Woo: I'm posting from my new MacBook Pro

Using Opera too. It's got some weird font. Bold words (headers) are like really fat and bold.

Anyway the Mac Book Pro is great, I like the two finger scrolling but I'm having difficulty getting used to the non-ergonomic keyboard. Also the @ sign is on the number 2 key. Wait a minute there's no Del key :-o, just a backspace key! There also a few other funny keys.

So anyway to get BMax on here I just to to my account and download it right (then patch it)?

I'm going to try to network to my PC to get some files off like my Game Framework. Wish me luck!

Hey does anyone know if it's possible to store Mac files on my external NTFS formatted USB Hard Drive? (I haven't tried yet) That would be cool for backups and data transfer should the network be tricky to setup.

Must be my eyesight but this text is pretty small. I got the 15" version because, although the 17" was bigger, it appear to just up the res so probably the text would be the same size anyway.

Hmm I'm gonna change the key repeat rate too, it's well slow.

Oh yeah the Mac should be pretty easy to make podcast and video podcasts with right? This things got a built in webcam you see. What can I used to capture the video and compress for Internet use and upload it? Thanks.

Well anyway sorry to ramble there's lots to figure out as this is all totally new to me (I once used a Mac about ooh 11 years ago) so I might be asking a few questions if you'll indulge me.

Looks like I need a Macbook for Dummies book as I don't know any keybaord shortcuts like backpsace to go back, Altr+F4 to close a window and F5 for refresh. Have found Ctrl + trackpad to zoom in though, cool. And F11 and F12 for desktop and dashboard.

Anyone know a good web tutorial, thanx!

hmm just noticed that in Opera you can't tab down to bthe post button...

Can anyone help with this weird network issue please?

I have used the network tool to view my C and E drives. When I am on my C drive I can go into any folder and view stuff, but on the E drive I can see all the folders but whenever I go in one it's empty, weird! both drives are fully shared. Any ideas? Thanks

Not sure about that particular issue, but I can help with a couple of your other questions:

Fn (bottom left key) + Backspace = Del.
Apple + [ = Go back
Apple + W = Close window

If you go into System Preferences and choose Dashboard preferences, you can redefine those F11 and F12 ones, and add in preferences for Expose etc. (Expose is a wicked little tool which instantly shows you every open window, or every window for the current application, or shoves all windows to the side temporarily to show the desktop.)

You can use your external drive but OSX will only read NTFS, not write to it. You have two choices: either reformat it as FAT (with FAT's limitations) or reformat it as HFS+. Then you have to get round your PC not being able to read it, but there is a brilliant program called MacDrive which you install on your PC, which enables Windows to read and write to HFS+ disks. I think it's about £40.

I found Google to be of great help when I was setting up networking between my PC and MacBook Pro. It actually isn't all that difficult to do either. Anyway...

What I did was make sure that file sharing was enabled on the PC. It also may help if you give your PC a fixed IP address. I then did everything else on the Mac.

When I first got the two networked, I hit Apple+K to connect to a server. Type in "smb://192.168.0.2/" (the IP address of your PC on the network). You will get asked for a password, which will be your Windows password. Once authenticated you'll be present with a drop-down with a list of your shared folders on your PC.

As well as the normal Shared Documents folder you can also set any folder to be shared by right-clicking it in Explorer, which is what I do for my BlitzMax folders. Although you can compile with everything on your PC, I'd recommend transferring copies over to the Mac for at least the final release, as the file system has some little quirks that can cause problems later on (mainly due to the files attribute flags, permissions, etc).

You can also connect to your PC by opening a Finder window and clicking on Network. A list of connected servers will appear after a few seconds and one of these should be your PC. This is now how I connect and it's dead easy.

The above assumes that you're going through a router, which I assume is the case?

Also, before you can compile anything in BlitzMax you will need to installed X-Code, which will be on the DVD that came with your Mac.

And the Mac can write to NTFS as well (following on from post above), because mine has no problems at all (apart from the atrribute quirkiness!).

Have fun.

Congrats on your new MacBook! :-)

NTFS: I don´t know of a tool to write to NTFS partitions, but with the utility "MacDrive" for Windows you can write on HFS drives - works great, but costs a few bucks.

Keyboard shortcuts: There is a list of that in the book "Mac OS X (Panther) in a nutshell". but I don´t know how relevant most of them are for you at this point in time.

During startup of the machine:
C -> boots from CD
N -> start from netboot server
R -> Resets the display for a PowerBook
T -> Start Mac in "Target" mode as mountable firewire drive
X -> boot OS X even if OS 9 was selected for startup (should be irrelevant on an Mac Book)
Command-S -> Boot in single user mode
Command-V -> Boot in verbose mode
Shift -> Safe Boot
Option -> Select OS / Startup Manager
Mouse Button -> Eject CD

in OS X:
Shift-Option-Command-Q -> Log off without prompting
Option-Apple -> Log off
Option-Power On -> Shutdown without prompting
Control-Command-Power On -> Forces shutdown, can damage file system
Control-Eject/Control-F12 -> Opens "restart/sleep/shutdown" dialog

Network issues:
What´s the server OS? If you have an 2003 AD, you should disable the "digital signing of network packages" in your group policies (you would even have to do that for clients prior to Windows XP).

If you have an AD, you should also go to Applications/Utilities, launch the "Directory Services" utility and configure it to connect to your active directory.

Other than that, I can only guess that you have a problem with your local permissions on that folder. Just because the permissions on the share give you full access that does not mean that the file system security will also grant you access.

HTH and have fun with your MacBook! :)

Hi. I'll try to help you with as many of your questions/comments as I can. Some have already been answered, but whatever:

The Mac keyboard, particularly on the laptops, is a little different. I'm not sure which country you're in, but in the US, I'm pretty sure the @ sign is always on the 2. There is indeed no Delete key on the Mac laptop keyboards. You can press function+backspace to have it work like a delete key. I think you could also remap a key if you really wanted to.

NTFS is a proprietary Microsoft format, so you normally can't get fully functionality on a non-MS platform. You can use an external NTFS-formatted drive with the Mac, but it would be read only. So, the Mac could copy stuff from that drive to somewhere else, but can't write to it. That's the same issue you would have with Linux too, though I believe someone has alpha/beta versions of a way to write to it.

As for your font size issue, click your desktop, then View, then Show View Options. You can change your font size to something bigger from there. Then open a Finder window and change the "Application font size". Certain apps, like Firefox (not sure about Opera) have their own internal font settings too, so you might have to change it within the app.

Key repeat rate is in the System Preferences (the thing that looks like a light switch) under Keyboard & Mouse.

I've seen the podcast stuff somewhere, but don't use it so I can't really remember where. I'd check iMovie for the video stuff and GarageBand for the audio.

Here's a like to some documentation on the various OS X keyboard shortcuts: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

As for the network issue, I'm not sure. I'd check all the NTFS permissions on the drive, make sure they're inheriting down into the folders, and all that.

I hope this helps!

Oh, another thing that's fun to do, at least on a desktop machine where you have a regular mouse, is to use Active Screen Corners (under System Preferences -> Dashboard & Expose). I set mine up so if I touch the top left corner of the screen with the mouse pointer, it uses Expose to show all of the open windows. I also have the top right show the screensaver so I can just flick the mouse when I walk away from the machine, bottom right show the Dashboard, and bottom left hide all the open windows for easy access to the desktop. I'm not sure how well that would work with the trackpad, though.

Congrats! By the way: I'm writing from my new iMac =)
Have sold my laptop to afford it and I'm very impressed. I play Enemy Territory, UT 2004 and World Of Warcraft on it, I do my website with iWeb, everything I want runs on it and it's more stable than XP or Vista are or will probably ever be (in fact I just had to restart two times: the first time after I updated all the software and another time when I installed USB Overdrive to get my Microsoft Habu mouse to work properly). Also the start-up and shut-down times are impressive. In the time Windows XP needs to boot you can easily reboot your Mac 3-4 times. Now count that for one year and you'll see that you're wasting some amount of time on Windows just to boot up ._.

mrtricks: great tips thanks. those keys are now memorised. Weirdly the Fkeys alter the laptop settings like brightness and sound etc by default, I thought that you'd nomrally press the function key to do that...Also myabe I could add a second partition to the backup drive (keep the first as NTFS for Windows) and format that for Mac?

JazzieB : OK great thanks for all the advice! As I sid I can access all my stuff on the C drive but not on the E drive. I guess it must be something in Windows XP Home that is set weirdly...I'll test the removable drive too soon :-)

Winni : hey thanks for the shortcuts. I'll hopefully find out more general OS ones as I go on. I know what the Control and apple keys are but what is the Command key? Oh my PC is Windows XP Home.

jhanson: great tips thanks! WhenI click the desktop, nothing happens...

KudosCry: I really like the sleep, it's very fast. Does sleep drain batteries much isf left on for several hours say?

OK the network issue is sorted. I just unshared my E drive and then reshared it and it worked. Good old XP doh!

At the moment I access my E drive by going into Finder then Network then MSHome (my workgroup) then JBHome (my PC) then I select the E drive in the droplist and click OK. This put an E drive icon on the desktop. This is great but when I make the laptop sleep and come back the icon disappears from the desktop. How can I make it into a permanent link please? Any ideas? Thanx

If you just want to capture video through the camera you could use for example Graphic Converter, which is a classic Mac image-conversion graphics tool (shareware) - you can open a video capture window and capture to disk.

It sounds like your other questions are really just newbie silly questions due to your immense excitement about your new platform ;-)

Yes you just go to your account and download the mac version and then download the update and then syncmods.

Your usb drive should work fine just plug it in and it should appear on the desktop.

Is it an intel dual core mac or a ppc? I'm looking forward to your future mac product line ;-)

Grey Alien: When you click the desktop, the menu bar at the top of the screen should say "Finder" and then have a list of menus, just like Windows. Under the View menu, click Show View Options and follow my instructions from there. Good luck!

The key with the Apple and the other strange symbol on it is the Command key.

Thanks all for you extra tips :-) Yes I'm full of Noob excitement.

AngelDaniel: It's an Intel dual core. Also I used ISight to record from the built in web cam and edit a little video which I uploaded to youtube (never done that before). Was pretty easy but it doesn't seem to let you fade audio in/out...

I installed BMax but nothing compiles and also Syncmods fails. You are right JazzieB!

Question about X-code: All I've got is two OS X CDs (or maybe they're DVDs). Is X-code on that then?

No, you'll have to download Xcode 2.4 from Apple's website.

If you would prefer that functionality, you can change it in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard tab > Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features.



Actually, Xcode should be on one of those discs. It may not be the newest version however, so you should check before installing it if that matters to you.

Yep, you're right - Xcode 2.2 was indeed on my Install Disk 1.
But I downloaded the latest, which I think is 2.4.1 for Tiger, since the Software Update program doesn't update Xcode.

Ah OK thanks for the tips. So I'll just download it as the laptop is on the Internet so that's cool.

eni: OK thanks for that too :-)

Anyone know hoe to view the Home page in Opera? It opens up with google now I've set it too, but later on after browsing how to I got to the home page, there doesn't seem to be a button...thanks

Also I've done a bit of research into making my network drives, which are on my PC, persist on the desktop but it seems I have to make some kind of Automater script or something. OS X could really be improved if it had a "Reconnect at Logon" style checkbox like Windows has.

Hi Grey,

You don´t have to write a script for that - just use the "create alias" command (Command-L) in Finder´s "File" menu with one of the folders you want to use. The alias will be created on the desktop and stay there. The next time you double click on it after a logon or restart, you will be asked for the network username and password.

I can´t help you with Opera. I almost exclusively use Safari and think that it´s the best browser for OS X.

Laterz,
W. :)

You can make your network drives reconnect at logon easily. Open System Preferences and go to Accounts. Click on the Logon Items tab and drag your network drive into the list. Now, whenever you logon with that user account your drives will be there.

XCode comes with osX so I'm glad you found it on the disc. All you do is install xcode and then blitzmax should work.

Winni: Thanks dude. Turns out I'm using Safari after all...

jhanson: Thanks

Angel: OK on the case.

So what do you think of OS X? Are you going to be a full on Mac convert?

OSX is great. I also like the use of fancy 3D card effects though I guess Vista has copied that. I keep trying to right click though, just discovered that Ctrl + Click = right click. The Macbook Pro is sleek and cool and has loads of totally cool useful stuff preinstalled for movies, recordsings, photos etc unlike Windows. I still find my PC easier to "work" on but the Macbook is for a) converting my framework to Mac and b) to browse Internet and read ebooks when I'm somewhere comfy like on my sofa and c) to do podcasts etc (I only discovered this purpose after I bought it!)

You can also right-click by putting two fingers on the track pad and clicking. Don't need to use both hands then ;o)

Ah OK, thanks for that :-)

Since you already fell in love with the bundled applications, here's a list of free (as in beer, sometimes also as in speech) software for OS X that you also might not want to miss:

Journler (phildow.net)
Cyberduck (FTP client, cyberduck.ch)
Stuffit Expander (stuffit.com)
NeoOffice/J (The OpenOffice.org port for OS X with native look & feel, www.neooffice.org)
SeaShore (http://seashore.sourceforge.net/)
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
Pixen (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13363)
MacBill (http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-PaloAlto/8861/mac/)
TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/)
Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html)
Mono (www.go-mono.com)
Python for Mac (Goes beyond what is shipped with OS X, http://pythonmac.org/)
SQLite.org (for the latest versions of that nice embedded db)
www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp (if you want to run Windows natively; btw, you do NOT need the bootcamp drivers for Vista - it runs out of the box - on my iMac)

Commercial software that is great for the Mac (besides the "big names"):
Apple Soundtrack Pro
Apple Jam Packs - for Garageband, Soundtrack, Logic
Propellerhead Reason
Parallels Desktop
BBEdit
Toast Titanium
Stuffit Deluxe
iWork
OmniGraffle
PhotoLine 32 (http://www.pl32.com/)
ffmpegX

Wow thanks Winni, great list. I was wondering about good free software for the Mac!

There is even more if you have X11 server installed and do not mind if the software has no native Mac-Look & Feel. Look at "Darwinports" or "Fink". Most Linux applications actually can be compiled one way or the other to run on OS X, but it usually involves a lot of pain and in the end wouldn't be satisfying.

MonoDevelop is one of the worst examples - it can be made to run, but getting there can take you days and is no fun at all.

"The GIMP", however, runs as a Universal Binary on Mac's X11 and works quite well. But... I'm spoiled. I want native Mac-stuff and rather spend 80 Euros or so for either PhotoShop Elements (PowerPC only) or PhotoLine 32 (Universal Binary) and get something that integrates well and looks "right".

There's also an interesting game developer scene in the Mac world (www.idevgames.com), and also nice Mac-only games like "Deep Trouble 2" (www.codeblender.com) or my personal favourite "Midnight Mansion" (www.actionsoft.com).

On Apple's website you will also find the Mac-ports for Quake I & II (UB) or the original doom as free downloads. Just in case. :)

I found Pixen to be extraordinarily slow. ??

You didn't mention GimpShop.
Also Graphic Converter.

wow I gotta try out Quake II, it's been a few years ;-)

I use Gimp for PC and have PS Elements too for PC, but could be worth getting one on the Mac.

Great info thanks, really apprecaite it.

AngelDaniel: thanks for the extra app hints :-)

well I've changed over to Mozilla now as Safari didn't support google spreadsheets (or vice versa). You still can't tab to the post button!

You will find safari sometimes doesn't work with some websites, or more to the point, websites that get away with poor programming that work under IE won't work with the more `correct` safari.