As of 12 hours ago, I have joined the rest of my family and taken a bite of the iMac apple. I have a 27" whatever, with the base memory and stuff. It is really, quite amazing. I'm already familiar with how they work, because I helped Luca and Mrs. jrr get their's going last year. Now, with the magic mouse and this absolutely HUGE monitor, it's pretty nifty. Thus far, ALL my critical Ricambi apps have ported over just fine. (No I'm *not* running a PC emulation inside -- its all pure mac) The Magic Mouse was confusing for about .3 seconds. Really, it is genius and I wonder why it hadn't been invented sooner! Access to our multiple Windows servers at Rackspace remains simple and easy through Remote Desktop, our servers all bounce into Gmail professional (what a godsend), our VOIP pbx is unaffected, but my little 'visual voicemail' into the Mac works great. Other apps that I've installed and work great include Navicat (database management), Dreamweaver (site development), FedEx 'whatever its called'. Only big challenge was finding a Roboform-like application to save the gazzilion passwords from a gazillion sites. It looks like 1Password will do the job nicely. I'm in heaven! This morning, I'll lug it into the office and see how nicely it plays with our Zebra thermal printers, scanners, and other stuff. I suspect, by noon, I'll be fully converted. It's astounding. One quick question for Mac-pros.... I have a 1tb external drive on my old PC. Can I simply plug it into the iMac when I get to the office and see my existing data? Can it also be used for time machine, or will I need to reformat it? I will confess... the Apple store is so trendy and over-styled, that it was almost off-putting for me. Luca and Mrs. JRR machines were bought on-line... So I hadn't been to an Apple store before. I'm not old (40), but certainly felt like an ancient old man walking into the place. Now... back to playing !
Pretty cool aren't they! Wait for a real pro to respond, but I'm guessing plug in your external drive and go. Might depend on your data also. I swap thumb drives between my Apple's and PC's with no issues. Sometimes the Apple won't save a Word file with the extension so the PC gets stumped on what it is. Easy fix when saving.
While I agree that it is too trendy and a bit off-putting at least one of the salespeople in my closest Apple store is a retired public school network guy so they are not all young hipsters!
Congrats, I had to go back to a MacBook pro for school but my next computer will 100% be an iMac. Try plugging in the external, it may or may not work depending on how it is formatted. Honestly if you're not using Windows anymore, copy over the data and re-format the drive to Mac OSX Journaled, if you need help with the formatting shoot me a PM. Doubt Time Machine will work even if the drive is a format OSX can read, again much easier just to wipe it and start over.
8+ hours into the day, things are going really well! More updates to come. All the printers work great, all the apps are working. Biggest problem so far is that I find myself hitting the wrong keys for copy-paste.
"It depends!" [On how it's currently formatted.] I'm pretty sure you'll just plug it in and the Mac will at least see it though However, Time Machine wants it's own drive (more correctly, partition) to work "properly" - Do not try and put anything else on the TM partition. As has been said, my suggestion would also be to move your stuff off it and then format it as "Mac OSX, extended, journaled" - You can split it into two (or more) partitions and use one for TM and the other as a "regular" drive. [I use a 2nd partition to stash a complete bootable clone of the internal drive - TM backups are not bootable and if the internal drive breaks restoring the clone is much faster than rebuilding the drive.... Once the clone restore is done, TM can then restore anything thats changed since you made the clone of course.] HTH, cheers, Ian PS - Congrats on joining the 21st century!
You can change 'em if you really want to..... [System prefernces -> keyboard & mouse -> shortcuts from memory.] Isn't it wonderful that stuff just plugs in & works though? - No spending *hours* searching for and installing drivers, rebooting the thing over and over etc! ["Windoze has detected that the mouse has moved, you must reboot for this change to take effect" ]
I am so freakin' in love. Today, I pulled about 500gig of data from the 1TB external drive and loaded it into the Mac "documents". Tomorrow, I'll allow the Mac to reformat that drive into a TimeMachine. Since everything on the external drive is also still on my old PC, I'm not at great risk should something critical that I've forgotten about become electronic dust when TM fires up. Here's what I need help with: 1) I installed a few apps that I needed for day-to-day operations. They are all native Mac apps, and work fine. BUT, in the upper right corner of my screen it now looks like a little 'virtual' harddrive exists. Since the app is installed, I thought I could safely Trash that 'virtual drive'. When I drag it to the trash, my trashcan disappears and it becomes an 'eject' icon. Can somebody explain what's going or, or did I install the app incorrectly? 2) In my Dock, there is an icon for "Documents". When I single click on it, it grows into this bendy beanstalk thing. Is it supposed to be "most recently used documents" or something? It's pretty annoying. The "Applications" icon does the same thing. I wish it would just open Finder into the respective location. I'll live, but it's quite odd. 3) If I'm in Finder and want to rename a folder or file... how do I do it? There is no 'rename' available if I right-click. 4) Why is USB so amazingly fast on a Mac? I was using a 'sneaker net' today to carry a few files from my old PC onto the Mac... it pulled the USB files so fast I thought it wasn't even working properly. (but it was fine). I thought all USB was the same. My PC is/was USB 2.0. Still, this is faster. 5) Do I need to do *anything* in terms of Virus or firewall software? I feel a bit naked. -Daniel p.s. I cannot believe I waited so long to make the switch. I hate to be such a fan-boy, but I can already see just how 'it just works' without all the drama of my PC (Windows Vista Ultimate)
Sounds like it thinks that there is a drive mounted. Is the icon pointing to something that you downloaded or to another partition or what? Not quite clear on what it is representing.
Here's what I need help with: 1) I installed a few apps that I needed for day-to-day operations. They are all native Mac apps, and work fine. BUT, in the upper right corner of my screen it now looks like a little 'virtual' harddrive exists. Since the app is installed, I thought I could safely Trash that 'virtual drive'. When I drag it to the trash, my trashcan disappears and it becomes an 'eject' icon. Can somebody explain what's going or, or did I install the app incorrectly? -- All is well. The installer is mounted as a disk image (sort of a fake disk drive) and it should be 'ejected' (deleted) after you're done with it. Your installation should be perfectly fine if you're running the software off your HD rather than out of the mounted volume. 2) In my Dock, there is an icon for "Documents". When I single click on it, it grows into this bendy beanstalk thing. Is it supposed to be "most recently used documents" or something? It's pretty annoying. The "Applications" icon does the same thing. I wish it would just open Finder into the respective location. I'll live, but it's quite odd. Can you not just drag the stack folder off the dock? That's how I got rid of mine. 3) If I'm in Finder and want to rename a folder or file... how do I do it? There is no 'rename' available if I right-click. Usually you can re-name a folder by selecting it (so that the folder's name is highlighted -- has a colored background) and then clicking on the name. It should allow you to edit/re-name the folder. 4) Why is USB so amazingly fast on a Mac? I was using a 'sneaker net' today to carry a few files from my old PC onto the Mac... it pulled the USB files so fast I thought it wasn't even working properly. (but it was fine). I thought all USB was the same. My PC is/was USB 2.0. Still, this is faster. No clue, but I've noticed my USB is quicker on my Mac, too. Just happy it is! 5) Do I need to do *anything* in terms of Virus or firewall software? I feel a bit naked. For firewall, check out: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1810 (all about the built-in firewall) and for virus - I've used Kapersky -- which is pretty simple and effective. I'm sure others will have other recs, but it worked for me. p.s. I cannot believe I waited so long to make the switch. I hate to be such a fan-boy, but I can already see just how 'it just works' without all the drama of my PC (Windows Vista Ultimate) That's why I switched, too. Got tired of dealing with the little hassles of PCs.
I also never expected to become a "fanboy", but once you switch, and learn a few "tricks" you wonder how *anyone* can live with Micro$oft crap! Do you mean similar to the "google earth" drive in the image attached? I assume so - As has been said, many apps (particularly if downloaded) are in the form of a "disk image" which gets mounted on your desktop. After you've run the installer or simply moved the contents into your apps directory (as appropriate) you can safely remove the image - And you do that by "ejecting" said image - It'll go away and life will be good.... Incidentally, you do the same thing to eject CD's - Drag the icon to the "trash", which is smart enough to change to the eject icon and out it comes.....[I can't tell you how many ex-pc users have called me to ask "how do I eject a cd?!"] "Recently used" is exactly what it's showing. However, while I remember the "bendy beanstalk" thing (nice description btw!) mine now opens in a translucent box, and has the option to "open in finder" as one of the icons - I believe once you've got more stuff "recently used" your's will do the same. It's trying to make your life easier....This may have been a change in Snow Leopard IIRC - You are running 10.6, correct? One click to select, wait, 2nd click will "highlight" the name and allow you to enter your new name. It's all a question of buses! IIRC, the Mac's USB ports are on a nice wide bus.... The link posted above discusses the built in firewall, but in general just leave it alone and you'll be good - The default settings are pretty much spot on. As to virus's, Snow Leopard includes a rudimentary "malware finder" and works well enough - Should you download the infamous (illegal, hacked) version of iWork that has a "worm" buried in it, this will be found and you'll be warned [This is the "virus" that the PC fanboys jumped all over as evidence of "viruses on Mac's" btw]. However, I'm nominally responsible for about a dozen Mac's and have *never* installed any anti-anything S/W - Practice somewhat "safe computing" and you'll be fine - I honestly wouldn't bother installing anything - You'll get used to being naked - Isn't it wonderful! Another satisified "switcher"! I *love* it!..... Image Unavailable, Please Login
Lesson of the day... wired Ethernet is still WAY faster than 802.11x. On Sunday I came into the office and tried to 'reduce' the number of wires hanging from my desk. So, I opted for wireless connectivity. All day, I was bit^ing and moaning about how slow the iMac seemed, and how that pinwheel graphic appeared so often. Previously, I'd never seen it. Around 4:00pm, Mike said "go back to the wire, and see what happens". Guess what? The machine is smokin' fast again. And yes, I know enough about wireless to verify whether its running b, g, or n. The hell with 'clean lines". The speed of the iMac on a wired connection is astounding. Wired still kicks it home. (Time Machine is formatted and working too).
I agree there is significant value in "feeling good" and I am sure the Mac delivers this in spades. But what "actual work" tasks were you able to accomplish and how much time did it save you over doing the same things on the PC and on a dollar basis for those tasks, do you think the additional expenditure on the Mac was worth it?
Actual tasks? Yes. I'm not sitting around playing Solitare. Today, all the day-to-day operations of Ricambi America were entirely Mac. Both Mike (Ricambi South) and I are Mac users now: Email VOIP applications Visual parts diagrams Inventory management RDP back to our servers at Rackspace local and WAN/remote printing Database management via NaviCat (Mac native) Website management via Dreamweaver (Mac native) EDI purchase orders to suppliers FedEx Desktop ...and various spreadsheet tasks via OpenOffice. Did I "save time"? Who knows. Did it cost me time? No. FWIW, my old PC (Vista Ultimate) is running in one of our empty offices across the hall. Today alone, it froze during a Symantac update, and barfed on running Audicity (for our on-hold music). Big deal? No. Recoverable? Yes. Frustrating? Very. That machine is a quad-core, 4gb memory box. It's not out-of-date or obsolete. It's just too much drama, when I'd rather be running my business instead of being an I.T. person. I played that role in a previous life, and I'm not interested in doing it again. For years and years, I scoffed at the Mac. I'm an IBM'er who cut his teeth on S/38 and AS/400 boxes. I've been a M'soft user since DOS 'whatever', and frankly way before that in crappy little OS's from a host of now-dead software/hardware houses. I thought Mac's were only for tight-jean, clove-smoking, leftwing, artsy, light-loafer, poseurs. I was wrong. And boy, was I wrong. Microsoft has every possible resource to solve the problems with Windows. For some reason, they just haven't.
I can't believe Vista is being used as a comparison. Even die-hard PC guys don't use it. Best of luck with the Apple. I had nothing but heartache using them for whatever reason.
