It was my birthday last Thursday on the last day of May.
I will leave the usual reflective birthday post for another day. (Or not, if I never get round to it.) This post is about my present. This year, I decided to go geek and asked D for a new laptop — my first EVER Mac.
This was the laptop that I nearly got the last time, but which I decided against because it was too expensive. That was before I got my iPhone. The phone was my first Apple product, and given that I love it so much that it is practically glued to my hand, when my laptop started acting up, I decided that this time, I was going to get the Mac. I was going to switch and never look back — just the way all my fervent Mac-loving friends have told me. “Mac systems are intuitive, aren’t they?” I told myself. “How hard can it be to switch?”
Well.
For this girl who has been using PCs and Windows all her life, it’s been a painful few days, as I tear my hair out trying to figure out what to click, how to click and where in the world all my stuff is. To be fair, part of the pain stems from the usual difficulties which come with using a new machine and having to re-install programmes, shortcuts and re-input saved passwords and favourites. I somehow also thought iTunes connectivity with my iPhone would be more seamless. Just sync and everything will be transferred over, right? The answer, unfortunately, appears to be NO. (Unless I’m missing something. In which case PLEASE tell me.)
The good news is that every “how-to” that you want to ask about using a Mac appears to have been asked and answered. Alternating between Help and Google, I’ve managed to figure out how to install my printer, how to preview a link in Safari, how to open a new tab in Safari, how to resize photos in iPhoto, how to copy all my music from my phone into iTunes on my new notebook.
At this point, I’m still getting up the courage to copy my music over. I’ve also given up on Safari and downloaded Google Chrome. Yay. Now I still have to figure out how to customize the items in the dock before I end up with a bazillion items in it, change my preferences and figure out why there are lights under a whole bunch of items in my dock. And someone please tell me how to minimize all the windows to show desktop?
Every time I turn up mournfully at the door asking for help for something, the husband will — after having a good chuckle at my grief — ask me if I want to download Windows. I just give him a dirty look.
Ah well, at least my new notebook looks gorgeous! (Which is, also a big part of the user experience for me.)
So, blogging here will be slow for a bit until I figure this Mac thing out.
heehee I'm still not v good with the mac shortcuts, but there are a few i use a lot. <br /><br />One I really miss is print screen button but the Mac shortcut is way better, cos it allows u to just capture what you want instead of the whole screen – shift + command +4. 🙂 I miss this when Im on the PC at work! Haha. <br /><br />To see your desktop, bring the cursor to top right corner, all
There are tons of shortcuts – I feel boggled looking at the list! Haha.I didn't know that about print screen. That does sound useful indeed! I've just about given up syncing my phone. Just as long as I can get to my photos!
Try searching for Snipping Tool in the PC (I think only Windows 7 onwards). A tip is to keep it pinned to the taskbar and you can use it to do selective screen capture. (you can also read more on wikipedia)<br />http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/microsoft/ht/snippingtool.htm
thanks for the tip! I think my hubby is going to find this useful.
You can set your "show desktop" hotspots under "Settings->Mission Control->Hotspots". Need not be top right corner if you are not comfortable with it. I think Fn-F12 works too. <br /><br />The lights under the stuff on your dock are the programs that are still running. Closing the window doesn't close the program, you actually need to Quit (from the menu) or
Thanks for offering some help! Fn-F12 brings up the dashboard not desktop though. Haven't quite figured out what the dashboard is good for. I'll try changing the settings. Thanks! I did figure out the lights under the stuff in the dock and am now quitting stuff properly. Whew! 🙂
Hi,<br />Was searching for some help to make my life easier and chanced upon these. Think you might find them useful.<br />http://www.danrodney.com/mac/<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts<br /><br />What I was searching for was really to resize windows quickly (or rather optimise the space on the screen). I found an app (1wk free trial so choose the best time to try it,
Thanks for these! Wow, that is a long table of shortcuts. I don't know if I'll make it through them. Lol!