The Windows to Mac transition, a few tips
I was sitting in Starbucks last Saturday writing, an activity and location that seem to fit well together, when I was approached by a lady with questions on MacBooks. It seems that she had just purchased one and was trying to make the transition from a long line of Microsoft Windows based laptops to her new Mac and was having a few issues. Now anyone who knows me at all knows that I'm something of a geek when it comes to technology and my latest passion is that very topic. You see I made the same transition about 5 months ago and have never looked back. A long time Windows / PC user, I started with a Dos based PC in 1988, courtesy of the US Navy and built my first personal computer from parts I ordered from the Computer Shopper in 1990. That was a fun project and I learned the PC literally from the inside out. Oh, I better get off this subject, but anyway last Summer was it, I decided I was done with XP, never going to Vista and was ready to see what all the Apple hype was about. Now I had flirted with Apple products for some time, I had a 1st gen iPod, then later upgraded to an iPod Classic. I also got hooked on the iPhone when it came out and now have a 16 Gig 3G model. The Apple products I had used were excellent, well designed, operated easily and almost flawlessly so I thought, why not. I had looked fondly at the well designed MacBooks every time I wondered into an Apple store, so I had a good idea of what I wanted, I was particularly fond of the look and feel of the aluminum case so that meant that I had to go with a MacBook Pro even though I thought about the portability of the 13" MacBook, the case and the extra screen real estate (I do edit photos and even though I have a 20" external LCD I need the 15" screen at times) won out. I bought the 15" 2.5 GigHZ Intel based Pro with a 250 Gig hard drive running Leopard (no running Windows in Parallel, if I'm making a change then I'm completely making the change).
When I got it home I unpacked it, plugged it in and booted up. Now the first thing a Windows user will notice is that you loose all that time you used to have to run get coffee (OK, make coffee), go the restroom, maybe run next door for some takeout...only to come back and find the PC STILL booting up. Not so with the MacBook, turn it on and it doesn't churn the hard drive for minutes, it just turns on, hmmm. Immediately a simple set up and registration wizard starts up and walks you through getting started, nice. Now I'm not completely lost, my girl friend has a 17" MacBook Pro that I had played with a little so I knew a few of the basic "how do you" things already. I dived right in configuring things, including the trial .Mac account (which I have since transitioned to MobleMe). I set up 4 work Spaces (my GF uses 6 but 4 seems like the right number for me and I've never changed that). I initially set the hot spot for Spaces in the upper left (I'm left handed and that seems intuitive) but after a few months I moved it to the upper right where I don't accidently hit it every time I'm trying to close a window. I like the Dock on the bottom with auto hide, which truthfully is exactly how I had my XP menu configured. The Dock is way more useful than the XP menu / start bar though. I have the Dashboard in the lower right as well and have several widgets including the calculator, weather, clock, dictionary, movies, etc.. Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling and get to the list, my top ten tips for the Windows to Mac transition for the new user:
1. For keyboard short cuts the Rosetta stone is that the "Command" key is roughly the same as the "Control" key in the Windows OS. Most of the short cuts then work fine, Command C for copy, Command V for Paste, Command B for BOLD, etc. One more useful key combination, Command - Option - Escape for force quit (its the Control - Alt - Del of the Mac world). Now some of you are thinking see, that Mac gets stuck too but let me explain. The Mac almost never (that I've ever seen) gets stuck on Mac based software but I tried several Linux-based products that required an add in called X11 to run and once in a while they get stuck (Gimp for photo editing, excellent program but does lock up on rare occasions and I used the previous version of OpenOffice before I discovered NeoOffice).
2. The rough equivalent of the control panel (well, a sort of uber control panel) is System Preferences. It's in the dock and looks like a box with gears (if you're an iPhone user you already know this one). Everything is set up and controlled from this window, from appearance to speech preferences. Get familiar with this one first thing after set up.
3. Touch pad: there are 2 options that are very different from a Windows based PC. Under Keyboard & Mouse, Trackpad there are several two finger options: secondary click let's you put 2 fingers on the track pad and click to get the effect of a right click on a PC; Scroll lets you drag 2 fingers to scroll instead of clicking or dragging the scroll bars; and Screen Zoom lets you drag 2 fingers on an image to zoom in our out (works with Google Maps too). The 2 finger scroll is such a great feature (when I'm forced to use a PC I'm constantly annoyed that it won't scroll when I drag my fingers, how quickly I'm spoiled).
4. Finder replaces File Explorer and the Start Menu on the Mac. It's in the Dock and is key for using your Mac (more on this later in the top ten apps, I'm experimenting with a new tool). There's a pre-configured Downloads folder that holds all downloads, files and apps. There are a bunch of other folders that are pre-configured and in general they're pretty obvious. You can of course add your own as well.
5. This is very basic but it is different, the control buttons for an open window are on the left top corner, not the right...of course they're red/yellow/green so they're pretty easy to find. One twist on these though, they close the window but they do not close the running app; to do that you must use the menu bar across the top otherwise the app keeps running.
6. I love a few of the F function keys other functions, for example the show all open windows function (F3), way more useful that Alt-Tabbing through open windows on XP. You can control screen and keyboard brightness, volume, Dashboard (F4), play/pause, forward/back and eject as well.
7. Installing new apps is a bit confusing for someone who is used to the Windows wizards. Some apps do have a wizard that starts when you hit download but not many. Most download to the download folder and you simply drag them to the Applications folder to install (drag them to the trash to uninstall, simple right)...oh and you'll have to clean up the download folder once in a while.
8. Keychain: All passwords (local and internet), certificates and keys are stored in the Keychain. Keychain is under the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.
9. Spotlight: there's a magnifying glass icon in the menu bar on the upper right hand side, this is called Spotlight. It's the search function for your Mac and very useful (I'm just testing a new app called Quicksilver that replaces Finder and Spotlight, more on that in a later post). It searches everything from email to your KeyChain (which is very useful if you want to quickly give your wireless password to a guest, for example).
10. Battery life is good. It can be maximized by setting the control (click on the power icon in the menu bar) to better energy control. In addition is you turn off Bluetooth (click the bluetooth icon in the menu bar) and the Airport when you're not using them, your battery life will be extended. Using sleep (closing the screen or selecting sleep in the Apple drop down menu) does also use power so if you're traveling and trying to squeeze all the minutes you can out of the battery shut down when you take a break. Now I know this is different for a Windows user because you really rarely use sleep (at least I rarely did because the PC would usually freeze after a couple of sleep periods) but with your Mac you'll be tempted to sue sleep all the time since it never locks up...but then again it boots so fast why not shut down...
Enjoy your Mac, I certainly am enjoying mine...anyone else have some good tips for the new Mac User?
