NEw member, new macbook, and of course questions.

[JR"Bob"Dobbs]

Hey all, Ive been using apple products a while(iPhone, apple tv, iPad, iPod) I have never owned a macbook before.

I am, at the ripe old age of 39 going back for my bachelor's Degree. AS a disabled veteran the va has my back financially.
So, they bought me a macbook pro 2.2ghz 500gb ssd, 16gb ram and iris pro graphics 15" model. They also bought office 2016 for mac so i can do class work.

Ive searched the web for good apps for the macbook and ive got a nice list so far. I would love some tips from you guys on what I might expect. Some of my classes may require me to hit up boot camp and dual boot. Though I wont be diving into that unless necessary.

HEre is my list of apps that generally seem good for students, Recommendations are most certainly welcome
(maybe) inklet
Evernote (or is supernote better?)
kindle for mac(for ebooks )
CHrome
mathway
oxford dictonary
realcalc(for my iphone or ipad)
DUoLingo
iStudiez pro

one final question, Is it possible to add a NAS to my airport extreme router that i can access remotely from my macbook while at school? SO if i do homework at home i can upload to NAS and grab at school(in case i forget something or need a file at school?)

 

[chscag]

First, welcome to Mac-Forums. And a special thanks for your service to our country!

Nice of the VA to buy a good machine for your school work...

Evernote is good, so is OneNote (Microsoft)

Kindle works on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Great app, I use all the time.

Chrome browser is fine, although many folks prefer Safari from Apple which is the default browser on your Mac.

You don't need the Oxford dictionary unless you really want it for whatever reason. Office 2016 has a great dictionary and so does your Mac.

The other apps are those that I'm not familiar with, sorry.

The NAS is not really necessary as just about any good external hard drive of sufficient capacity should suffice. Don't forget that you will need a good external hard drive for backups. Your Mac includes a program called Time Machine which does backups.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to post as we have a lot of talent in our forums that can provide answers.

 

[JR"Bob"Dobbs]

thanks for the pointers.
The point of the NAS was for backups, and to store homework. I'm sure backing up a macbook will max out iCloud in two shakes of a lambs tail.
The point of chrome was because I will likely end up in a web course at some point and it may not take well to safari, just nice to have a backup ready to go.

I would love a way to use my stylus with the track pad and take written notes on my macbook instead of typing. Is there a way to do that?( I believe inklet does this, but have not tried it.)

I got that list of apps, via google searches and those seemed most aligned with what I'm going to be doing.

 

[chscag]

I'm not sure about using a stylus in combination with a trackpad. The new iPad Pro models are excellent for taking notes if you also purchase the "Apple Pencil" but that may be getting into some more expense. You don't want to use the NAS for both backups and storing school work. A drive used for backups should be only for that and nothing else. And why would you want to backup your Mac to iCloud? If you're considering off site backup or storage, there are many more good choices than iCloud. Shop around.

 

[JR"Bob"Dobbs]

how big a drive will i need for a backup? 128gb enough? 256?

 

[chscag]

A drive that's at least the same size or larger than your internal hard drive or SSD is what's recommended. Time Machine backups are compressed but if you have large amounts of data, an external backup drive can fill up fairly fast. There is also another method of backing up known as cloning. If you are familiar with backup programs for Windows, you might have heard of Acronis True Image which can clone a hard drive so that you can boot from the clone. For Mac OS X, we have Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper which pretty much do the same thing. I personally use two methods of backing up: Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. I have two separate external hard drives for that purpose.

 

[harryb2448]

Using an external drive, suggest you get a 1TB platter drive. An SSD for an external is a little extravagant and you can use it for Photos, iTunes, iMovie etc if you are into those things.

 

[MacInWin]

If you want a NAS solution, look at the WD MyCloud series. I have one and can access it from anywhere on the Internet when I need to. Works well.

 

[IWT]

@JR"Bob"Dobbs

You mention your reservations about typing. How I sympathise!

I have only iMacs, but I'm assuming that the following suggestion is catered for on a MacBook:

Go into System Preferences (click on Apple icon, dropdown, > System Preferences); then Click on "Dictation and Speech".

You have two options here: what you might call Normal or Enhanced. The Normal function allows you to dictate but the translation-to-text is via the Apple Servers. A better option for speed & accuracy is to use Enhanced, but this requires you download 422MB of software. If you can afford the space, go for it. You can use it Off Line and the response & feedback is much quicker

As you will see, activation of the Dictation facility is by pressing the Fn (Function) key twice.

Try it out on a blank page of Text Edit or Pages. You'll soon learn about paragraphs and full stops, colons etc. Mind you, if they are just your own notes, who cares about punctuation?

No more typing - unless you are in an environment where dictation would be intrusive to others.

BTW, Dictation works in Mail and most apps that deal with text.

Give it a go and see how you like it.

Ian

 

[Ember1205]

Thank you for your service, Bob.

Evernote is a good app. I use it instead of Apple's Notes because I can sync content to ANY platform.

Before you go down the path of Boot Camp, consider using VirtualBox on the Mac (within OS X) to create a virtualization platform where you can load Windows. I use VirtualBox on my MacBook Air to run a virtual copy of Windows 10 when I need to access Windows-only applications like Visio. I don't have to restart my Mac in order to get to the app and when I'm done, I just "shut down" the Windows instance and it's vacated from memory.