Few bits of advice for new mac please

[rctneil]

Hey,

My first ever personal Mac is arriving tommorrow in the form of a 27" iMac i7.

I'm as giddy as a kid at christmas to be honest but have a couple of questions.

I have been a long standing Windows user for a very very long time and i'm not deserting Windows entirely as I will be using a bootcamp version of Windows on this iMac.

Right, one reason for suddenly up and changing to a mac is the fact that my main windows PC suddenly dies one day and refused to boot. The SSD failed so I have a got an RMA from OCZ but haven't reinstalled Windows on it just yet but I do have all my data sat on a separate internal drive ready to be moved onto the macs drive when it arrives.

On my Windows PC I had iTunes all set up nicely and how I liked it. I had all the preferences set correctly and I basically told iTunes to manage nothing and leave me to store and organise my music manually which has worked out perfectly. I also had all my playcounts and playlists set up.

What is the quickest way to get iTunes and all of it's "stuff" moved over and working?

Also, what applications would you reccommend I install?

I am also looking for an application that I can use to convert a DVD into an ISO file? So suggestions would be useful.

Also, I have a 1tb external drive with my current Windows PC backups on it, I will be putting this drive to use as my Time Machine.

What I want to know is if I put some files such as some photos on a different netwrok attached drive, can I configure time machine to back those up too?

I may have more questions but at the moment I can't think of any so when I do i'll post them in here.

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

 

[Skyboat]

That's a lot of questions but I can answer a few straightaway:

I am also looking for an application that I can use to convert a DVD into an ISO file? So suggestions would be useful.

Disk Utility, already comes installed with OS X. Should be in the Applications/Utilities folder.

What I want to know is if I put some files such as some photos on a different netwrok attached drive, can I configure time machine to back those up too

AFAIK, Time Machine can't backup network drives.

 

[rctneil]

Thanks for the reply.

Just tried to convert a DVD to an iso on my work Macbook Pro but can't see any options to get it to ISO format?

One more question. I have been syncing my iPhone with my Windows PC for a while now, How do I start to sync it with my iMac without losing all it's configuration and data?

Any suggestions?

Neil

 

[Skyboat]

When you create a new image, select the DVD/CD master format as shown below:

The file produced will have a .cdr extension, but it's exactly the same as an ISO, just rename it in Finder.

I believe you can sync your iDevice to another copy of iTunes but you will lose any 'paid' content such as music and films - basically anything that isn't backed up. You can re-download Apps for example, but not much else. I suggest making a copy of everything you sync to your phone in iTunes, and making a backup of the phone too. That way you can activate your phone with your new Mac, and import all your old content from the Windows PC into iTunes on the iMac.

I'm probably waffling a bit, essentially just make plenty of backups of anything that you think you might lose in the re-syncing so if anything goes wrong it hasn't been lost forever and you can just re-import.

 

[rctneil]

Cheers for that. Worked perfectly.

My iMac arrived today and am loving it so far. Just taking ages to get all my stuff onto it