Mac newbie seeks Mac guru for short term relationship Monday July 4, 2005

Posted in: Mac Technology

1. Lisa Spangenberg

   Jul 5, 06:07 AM

   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.

2. Greg

   Jul 5, 08:09 AM

   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!

3. Greg

   Jul 5, 08:38 AM

   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!

4. Nathan Pitman

   Jul 5, 09:34 AM

   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.

5. Lisa Spangenberg

   Jul 5, 02:19 PM

   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.

6. Phil

   Jul 5, 03:51 PM

   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!)

7. Daniel

   Jul 7, 01:06 AM

   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

8. Nathan Pitman

   Jul 7, 08:16 AM

   Thanks for all the great tips & tricks!

9. PaulC

   Jul 27, 03:57 PM

   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!

10. Nathan Pitman

    Jul 27, 08:13 PM

    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!