just bought my first Mac everrrr!

ok so after using a couple of my teachers macbooks in school i got my own today!..its my first mac of my entire life (all 18 years) my mom bought it for me as a graduation gift, even though its still a few months away (im gonna need a laptop for college anyway). i got the white one with 2.2GHz upgraded to 2 gb ram, and 120gb hd. Is there any tips i should know for a first time mac owner? or are there any acessories i should get? thanks for all your help!

I got my first mac for Christmas... It felt like a completely different experience that what I was used to with using a "computer."
Hopefully you have the same experience!

yeah i bought mine and transfered my files from the pc and have yet to touch it since.

Congrats and welcome to the forum. You will find this forum very useful - not to mention friendly. Feel free to search and you will find tons of tips on this forum. Especially good are the four "stickeys" located in the Switchers forum.

I'm a recent switcher myself...I guess my blog entry from 1/4/08 says it all:
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I'm so psyched.

I went to Best Buy and took some cash I got for Christmas and a little bit more money and put it down on a new computer. I was getting fed up with Windows (and Linux, for that matter), its slowness, and basically it being a not-fun system to use. Plus, I wanted something that will facilitate multitrack recording and MIDI sequencing without having to shell out hundreds more dollars. That led me to...a Mac. Specifically, a MacBook, as I don't like the thought of an all-in-one computer such as the iMac, and there was no way in **** I was going to drop nearly $3000 on the tower model. While I'm better off financially than I've been in a long time, I opted for the MacBook that's not the Pro model -- the guy at Best Buy told me basically that the MacBook Pro is really only a significant advantage if I'm really into gaming.

So I bought my MacBook, named her Cermac, and took her home. Wow...this machine is a dream! And this is coming from someone who was a die-hard Amiga user from 1993 to 2006. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, I had to sell my AmigaOne in the summer of 2006. But before I got Cermac I'd been itching to get another AmigaOne, as I didn't think there could be a better machine. I was wrong.

I can't believe I'm going against my Amiganess, but...this MacBook is my favorite computer I've EVER used!


* It boots almost instantly, much like the AmigaOne.

* I was actually able to repartition the hard drive without any data being erased -- I always thought repartitioning meant that you'd have to reinstall everything!

* GarageBand...'nuff said! I know, it's not CakeWalk/SONAR/whatever, but it does the job for me.

* The manual is so welcoming it's disgusting. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you.

* I'm able to connect to my place-of-work's VPN without losing my Internet connection; I could never do that in Windows.

* Software installation is so easy that a brick can do it.

* Cermac was able to pick up the shared drives from our Wintel boxes -- WITHOUT ANY CONFIGURATION! I had a lot of trial and error to get Windows to do that, and I never was able to figure out how to get Linux to recognize our shares.

* My wireless networking autoconfigured in about half a second. All I had to do was type in the WEP key.

* The dock is really cool! I know, you can probably get a similar one for Windows and whatever Linux distro you prefer, but on the Mac it comes with the OS.

* I was able to make some changes on my FAT32-formatted iPod without having to reformat it.

* The dashboard is way cool, especially with the flight tracking widget!

* The "MagSafe" power supply connector is a nice feature -- magnetic force keeps the power supply connected, and it breaks away very cleanly in cases of trippage. Gotta love it!


I really don't know what much else to say. As much as I loved the Amiga -- from my early Amiga days of using OS 2.05 to the PowerPC days of OS4 -- I have to say that no computer has ever been more a joy to use than my new MacBook.

And no, unfortunately, I'm not being paid by Steve Jobs (or anyone, for that matter) to say these wonderful things...I really mean all this stuff!

I picked up an used ibook g4 last summer just to "fiddle" and see if I would like the mac os.....Mainly using my windows PC that I'd build a couple of years ago.

I was hooked. a couple of months ago my lappy's hard drive keeled over and is currently out of service, I bought my very first New mac one week ago. An iMac 20" 2.4ghz 2g ram, 500g hd. I have to say there are still TONS I have to learn but I can't imagine ever touching a windows pc again.
My mac collection is now a 80g ipod, iPhone, 1st gen nano my busted ibook (which I intend to put a new HD in eventually) and my imac baby, I named him Alex (after the speech voice that I picked lol)
From reading in these boards for the past few days I can honestly say that you came to the right place. Folks here seem very friendly and eager to help us new switchers. *smiles*

Getting more excited. I'll be joining this club in about one week!

Hee hee I got mine today. Her name is Candyapple. Saw the MBA in person today... it's amazing. I'm so happy to be part of the family.

congrats! i got mine last september and am loving it still. personalise your dock, set up isync with a phone or whatever, download all the useful best freeware apps and you're ready to go. i keep finding so many new things about my mac that i didnt know before, its great!

This is for dauber: isn't a laptop an all in one? ;D

visit www.myfirstmac.com

cocoablack said:

Hee hee I got mine today. Her name is Candyapple. Saw the MBA in person today... it's amazing. I'm so happy to be part of the family.

Click to expand...

I hadn't thought about naming mine. I'll have to give it some thought.

What Dauber means is monitor built into the computer like a laptop/iMac vice the Macpro which has a physical separate monitor. The main advantage of the Macbook Pro is the wide screen. For this reason alone I would get it if I could afford it.

Congrats!!!

My wife and I just got our 24" iMac 6 days ago and we can't get enough of it. I wish we had switched a long time ago. Now that I have emptied all our pics and things off our old PC, I plan on never going back (although I still need to use a PC at work ).

My only tips are go through a lot of the tutorials at the Apple site. I have been checking a lot of them out and it has helped me on a lot of minor questions I have had about the OS. And look around here for a lot of help. I have found a lot of useful tips and helpful people here in my short time coming to this forum.

JD

haha, i just navigated over to this forum and this was the first thread I saw. I guess there's a lot of us out there. I just bought an ibook G4 1.3ghz....it will be here on monday. I already ordered the 1GB chip (only has 256 in it) but even with that I got it for just under 500. My major beef so far (i havn't even played with the thing yet) is the seemingly lack of software....is this true? or am i just not looking in the right places. It comes with office.mac which is nice....i think ilife 08 won't fit so i must find a copy of ilife 06. is there a nice spot on the web for mac software? I'm sure i'll be on here much more after I recieve my laptop!

oops, i just found the "switchers guide to OS X software"