apple mac info

toasterman

Hi everyone,

I've posted a few times on here previously asking questions about macs, as I've never really used one before.
After a lot of pondering, a lot of questions, wondering if I really need one, and generally being a bit too much of a money-saver, I went and bought one.
I want to say a big thank you, to anyone who helped me with my questions before.

I'm not your typical apple fanboy (in fact I work in Windows IT Support), but it is surprisingly good. Still a total newbie, but there are a fair few things I prefer the mac way. Some things I miss from windows - for example - I have to really think when I'm copying, pasting, selecting text, etc, whether I'm meant to be using shift, cmd, ctrl, alt, or what. I dare say I'll get the hang of that with practice.
The keyboard is superb and considering half the keys are in different places to standard uk keyboards, I seem to have adapted to it very quickly.

I've not used any of iLife yet, but I was slightly disappointed that mpeg2 video files don't play in the software you control with the remote control. To be fair, windows doesn't play mpeg2 software by default either.
There seems to be an additional charge for this - which is a shame, but the best windows one is the Nvidia Purevideo codec - which you have to pay for too.

It networks to my old windows pc easy enough, when I looked up how to do it, and my printer works fine on it once I'd installed the software.
installing/removing software just seems to consist of dragging a file to the applications folder, or removing it by dragging it to the trash. Couldn't be simpler. Doesn't seem to be a 'registry' either.

It also starts up faster than my windows pc and shutdown is insanely fast. About 3-4 seconds. Seems a proper shutdown too - not like vista's lazy sleep-pretending-to-be-shutdown mode.

I installed parallels and installed a copy of windows xp on it, and was surprised to find it asked me for my name and serial number, and that was it. 15mins later, a complete installation of windows xp had completed. And virtual windows xp starts faster than the real version on my other computer.

Trillian isn't available, but I found something called Adium, which is better if you ask me. Certainly looks sexier.

When I plug in a memory stick, it appears as an icon on screen to tell me it's connected. Perfect. It doesn't ask me if I'd like to autoplay it, or that it contains mixed types of content. Just appears. Same with cds/dvds.

Things do crash, of course, and things don't "just work" on a mac either. They need drivers - same as any operating system.
AND they DO come with trial software (the mac vs windows adverts say otherwise) - but only iWorks and MS Office, which you can easily remove.

All in all, a perfectly good alternative to windows. And as I really don't like vista, I'll probably go the mac route from now on.

wakandem

The thing that worries me about macs is that you are more locked in to their system than even an MS system. I personally dislike vista as it very much treats you as a user rather than the owner, more than any other piece of software I know except for spyware, trojans, viruses & norton.

Have you any experience with linux & if so how does the mac system compare ?

BillScarab

wakandem wrote: »

I personally dislike vista as it very much treats you as a user rather than the owner, more than any other piece of software I know except for spyware, trojans, viruses & norton.

Have you any experience with linux & if so how does the mac system compare ?

Which is exactly what OSX and Linux do! It's one of the reasons they, and Vista, are more secure than XP, you don't run as an administrator by default.

If you don't like Vista because of that just turn off UAC and log in with an administrator account all of the time.

BigBouncyBall

We meet again toasterman!

You shouldn't need too many printer drivers unless you're using a strange/old printer.

I haven't tried Leopard yet but i've heard its a nice improvement on Tiger. Going to be upgrading my own system in January after MAcWorld updates i think.

Macs are (should be) more stable than M$. The OS is built on top of Unix rather than the house built on sand that Microsoft have constructed. In years of using a mac (particularly OS X) i can honestly say i can count on my fingers the number of times it has crashed. The problems come with 3rd party software/drivers that haven't been properly designed for mac os x but ported from a windows build.

Enjoy your mac - iLife is great, though what they've done to iMovie i still can't quite work out (well i can, sales of Final Cut Express went through the roof, i wager). Consider branching out into some pro apps like Final Cut and Logic if you're into making movies and music, or Aperture if you're into tinkering with photos. They are a great extension to the iLife apps.

RE: MPEG2 - doesn't VLC play this as standard? I'm pretty sure it does.

A great website for cracking little apps is https://www.freemacware.com - it has loads of freeware for the mac that work really well (things like games, iLife extensions - anything you can think of really!)

and when searching for something you need in google always just add - "mac os x" on the end for more relevant searches.

Good luck

isofa

wakandem wrote: »

The thing that worries me about macs is that you are more locked in to their system than even an MS system. I personally dislike vista as it very much treats you as a user rather than the owner, more than any other piece of software I know except for spyware, trojans, viruses & norton.

Have you any experience with linux & if so how does the mac system compare ?

I'd disagree. With the current line up, now they are all Intel based, you have more flexibility than on any other hardware platform. You can install Windows XP/Vista on a separate partition and boot to it if you want, just by using Boot Camp built into Leopard (or the free download for Tiger). Or for a small fee you can buy the excellent Parallels virtualisation software to run Windows and their apps, or Linux. And remember OS X is based on Unix, so there are many many options and utilities available, OS X has always also had an option to install the X11 (a X-Windows implementation), that's quite a lot of options for the power user.

I've used most OSes, especially now XP/Vista and OS X, not so much Linux anymore, each one has strengths and weaknesses, but my next laptop will be a top end MacBook Pro so I can run all the apps and OSes on one box, to save my shoulder! The security in OS X makes Vista look very weak indeed, the initial idea of Vista was a good one, but it's been so poorly implemented by MS, that it's just not up to the job IMO.

wakandem

bilscarab - Which is exactly what OSX and Linux do! It's one of the reasons they, and Vista, are more secure than XP,

I suppose what i mean is that i always feel when using vista, what the system wants to do is more of a priority to it than what I am using it for, infact it almost comes over that i am a total inconvienience to it and it would be much happier just being left alone in the corner to do what it wants.

toasterman

wakandem wrote: »

The thing that worries me about macs is that you are more locked in to their system than even an MS system. I personally dislike vista as it very much treats you as a user rather than the owner, more than any other piece of software I know except for spyware, trojans, viruses & norton.

Have you any experience with linux & if so how does the mac system compare ?

I've had a bit of experience with linux. It's not too bad, but it takes time to learn it, work out how to use it, etc. I don't get on well with it because there are still things you have to do with the command line, the driver support isn't as good as I'd like, and I seem to always get stuck on something silly like monitor resolution. I might work in IT support but I'm very lazy - and editing text files, reading a lot of online help etc is too much like hard work. I'm told this is because ATI drivers are rubbish on Linux. Wireless driver support is also rubbish, but improving all the time.
I dare say if you built a machine from scratch, and knew you were going to go the Linux route, you could undoubtedly get one working very well. But the idea you can just download a cd, run it and use it - hasn't been true for me any of the times I've tried it on different hardware.

Plus because everything is open source and mostly free, and the big name software companies don't make anything for it - trying to get something like Adobe Audition for it is impossible.
Audacity doesn't seem as easy to use at all, nor as full featured.
I must have spent 2-3 days trying to work out how to play 2 sounds at once, using something called 'Jack', and couldn't make head nor tail of it.

I've tried Linux a few times - on many different versions, and each time just given up with it because I really don't have time to relearn everything the Linux way.

Btw - I'm well aware there isn't a Mac version of Audition either - which is why I've got parallels and Windows XP on my Mac.
There are similar types of software for Linux, to run Windows programs. I did try and get Wine to run when I tried Linux but I couldn't get anything to run with it very well.
It just took a lot of time and I struggled to see much in the way of any real benefit to Linux I couldn't get from just sticking with Windows.
Openoffice on Linux is slower than on Windows. Linux took longer to start up, longer to shut down - it certainly wasn't easier to use. Quite likely more secure, but I've never been hacked on Windows.

Mac is hard to compare to Linux. Apple's driver support might be poor for all I know, but it's an all-in-one system with hardware and software made by the same people. If Ubuntu made PCs, the drivers on them would be highly likely to work flawlessly.
The real benefit of Linux seems to be it's secure and it's free. Apple is anything but free - its generally more expensive than other companies, for the ease of use and because it's beautiful.

toasterman

BillScarab wrote: »

Which is exactly what OSX and Linux do! It's one of the reasons they, and Vista, are more secure than XP, you don't run as an administrator by default.

If you don't like Vista because of that just turn off UAC and log in with an administrator account all of the time.

I dunno. The thing on Vista where even as a local administrator, you still can't modify files in the windows directory, is annoying. I'm sure I had to set that in about 3 different places and take ownership of the folder, just to modify a line in a .txt file.

Linux/Mac seem to tell you you're modifying stuff, ask you for a password, then let you change it. Vista seems to just tell you that you're not allowed.
I do like the SU option on Linux where you can do a lot of things as administrator, and enter the password once. I seem to get repeatedly asked to confirm things on Vista.

The reason everyone logs in as administrator on windows is because you can't set the clock without doing so. In fact I've seen certain DVD playback software that won't even open unless you've got admin rights. Windows security is so tight, you seem to have to give everyone admin rights to let them do basic tasks.

toasterman

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

We meet again toasterman!
You shouldn't need too many printer drivers unless you're using a strange/old printer.

It's about 12 months old I think. Samsung ML2010 mono laser. Works perfectly.
I bought it specifically because it came with Mac, Windows, and even Linux drivers - and I had plans to spend time using them all.

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

The problems come with 3rd party software/drivers that haven't been properly designed for mac os x but ported from a windows build.

You are correct so far there. FrontRow keeps quitting, but only when I'm using (free) divx codecs that are still in alpha.

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

iLife is great, though what they've done to iMovie i still can't quite work out. Consider branching out into some pro apps like Final Cut and Logic if you're into making movies and music, or Aperture if you're into tinkering with photos. They are a great extension to the iLife apps.

I don't know if you have iLife 08 - apparently iMovie was completely rewritten for that.
I'd like a mac equivalent of Adobe Audition really. Not too complex, not too basic. Quite easy to use. The guys who created that (whoever wrote CoolEdit originally) got that to such a good balance between ease-of-use and functionality. Adobe have made something called Soundbooth for Mac and Windows, but it's nowhere near as good as Audition.
It seems to run fine in Parallels at the moment, though.

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

RE: MPEG2 - doesn't VLC play this as standard? I'm pretty sure it does.

Yeah it does. But the remote control is only used by FrontRow - which uses the back end of Quicktime to play videos. So if Quicktime doesn't support it, FrontRow doesn't support it, and you can't control it with the remote.
The Mac version of VLC is very good though - it's better than the Windows version I think.
I did a google search about the remote and there are ways to get it to control other software apparently...might look into that.

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

A great website for cracking little apps is www.freemacware.com - it has loads of freeware for the mac that work really well (things like games, iLife extensions - anything you can think of really!)

Thanks for the link - you may have given it to me before. Will bookmark and check out.
Loving the Mac way so far.

BigBouncyBall

yes there is an app that allows you to use the remote with other programs such as to control powerpoint presentations or VLC its called "iRed Lite" - http://www.filewell.com/iRedLite/

it works really well

once you go mac you never go back!!

toasterman

And it's a freebie. Will definitely be checking that one out.

I had to reload FrontRow 5-6 times to get through an episode of 'Studio60 on the sunset strip' with the alpha divx codecs, so this could be a happy medium.

I do have intentions to edit some stuff I've recorded through my tv card on my pc - so I may end up buying Quicktime Pro to import the mpeg2 from that. I had a go on my pc but demuxing and re...whatever...ing the files back together seemed to frequently end up with files that wouldn't play properly in some players, or video and sound out of sync.
Probably easier to go the iMovie/iDVD route and burn it back in a dvd format afterwards.

I'm still loving the mac.
I did find a downside last night when I fell asleep and left it on all night (it did slip into standby at some point), because the thing is so quiet it didn't keep me awake like my fan-filled pc used to.
Oddly, the screen went off and the hard drive went to sleep, but it didn't seem to disconnect me from msn. I had a load of messages at 4-5am from people asking if I was awake.