Help a Newb with OSX

[Nessus]

I'm a life long windows guy but I have a Mac now and am going to wipe and redo my windows box and keep it for gaming, movie streaming and some windowy stuff.

But I don't know ANYTHING about the mac world. It seems to like keyboard shortcuts. I can't kill a process and don't know how to stop the beachball or a hung program.

I only used it a few hours but so far I'm pretty well lost as far as being a power user goes. I'll take any tip, trick, advice or help I can get at this point.

I bought Aperature, the $200 music studio and the $200 video editing program (forget what theyre called) and a little word type thing but I haven't put that stuff in yet.

They threw in an 8gig ipod touch, all I had to do was pay the tax. Haven't decided if I'll open it or try and get $150 for it.

[Sang]

Much like in Windows, Macs also have a web browser, with which you can google things, like kill proces mac os x (http://www.google.be/search?q=kill+process+mac+osx&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a) or stop beachball mac os x (http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&client=firefox-a&hs=XK3&rls=org.mozilla%3Anl%3Aofficial&q=stop+beachball+mac+os+x&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

These simple searches alone reveal the following possible solutions (I dunno, I don't have a mac):


select Force Quit from the Apple Menu. A window will appear listing all the user applications running on the system. Applications running normally will appear as black text, whereas applications that are hung or having trouble will appear as red text. Highlight the application you want to kill and click on the Force Quit button that appears at the bottom of the window.

Another way to kill applications is to open a terminal window using the Terminal application. In the window type top -u, making sure that all the characters are lowercase and a space is present between top and -u. A list of the top processes will appear in the window. Identify which process you wish to kill and note the PID or Process ID for that process and then type q. Then type kill -9 followed by a space and the PID. This will almost always kill the process. If the system says you do not have sufficient priviledges, then type sudo kill -9 followed by a space and the PID. SUDO enables you to type in system command and it will prompt you for the system administrator password before executing the command. Type in your password and the system will kill the process.


and



> Today I had uTorrent running with 10 downloads while surfing the web, and suddenly I get the spinning beachball of death....

° Cmd+Opt+Esc or Apple Menu > Force Quit.
Or ctrl+opt click the icon in the dock and select 'Force Quit' from the contextual menu.

[Nessus]

Google you say? Think I've heard of them.

Sure I'm gogling but part of the cool part of a message board is maybe someone will tell you neat stuff you might not have found or speed you along.

I dunno.

[Sang]

someone will tell you neat stuff you might not have found

Like how to close processes and get rid of the beachball? ;)

[Nessus]

Like how to close processes and get rid of the beachball? ;)

yeah thanks I stumbled on to half of that anyhow but still useful. Needless to say i've been googling like crazy. One minute I',m like WTF? that is a totally stupid way to do things and then a minute later I'm thinkning, "nicely done Aplle, very good tool set there.

I wish I could smash WinXP and Mac OSX into one operating system that did everything just the way I liked.


Really I was looking for tips and tricks more so than googleable problems. I don't even know what I don't know yet. But these days the forums are dead and I'm not that popular a poster to get a lot of replies in a thread like this even in good times.

[Sang]

It doesn't really have much to do with that... expecting people to give you hints about an OS, unless they're very friendly, seems pretty silly. Like with many things it's a manner of learning by doing, looking things up, accidentally discovering things, experimenting...

For example I didn't know about the windows key + letter shortcuts for years, I only found out about them recently by coincidence.

I've only used Mac Os X for about 5 minutes this year (on a friend's machine)... it confused me, I was trying to find folders that would be the equivalent of the "documents and settings", "windows" and "program files" folders but couldn't find anything.

[KO Gilligan]

I thought this was pretty cool:

Mac OS X's core is a POSIX compliant operating system (OS) built on top of the XNU kernel, with standard Unix facilities available from the command line interface. Apple has released this family of software as a free and open source operating system named Darwin. On top of Darwin, Apple layered a number of components, including the Aqua interface and the Finder, to complete the GUI-based operating system which is Mac OS X

I'm learning SUSE Linux Server right now, and I find it helpful to keep a couple of simple reference books handy (in addition to my school text). For me it works better than searching the Internet for stuff.

It doesn't really have much to do with that... expecting people to give you hints about an OS, unless they're very friendly, seems pretty silly. .

I was actually expecting this to turn into a flaming epitaph about how Macs suck. :D

[Sang]

Why would it? :confused:

[KO Gilligan]

It's like the Consoles vs PC thing... it just happens.

I personally wouldn't buy one, but there's no need to debate it.

[Dopefish7590]

Nessus, are you familiar with and of the *nix OSes? Mac is based off of a modified BSD kernal that Apple called "Darwin", as a power user, you could probably learn to play around with that as it functions almost exactly the same as other *nix OS, and will allow you to do a LOT of stuff you can't with the GUI alone. You can find the terminal in Computer -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal...

[Sang]

learn to play around with that

Playing around as a power user without knowing what you're doing is a really good idea if you want to mess some vital stuff up... Wouldn't recommend just "toying around" unless you do it in a virtual machine or something.

[Nessus]

Nessus, are you familiar with and of the *nix OSes? Mac is based off of a modified BSD kernal that Apple called "Darwin", as a power user, you could probably learn to play around with that as it functions almost exactly the same as other *nix OS, and will allow you to do a LOT of stuff you can't with the GUI alone. You can find the terminal in Computer -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal...

Unfortunately I have no Unix or Linux experience at all. One of the things that;s tripping me up is I don't know where anything is going. On XP the file structure was all very clear to me where everything was getting saved and exactly where to go to find it. In Mac I still don't really know whats going on.

A large part of this is my fault in that I've been offline for almost 2 weeks and all I want to do is surf the net. There's a lot of people I have to email, stuff I need to do so I haven't yet put in the time necessary.

Sang, I'm pretty sure I wont do something stupid.

There's some neat things on it and some things I hate. I wish I could strip OSX and XP to make my own custom operating system.

One thing that bothers me is the keyboard is different in the way it deletes and pulls up paragraphs when you hitting delete above it, stuff like that. I need to go in preferences and see if that's fixable, I like the Windows way better.

Another observation I have is that I think girls would really love Macs. It seems to want to do all kinds of neat stuff for you and it wont just say Delete? It will be more like. Would like us to delete this item for you?

It also seems very dependent on keyboard shortcuts. Anyone know one to get straight to the hardrive like Windows key+e?

[Sang]

Sang, I'm pretty sure I wont do something stupid.

Don't be. It is VERY easy for an inexperienced soul to **** something up as a power/super user.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

You can dual boot windows with osx.

[KO Gilligan]

Don't be. It is VERY easy for an inexperienced soul to **** something up as a power/super user.

Meh..
I **** things up in Windows all the time :cool: - worst case scenario, I have my drive image :D

You can dual boot windows with osx.

Isn't it like an an x86 platform now? from what I heard (on gaming forums) the drivers are still proprietary. Since Boot Camp, Apple has been doing a pretty good job in providing Windows drivers. But it really makes you wonder if your into Windows programs and Mac both, wouldn't it be better to run OSX on a homebuilt PC?

[Sang]

I **** things up in Windows all the time :cool: - worst case scenario, I have my drive image :D

Well sure, if you cock something up reinstalling your OS should fix it but that's a pretty annoying thing to do and generally something I figure one would want to avoid :p Especially in Windows, where most of your programs will become useless (if you didn't format) because of the registry being cleaned and shit

[Dopefish7590]

Don't be. It is VERY easy for an inexperienced soul to **** something up as a power/super user.

True, but it's literally impossible to screw anything up unless you are rooted. Also, most people probably won't kill their computer by toying around, it's how I learned *nix in the first place. :)

[KO Gilligan]

Well sure, if you cock something up reinstalling your OS should fix it but that's a pretty annoying thing to do and generally something I figure one would want to avoid :p Especially in Windows, where most of your programs will become useless (if you didn't format) because of the registry being cleaned and shit

You only lose what you did since your last image. Probably some junk in My Documents I'll have to try and save, because it's not on the image. But most of the time I can just roll back with a restore point instead.