Colin Woods Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Hi all I now have a 27 inch imac sat on my desk, its gorgeous. At the moment I am just playing with it really, finding my way around the way everything is organised and downloading and installing my software. It all seems pretty straightforward, apart from one thing. Windows Explorer. The Mac equivalent is Finder but I haven't got the hang of it yet. Do you use Finder to manage all your files, create folders, drag and drop files, etc? If not, is there a third party file manager that you can recommend - I really like the ease of Windows Explorer. Apart from that everything seems pretty intuitive and the big screen is fab. I still have my PC set up to next to it and my 10 yr old 19 inch cathode ray screen looks pretty weedy now. Todays job is to get the software that allows Mac to speak NTFS and get my hard drives plugged in. Cheers Col Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Morrison Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Do you use Finder to manage all your files, create folders, drag and drop files, etc? Yes... It's a piece of cake. Just click anywhere on the desktop, and you're in Finder. Then use the drop-down menus from the top of the screen (where you'll also find keyboard shortcuts for most actions). You'll be a Mac expert by the weekend... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulstw Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I got my 27" MAC last week and my world changed. It really is a beautiful bit of kit to work on. It's fast, it does what you want and I found it to be quite intuitive compared to WIndows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Todd Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Todays job is to get the software that allows Mac to speak NTFS and get my hard drives plugged in. I think you may be disappointed as NTFS is a Windows filesystem and won't be available on your mac. If you find a way of doing it please let me know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulstw Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 On the formatting point, FAT32 will work on both machines, however, you need ExFat if you want to transfer files bigger than 4Gb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SFL Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 You might find the following useful. http://www.pcworld.com/article/250431/how_to_share_an_external_drive_between_a_mac_and_a_pc.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Woods Posted October 31, 2013 Author Share Posted October 31, 2013 Yes, its a great piece of kit. It arrived on the same day that I went through the ten thousand pictures barrier on Alamy, a double big grin day. Its my first foray into Macworld but I haven't come up against big problems so far. For NTFS I was going to get this program http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ . I had a look around the interweb yesterday and it seems to be well regarded. Cheers Col Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Colin, swim out from your perceived safety of Windows-thinking and try some of the apps unique to Macs. Try Spotlight. The icon is at the upper-right of your screen. You can search and find anything on your iMac in a second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 If you have an Apple store in your city,go online and check to see what free hour long seminars they have. Sure much of it is sales pitch,but you can ask questions and you will come away with something you probably did not know. Good Mac forums online and same for youtube videos. I switched in the mid 1990s from PC to MAC and never looked back. L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Good advice, Linda . . . and then there's the helpful videos on YouTube. Oh! You said that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneWay Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 PC users seem to find the background "desktop" a strange concept. On Macs, just consider the Finder screen as you would the top of a desk where you place "things." In the File menu, you can create a new folder anytime on your Finder desktop, name the folder as you wish, then drag and drop the folder into any active hard drive you want (the hard drive icons will also be on your desktop), or within any folder you want, move it whereever you want. Now one thing. All external drives should be Mac formatted for best efficiency. Be sure to back up all files in another hard drive temporarily before reformatting, then drag all the files you want into the newly formatted drive. In about a week, you'll know why Mac users are such happy lot. Yes, Macs are worth the premium price. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Woods Posted November 1, 2013 Author Share Posted November 1, 2013 Thanks all I am getting used to Finder a bit now. I have started to put a few things on the hard drive now and have been playing with Finder. I have just put a couple of my full size pictures up on the screen and I was just sitting there with my mouth hanging open. I have never seen them look so good. So much for Macs improving productivity - I know I will spend the next month looking at every picture I have ever taken again. Thanks to everyone who has replied to my questions and to all the others who happily share their knowledge so that us non-computer types can improve ourselves. Cheers Col Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 Colin, I have always admired the images you submit to our contests and decided to check out your website for the first time. I noticed that your link to Alamy just took me to the main search page. Since searching your name isn't working anymore you might want to adjust that to use the "MY ALAMY HOMEPAGE". I Like your work a lot and also enjoyed your sense of humor on the site. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Woods Posted November 1, 2013 Author Share Posted November 1, 2013 Thank you for your kind words Paulette, and for the heads up. I set that up when name searches worked and have forgotten about it since then. I'll get it changed. Col Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyMelbourne Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 For me the beauty of the Mac is that in future years you can switch it on and it performs as good as the day it came out of the box. I own 2 macbook pro's and an imac 27 (and a PC that I have not switched on for about a year). Except for the oldest macbook that has just gone over the 3 year applecare the hard drive went down. I sourced a larger faster replacement drive and with 5 mins work replaced it, reloaded from scratch and then took just over an hour to upgrade to mavericks with no problems at all. I done all this last night and I am typing on it now. Even the battery is still good and lasts for a few hours, in fact I have been using it consistently for about 3 hours and it is now on 55%. The other 2 macs have given me no problem whatsoever and I have never needed to calibrate the screens as they were spot on straight out of the box. I have been into PC's since my amstrad 1640 in the late 80's. I have built them for people now and again and (although no IT expert) I feel i am reasonably experienced to give an unbiased opinion. In summary: I do not envisage buying another PC as long as I have a hole in my proverbial. I do not need a system that splashes dll's everywhere, leaves bits of programs everywhere and grinds to a halt after an undetermined while. I also believe that most people that say how wonderfull PC's are and that Macs are just overpriced clones of the same have probably never had one. Also, if you know a student that is at uni (UK) then there is a way of getting around 15% off. Hope this helps anyone on the edge. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Todd Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 I've had two macbooks too and only use my PC occasionally. I wouldn't go back to using a Windows laptop. It's so easy to uninstall something from the mac without having to do extra steps like you have to on Windows to get rid of everything and no need to defrag etc. The only problem I had once was when the battery was hardly holding a charge. I was in the habit of having it on the mains when I was in the house but you should disconnect when the battery is at 100% and let it run down as it is designed to do. Apple sent a new battery FOC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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