Computer Association of SIUE - Forums

CAOS Forums => Questions and Answers => Topic started by: John on 2007-09-26T23:33:54-05:00 (Wednesday)

Title: New Mac
Post by: John on 2007-09-26T23:33:54-05:00 (Wednesday)
So, I just got my new Mac, and I have never had one before. I had a few questions that I hope some of the Mac verterans out there could help me with.

Firstly, what is the freakin' shortcut to Expose or whatever it is that lets me see all open windows at the same time, so I can pick the one I want?

Secondly, I am debating over whether I should go with Boot Camp or Parallels or both, and how I would even do both such that I don't have two installations. Instead, they both just feed off of the same installation.

Finally, any other comments or suggested downloads would be appriciated or anything useful that you think a first-time Mac user wouldn't but should know.

Thanks,

John
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: Jarod Luebbert on 2007-09-27T07:25:30-05:00 (Thursday)
The shortcut to Expose is F9, if you go to system preferences -> Dashboard & Expose, you can configure the other shortcuts too. Boot camp works really well if you need speed on the windows machine, parallels works really good if you just need to run one or two programs at about half speed. The choice is completely up to you. However, I would go with one or the othe r, just to conserve hard drive space. As for stuff that you should know... I'm not really sure, just mess around with it, theres nothing you can screw up too badly. Heres some of the best free mac programs: I'd suggest Adium as your chat client, your also going to want to download Onyx to perform regular maintenance about once a month or so just to keep the performance up.

http://bestmacsoftware.org/
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: JR on 2007-09-27T08:35:46-05:00 (Thursday)
one tip: don't put windows on there. it will screw everything up
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: John on 2007-09-27T10:28:50-05:00 (Thursday)
Thanks for the suggested downloads. I had aready found Adium and it rocks. As I find more and more software for the Mac, I feel less and less like even bothering with Windows. The only two things I might want it for are games (but I have game consoles for that) and Visual Studio. It's a crutch I have had and would like to get off of, but XCode is just a little rough for me at ATM. Do most of you use IDEs, and, if so, which one do you recommend?

Also, could you elaborate more on Windows "screw(ing) everything up"?

Thanks,

John
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: Shaun Martin on 2007-09-27T11:11:50-05:00 (Thursday)
jrat is an apple fan boy.  He doesn't have any valid answers to your question other than "I LOVE MY MAC ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!"
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: feyerabend on 2007-09-27T12:41:28-05:00 (Thursday)
If you run parallels or boot camp you need at least 2gb of ram it.  Because OSX needs at least a gig and vista or xp needs another gig to run at its best.







---------------------------------------
Is A Insane Man Sane In A Insane World
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: Avren4 on 2007-09-27T14:05:38-05:00 (Thursday)
As has been mentioned, whether you choose Parallels or Boot Camp really depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to run a few programs from an OSX install, or are you wanting to run many programs at once (or even one program that needs all of the available computing power)?

The first case would be Parallels, the second Boot Camp, as has been mentioned again, heh.

Another thing to keep an eye on might be VMWare Fusion, basically the same idea as Parallels, but at least as far as I know, VMWare has been around longer than the Parallels guys, and probably have more experience in working with this sort of thing, for what that's worth.
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: William Grim on 2007-09-27T21:10:10-05:00 (Thursday)
You can run everything you need with 2 GB of RAM and Parallels Desktop.  Parallels 3.0 even supports DX9, and they're working on adding DX10 support.  I have used Parallels to run XP and GNU/Debian while running OS X; it ran well.

As far as choosing between Parallels and VMWare Fusion, definitely go with Parallels.  VMWare may become a viable contender in the future, but Parallels has better support now and a longer history of work with Apple.

Windows doesn't screw anything up.  In fact, if you need Visual Studio, it works quite well.

Currently, I used a couple IDEs.  I mainly use emacs, but I'm trying to get used to eclipse, since it has better features overall.  I just don't like using the mouse for various reasons, such as wrist strain and context-switch time between keyboard and mouse.  (I wish eclipse let me add arbitrary keyboard shortcuts easily... maybe via a plugin I can write... at least it has some emacs keys.)

I'd say that Visual Studio is a very good IDE, but it wouldn't hurt to use something else to get a feeling for what happens under the hood.  I'd use vim or emacs for a while and then later go back if you want.
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: Jarod Luebbert on 2007-09-28T10:46:07-05:00 (Friday)
I use Xcode, but I can see how it can be intimidating at first, especially after using Visual Studio for a long time. You should check out eclipse.

http://www.eclipse.org/
Title: Re: New Mac
Post by: JR on 2007-09-28T16:35:56-05:00 (Friday)
haha. look at mike standing up for M$ !
I know that Jesse Cook is having problems (random lock ups and odd error screens) and he has parallels w/windows. and i know mike was having a lot of problems but i think they were hardware related (he uses parallels).
I don't and either does JCam and I haven't seen those kinds of problems.

windows is unstable. that's the bottom line and i think a lot of people would agree.

anyway...
my *favorite* apps on mac are
TextMate : http://macromates.com/
QuickSilver : http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

my *least* favorite apps are
vlc : http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
 i wish they had media player classic for os x ;-)

apps i wish were a little better on os x
Opera : http://www.opera.com/

oh, and customize your hotcorners in System Preferences.

vim is cool but i use TextMate and build through the terminal. terminal is great.