

Good stuff. How are you finding OSx?

Did you buy iLife for iDVD?

BlackEdelweiss

Early days yet, pulling my hair out a few times so far. Took half an hour to find my external hard drive, turned out it wasent plugged in properly so my fault on that but I was cursing the lack of a Windows Explorer button.
I havent bought anything yet, budget is completely blown on getting this far. I went for the trackpad and I love it, it will take awhile to get the full use out of it but so far it is cool. I love the small keyboard too.
Has anybody any recommendations for someone on their 1st day on a Mac, where do I go from here.

Sad Professor

iLife comes preinstalled on all new Macs. But as said earlier, iDVD has been discontinued.

Sad Professor

OP, if you have any particular questions, fire away. But it's mostly a case of getting used to the new OS. It can take a while, but be patient and you'll be flying in no time.

BlackEdelweiss

Just a quick one here, can anybody tell me the equivalent of the refresh button that is F5 on a PC?

Sad Professor

Command-R.

BlackEdelweiss

Cheers.

BlackEdelweiss

I am trying to download codecs for the moves I have on my external hard drive. I have been directed to a page from apple support and for .avi it says to download flip4mac which I have done (trial version) but I still cannot play some of them. I can play it on the divx codec but with no sound, it says I need something from quicktime which from what I can see is the flip4mac.
I havent moved all my stuff from my external HD yet and reformatted it, should I do this first or is that a separate matter?

Sad Professor

Get VLC player.

Ranicand

Sad Professor wrote: »

Get VLC player.

VLC player 2.0 is out now also and it has Blu Ray playback also.

VLC has always played everything for me.

BlackEdelweiss

That seemed to work on the problem movies so far, thanks.

brav

VLC Player is great but if you want to play them in Quicktime then Perian is a good addition

http://perian.org/

BlackEdelweiss

My wife was trying to sync her ipod and ipad but is getting a message saying there is not enough space for her ipad in iCloud and says she has to buy more. Can we not use the disk space on the mac to store data or is it all done on icloud? I dont have a clue about apple products, I have a HTC phone and no ipod so I dont know what all this is about.
Is there somewhere equivalent to windows explorer where I can see my available disk space etc?

Sad Professor

Just to be clear, the issue here is that there's no enough space on iCloud for the all the backups (you only get 5GB). Not that there isn't enough space on the device itself. I would recommend that you familiarise yourself with iCloud and how it works. See here.

Do you and your wife share the same Apple ID? She's probably got a lot of documents or video files or something on the iPad. If you got into Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage on her iPad you'll be able to see what's using up all the space. Then you can tap on the device backup and tell it not to backup that particular app's data.

Alternatively you can just disable iCloud backups on that device entirely and backup to iTunes instead.

Freddie59

Sad Professor wrote: »

Get VLC player.

+1. I have an external BluRay burner connected also. VLC will play almost anything.

BlackEdelweiss

Freddie59 wrote: »

The Mac will read the external Hard Drive as is. Transfer the data to the Mac, then reformat the HDD, then retransfer back to the newly formatted drive?

How do I do this, I am used to windows explorer and just dragging and dropping my way around it. I don't know how to do this on my mac, I can't find something that says it is my hard drive where I can create a new folder and move stuff there.

Ranicand

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

How do I do this, I am used to windows explorer and just dragging and dropping my way around it. I don't know how to do this on my mac, I can't find something that says it is my hard drive where I can create a new folder and move stuff there.

I got a Mac a year ago.

A Mac is way more user friendly then a Windows PC.

The Mouse on a Mac does have a right click just go to the little Apple logo top left of your screen go into preferences go to the Mouse and enable right click.

Right click when you are on the desktop to create a new folder.

As regards finding stuff on your hard-drive finder bottom left in your dock.

The little menu on the left that comes up has devices and one of these is your hard drive.

At the start when I got my Mac I put my downloads Icon in the dock into the trash and I had no idea how to get in back.

The download folder was still there in Finder but I could not get it back into the dock at the bottom of the screen.
I looked for every menu and setting.

In the end I had the crazy idea of just dragging the folder out of Finder into the dock.


The answer on a Mac is always so simple you have to go DOH when you think of it.


The other problem I had at the start was how to uninstall a program or App as we call it on Mac.

Windows you went into control panel and click on add and remove program's and went through the uninstall process.

On a Mac you just drag the App into the trash.:D

Freddie59

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

How do I do this, I am used to windows explorer and just dragging and dropping my way around it. I don't know how to do this on my mac, I can't find something that says it is my hard drive where I can create a new folder and move stuff there.

Open Finder. This will present you with the tree of where everything is. Then (still in finder) choose File/new finder window. This will open a second duplicate window. Just copy the required files across.

Remember, as you toggle between programs, the menu bar at the very top changes to that program. This took me the longest time to get used to.:o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ2JlFz2nfo

ZENER

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

. . . I can't find something that says it is my hard drive where I can create a new folder and move stuff there.

Click anywhere on the desktop then the Finder menu will appear on the top of the screen. Click "Finder" then "Preferences" then under the "General" Tab tick all the items you wish to be visible on your desktop. By default the Finder does not show the internal hard disk. Not too sure why but there ya go !!

Ken

Liameter

ZENER wrote: »

By default the Finder does not show the internal hard disk.

But it can. Click on the "desktop" then click on "Finder" (top left) and select "Preferences" and tick "Hard Disks". Click red button to close the Preferences window. Now the HDD icon will be on the "desktop".

Click on the "desktop". Click on "view" (top menu bar) and select "Show View Options". Select "Keep arranged by" (Name). Keep icon size small (about 16 x 16) or you'll quickly run out of space. Keep the "desktop" reasonably clear.


Which OS version are you using?
Click on the blue apple icon and select "About This Mac".

BlackEdelweiss

I was going to download iDVD but in the app store the only result I get for iDVD is called MPV's iDVD and it talks about being a tutorial. It costs €15.99. Is this the actual software that contains a tutorial or is it just a tutorial?
Can I burn cd's on iDVD or do I need something else for that, toast is more expensive than I can afford right now.

Sad Professor

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

I was going to download iDVD but in the app store the only result I get for iDVD is called MPV's iDVD and it talks about being a tutorial. It costs €15.99. Is this the actual software that contains a tutorial or is it just a tutorial?

No, as said already, iDVD has been discontinued.

BlackEdelweiss

I thought it was just not contained within the iLife suite anymore. So iDVD does not exist for purchase anymore?
Is there a more affordable software package available?

Sad Professor

iDVD was only ever available as part of iLife. It was never on the Mac App Store. As for alternatives, I don't know, Toast probably.

muggyog

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Can I burn cd's on iDVD or do I need something else for that, toast is more expensive than I can afford right now.

iDVD is no longer sold, for cd/dvd burning use an open source app. called Burn.