Just switched to OS X from Windows... not so impressed.

[iPhil]

Yeah, I guess it is. Don't get me wrong, I hate using Windows but there are some things I really miss when using OS X. Like putting files back to where they came from when restoring from trash.

Diatribe,

I understood what you were speaking of, I know of that feature on windows but i didnt need to use it that much ..

Usually when i trash something,i want it off the system but onccassionally i'll need to 'restore' a file and i'lluse that feature in windows


iphil

 

[Lacero]

I would seriously suggest you read the series of articles at http://www.anandtech.com/mac. <snip> Read the Anand article, he too was frustrated and hated certain things at first.

Thanks for the link. Are you saying he came around?

 

[shwc]

Thanks for the link. Are you saying he came around?

I can not speak for Anand, but from all outward appearences he is presently a happy duel user.

 

[Nermal]

1) Do as you would in msWindows, position (tile) the each window on the screen with the mouse.

That's not how you do it in Windows. There's an option to do it automatically.

 

[Linkjeniero]

First of all, I think you got the crappiest Apple salesman ever, and you should talk to the store manager so nobody else gets that kind of service. Now, to the questions I know the answer for:

3) How can I find an equivalent key shortcut that switches to finder and does command + N (new window), anywhere and in any application (like winkey + E)?

I use Launchbar to launch all my apps. Other people use Quicksilver and Butler (the latter two are free). You should try them, it's by far the most efficient way to launch apps (especially for the mouse haters). And, when I launch Finder, it creates a new window if there isn't one (when an app is already open, it just switches to it, instead of creating a new instance).

4) Can I make the finder actually view the root of the drive (/) and not just some stuff that it wants to show me and my user folder.

Well, / is not the root of the drive, but the root of the system. What Mac OS X is already showing you is the root of the drive. You can also show the root of the system; to do so you have to add the computer to the side bar of the Finder. To do so, you have to go to the Finder preferences, Lateral Bar, and chech the computer icon.

6) Can Alt-Tab cycle windows instead of applications. Does not help me if I have 6 finders open. (Aware of Command + `)

With command-tab you cycle through apps, and then with command-´ you cycle through the app windows. If you don't want this, there's an app called Witch wich does it exactly the way you want it, and you can assign it to whatever key combination you want. And it's free.

EDIT: I think you don't understand the concept of open app and window in Mac OS X. In Windows, 1 window = 1 instance of the application. If you have, for instance, 2 different windows that show Internet Explorer, that means there are 2 instances of IE running, and you see 2 tabs in the taskbar assigned to IE. In Mac OS X the paradigm is different: There's always ONE instance of the app running (unless you open another manually, and by that, I mean in the command line), and that one and only instance can have many windows open. That's a great way to organize things, because now you can cycle through full apps instead of having to hand pick the window. This is specially useful in apps where you probably want to be watching several windows at the same time (the terminal comes to mind), because with command-tab or Launchbar you can instantly bring up all the windows of the app. Another aspect of this is the fact that Mac OS X doesn't like fully expanded windows, because it's meant to use your screen real state in an efficient way (and boy, if I can take advantage of this with my 12", you sure as hell should learn to with your gorgeous and gigantic screen).

9) Can I disable the trash and have things deleted immediately?

Yes. For this, you do need to do some of that hacking the salesman told you about, though . You have to do the following in the Terminal app (maybe as root, I don't recall):

cd
rm -rf .Trash
ln -s /dev/null .Trash

and then you have to restart the Finder (if you don't know how, just log out and back).

10) Are there media codecs? (I'm using VLC at the moment which knows a lot of things built it.) How do I get FCP to recognize non-standard media for example?

Yes, there are. I for one have installed DivX and Xvid codecs for Quicktime. Sadly, I don't recall where I got them, you'll have to google it (probably I got the links from this forums). I wouldn't know about FCP since I don't have it, but it probably relies on Quicktime, and if that's the case, the same codecs should work

Thanks!

You're welcome, glad I could help. Let me know how this works for you.

 

[mduser63]

People have provided good responses here. I just wanted to add one thing, sorry if it's already been mentioned. By default, control-F4 is the shortcut for switching between windows (all open windows not just those in the current application). You can change it to anything you want in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of Keyboard & Mouse preferences in System Preferences. I've got mine set to control-' (tick) and it works great.

 

[whocares]

control-F4 cycles through all windows in all apps.

ctrl+F4 only cycles through the windows of non hidden apps.

---

1) I have a 23" 1920x1200 display. Safari wants to scale to content on maximize. I can fit 2-3 scaled windows on my screen. How can I tile these windows? (The mac store guy opened 6 safari windows and tiled them to unreadable sizes with expose. This is not what I mean.)

Nope. This is a fundamental difference between Mac OS and Windows: you put the windows where you want them, not where some programmer thinks you *might* like them. Give this a try, you might like it.


2) Can I maximize to fit to screen with Safari for example? (Very glad that Firefox does this. And don't say it's unnecessary. It's kind of a visceral thing.)

See 1. Mac OS users (usually) like to arrange their windows in a manner they like and switch between windows with the mouse. Having windows maximized really screws this up. Again you should try it, you might like it (take a week or two to really appreciate it ). I personnally can't live w/o it and will not maximize, even in Windows.


3) How can I find an equivalent key shortcut that switches to finder and does command + N (new window), anywhere and in any application (like winkey + E)?

See 1 and 2. You're at the heart of Mac OS GUI. This is apparently more complicated than in Windows: click on Desktop, hit cmd+N. This may seem more complicated but has some advantages. The main one is: instead of just clicking on the Desktop, option+click on it to hide the active app (possibly my most used feater in OS X).


4) Can I make the finder actually view the root of the drive (/) and not just some stuff that it wants to show me and my user folder.

Has been adressed many times here.


5) Can I put an address bar into finder? (I'm aware of Go > Go To Folder).

Not in Finder (a GUI application). If you're in need of more complex stuff, try Terminal.app .
You can probably find a shareware to do this also


6) Can Alt-Tab cycle windows instead of applications. Does not help me if I have 6 finders open. (Aware of Command + `)

Ctrl+F4; you can probably find a shareware to do this also
Also give Exposé and cmd+tab & cmd+' a try.


7) Is there a true screen locking solution (like winkey + L)? (I'm aware of keychain lock... you can still control things like eject button and mute/volume buttons while LOCKED.)

Not sure.


8) How much ram is necessary for Tiger to run smoothly? (I have 512mb at the moment with 2gb coming soon (x800 256mb video) and it runs somewhat crappy at times. Doom 3 CLEARLY seizes up for a few moments when it's paging.)

Unfortunately, Mac OS X isn't a gaming platform


9) Can I disable the trash and have things deleted immediately?

Nope! But can bypass it using terminal (or possibly by writing an AppleScript).


10) Are there media codecs? (I'm using VLC at the moment which knows a lot of things built it.) How do I get FCP to recognize non-standard media for example?

Plenty


11) Is there a way to permanently use your chosen printing profile? (Like I have an HP Inkjet I want printing from black always, but whenever a print dialog comes up it always chooses "Standard" by default, which prints stuff in color and makes me mad for forgetting to set it to the "Black" profile. "Standard", btw, cannot be modified (easily I suppose)).

Dunno.




The bottom line is: don't make fast judgments. Some things take some time getting used to (especially the 'no full screen' thingy) but are really worth the effort. Also you'll find OS X has plenty of keyboard shortcuts (most of which are application-independant) and you can always add your own.

 

[camomac]

I have no idea why you want to use Safari in a full screen mode, on a 23" that's just plain... well, well...

But you can make your own Full Screen bookmark:
- Make a Bookmark and put it in your Bookmark Bar.
- Rename it Full Screen or whatever
- Edit the address to javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);

Now you got yourself a Full Screen button...

Note that it will only be true full screen if the Dock is hidden. If the Dock is visible, it will not cover that (which is not available).

WOW, that is supa cool. thanks so very much for that, i had no idea that you could add scripts like that... cool!

 

[gekko513]

That sounds like poor organization skills are at work there. Use AutoArrange and you'll always see the Recycle Bin.

Not if there's a window in front of it.

 

[funkychunkz]

I've seen most (if not all) in downloadable free hacks. To switch to desktop hit f11. There are 3rd party apps that will let you go full screen with safari. Auto deletion is a part of cocktail or tinker tool, I forget which.

 

[Dane D.]

Yea, maybe so, but calling him a troll doesn't help.

I didn't say he was a troll. So far nobody has mentioned one thing that Windozes does better.

Any idea what percentage of Mac users would ever boot into the command line?

I'd guess less than 1%...

I agree, if I wanted to line command a computer I would of learned DOS (which I didn't). I never want to learn line command and the Mac users I know don't want to either. Line command is BS, if I can't use a GUI interface then screw it. Please somebody answer what does Windozes do better? For my money it is Mac and that's all.

 

[Linkjeniero]

I never want to learn line command and the Mac users I know don't want to either. Line command is BS, if I can't use a GUI interface then screw it. Please somebody answer what does Windozes do better? For my money it is Mac and that's all.

I for one am a Mac user, and I love the command line, it's way more powerful than the GUI is. I know at least eight other mac users (in real life) that also use the command line. In fact, I hated the classic Mac OS, and I would have never started using Mac OS X if it wasn't for its UNIX base. If you can't learn it, fine, use the GUI; after all, not everybody can (or wants to) be power users, and that's why they invented the GUI, and Apple's one is damn good; but don't go saying the command line it's BS, because it's most definitely not. And please don't compare the powerful command line of UNIX with that DOS crap.

 

[pyrorwd]

Thanks to posters once again. I went over the thread quickly, will reread later.

With a 23" montior, full screen browsing is the most unproductive thing you can do on a Mac

What does it mean, unproductive? I myself do not find it productive to spend two minutes scaling windows by hand. If they want to force me to use my monitor correctly, why not have the option of scaling all windows to equal size or some combination of windows?

In my example:

I don't particularly like this because I'm reading the forum. I don't want to be scrolling every 10 seconds while the other 2 windows are taking my screen up. I'm not going to read the other two while I'm looking at the forum.

Here I'm reading the forum. That's what I want to be doing. Many sites are not locked to 800 or 640, they scale out. If I'm reading a long document, I want to use the entire screen, as is shown here. Google news, for example, is as efficient as the size of the window, I can read 12 headlines/snippets comfortably.

(Pictures are old to post because they were to be used for another purpose.)



I like windows' alt-tab because I can see the icon and what is in the title bar. I don't like to choose firefox for example and then cmd + `. It feels like windows are jumping all over the place. It doesn't let me choose the window but more like I have to try to stop when I hit the right one.

I'm trying more and more to learn the mac way, but it's hard to believe that every shortcoming is somehow a feature. Why for example, does not closing the last window of a browser application not close the application? How does it benefit me to have safari run in the background with no windows? To save 1/4 second for it to launch before it opens a window?


Another thing for example, I just tried to open a bunch of finder windows while it propted me about a SMB disconnect from my laptop. As such, I got the spinning beach ball of death. Even when I closed, it didn't unlock. When there's a normal action like a prompt, why does the thread lock up instead of pointing you to the required interaction? Also, for example, if you drop 500mb of songs into itunes, it will lock for maybe 10 seconds and become unresponsive while it sorts things and then it will start showing a progress bar (over 100mbit lan, this I'm sure would be a very popular way to move music, apple has been pushing for a while how friendly it is with windows/netbios/etc). If you try to drop 2gb into it for example, your patience may be shorter then the time it takes for it to come back to life and you may just kill it.

Please don't label me a troll, I'm trying to figure all of this out. I will look at all the hacks and methods recommended shortly. If you know something is a feature, also please explain why it is a feature (many have) and not just say that this is the zen of the mac and it is always better.

Thanks again.

 

[belvdr]

I didn't say he was a troll. So far nobody has mentioned one thing that Windozes does better.

I agree, if I wanted to line command a computer I would of learned DOS (which I didn't). I never want to learn line command and the Mac users I know don't want to either. Line command is BS, if I can't use a GUI interface then screw it. Please somebody answer what does Windozes do better? For my money it is Mac and that's all.

Actually, they did mention gaming. And, from your post, it must have a better spell/grammar checker.

Stating that the command line is useless must be due to ignorance. Actually, comparing it to DOS proves that. There's so much you can do in a command line in seconds that would take you much longer in the GUI.

 

[radiantm3]

Wow trying to read across my whole screen like that would drive me nuts. How many times do you lose your place while reading like that?

I like windows' alt-tab because I can see the icon and what is in the title bar. I don't like to choose firefox for example and then cmd + `. It feels like windows are jumping all over the place. It doesn't let me choose the window but more like I have to try to stop when I hit the right one.

How about F9 and F10? That's the best way to find a window.

I'm trying more and more to learn the mac way, but it's hard to believe that every shortcoming is somehow a feature. Why for example, does not closing the last window of a browser application not close the application? How does it benefit me to have safari run in the background with no windows? To save 1/4 second for it to launch before it opens a window?

Apps staying open without a window in OS X is not a shortcoming because a window does not equal the application itself. In windows, the main window is the application. You are just used to the windows way of thinking. Remember, Mac OS has always been designed around the idea of multitasking. Windows has not and you can start to see all the flaws as people are doing more things at a time with their computer.

My advice is to be patient and accept the new concepts instead of complaining about them. Give it a few months, and then come back to this thread and you will probably answer your own questions.

 

[kevinuaa]

Hey all,

\
6) Can Alt-Tab cycle windows instead of applications. Does not help me if I have 6 finders open. (Aware of Command + `)
sily I suppose)).



Thanks!

lots of fools said you can't do this, but you can . go to

sys pref > key board & mouse > keyboard shortcuts > keyboard navigation > move focus to active window or next window

best!

 

[gekko513]

pyrorwd: I recognise that people like to do things differently, so if you want to read macrumors in full screen, then be my guest. Not everyone prefers full screen, though, and as you see here there are lots of people who argue why full screen isn't best for them.

Safari remembers it's previous screen location and size if you close it and open it again, so if you prefer to have it full screen, it will remain full screen. That means everyone can adjust the size to their preference and be happy. I don't see what's wrong with this. The green button resize to the most sensible size for the content, but if you want to surf full screen you can do that by resizing the window just once. Everybody should be happy.

I've attached my screen, just to show more examples of people's different preferences.

 

[Nuc]

...

Some possible solutions.
http://haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/index.html
Also you can save your printing profile from the Presets drop down menu. It should save your printer and settings the next time you print something, it does for me.

Nuc

 

[applebum]

Why for example, does not closing the last window of a browser application not close the application? How does it benefit me to have safari run in the background with no windows? To save 1/4 second for it to launch before it opens a window?

Ooo ooo - I can answer this. I can give an example of how the Windoze way is a pain in the ass. At work (windows) I use a lot of Excel spreadsheets. Many times I will have several open. Some of them I simply use as templates and don't actually want to save the changes I make (I simply print them and let them revert back when I close the spreadsheet). Unfortunately if I have a couple open and accidently hit the big X instead of the little x, it will pop up the "Do you want to save changes..." message. Many times I have hit no not realizing I had hit the big X. Of course that closes all of Excel and I have wound up losing what I was working on in the spreadsheet that I wanted to save. This doesn't happen on the Mac because hitting the Red button doesn't close the program...just the window. Makes me mad just thinking about it as I type this...all the work I have lost by this windoze stupidity.

 

[gekko513]

Haha ... I've posted so much in this thread one should think it was about me ... well, anyway, to make it even more about me, I would like to thank wordmunger for the ctrl+F3 shortcut to dock. I do agree with the OP that Win-E is quite convenient, but now I can use ctrl+F3 then space to go to Finder instead of cmd+tab to get to it.

 

[Dane D.]

Wow games

Not all games, I can and have used many Mac games. Some were also on the PC side. The Mac was so much better looking and felt good. The PC was, well a PC, a cheap knock-off.

Stating that the command line is useless must be due to ignorance. Actually, comparing it to DOS proves that. There's so much you can do in a command line in seconds that would take you much longer in the GUI.

I'm not a 'Power-user' whatever that is, so the typing in a window to have my computer do something is IMO BS. My reference to DOS is the typing out of commands. My point of reference for dislike of line command is, I nevered learned to type and I nevered learned DOS, so the GUI is a blessing to me.

 

[Linkjeniero]

I don't particularly like this because I'm reading the forum. I don't want to be scrolling every 10 seconds while the other 2 windows are taking my screen up. I'm not going to read the other two while I'm looking at the forum.

You should try tabbed browsing then. It's the best of both worlds, in my opinion: You get to look at one page at the time, but you don't have many windows open in the background. To select another tab (in Safari) you just press Command-> or Command <-. In Firefox, it's Command (number of the tab). And as you were told: the reason of the behavior of the green button is because it's so much more useful. If you want full screen, you can do it manually and it will stay that way (or use that Javascript bookmark in the case of browsers); but it's not so trivial to get every window to it's ideal size by hand. It's consistent to the rest of the Apple GUI paradigm.

I like windows' alt-tab because I can see the icon and what is in the title bar. I don't like to choose firefox for example and then cmd + `. It feels like windows are jumping all over the place. It doesn't let me choose the window but more like I have to try to stop when I hit the right one.

Well, if you hate it that much, and don't want to use Exposé, you can always try Witch, the free extension that will let you do it the Windows way. But again, what you think it's a shortcoming, a lot of other users think it's a feature... I for one am totally used to switching apps and not windows. I mean, what if you have Photoshop with 10 windows open, that you want to see at the same time? Or the terminal? It's not very easy having to bring them up manually if you want to in Windows, but it's really easy in a Mac.

I'm trying more and more to learn the mac way, but it's hard to believe that every shortcoming is somehow a feature.

Well, not EVERY shortcoming, but many of the ones you speak of indeed are... It's just that you aren't used to the Mac way, and maybe won't let go so easily... You have to try to understand the why of the differences between Mac OS X and Windows, instead of just complaining you like it the Windows way better. If you try to use Mac OS X exactly as Windows, you'll be frustrated because it can't do it all that way. OTOH, if you learn to use Mac OS X as Mac OS X, you will soon realize you can do so much more, and for the most part, it does a lot more sense.

Why for example, does not closing the last window of a browser application not close the application? How does it benefit me to have safari run in the background with no windows? To save 1/4 second for it to launch before it opens a window?

And how does it hurt? Memory management in OS X is excellent. What it tries to do is keeep everything possible available, so you can open things faster should you need to; if and only if that memory is needed for something else, the data that was being kept there is thrown away (As opposed to Windows, that throws everything away immediatly, even if it doesn't have anything to fill it with at the moment). When you put that extra RAM in your Mac, you will realize it will eat it up completely, by keeping as much data as possible available "just in case" (for example, in your computer it might take 1/4 of a second to open a browser, but in my Powerbook it takes a full 8 seconds to launch Firefox... so yeah, I'm glad I can keep it open in the background). Also, there are apps that can benefit of being open with no windows, as the case of the Mail app (to know when you get a mail). If you really want to quit, you can press Command-Q, go to the app menu and quit it, or do it from the Dock. Again, it's very similar to the green button issue: the Windows way it's the easy way, but the Mac way it's often the best.

 

[Linkjeniero]

I'm not a 'Power-user' whatever that is, so the typing in a window to have my computer do something is IMO BS. My reference to DOS is the typing out of commands. My point of reference for dislike of line command is, I nevered learned to type and I nevered learned DOS, so the GUI is a blessing to me.

The fact that you can't do it doesn't make it BS. I for one can't drive very well in a car with manual transmission, but that doesn't mean it's BS. I'm well aware that experienced drivers can do much more with it than what they can with an automatic. It's kind of the same thing; the GUI is easier and friendlier, but the command line is way more powerful.

 

[OutThere]

Final Cut Pro is a professional video editing app and typically doesn't like to play nice with various video codecs, as it's designed, and used by most, to edit with DV/HDV(starting in v5)/Uncompressed video, and typically is not used to import, say, a DivX video downloaded off of BitTorrent.

Now, since you have Azureus and Limewire in your dock, and, speaking honestly, neither of those programs have many legitimate uses, I'll assume that you're getting the video files through those programs, and possibly FCP. I don't have any problem with that, I'm just making an assumption so I can give you some more precise advice.

Now, if you don't really intend to learn and use Final Cut Pro, don't bother. It's easy enough to open up and play with the clips, but you will waste hours trying to do simple things that you could easily do in iMovie. If you get the DivX codec (http://www.divx.com/) you will be able to play DivX compressed movies in Quicktime, and therefore import them into iMovie. Final Cut Pro isn't always as nice, and usually the easiest way to go about getting video from different codecs into it is to convert it using Ffmpeg (http://homepage.mac.com/major4/) to DV or the like.

 

[hopejr]

I've used Windows for 10 years, and am a power user (.NET developer, Windows Server 2003 Pre-installation specialist, also grew up on DOS). I switched because of the UNIX base of OS X and was sick of Windows. It took me a couple of months to get used to the mac way of doing things, but now I prefer it. I know all the keyboard shortcuts in windows, but the mac ones now make more sense (btw, I very rarely use the mouse on OS X).

Just some comments and suggestions I have:
Have you ever heard of the Multiple-document Interface? You probably have. It's something that was really big in the days of Windows 3.1, and has been sort of phased out as the years went by. Some programs on Windows still use it (Adobe Reader is a perfect example), Microsoft Office XP and higher kind of use it, but it's more of a hybrid and isn't consistent (MS Project acts differently to MS Excel or MS Word). Alt+tab doesn't work to switch between child windows in MDI apps. Ctrl+tab does that. OS X is based on MDI. Some programs on OS X do close when you close the window (such as System Prefs), but this is not default behaviour (I'm a developer on OS X now too, and have to actually code it in such a way to do this). A couple of shortcut keys that you might find helpful here are:
cmd+q - quit the whole application
cmd+w - quit the currently focussed window
cmd+h - hide the currently focussed application (you can cmd+tab back into it, and it helps to get rid of screen clutter - far superior to minimising, but is similar to minimising an MDI app in windows).
cmd+opt+h - hide all other apps in the background
cmd+opt+click on dock icon (or any window in other app) - hide all apps and focus clicked app
opt+click on dock icon (or any window in other app) - hide current app and focus other app (no other apps are hidden)
ctrl+F2 - open the menu bar
ctrl+F8 - open the menulings (keyboard layout, volume control, clock, etc)
cmd+space - open the spotlight search box (if using the default keyboard shortcuts)
(btw, I very rarely have a need to use Exposé)

In Finder, if you have the "Show warning before emptying trash" option selected, but don't want that to come up at a particular time, hold down the option key with the appropriate shortcut key (cmd+opt+delete for deleting a file, and cmd+opt+shift+delete for emptying trash). Also, when shutting down the computer, you can option-click on the "Shutdown", "Restart", and "Logout" items in the apple menu to skip the count-down screen. (option bypasses a lot of the confirmation dialogs).

Another thing to note in Finder - to open something, DON'T press enter/return like in Windows. That has the same effect as pressing F2 in windows (i.e. rename the file). Press cmd+o instead.

I hope some of these tips help. If I think of more, I'll post them.
Give it time, and you'll appreciate the differences. I do.

EDIT:
I just remembered a few other things that might be annoying or hard to get used to. Below are some differences between the Windows and OS X text editing keyboard shortcuts:
Windows -- OS X
Home -- cmd+left arrow (except in Macromedia products and older versions of MS Office, where Home does it)
End -- cmd+right arrow (ditto)
Ctrl+Home -- home (except it doesn't move the cursor)
Ctrl+End -- end (ditto)