top switcher mistakes - switcher guideFeb 17 '05 (Updated Mar 01 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Here are some things to point out some of Macs advantages and help out switchers. I feel it belongs in this topic.
This is based largely on the experiences of switchers to Macs who have written articles here. Although I respect and find interest in their responses I also have the insight to point out where they are wrong, and where their reviews may be misinforming other readers. I'm writing this from the perspective of a non-professional Mac user, but I have used Macs since being a teen, and still use them for all my home computer needs. I have very good knowledge of how to operate Mac OS. 1) Multi tasking/multi-task bars With Mac OS X, Mac now has a "multi task" (as I heard someone call it) bar. Its called the dock. With Mac OS X, Mac also has a 'start' menu. It's called the dock. To describe the dock for people who havn't switched yet, its a translucent strip that runs along the bottom of the Mac interface by default, housing many key applications that can be launched from it with a single click. This is a lot nicer than cluttering your desktop with aliases. The dock can also be used to switch between open applications. While an application is open, its icon will be in the dock (whether or not it is 'set' there as default - if it isn't the icon will disappear when you quit), and open applications are distuinguished by a small black arrow underneath the icon. Clicking the icon on an open application running in the background from within the dock will immediately switch you from your current application to that application - in exactly the same way as windows does with task bar. The main immediate layout difference (and advantage) of the dock is that it is split into 2 portions by a subtle divider bar. The applications (including finder) belong on the left side of this divider bar, and the files and folders (including hard disks, and the trash) all belong on the right hand side of the bar. The advantage is that in windows you have an item on the bar per window in any application - which can clutter up the task bar, and cause confusion between which is which. With the Mac 'dock' only applications in use appear on the dock, and not windows within that application (unless you minimise an application window, in which case it will appear on the right side of the dock). This doesnt mean you can't easily switch between windows within an application though - a menu bar called 'window' displaying open windows within an application exists on the static menu bar at the top of every Mac screen - allowing to quickly select the relevant window with a click of the mouse. Since this Mac menu bar is application specific, it changes depending on which application you run - rather than having an application menu at the top of every window within an application - so you are able to make changes to ALL items within an application at once, as well as changes to individual windows - once you get used to this, it is much more logical, and functional. To make the most of the dock you must first realise that you have total control over it. Most Windows users assume you don't have this kind of functionality simply because it isn't the kind of thing built into windows. What this means is that: 1) you can place the dock vertically - on the right or left side of the screen if you choose by selecting the 'dock' menu, located on the 'apple' menu (indicated by a blue apple logo), located at the far left of the menu bar which always sits at the top of your screen. The options you find under 'dock' also includes turning off the magnification effect (dock magnifies icon sizes in the area which your cursor hovers over by default), an option to turn on the 'dock hiding' function, and to call the more advanced dock preferences. Dock hiding means that the dock slides under the bottom of your viewable screen until you move your cursor into that area. when your cursor hits the bottom of the screen the dock will automatically slide up so you can use it - or slide down again if you move the cursor away. This frees up some more space, but hiding the dock makes it harder to see which applications you have open at any particular time. 2) You can have whatever you like on the dock by default. If you want to add an application to the dock, simply drag the icon from the relevant folder onto the left portion of the dock (or top portion if you have the dock set vertically). The actual application of the icon will stay in its relevant folder - you havnt moved the file anywhere - but that application's icon will sit there so that you now load it from the dock without going to any folders. You can also remove an item from the dock by dragging its dock icon onto the trash icon (located on the right side of the dock) - the icon will disappear in a nice puff-of-smoke eye-candy effect. Again, this doesn't move the original item to the trash, it just removes it's shortcut from the dock.. this is useful for example if there is an application I will almost never use - say windows media player or address book (which I don't use) I can simply drag their shortcuts to the trash icon, and make my dock less cluttered. This combination allows me to customise the dock however I like - it really becomes MY dock. 3) From within dock preferences ( -> apple menu, -> dock, -> dock preferences) there are some more things you can tweak: -dock size - Big beautiful icons or small, neat discreet ones? Mac OS X really supports beautiful crisp icons that look perfect (not pixelated) even if you blow them to like a 2 square inch size. Not everyone wants such a large portion of their screen taken up by the dock - so you can make the dock as small as you need - or turn hiding on (to toggle on/off- keyboard shortcut = command+option+d) which hides the dock till you need it as I already explained. Further options include exagerating the magnification effect. Try them out and see what setting you like! Further dock tricks: -To get a 'start' menu, drag your HD icon (or both if u have 2) from the desktop onto the right portion of the dock. Right-clicking (or holding down control key while you click=control-clicking if you don't use a 2 button mouse, it does the same thing) them will open a pop-up menu containing it's content in much the same way as windows start menu. In fact this feature works for any folder as well - just drag it to the dock and right/control-click. -Try right/control-clicking on an inactive application on the dock, a pop-up menu appears from your cursor giving you the option "show in finder", which when selected, will open the relevant folder containing the original item in the finder. This is useful say if you want to access your photoshop plug ins folder quickly (photoshop plugins folder is always located in the same folder as photoshop) -Try right/control-clicking on an active (open) application - again a pop-up menu, again you get the show in finder command, but from this menu you also have the option to hide this application (removes all it's windows from view until you switch back to using it - very handy), you also have the option to force-quit the application if it isn't responding (this won't affect any other application), and this menu also displays all windows open within that application so that you can switch to your desired window with one click from within any application. -Right/control click on the trash to empty it. -One more really neat trick is to right/control click the divider bar in the dock - this will bring up all the dock options I mentioned previously without needing to go to the apple menu. Thats the dock dealt with, but there are still other cool multi-task functions built into Mac OS 10.3 (aka panther, the OS shipping with all macs since months ago). The first one is alt-tab. Alt-tab works just like it did in any previous version of Mac OS - it allows you to quickly switch between any open application - simply hold down the command key and then hit tab to toggle open applications. In panther a dock-like strip appears in the center of the screen displaying open application icons when you press command-tab, if you hold down command and hit tab once, you can now select an application from this strip with your mouse. This is useful when you have a large number of applications open - in the past it was really easy to 'miss' the application by toggling to fast, and then you had to go through the whole list again. With this new feature you can enter the keystrokes with one hand and immediately pick your desired application with the mouse in the other hand. Furthermore, with a multibutton mouse plugged in, you will be presented with the option to assign specific functions to each mouse-button that act on this alt-tab menu, for example one click-button might quit an application, and another simply hide it. The other brilliant multi task tool introduced into Mac OS panther is expose. By hitting F9 on your keyboard all open windows in all applications instantly minaturise and reposition themself so you can view every open window on the screen at once with no windows overlapping then click one to bring it to the front and into use (all the other windows will slide back into position neatly behind it) - the more windows you have the smaller they get minaturised, but when you have more windows its a lot more useful. Hit f9 again, and they will slide back into original position and order (cancel). Hitting f10 performs a similar function but works on only the windows within the particular application you are working in. f11 hides all windows in all applications to the corners of the screen instantly and allows you to access a window-free desktop, when you have done with the desktop you can hit f11 a second time to return all windows to position. this takes away all the mindless searching through multitudes of open windows in a really slick way - top feature! note that you can also work expose with the mouse only - open system preferences (which is located in the applications folder, and apple menu, although I always keep it on my dock for quick access) and go to expose (fourth from left in the top quadrant). Here you will be able to assign expose functions to any 'hot corner' of the screen - for example I have the 'all windows' expose function set to my bottom right corner. If I move my mouse down into the bottom right corner expose will now activate the 'all windows' command. You can set any corner to any of the particular expose functions, and from the same menu you can edit the keystrokes that activate expose functions. 2) "The Mac never breaks/experiences problems" or "Mac OS X is infallible". due to the overwhelming amount of spin that goes on about apple being more secure and less crashy, overall more reliable, some people get the idea that the point of a Mac is paying a premium, and making a few software/hardware sacrifices to get an infallble system. This is 100% untrue. As I pointed out in my previous editorial Macs are not really any more expensive than PCs, and are certainly better value for money, but at the same time they do sometimes experience problems. The sooner a switcher realises this the sooner they will become experienced Mac users and learn how to maintain their systems. Recognition of this will lead to finding out information (all available on the web or particularly some brilliant manuals written by pro-users out there) - and this will lead to the full enjoyment and benefits of the brilliant machine you payed hard-earned cash for. Fortunately, the Mac is indeed far more stable than windows, Mac OS panther has NEVER crashed on me (if your machine is crashing you must have a hardware fault, so buy -the brilliant- applecare, or be prepared to spend a while on the phone with a techician). Furthermore, as I outline in my previous article, Macs are not prone to the huge number of viruses and malware out there on the net - in fact there are no known viruses that affect any version of Mac OS. Again, Macs are generally very well built so hardware problems are rarer than PCs (altough there are always exceptions), and if you pay for applecare which is well worth it, you get brilliant service from people who care for 3 years. finally, the Mac is a lot easier to learn how to maintain because the interface is more intuitive, and logical. Start making positive steps now, and don't whine if you have the misfortune of a glitch, because PC users have to put up with so much more crap. 3) "The system is slow - things load up slower than windows"/ This is partly true in fact, but the reason is because Mac OS is a true operating system, whereas windows is a graphically rendered direct command line. This is shown by the fact that the Mac has a 'finder' application as part of the OS. What this means is that every command you make on a mac goes through its operating system. With windows your commands are made directly. This makes the windows environment feel more responsive - particularly when loading programs and navigating the 'OS' and so on. The advantage of running things through a true operating system like the mac, is that your system has an element of control over what happens to your computer - as it is the operating system that actually carries out these commands. Windows has none of this control - this means that software can damage your system if it coded badly (malware), and it means that viruses and trojans can invade your computer and literally take control of it.. if, like me, you would rather wait an extra second for word to load up, but know your system is secure then you are right to buy a Mac. Interestingly, it is possible to make direct commands on your mac in unix code, using 3rd party command line applications from the net, or just the included 'terminal' program. If you have the know-how you can use this to do virtually anything you can dream of on your Mac, truly harnessing its power, but since this is only running within an application run by the operating system, the OS still has that modicum of control - applications can be force-quitted. Please note on this issue, that the relative speed of responsiveness only affects system based commands, such as launching applications - once the application is loaded it will run just as fast as a windows user may expect. So when you are rendering video on your home-iMovie based film, and your eMac/Mac mini is stripping off minutes of time compared to the integrated-graphics dell machine, you will overall save a lot more time, despite the application taking a second or so to load up. The best thing to do: and is just a good piece of Mac advice in general, is to add extra RAM. Apple never really include anyhing more than a 'satisfactory' amount of RAM, but adding more RAM - you'll want 512-768 recommended as minimum for Mac OS X. Once you did this, you'll quickly notice your system become a lot more responsive and smooth, and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg for RAM either. 4) "I can't change file/folder names, or file extensions" In windows, to rename a file/folder you had to right-click it - in Mac OS there are two ways to rename a file/folder. The fast way is to click on the file/folder name (not the icon) and wait for about 2 seconds - you will then be able to edit the name. The other way is select the file/folder and select 'get info' from the file menu (you can also select get-info by right-clicking the target, or selecting the target and hitting command-i). This will open up a window that allows you to edit any property of that file or folder, including renaming, changing file extensions etc. 5) "Internet explorer is slow" I agree. Use safari. If you have an old version of safari the new (free) version is a few megabytes to download. Safari is very fast, and blocks pop-ups by default. It also has a google search function built into the menu bar - very handy. If you hate safari, try opera or firefox. to be continued...  |
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