I cant wrap my head around mac osx

[Lifeisabeach]

Absolutely so, LIAB. But it can be just as easy - or let's just say here's another way - to make Finder always open Documents as soon as you click on it.

@dcm426 - this is how to access your Documents every time you click on the Finder icon - which never strays from its position, far left within the Dock.

Do this: Click on Finder just to open it. The look up to the very top menu bar, far left where you see the Apple icon . Immediately to its right is the word "Finder". Click on it. From the drop down choose Preferences (it's the second choice).

View attachment 36228

This is what you'll see. Make sure "General" is highlighted, as in my pic above. At the bottom you'll see: New Finder windows show:

Use the up/down arrows to see your choices. Choose Documents, as in the pic.

From now on, every time you open Finder, it will open up in DOCUMENTS.

(The other options shown on my pic with Ticks against them can either be ignored or chosen as you wish. Much less important for the moment; but dead easy to understand what they mean. Basically do you want Hard disks, External disks, CDs, DVDs etc to appear on the Desktop? Leave these alone if you feel intimidated. The important choice is the "New finder windows show Documents")

Good luck.

Ian

This is a great suggestion, and reminds me that the default setting there for what new Finder windows open to is what I believe is to blame for the OP‘s bad impression. I’m not in front of my Mac, but I think it defaults to “All Files”, or something like that. It quite frankly isn’t a useful view for me or most people. But hey! It can be changed, and this is what he needs to understand. The “default” way isn’t the only way of doing anything.

 

[MacInWin]

Look guys, the problem is that I just dont think like a mac user. Terminology aside, things just dont click for me. I've used other apple products before and they were relatively easy for me to understand. Before I had an iphone I had a blackberry. I picked up the iphone mighty fast, because it was easy and intuitive. I had an ipod before that and it had just the scroll wheel which while limited serve it's purpose nicely. I also had an ipad but I never really liked it. Made no sense to me. I never liked touch screen gaming and it was easier for me to watch movies on my netbook, because it had a wide screen and I didn't need a kickstand. Personal gripes aside macintosh has a lot of usability issues too. As good as the gestures one the trackpad are. I much prefer a mouse, because it's physically more comfortable for me to rest my hand on a mouse, than to arch my fingers in an uncomfortable way to browse the web or do word docs.

Let me suggest you go back to a PC and Windows. NO need to struggle with something that goes against your way of doing business. You said that

In my line of work appearance and perception are everything. It's brutal. I dont want to be the only loser with a dell or a thinkpad, if all my colleagues and clients are using a mac and expect me to be doing the same. It wasn't like that in my old job, because that was more results oriented work. Less 'image' required. And personally I hate modern windows with a passion. It's ugly and unusable.

I dont want to run windows on my mac. I want to learn macintosh. Because I need too.

But from your description, the last two sentences don't seem to be true. It may be that you think you need to have a Mac, to meet someone else's idea of not being a "loser," but if your productivity is impacted as much as you say, you could end up losing your job not because you aren't "cool" but because you are not productive. If anyone asks why you are on Windows, be honest with them and say that after X years of using Windows the shift to macOS caused too much of productivity decline and you decided to stick with what gives YOU the best results.

All of your issues are addressable, but you don't seem to be ready to address them. Don't like trackpad, prefer a mouse? Get a mouse, wired or wireless. Don't like iPad? Don't use it. I find the iPad good a some things, not at others. The idea of trying to type on an iPad just never made any sense to me. Never watched movies on my iPad, either. Screen was just too small. So, as they say, it's "horses for courses" and it would appear that a Mac is not a horse for your course. Don't force it.

On the other hand, if you really DO want to learn macOS, you've had some excellent advice. I'll chip in and say that when I migrated from Windows to Mac about 15 years ago the transition was not easy. I had to stop thinking in Windows terms and start learning to think in Mac terms. Like you, I had looked at Apple computers and the system interface way back in the 1980's and just didn't connect. I ended up with an iMac when I had just invested in a new PC because the old one was slow but the new one wasn't any faster after the required antivirus software was installed. Saw an iMac in a computer store running Windows, sat down and discovered it was faster in emulation than my new PC. Took my first iMac home that day, never looked back.

So, sit down and think it through: Is it more important to show the "image" or be productive? If the image is key, you are going to have to abandon Windows thinking and learn to think the Mac way. If productivity is the goal, then ditch the Mac and stick with what you know and what makes you productive.

 

[krs]

^^^^ Agree 100%

 

[pm-r]

I dont want to run windows on my mac. I want to learn macintosh. Because I need too.

I would strongly suggest you hire a good tutorial instructor for an hour or two or inquire at a local Apple dealer to see if they provide instructions.

A good instructor would be invaluable and make your life much easier.

Hopefully they would start with the basics and slowly progress as you need.


- Patrick
=======

 

[dcm426]

@Lifeisabeach
I'm still learning. The altered language is a big part of my struggle. In fact, learning a mac is not like learning a new language. It's like learning a dialect of the same language. With the exact same words that have completely different meanings. You can see how this can become confusing.

@MacInWin @Rod
Cant go back to PC. I need to learn macs asap. You dont understand just how important a good first impression can be. If I dont come in with a macintosh and dont display the bare minimum of competency with it. There's a good chance that the client might drop me, because my inability may reflect badly on the company itself. Some of these are multi-million dollar a year contracts. And in order to get those contracts you need to impress. Sales can be brutal. It was so much different just a few years ago. Clients cared more about price to performance and what the product could do. Now there are so many 'political layers' on top of every sale it's become mentally exhausting. I need to rebrand myself in order to say competitive and relevant and using a mac is just one facet of the rebrand.

 

[Rod]

When it comes to finding a document for example you say 3 clicks and you have it. With a Mac its one click on the finder icon in the dock (smily Face) one click on Documents (in sidebar) from there you can just look for your document and click to open, thats 3 clicks. That will also open the application that created the document.
You can change the display order of documents in the Documents folder window to By Date ascending or decending or Alphabetically to make finding your doc easier or use Spotlight to search for a key word.

Really everything is easier in macOS, more intuitive, but you have to learn the basics first and you need time to do that. Time seems to be the problem here.
I'm sure that anyone can become proficient with a Mac if they have the time. I usually advise people to start with the finder eg. Get to know the Finder on your Mac

 

[pm-r]

I usually advise people to start with the finder eg.

Try a Google search for 'Mac Tutorial Video dpe beginners and switchers' etc and see if they don't help.
IE:

May as well get entertained while you learn...

- Patrick
=======

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Cant go back to PC. I need to learn macs asap. You dont understand just how important a good first impression can be. If I dont come in with a macintosh and dont display the bare minimum of competency with it. There's a good chance that the client might drop me, because my inability may reflect badly on the company itself. Some of these are multi-million dollar a year contracts. And in order to get those contracts you need to impress. Sales can be brutal. It was so much different just a few years ago. Clients cared more about price to performance and what the product could do. Now there are so many 'political layers' on top of every sale it's become mentally exhausting. I need to rebrand myself in order to say competitive and relevant and using a mac is just one facet of the rebrand.

Sorry, going to call BS on that one. No multi-million dollar deal is hinging on you using a Mac or PC and "impressing" anyone.

I work with sales people all the time, and it's about how they sell me what they have to sell, not whether they use a Mac or PC to do the selling.

If this is the reason that you are switching to a Mac, you are destined to absolutely fail since it's more of a means to an end as opposed to a better tool to get your job done.

 

[dcm426]

It's a whole variety of factors. The macintosh is only one part of it. I work in a high stress industry that requires me to be on point 100% of the time. I need to make a good impression. Not just one time, but every time. I have to be a clean cut professional, who looks and acts the part. I come in with a rinky-dink dell or lenovo. I might let off the impression that the company is too cheap or that we're too poor to afford good computers for the staff. So then by association, our product must be ****. I need to fit in. You fit in, you make friends, you get leads, you thrive, etc.

Sadly, I dont work at some pretentious hipster tech company, where I can come to work in flip-flops and a long messy beard, and sell mediocre products for high margins to other hipster ********. I've worked for one of those companies before. I did not like it.

To the rest of you guys. I appreciate the advice. It's not just going against decades of muscle memory that makes this transition hard. I'm more pissed off than anything at just how lacking mac os is; especially when it comes to multi tasking.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I'm more pissed off than anything at just how lacking mac os is; especially when it comes to multi tasking.

Forgive me for being blunt, but if you'd stop complaining and start listening to the advice that you've been given here, you will find that the Mac OS is neither "lacking", nor weak when it comes to multi-tasking.

Everyone here is more than willing to help you as much as possible, but there is a limit to how much whining folks are going to be tolerant of.

There is nothing wrong with the Mac OS. You either have to decide that you are going to embrace it and learn to use it effectively, or you need to accept that you aren't up to the task and give up. Since even young children learn to use the Mac OS with no trouble, I advise the former. If you choose the former, we are happy to help you as much as possible.

 

[Sawday]

It's a whole variety of factors. The macintosh is only one part of it. I work in a high stress industry that requires me to be on point 100% of the time. I need to make a good impression. Not just one time, but every time. I have to be a clean cut professional, who looks and acts the part. I come in with a rinky-dink dell or lenovo. I might let off the impression that the company is too cheap or that we're too poor to afford good computers for the staff. So then by association, our product must be ****. I need to fit in. You fit in, you make friends, you get leads, you thrive, etc.

Sadly, I dont work at some pretentious hipster tech company, where I can come to work in flip-flops and a long messy beard, and sell mediocre products for high margins to other hipster ********. I've worked for one of those companies before. I did not like it.

To the rest of you guys. I appreciate the advice. It's not just going against decades of muscle memory that makes this transition hard. I'm more pissed off than anything at just how lacking mac os is; especially when it comes to multi tasking.

Are you quite sure you actually have a real mac? Also, nothing makes a better impression than turning up with a (genuine) sleek macbook which eludes the 'Look guys, I've arrives and I'm in touch with the modern world and not hamstrung by an outdated machine that requires constant virus updates in order to keep running.

 

[ferrarr]

I'm more pissed off than anything at just how lacking mac os is; especially when it comes to multi tasking.

It seems that you prefer to whine, than to push YOURSELF. Yes, macOS is different than winOS. But not that much. You learned winOS OVER TIME, you can push yourself to learn macOS, if YOU truly want to. You can only blame the tool for so much, the rest of the issue is always the user. If you can get over yourself, you can learn new things. Especially since you are only in your 30's.

 

[krs]

I'm surprised that anyone still replies to this thread.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

And with that, I think we're done. A lot of good advice has been provided by all. The OP can read through it and figure out what they want to do.