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Getting started with your new Mac

tuaw.com — Someone must love you, since there was a shiny new Mac waiting under the tree for you this morning. I know you're excited to get it up and running, and it'll be easier than you think. There are some tips I would like to share with you, oh newly inducted acolyte to the Cult of Mac, that should make your Mac adventure even more fun.

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  • dotcom101010, on 10/12/2007, -24/+3First Post
    • naio21, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3omgcongrats2u. Article buried as spam.
    • Koyder, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9This must be a proud moment for you and your family.
    • mrblack, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6first *****
    • chucker, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3naio21: how, pray tell, is an article of TUAW's "spam"? They're part of Weblogs, Inc., which is part of AOL, which is part of Time Warner. I.e., not Apple.
    • naio21, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Let me rephrase then: SUBMISSION buried as spam. Spam from Digg, the most biased community towards Apple.
    • moisie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3naio21, why don't you just ignore apple articles?
    • MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Because Naio has nothing else to fill the emptiness of his life
  • rhysep, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I actually bought a mighty mouse for my new macbook a couple of months ago... i quite like it even though this is my first mac!
  • vipool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11So there are 6 steps....
    1. get a 3 button cordless mouse
    2. use quicksilver and/or growl
    3. used tabbed browsing
    4. use the dock
    5. er.. charge the battery
    6. read my blog
  • Nullo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2For what it's worth...I did a list of "Indispensable MacOS X Software" some time ago to help new macusers get a good start with their new mac...http://madsenblog.dk/?page_id=11
    Hope someone might find it usefull...oh well....
  • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

    done.
  • mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5"Someone must love you, since there was a shiny new Mac waiting under the tree for you this morning."

    Someone must also have a hell of a lot of money burning a hole in their pocket too. This is like those Lexus commercials that show people getting cars for Christmas, I don't know anybody who would or could do that. Frankly, I don't care to either.
    • dogshaft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I got a car for Christmas this year... unfortunately, I bought it for myself and it was a necessity.
    • mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Completely different situation there, believe me I understand. :/
  • point665, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I think this is what new users SHOULD NOT do. Get used to the out-of-the-box setup first, then customize preferences and go from there. I personally avoid haxies and applications that attempt to modify the feel/stability of OSX.
  • cyberjavid, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2who will buy a mac ?
    • mrblack, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6many people it seems. I must admit its the best piece of computing equipment I have ever purchased. Alas this means nothing without qualifying it with my age and computing experience, so lets say I'm an IT professional, mid twenties and so on.
  • EvilTesdall, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1Getting started with your new mac - step 1, throw it away. Step 2, destroy the person who gave it to you.
    • Commodus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Hey, that's clever. Next you'll make a joke about Apple allegedly forcing you to use a one-button mouse and make blanket assumptions that Macs are overpriced!
  • brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I liked it when it said to get a real mouse. Real mice have at least 5 buttons. Then I read the rest, and it made me realize something:

    1. Post an idea you have that is common sense to everyone else
    2. Add other generic, everybody-already-knows-this nuggets of knowledge so it can be formatted to a Top XX list.
    3. Create a catchy title to make it seem a lot more profound than it actually is, something like "Top Ten Secrets that will guarantee you financial success."
    4. Post to Digg
    5. ??????
    6. Profit
    • dcharti, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3In case you didn't notice, this was a post for first-time Mac owners. Y'know, the people who didn't-already-know-any-of-this-because-this-was-their-first-Mac. Ya dig? If you already knew all of this, great - the post wasn't written for you.
    • brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"If you already knew all of this, great - the post wasn't written for you."

      Well, I didn't know about the "read my blog" step. That alone is almost grounds for burial.
  • hotdamn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So, if anyone decides to toss their $49 mighty mouse aside, PLEASE send them my way.
  • kaffein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Dugg for MX Revolution suggestion... Best mouse ever.
  • nomore, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Tabbed browsing.... why?

    I can understand tabbed browsing in Windows XP, or OS X 10.2, but when you have seamless tools like Exposé, what's the point? Also, I think Quicksilver may be overrated. Spotlight can launch apps. As easy as: Press CTRL & Space, type in the first few letters of the app, then press CMD & Return to launch it.

    These type of lists are usually by people who seem to want to make OS X work like Windows, which is good if you want to work like Windows... but then you might as well just use Windows.
    • nomore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4BTW, I just found a bug in digg... if you type LESS THAN symbol and EQUALS symbol next to each other in your comment, it truncates the comment at that point.
    • webdwarf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1test

      edit: heh, you're right about the truncation.

      second edit: tabs > expose.
    • Balanced, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Tabs are different from Expose, but the two can easily work together. I used to keep two or thee Safari windows open at once. Each was a different 'train of thought' and used appropriately. So one might be my morning comics and news while another was work research and similar. Expose allowed me to change between 'thoughts' easily while the tabs allowed multiple web pages per thought.
    • HornyGoat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quicksilver does a lot more then just launching apps.
      For example...
      Create custom web searches, for quick searching.
      Create custom key triggers to launch anything you like.
      Use it to control iTunes (using the iTunes plug-in).
      Quick contact lookup and a hell of a lot more stuff using the downloadable plug-ins
      Those are just some of the most common things I use it for.
    • rvelasquez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quicksilver is overrated if all you use it for is launching applications and documents. Quicksilver is very very powerful if you take the time to learn some of its more advanced features. There is nothing like it in the Windows world.

      Lets say for example John a buddy of mine wants me to send him my resume over email. I could type the following sequence of characters (excluding the keystroke to launch QS and assuming there is only one John in my address book): "resum(TAB)email(TAB)John(ENTER)". This would find a file with the text "resum" in it and email it to a contact named John with an email address in my address book. If there are multiple files or multiple contacts it will pick the first one alphabetically. You can narrow down the search with more characters of course.

      Another simple example would be if I want to change my network profile i could just start QS and type the name of the network profile and then (ENTER) and it will switch the network. Or if I needed to quickly calculate the tax of something I could start QS and enter a math expression and have it evaluate it for me. You can enter todos, calendar items, execute shell commands so many things it would take me forever to talk about them all. QS also learns the most common docs/apps you search for with a given key sequence and will prioritize them above others.

      Another thing is that Spotlight indexes your ENTIRE disk. So if you have 60GB of files and 100's of applications Spotlight can be very slow. QS only scans (a configurable) subset of your files. This makes QS much much faster on drives with many files. On the other hand Spotlight is the only tool you can use if the document/application you are looking for is not part of the QS catalog.

      So if you've just been using QS just to launch apps and docs take another look at it and try to learn some of the more advanced features. Its pretty awesome.
  • bermewjan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0Another thing you can do witih your new Mac is take a picture of yourself showing your love for it - and submit it to: http://www.flickr.com/groups/greenmyapple/pool/

    Show Apple that while you love your Mac - you wish it came in GREEN!
    http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/ - ask Appple to take harmful toxic chemicals out of their products.
    • webdwarf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hippie
    • MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oddly enough, I was told not to eat green apples as it made most people sick.
  • MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bought myself a 24" iMac for Christmas this year. Nice upgrade from the 2001 QS 933 I had. It was an open box refresh at a local Apple Store for $1650 down from $2000. I sneered at the so-called "Mighty Mouse" and plugged in my 3-button trackball instead.

    Took about 2-3 hours to download all my apps and settings from my old machine to my new one and then another hour to download all the updates from Apple. This is one very nice machine.

    For those looking for a new Mac, try either the red tag sales at the online Apple Store, or check for refreshed machines (open box) at your local Apple Store if you're lucky enough to have one nearby. I saved over 15% and it has (of course) the same warranty and support as any other new Mac.
  • dr00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2one of the first things you should also learn is that yes, it is still physically possible, however difficult, to still be friends with people who haven't made the jump yet and are still using windows.
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