New Mac User Alert (NRR)

bonzaisk8bonzaisk8 946 Posts
edited May 2007 in Strut Central
sup y'all. so i just copped my first Mac ever and need to get familar with all things that make a mac, a mac. i'm looking for just about any resources that can help me figure this thing out and get out of little mac dude status.also, does anyone recommend any audio editing software such as sound forge or wavelab, but for mac's (not talking about Pro Tools and of the such)? any help would be greatly appreciated. holler. kg.

  Comments



  • kicks79kicks79 1,343 Posts
    I was just gonna start a post about this. I just picked up my shinny new mac book pro.
    Anyother programs you mac users can't do without?

  • SnagglepusSnagglepus 1,756 Posts
    Audacity is a good free wave editor.

    In general, I think you'll figure things out pretty quickly. Just do some basic projects on iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, etc. to get in tune with some of the software. When you come across a problem or need an easier way to do something, there are tons and tons of forums ... just google it. Of course, there's always SoulStrut.

    DVD burning is very easy with Mac the Ripper (free ripping software) and Toast or Popcorn (not free / for compressing/burning).

    If you want to get your Macdork on, you can check out the MacCast or Mac OS Ken podcasts. We're talkin' dorkville here ... but you can keep up with new things coming out and they often have helpful suggestions.


  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,783 Posts
    Welcome Aboard:

    Buy this book from Amazon.



    It was my bible for a little while.

    Programs I cannot do with out on the Mac include:

    Office Suite for Mac (with Entourage), Quicken (for the finances), Transmit (FTP Program), Dreamweaver, Amadeus (Wav editor), Adobe CS2, Tomato Torrent Tracker, Missing Sync for my Windows Mobile Phone, iSquint (to convert YouTube FLVs to Mpeg4, VLC Player!

    Good Luck and Have Fun!

  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    KG,

    I second the recommendation for Sound Studio 3. I've been using it for years and have been very happy with its functionality (though I think their recent 3.5 upgrade is a little buggy, especially with EQ filtering).

  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    Missing Sync

    Oh lord, do I need that!

    One thing I am ditching is my .Mac account. I use a PC too much at work and it is so clunky it's damn near unuseable.

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,783 Posts
    Oh.. I forgot. Get Parralles for Turbo Lister & Soulseek.

  • bonzaisk8bonzaisk8 946 Posts
    nice. thanks for all the dope info so far y'all.

    been looking at the Bias Peak program for Mac's. looks pretty serious, not to mention pricey as sheeit.



    nice! do you know if this works for 1000's?

  • JustAliceJustAlice 1,308 Posts
    My hard drive on my powerbook took a major dump this week...couldnt even get my confuser to turn on at all. BUY APPLE CARE when you buy a new mac.

    My three years are almost up...but all of this happend while I was still covered.

    They say that laptops only last about that long anyways.

    I was only able to back up my itunes library ( thankfully ) and geek game data....before it took its dive.

    The good news is that I sent it in on monday around 3pm and they had already shipped it back to me yesterday afternoon. Should be at my door any minute.
    DHL and Apple care rock. I cant believe they fixed it that fast....though I realize they just popped it open and threw in a new hard drive, the speed at which it happend is impressive. I was sure it would have been a good two weeks of waiting and confuser detox.

    It is a little more money, ( 150??)) but you'll be glad you did when something goes wrong....which it will..eventually.

    Plus they will help you fix easy stuff over the phone.

  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    It is a little more money, ( 150??)) but you'll be glad you did when something goes wrong....which it will..eventually.

    I believe it's 250 for laptops.

    Macbooks have a 20-something% failure rate, which is about the same across vendors/platforms.

    A new macbook with academic discount is less than 1000. It's kind of a gamble, but I decided it was worth it instead to put that money towards a nice hard drive to back up to every week.

  • kicks79kicks79 1,343 Posts
    Yeah i copped the extra care package upgrading it to three years. Worked out to be about $500 aus dollars but i figure its worth it if somthing gos wrong. Thanks for all the help as well.

  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    Applecare is a must buy when you are purchasing a new Mac. A couple of years ago my G5 tower was acting really bad, kernel panics daily and just wouldn't run stable. I had Applecare and took it in and they attempted to repair it 3 times (replacing main logic boards, video boards, etc) which would have run me literally thousands of $ if I wasn't covered. After all that they never got the old comp fixed, so they gave up and replaced it with a brand new machine, which was the latest model G5 since mine was no longer in production. That kind of service is well worth the $300 or whatever it costs.

  • bonzaisk8bonzaisk8 946 Posts
    so i'm curious, do all mac users use I-Tunes to listen to their tracks off their HD? I'm still not sold on I-tunes as my sole music player and am curious if there are any other good audio players that dont take a long time load or anything.

    everyone's help has been really helpful so far, thanks for the suggestions.

    ez.

    kg.

  • prof_rockwellprof_rockwell 2,867 Posts
    if you are anywhere near an applestore, many of them have free workshops on how to use your mac as well:

    http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/week/20070506.html

    (just an example from the NYC location)

  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    so i'm curious, do all mac users use I-Tunes to listen to their tracks off their HD? I'm still not sold on I-tunes as my sole music player and am curious if there are any other good audio players that dont take a long time load or anything.

    it is the dominant player, 99% of folks on os x use itunes. It does load slow if you have a huge library, especially on an old machine. I don't think there will be much slowdown since you will have an intel. Best advice is to max out your memory.
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