Just switching to a Mac from PC

addz93 · Apr 16, 2009

Hi, thanks for taking the time to read this

I'm getting a MacBook in a couple of days, the new Unibody one. It's the first Mac i've ever bought after using a PC for years and getting fed up with its tireseome flaws and natuarally I need a few questions answering if you have the time.

1) I have an iPhone and I recently restored my iTunes on my PC and I had to restore it from a backup. Will I have to do this when I use it with my Mac for the first time because it's jailbroken and I don't really want to Jailbreak it all again.

2) One of the features I like on my laptop is being able to close it and then when I open it again, entering my user accounts password so I get back to whatever I was doing, can I do this on Mac? In fact does the mac have user accounts?

3) I often use Windows Live Messenger on my laptop and I couldn't find a Mac version on the internet. Are there any Mac clients out there? Are they any good?

4) Back to iTunes, is there any way I can get the songs on my iPod nano straight onto my Mac when I plug it in?

5) I'm thinking of using Boot Camp when I get my Mac so I get a better variety of games to play but i'm worried - if the Windows partition starts suffering from typical windows problems or gets a virus of whatever, will this affect the performance of the Mac part in any way?

Thanks very much, any help is appreciated!!

DarkestRitual · Apr 16, 2009

1) I can't help you there.

2) Yes, easily. One of the icons defaulted to appear on your Dock will be the System Preferences application. Open this, and then select (or type into the search field) "Security." Select this pane, and one of the first choices is "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screensaver." Check the box.

3) Adium - and yes, it's very good... does AIM, Live, Facebook, QQ, Yahoo, etc... the list is pretty extensive, also freeware.

4) there are shareware and freeware programs, iPodDisk is free, but i've had troubles getting a working copy. Senuti is shareware.

cwa107 · Apr 16, 2009

3) Microsoft actually makes a version of Windows Messenger for Mac (http://www.mactopia.com). There's also aMSN, Adium (as mentioned), and eMule.

5) Nope. If Windows has issues, you can easily nuke the partition and start over again. The Mac side is mostly sandboxed because Windows can't even see the Mac partition.

addz93 · Apr 16, 2009

thanks very much to both of you, it's really made me much more confident that i've made the right choice buying a mac - big help!

Rip Vega · Apr 17, 2009

1) I had the same thing when I switched.

Just copy your entire iTunes folder from the PC to Mac (in the appropriate place of course) and everything will be just as it was on the PC.

Make sure both are on the same version of iTunes first though.

Oneironaut · Apr 17, 2009

I'm not sure what you mean by "jailbroken", but if you're asking how to get your library onto your new Macbook, you can just copy your itunes folder onto an external drive, then transfer that copy into your new itunes folder. It could be a lengthy process if you have a big music collection like I do.

Don't forget to export your playlists too (File>Library>Export Playlist).

You won't "officially" (or easily) be able to get your music directly from the Nano into iTunes, it only works one from iTunes to iPod. I mean, I think there's a real convoluted way of doing it in reverse but the time I tried it, all the original file names were changed into unintelligible gibberish because I guess they really don't want you doing that. You can probably track down a 3rd party app that can do the job, but why bother? If you've got a Nano your music library can't be all that big; just back it up to disc and transfer it that way.

Just switching to a Mac from PC

addz93

DarkestRitual

cwa107

addz93

Rip Vega

Oneironaut

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