Mac newbie seeks Mac guru for short term relationship Jul 04. 0510
On Friday I finished up at Mirashade and today was my first day at my new place, Bite CP.
The most significant change for me is that at Bite right now I’m using a Mac, I think it’s a dual G5 with about 1.5Gb of RAM, so not bad by any stretch of the imagination. However… as a Mac ‘OSX’ newbie I could really do with some tips. I’ve already sussed the whole ‘Exposé’ thing but I really need some more tricks up my sleeve if I’m going to make passers by go ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ as I work my magic (hmm).
Please help me. Tell me about the great shortcuts you use everyday, the software you just cannot live without for web development, which IM and Mail clients you use and finally… is it tricky to set up an IMAP server? Hmm… maybe that’s one for another day.
I’m still resisting the force of Mac… 2 months in and I’m still trying my best to stick to a PC.
Should make the change really…
Hope the new job is good? we should all catch up sometime? A Ex-Mirashaders night out!
Thanks for all the great tips & tricks!
must have Apps:
Quicksilver: speeds up life while simplifying
gCount: (if you use gmail), set a key-shortcut to pull up your email in a new tab
Camino: (get nightly builds at least one a week), enable tabbed browsing
-CamiFlash: blocks flash from running until you click on it – kill those flash advertisments
-CamiOptions: lots of cool stuff
MenuCalendarClock: an easy access calendar
VLC: video and dvd player (best feature is it will play a dvd ripped to a folder as if it was actually on the dvd)
Mac The Ripper: Rip DVDs in full to your hard drive
key-shortcuts:
apple+t = open new tab
apple+n = open new window
apple+w = close tab or window (if there are tabs, it’ll close the tab first)
apple+q = quit app
I’m new to macs too but, I’ve been using this in terminal alot recently:
cd /library/apache2/conf/
sudo emacs httpd.conf
Once in emacs use shift + the page down arrow to cycle through the lines of code quicker (Apple + F should search but, for me it never works properly!)
If you’re running Tiger /OS X 10.4, you’ve already got Perl, Python, PHP installed.
If you’re not running Tiger, get it. Tiger even makes your hair shiny and more manageable.
Yup, got one of them 2 button jobbies with a scroll wheel already, not that it looks as sexy as the luverly one button mouse.
Also, while I remember, bookmark Marc Liyanage for OS X ports and (excellent) setup instructions for popular open source web applications – PHP, MySQL etc…
I’ll second the fact that BBedit Pro is essential!
Get yourself (or request!) a two button mouse with a scroll wheel, don’t muck about with the single button Apple mice!
Apple Key + TAB (cycle through applications) is sexy if you haven’t seen it before…
I’m all to familiar with that ‘new job feeling’ – give it two months and you’ll be like part of the furniture, so enjoy it. Good luck!
I’ve given up the Mac battle I’m afraid and will be shortly winging my way back to the land of Windows. Just makes more sense when you need to test on IE.
At the end of the day Macs and PCs are pretty similar, they each have their quirks and oddities but you can do just as good a job on either platform, all the other details are just decoration.
RE Mirashade… well as Mirashade no longer exists as it once did, but is now a part of the Dun Woody group, yes it is probably time for an Ex-Mirashaders night out… those were the days eh!
Shortcuts—lots of contextual menus; hold down the Control key and click.
If you’re running Tiger, Spotlight can save you lots of keystrokes, but I still use Qucksilver.
Web/HTML—I’m old fashioned; I use BBEdit Pro.
Drag and drop is a way of life.
The Terminal is your friend, as are AppleScript, and in Tiger, Automator; these can do work flow automation like nobody’s business.
If you’re setting up the IMAP server on a Mac OS X Tiger server, it’s basically a matter of clicking check boxes and reading the screen
For mail, I use Eudora—the campus licenses it for all students—but if you’re a heavy mail user, MailSmith is very very scriptable.