Hi all,I hope to puchase a Apple 21.5 MC812 over the next few days and it will be my first Mac after years on a PC.The local store is a good few miles away and when I came home,my wife had questions that I never thought to ask.Rather than drive all the way back to the store, I hope it is okay to ask them here and if they are silly,please forgive me.And the questions are-
If MP3 are downloaded from a source other than iTunes, can they be played on the Mac?
Can iTunes material be transferred on to MP3 players other than Apple?
Can two “accounts” be opened on a Mac as can be done on a PC?
Are there real beginners videos or documentation available just to get started? Stuff that might show how to get up and running on internet,bookmarks,how to store documents and all the basic stuff I would have been doing on a PC.The more in-depth stuff I can deal with and learn about over time but just to make the change over as seamless as possible?
Thank you in advance and as I say, please forgive any innocent questions and also feel free to offer any advice and suggestions.
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Larry
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MP3 files? Absolutely. In fact, drag and drop them into iTunes and they are added to your collection, including artist/album/song data.
If the files are MP3, then they are just MP3 files. Now to get them on another MP3 player, you would need to use whatever software that the player manufacturer has provided. So check the site of the manufacturer for Mac compatibility.
What type of accounts do you mean? You can have multiple user accounts on the Mac, yes. See episode 336: http://macmost.com/user-accounts-and-fast-user-switching.html
There are lots of books and such that are for beginners. Of course there are 600+ tutorials here at MacMost too.
Thank you very much Gary.I appreciate your help.Larry
Larry, whenever I need a run through and don't know what I'm doing YouTube usually has a video with step by step walkthroughs. Also apple.com has a lot of how to videos, also if you were willing to the apple store holds classes everyday that are an hour long that show new users the basics. And they are free! :)
Larry, I am a new Mac user (MacBook Pro bought this past June). I have watched many Youtube videos showing me everything from unpacking the MBP to installing Lion. It is hit and miss on Youtube, but some excellent stuff there. Much of what I have learned has been from Gary at MacMost. In fact, some of the more useful lessons have been what I CANNOT do. Gary makes it clear. The podcasts are probably the best resource as I can watch them whenever I want, with or without an internet connection. I am a four-hour ferry ride from any Apple store or service and there are no "Genius" helpers where I live. I highly recommend the podcasts and the videos from Apple (also as podcasts).
Hi and thank you all very much for your contributions.I am just sort of up and running the last hour.The wireless side of things seems to have hit a bump and I couldn't sort it so am working off a cable for now.Whatever I have done or not,I don't seem to have air port in my system preferences !But I will keep sorting through things and hopefully will get it right.I see from the opening page of this site that I am missing a plug in for Firefox and although I downloaded Adobe flash and reader, that hasn't sorted it.If anyone can help I'd appreciate it but either way I will take your advice and start watching the videos both on Youtube and here.Thanks Just a college student and Michael.
The wifi (Airport) settings are in System Preferences under Network. But you should have been prompted to connect to a wireless network when you started the Mac for the first time.
Flash and Reader are completely different things. You just need Flash. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/instructions/ and follow the instructions.
Oh and can I ask why this page is just half the screen? Can I enlarge it
Do you mean that the browser window does not cover the entire screen? Just drag the bottom right corner of the window to enlarge it.
Thanks Gary.Am getting sorted bit by bit.Yes, I was prompted on the wireless but it needed a code from my provider.After a bit of confusion, we agreed to work off the wire for now as I hadn't loaded discs on, not knowing whether to do it before or after the intro.The air port is on it appears but when I disconnect the cable, it's not? When I enter the code given to me by the provider it doesn't work so I think it is back to them tomorrow.It is nearly 11pm Irish time.But thanks again.Not having owned a Mac before, I am sure there will be a learning curve for a while and I am sure I will make silly mistakes.I did load Firefox as my browser and the symbol was on the dock but it has vanished.So need to get to understand things a bit better.
Usually all you need to log on to your wifi network is the password that you set for that network. I guess it is possible to need something else, but it would be unusual.
Why load Firefox? If you like Firefox, then fine. But until you get up and running just use Safari.
Hi Gary,
Wireless sorted.The provider help desk had left out a letter in the password !! I'd like to ask a few questions if I may.Firstly other than buying Microsoft Office as I only use Word, is there a way to interpret already existing Word docs that I need to import from an external hard drive.Is there an App that can do that? Also is there a way for me to play WMA files safely? Finally for some reason I am stopped from deleting some files on my external hard drive.I tried to drag them to trash but was told they cannot be deleted? Would you know why this is? Am I doing something wrong?Thanks again for your help.I appreciate it.Larry
You can open many Word files in TextEdit. Try it. But of course TextEdit doesn't have all the advanced functions of Word. Pages can also open (and save) to Word format. But the functionality, while more advanced, is different.
You can play WMA files if you get the free Flip4Mac extension (http://macmost.com/flip4mac-wmv.html).
Not sure why you can't delete files on the external. Perhaps ownership permissions? What is the exact error message?
I switched from a PC to the Mac Mini and i based my learning curve around Photoshop. I found that this guy told me to switch to a Mac,and he did back me up a bit. I found the OS X system far more user friendly than Windows. The final straw that did it was when Windows Vista came out,it was a night mare. I have learnt too from this site some really good things that i have never tried. Automator i have`t a clue what that is,well something to do with work flow i think, and Gary`s videos have learnt me a lot. Still learning?