One day with my first mac, some questions

hoogie

hoogie

hoogie

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18 Dec 2003
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327
Hi all,

My new 13" Macbook Pro (2011), my first mac, arrived yesterday and I have spent most of the evening using the system. As is to be expected there are some aspects that I can't get my head around and other that I love (Gestures!!!).

I have some questions one day in that I hope you guys may be able to answer:

1) iPhoto: I have run iPhoto and it seems to list my entire photo library without splitting them out based on the folder they are in (e.g. China 2009 or Vancouver 2010). is there a way to filter the photos based on the album I want, so I can select Vancouver 2010 and only see these pictures?

2) Ical/Contacts: I am synching with my Google account, is there any way to force a sync? I couldn't see an option and in one case a change to my Contacts was not being synched...

3) Notes: Is there a Notes applicaiton like on the iPhone/iPad? I really want to be able to edit my notes on my Mac and have it synched with all my devices.

4) Widgets: Are there any particularly good wighets people would recommend?

5) Finder: Is it just me or is "Windows explorer" much better? Also when downloading a file and choosing the download location (e.g. doing save as on a picture) is it not possible to create a new folder to save it in?

6) Safari: Cannot believe this doesn't have a combined address/search bar. I have heard there is an extension called Omnibar, anyone know if it's any good?

7) HDD noise: This is something I noticed on my friends mac in the past. If you lift the mac off your lap you can hear what I assume is HDD do a short seek, as if the movement has shaken it. Never heard this on any laptop but have heard it on 3 Macs I have used, is this normal?

8) Facetime camera: Is it just me or is this not very good? Quality seemed terrible when i tried it.

That's everyhtign I can think of for now, thanks for any advice.
 
hoogie said:
Hi all,

My new 13" Macbook Pro (2011), my first mac, arrived yesterday and I have spent most of the evening using the system. As is to be expected there are some aspects that I can't get my head around and other that I love (Gestures!!!).

I have some questions one day in that I hope you guys may be able to answer:

1) iPhoto: I have run iPhoto and it seems to list my entire photo library without splitting them out based on the folder they are in (e.g. China 2009 or Vancouver 2010). is there a way to filter the photos based on the album I want, so I can select Vancouver 2010 and only see these pictures?

2) Ical/Contacts: I am synching with my Google account, is there any way to force a sync? I couldn't see an option and in one case a change to my Contacts was not being synched...

3) Notes: Is there a Notes applicaiton like on the iPhone/iPad? I really want to be able to edit my notes on my Mac and have it synched with all my devices.

4) Widgets: Are there any particularly good wighets people would recommend?

5) Finder: Is it just me or is "Windows explorer" much better? Also when downloading a file and choosing the download location (e.g. doing save as on a picture) is it not possible to create a new folder to save it in?

6) Safari: Cannot believe this doesn't have a combined address/search bar. I have heard there is an extension called Omnibar, anyone know if it's any good?

7) HDD noise: This is something I noticed on my friends mac in the past. If you lift the mac off your lap you can hear what I assume is HDD do a short seek, as if the movement has shaken it. Never heard this on any laptop but have heard it on 3 Macs I have used, is this normal?

8) Facetime camera: Is it just me or is this not very good? Quality seemed terrible when i tried it.

That's everyhtign I can think of for now, thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

As regards notes I'd use Evernote as this syncs accross all my devices.
 
the HDD noise is the movement sensor it parks the drive in case you drop it or something like that

finder is amazing just use spotlight to find things its better
 
1 - iPhoto, if you click view and then choose event titles, it should separate them into the "events" which are the names of each folder you dragged into iPhoto.

2 - from Google website - Event information will automatically refresh every five minutes. You can change this interval by opening the iCal > Preferences > Accounts menu and selecting a new refresh interval under the 'Refresh calendars' drop-down. Keep in mind you can also force a refresh by selecting a calendar and pressing the Apple and R keys at the same time.

3 - When notes sync with a mac they go through the mail.app I believe. I agree with using evernote though it's much more flexible, and can be put on as many machines as you like, pc mac, tablets etc...

4 - I dont really use them, if I'm honest, if you get a few on there it can take a while for them all to load. I have made use of the Widget for Fetch which is an ftp program, or the one for dropbox isn't bad, other than that its your generic weather, calculator an itunes remote...

5 - Finder is great in my opinion, having been a pc user for so very long, and a mac user for the last 3 1/2 years. When you choose to download something you should get an option to save something in a specific place, sometimes when you are given the choise though the window looks small, if you twirl out the little triangle next the the file name it should give you the option to choose folders and create new ones. when you do download stuff though it will depend on which browser you use I believe. Give Chrome a go and see if it works differently to Safari.

6 - As above, I don't use it because I know Chrome is fast and just works. I wouldnt bother with added extras to make Safari do what Chrome does anyway.

7 - Never heard it myself, but I'm not exactly delicate with my laptop when moving around at times and have never had any issues with drive noise or failure..does it always do this? if its shock protection it could stop itself as movement is detected and then carry on, in which case its probably a good thing.

8 - it sucks. I have the same camera on my 17" version and it looks hazy and really not great. but then tiny little built in cameras like this will never be that great when going for a full HD image. Not sure if using it in Face time reduces the quality to optimise streaming, but you could open the Photo Booth app to see if it looks any better in there..mine doesn't, but it's more than adequate for Skype etc....

Thats about everything covered...... slow day at work :P
 
hoogie said:
4) Widgets: Are there any particularly good wighets people would recommend?
Click to expand...

iStat Pro is pretty good if you're interested in system monitoring stuff. Other than that, I mainly use some of the stock widgets like clock, calendar, notes etc.

5) Finder: Is it just me or is "Windows explorer" much better? Also when downloading a file and choosing the download location (e.g. doing save as on a picture) is it not possible to create a new folder to save it in?
Click to expand...

It's not just you. I find the Finder extremely limited compared to Explorer, which seems much more powerful and flexible. Coming from a Windows background, the Finder has some infuriating little niggles, like the asinine keyboard shortcuts (try pressing Enter), the inability to select multiple files easily in some of the display modes, and the way it jumps back to the top of the file list every time you delete something!

Finder is my biggest bugbear about the Mac.

6) Safari: Cannot believe this doesn't have a combined address/search bar. I have heard there is an extension called Omnibar, anyone know if it's any good?
Click to expand...

In my experience, Chrome is much better. Safari seems fairly limited to me, a bit like IE on Windows.
 
I know it's the "correct thing" to happen on Mac, that isn't what I was saying. I meant after so many years of PC use I still occasionally press enter to open something rather than cmd + O. I know this is the correct function in OSX.
 
CrispyXUK said:
Enter renames, this is the correct thing to happen.
Click to expand...

It's 'correct' in that it's what's supposed to happen on a Mac.

In no way is it logically sensible. It flies in the face of pretty much every other key-based UI in the world (which uses the 'Enter' key to move deeper inside a hierarchy or to open a file). It also requires two keys to be pressed to perform a very common operation and one key to be pressed for a less common one.

Whoever came up with that one should be stoking the fires in the basement of Cupertino for a long time. It's even more surprising because Apple's UI design is normally extremely intuitive.
 
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7) HDD noise: It's the Mac automatically parking the HDD head on movement. It's to protect it from sudden movements + any potential drops while it's in use. Uses a built in accelerometer to detect it.
 
Finder is basic, try Path Finder - mush better, what finder whould have been (or at least have the option to be!)
 
Command + Down Arrow also opens files and is how I usually do it. I am agreed though I was puzzled when Enter didn't open it and went to rename the file.

I use Omnibar but quite often it won't start up with it enabled after putting my MBP to sleep. Have to close Safari and re-open it for the single address/search bar to reappear
 
What really annoys me as well is "preview", fine for word/pdfs etc, rubbish for photos... Who thinks you only ever want to view one photo at a time. Yes I know you can select all and press space then you can scroll through photos but that is far more long winded than the windows way of just clicking a photo and being able to scroll through all photos in the folder...

Oh and whilst writing this another bugbear... on windows "ctrl i" puts in the italic bit which you can write in between, where is that on OSX?

I'll have to try path finder as well, finder is a little annoying. First impressions of the OS (using it for 3 weeks), other than the old fashioned looks it's fast but form over substance.. Anything other than browsing and opening apps/using iPhoto/iTunes etc just seems overly complex and like going back 10-15 years to using OSs from the 90s!
 
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Congrats on your new purchase :)

1) You can select albums from the left hand navigation.

2) Why not use iCloud if you use iOS devices? Much easier to keep it all in sync, literally zero maintenance. Web versions too...

3) Notes syncs with Mail which is handy, however Evernote is fantastic. Also 'Pages' for Mac and iOS will seamlessly sync your documents via iCloud. Very easy.

4) iStat Pro, Calculator, Weather, and there is a cool battery monitor one for your BT peripherals but I don't think it is Lion compatible now. Forget it's name.

5) It's you. Finder is actually pretty powerful and quite customisable. You can drag shortcuts to the left nav bar, and customise the buttons on top also. You can also do smart folders etc which is cool. Spotlight search is awesome for finding/launching things fast. Cmd + space and start typing...

6) Unable to comment, I use Safari almost exclusively though as it is stable and fast.

7) Unsure, I own an iMac.

8) Should be HD on the new models so I'm surprised by this. Mine seems decent even on my 2009 Mac.
 
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