A Week of Mac - Oh Happy Days
It`s been seven days since I started my “Mac-Career” and a week later, it’s safe to say that my expectations have not just been met but exceeded.
My reasons to get a Mac were to get a comfortable and user-friendly computer to work with. I certainly got that as Mac OS X is a blast to work with, even though I probably don’t even know half of it. But it’s another surprising feature that makes using the Mac very pleasant: It’s silent!
In the PC world, silent often means that you can still have a conversation in the room… if you talk loud enough. In case of the Mac Mini, silent means no noticeable noise.
When both the optical drive and the harddisk are not working, the Mac Mini can not be heard - Very usefull when full concentration is needed.It does have it’s downside though, now I barely can stand the noise my PC is making.
Another “feature” I like a lot is the Apple Keyboard. When I first tried it, I thought the keys felt sort of “Notebook-like” and not very good to type on. After a few tricky days, I’m completely used to the feeling and typing longer text is very comfortable. What’s not so pleasant is that some keys are aligned different compared to the PC. I`m still not used to look for the @ under the “L” key… I think it will take some more weeks until I´m totally used to the layout
Besides that, I spent most of the week getting Mac equivalents for all my favorite software and trying to make me feel at home on the new computer. A set of nice racing wallpapers (I´m a motorsports freak after all) helped…and the Mac OS-X changing-wallpapers feature helps making the most of them!
Firefox Makes Switching Easy
When it comes to switching from one operating system to another, a multi-platform application like Firefox makes some things very easy. I have worked with Firefox on my Windows PC for about two years, collected tons of bookmarks and cookies.
Starting in a blank browser can be pretty annoying. You don’t have your bookmarks and even worse, no passwords for all your accounts. You can now start to do it all again, have password’s sent to you and whatnot.. Or, you simply copy over your Firefox profiles directory and everything is just there.
This is what I did and it worked like a charm. Simply copy over the profiles directory from Documents and Settings/<user name>/Application Data/Mozilla on your Windows PC to /Library/Application Support/Firefox/ on your Mac.
That’s it, all bookmarks, cookies and everything else is there!
Mac OS X Music Video
Here’s a cool idea for bands running out of money to make a real music video - Your Mac OS X desktop offers enough eye candy to serve as a substitute 
Dennis Liu has composed the following video to the song “Again & Again” by Bird & the Bee.
Found on Macenstein
Access to my Files - Not that Easy
With my new Mac up and running, the first order of business was getting access to my files. Most of my data is stored on my Windows PC and one Western Digital USB drive.
Getting access to the USB drive is as easy as it gets - Plug it in and the Mac can work with it. All was fine until I tried to write new data on the drive. That did not work, a closer look revealed that the drive was write-only.
Thanks to Microsoft not giving out required info, Macs can read from NTFS drives - but not write on them…ugh! Since there was no choice, I had to copy 700 GB of files over to the PC, make a brand new HFS+ partition and copy everything back. For those of you unfamiliar with USB drives, that task took roughly 14 hours!
connection between a Mac and a PC is very easy. Just assign Accessing the files on my PC was a bit easier. Thanks to recent improvements, setting up an EthernetIP’s, set drive permissions and off you go - This guide explains it perfectly.
One little glitch crossed my way though as the Microsoft XP firewall was blocking access first. Was that a last try from Microsoft to keep me from enjoying the Mac? If it was, it was already too late!
My Mac - Getting Started
After watching a promotional video of Leopard a few weeks ago, I´ve made the decision to join the fun - Get a Mac.
But it was not quite as simple as that as I had to find a way to integrate it in my personal workflow. Being a passionate PC sim racer, I was not willing to give up my Windows PC at all.
After quite some thinking back and fourth, I decided that going with a KVM switch would be the best route. It allows me to share a set of Screen, Mouse and Keys with two computers.
The decision which Mac to get was not a pretty hard one. Since I did not need another screen and don’t like glare type displays either, the iMac was out of the question. I wasn’t really keen to spend that much on my first Mac either, there was the possibility that I don’t enjoy it.
With those factors in mind, the Mac Mini was the way to go. I opted for the 1.83 Ghz one and did not mind the rather small 80 GB harddrive since most of my data is stored on USB drives and network devices.
The only modification I needed was more ram. With lots of Windows experience, I figured that 1 GB could be a little small, especially when working with applications such as Photoshop. And with another 1 GB, there is more to be eaten up by mallware and stuff like that….wait no, that’s the Windows user speaking…. I would actually be able to use the additional memory
Because of the recent price drop, I was able to pick up my 2 GB Mac Mini for very reasonable 529 Euros.
Along with the Mac, I bought the Apple Wireless keyboard since I would need all the fancy special Mac keys.
Taking it all home, I was facing the challenge to connect both computers with the KVM switch. To my surprise, it all went rather smoothly and now I´m able to switch between the Mac and the PC with the click of a button.
But who wants to think about the old PC when Leopard is booting up for the very first time…
MacRookie - It All Begins
So this is it - The very first posting of the MacRookie. Hopefully many will follow in the coming months as I try to make my way through the jungle of Mac software and knowledge.
After using the Amiga and Windows PC ever since kindergarten age, I finally decided to try something new - Get a Apple Mac. As a Windows user, you always here about Mac OS X being much quicker, safer and more convenient. But there are doubts too: Will I find an Mac equivalent for all my favorite software? Can I even adjust to a new system after spending years with Windows?
Despite those doubts, I went ahead and got me a Mac to see what the all the fuss is about - And if it’s a serious Windows alternative. For me, there were two main reasons for the switch:
1. Windows Vista
While Windows XP is a quite solid operation system, it’s not the freshest looking thing. Micosoft always promised that Vista would be the next best thing, making a real step forward.
I never expected too much but I didn’t expect such a hunk of crap. Vista is an awful piece of software, no wonder the sales numbers are disappointing. It hardly offers any new features (yes yes, DirectX 10) and a dreadful copy of the Mac OS user interface. I really tried to get used to it but after two days, Vista vanished from my drive - I just couldn’t cope with it.
2. My Apple iPod
It may sound weird but my iPod had quite a big influence of getting a Mac. After using a Creative MP3 player, I got me an iPod last year and I quickly got used to all the comfortable features it offers. iTunes is a brilliant application to work with and that got me thinking… Would it be the same with most Mac OS X software?
I´ll try to find out in the coming weeks….
