Use a Mac for a month?

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• Frank Jones - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  The joke is all those restaurants on 6th St. share the same kitchen. Deli Palace in Jackson Heights is my favorite indian place, right next to and less cool than the Jackson Diner.

• Frank Jones - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  The joke is all those restaurants on 6th St. share the same kitchen. Deli Palace in Jackson Heights is my favorite indian place, right next to and less cool than the Jackson Diner.

• Frank Jones - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  Get a village voice (free newspaper in sidewalk boxes) to find out where to eat or a Time Out NY (sold at news stands). TimeoutNYC will also give you listings and articles about what's going on in town.
  
  There are so many restaurants in each neighborhood and in each pricerange. There is no way to recommend one. Those options above list by neighborhood and price range. Avoid eating near Times Square. Everywhere else is fine. The boroughs have a lot of great places too.
  
  Good luck with the G5. Newer ones are coming out within the month.

• GL - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  For all of you having problems connecting to Windows shares, and to save Anand some trouble in advance, it is common for OS X 10.3 to not have the proper workgroup name configured. By default it uses WORKGROUP. But if your LAN uses a different workgroup name, the Finder will not be able to browse any of the shares on the Windows network. You should be able to manually connect to servers if you know their names however.
  
  To solve this situation, run Directory Access (/Applications/Utilities/Directory Access). Authenticate by clicking on the lock. Now double-click SMB at the bottom of the Services list. You can now enter the proper workgroup name, and address of your WINS server if you have one.
  
  This is pretty bass-ackwards if you ask me. Apple should have this option in the normal Network settings so that people who change locations (i.e. bring their laptop to work and home where the workgroup names are different) don't run into problems. OS X's location-based network settings are very handy otherwise.
  
  So, there you go. I hope this helps some of you having problems!

• river-wind - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  also, FTP in the finder is something not for the feight of heart. I'm honestly surprised that Apple left it turned on in 10.3. It's not very good.
  
  
  as for what to focus on - I'd like to know your basic ability to get things done on the machine after you started to get used to things like a single menu bar. Instead of just "I had difficulty dealing with AD in a Windows network at first..." which is what most Mac review are - how well does it work in y exsisting system. I'd like to see what you think of the machine on it's own - how well it would function as a main machine for you if all the other machines around it were macs.
  
  
  lastly, the biggest negative to switching platforms, IMO, is the cost of software. Most companies do not offer cross-grades, so you end up looking at a significant $$ inventment in duplicating SW on both OS's. Sadly, IMO, MS Office is still a must for most people, though there are now some OK Open Source alternatives that are fairly compatable with MS's file formats.

• river-wind - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  I'd put votes in for menulator (a nice little menubar calculator which is activated by a command+esc key combo. very handy), copypasteX (gives you 10 clipboards to work with), codetek Virtual Desktop (the best VDesktop implimentation for OS X; version 3 deals with Expose in Panther, which caused problems for v2), and Dragthing (very custimizable shortcut organiser. you can set key combos to any shortcut, too. Cmd+shft+space for me is iTunes, Cmd+shft+m is Mail.app, Cmd+shft+z is Mozilla... it rocks.

• Anonymous - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  Re: networking.
  
  SMB networking to Windows shares in OS X works great (SAMBA 3). However, the Finder's browser to automatically network to Windows shares (introduced in Panther) does not work as well. Stick with samba. < Go --> Connect --> SMB://xxxxxxx > Just so you know in advance.

• Anomynous - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  BLUETOOTH
  
  If you have a supported Bluetooth phone (check apple.com/isync), open up the Address Book app and hit the BT icon. It'll notify you on incoming calls, lets you text a reply from your keyboard and much more. Click on the little headers like 'Mobile' in a persons card to bring up options like 'Send SMS' or 'Dial'.
  
  If you have a SonyEricsson phone, get "Salling Clicker". In addition to all the usual remote control stuff, it'll let you lock the screen and silence iTunes by just moving (your phone) out from Bluetooth range. And the opposite when you come back. For supported Nokia phones, theres "Romeo".
  
  BOOK
  
  And I do recommend getting a book. David Pogue's "Missing Manual" is aimed at both newbies and pros and includes a huge amount of info.
  
  SCREEN GRAB
  
  If you'd like to record any of the stuff (like DVDs with sound) on your screen to movies, get the insane Snapz Pro 2 from www.ambrosiasw.com. See some of the mind-blowing captures at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/scre...
  
  And oh yeah - LaunchBar is a must ; )
  
  Have Fun!
  
  AC

• OoTLink - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  If anything, make sure to try out the unix utilities. Install either XDarwin (full blownw window manager), or apple X11, get fink and fink commander, grab xmms, blackbox (or KDE), perhaps even gimp.. free goodies :)
  
  Just a note at the 2gb ram stick comment above: While the g5's chipset will indeed accept 16gb of ram the crucial sticks are ECC which will probably not work in the g5 (not to mention a tad more expensive).. expect 2gb non parity sticks soon :)
  
  For now that means the most you can squeeze in there is 8gb.. one of the cooler things about this wild amount of ram is disk cacheing.. you can stick in a dvd or cd and it'll probably be spun down long before your music listening or dvd watching is done (depending on the app).
  
  One feature that's most definately worth a shot is the networking capabilities. Mac OS X has proved to be incredibly efficient in this in ways that most OSes are not. Plug in an 802.11b (or g) box, hook up to your network, turn on the g5 and watch the connection just work (may or may not want to enable icon in system prefs if it's not already).
  
  Ironically with laptops there's a feature that's automatically enabled by default called "use network with best signal", you can drive around with a powerbook in the car and it'll auto swap networks for the best reception :smirks:
  
  There's a handful of other things, like DVD burning, running the built in web server on your machine, sticking the web folder in your dock, and simply dropping files in there to put them "on the internet".. hrm oh yes.
  
  if you plug your mac into a regular ethernet switch with other PCs, dhcp network, the rest should come automatically including clicking the "network" icon in the finder and easily getting to your other stuff :)
  
  Hrmm more fun toys = dragging a folder to the dock, right click folder, contents are listed. In finder or any document windows with an icon -- option + click the document's name in the titlebar (or folder name), and you'll get a directory tree. You can also click, hold, and drag this anywhere you want (dock, other apps, desktop), to copy the file there.
  
  Command alt * = enable zoom features
  command alt + and command alt = zoom in or out.
  
  Try this one. (numpad controls for +/-/*)... very fun little utility.
  
  control eject = shutdown hotkey.. hrm any others?
  
  Yes actually. For scrutinized security, if you want it, you can go to system prefs, enable filevault and auto logout, go to applications->utilities->keychain utility, and stick a menu item in your menu that allows you to lock out your keychain (all your saved passwords for email and whatnot totally locked down) to where you have to enter a password to do anything.
  
  There's also the admin scheme. Any major install or system modifying requires a password.. CHUD is an awesome utility btw, almost purely for bragging rights. With it you can actually stick a menubar item in that when you click it, can turn on or off the additional CPU on the fly.. disable cache, etc. There's also a few utilities for temperature information.
  
  If you want to get to deeper/more intense fun with it you can right click apps and most of the time click an item called "Show package contents", which allows you to change all sorts of things .. great fun with stuff like xchat aqua here...
  
  Oh yes, when you have your computer on, if you have all drivers installed, plug in your printer, turn it on, go to an app and hit command P, find the printer already in the menu [if it's fairly recent it'll auto install]
  
  There's also more mundane features since as built in disk journalling (which doesn't need to be installed since it's on by default), which stores the file info on your drive... accidentally turn off your comp or it crashes? No problem... since it's journaled if repairs need to be made they will.. no scanning required.
  
  There's also more strange stuff like command V at startup to get a verbose startup which tells you all the console info while booting, or for fun, logging out, holding option, and at the login menu clicking other and typing >console as the username and hitting enter.. more stuff to play with.
  
  If you're really bored you can also download a utility called Imagine BootX and change the apple/grey screen at bootup with something else. :)
  
  Hrmm there's a million oth8er things but off the top of my head I can't remember. If you're looking for a weatherbug replacement btw there's something called meteorologist to be used. Be sure to check out themes and unsanity's shapeshifter (or themechanger or duality) for all your theme needs.
  
  There's also www.macupdate.com and www.versiontracker.com for the insane amount of apps you might want to play with :) Stuff like having an IPv6 network going by just configuring it (a quick change in setting), or sharing the internet connection over 802.11, ethernet, etc.. and even silly things as simple as setting the speech system to tell you when a dialog box comes up and what it says (this is really a cool feature but not for too much more than show off), or to set ichat to tell you not just that someone is IMing you but WHO is IMing you (or only to tell you if your girlfriend is or whatnot) -- this one's almost invaluable when you're in a game but still don't want to miss important stuff.
  
  There's so many nifty little features :)

• Judge Fire - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link

  Good luck! Here's a threadful of some peoples' favorite freeware/shareware for Mac OS X, including of course LaunchBar, Clutter and many more : )
  
  http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=e3d98aaed...
  
  J