OS X

A few months ago I got another call from a friend, giddy as a schoolgirl, telling me they got a Mac.  I’m not sure what it is about these machines:  It’s not like switching from Honda to Volkswagen.  People who get their first Mac act like their life just changed: their first baby may have just been born but they’re asking me what to do to their Mac.  They’re teenagers again, who just bought their first car.  Freaks. (Or was I the same way back in the last ice age when I got my first mac?) No matter.  This is not a social studies course.  I get questions about “what to do first” on a new Mac, so I’ll address them here.

But first a correction.  People seem to “switch” to mac these days.  I’m personally not keen on that word choice.  ”Switch” implies a fairly dramatic (if not major) change.  You switch a light off or on going from darkness to light or vice versa, for example.  I’m guessing the Apple marketing geniuses love this idea that you’re putting something behind you, switching to something new and exciting.  But I think it’s more of a shift. Like shifting from 2nd to 3rd: you’re still driving the same car on the same road, but you’re moving better now.  Apple goes to lengths to remind us that we can now run Windows on a Mac, so even when you’re switching, you don’t have to, really.  Parenthetically, I know only few people who run Windows on their Mac, and they have specific requirements such as server software that require Internet Explorer.  Even Windows devotees will tell you not to run IE but I’ll again leave this philosophical tangent for a later time, like after a few martinis at Old Ebbitt.

One last thing by way of introduction: this is not purely an entry-level “top ten” list on how to use the Mac.  There are plenty of these.  I’m assuming most of you have some, even minimal familiarity with OS X by now, have installed the software updates (your Mac will have told you to anyway), and are able to use Safari to get to this article.  If you don’t, follow along anyway…but if you are not yet comfortable with a one-button mouse, I suggest browsing Apples Mac 101.   

Now on to step 2.

Security

Macs are safe enough out of the box, but it makes sense to do a few things to make things more secure, especially as phishing schemes don’t discriminate.  The first thing you should do is create an Administrator account, and make sure your default account is not an Administrator.  Don’t worry: the system will ask you for the Administrator account credentials if it needs administrative access, without forcing you to log out and log back in. Removing administrative privileges from your default user account means that any malware can, at most, only gain access to your user files.  The overall system will remain uncompromised, and you can log in as the administrator user to fix any problems.  One caveat: A  few applications don’t like being installed as a non-administrator user and don’t warn you to the fact. I’ve found only one to date.

1. From the Apple menu, select System Preferences
2. Select Accounts
3. Add a new account.  You can name it whatever you want (”Admin” works for me), and give it a secure password
4. select “allow user to administer this computer”
5. Select your default user
6. De-select “allow user to administer this computer”

When you’re away…

• Selected: Require password to wake his computer from sleep
• Selected: Disable automatic login
• Not selected: Log out after X minutes of inactivity

You would think that it’s more secure to log out if you’re not going to be around for a while.  This however presents a problem:  If you have multiple tabs open on some applications, or if you have unsaved documents, the logout process will hang while a pop-up asks you if you really want to quit the application with unsaved changes. Eventually, the application will cancel the logout process.  My Security Preference Pane looks like this:

Security Preference pane

Movies

A lot of Internet movies are in WMV format.  Sadly, Macs don’t support the WMV format by default.  Don’t despair!  Install Flip4Mac. Microsoft makes this preference pane/Quicktime component that allows you to view WMV movies right in Safari or Firefox.

Text and MS Office compatibility

You have basically three options here:

• MS Office for the mac (Available in several editions.  It’s still Microsoft after all.)
• iWork 
• OpenOffice

Back up…several times a day

I have to get personal here.  I love Time Machine. I’ll tell you a story. (Some people don’t tell stories anymore.  They share stories.  So be it.) Better yet, I’ll let you read about it, since I hate repeating myself.  You can’t know how much I hate repeating myself. I hate repeating myself more than…well, I just hate repeating myself.  But I have a second story: Today I accidentally deleted a contact from my address book.  What’s a guy to do?  Bring them back, that’s what.  Go to Time Machine and restore.   So, get yourself a Time Capsule, or if you have a desktop, get yourself a 500GB drive from your local Best Buy, plug it in, and back up.  you won’t even know it’s there, until you need it.

Other stuff

Here are some other things to get you going:

• Spanning Sync will let you sync your iCal calendars with Google Calendars, which you can then sync with your PDA/phone wirelessly through GSync
• The Omni Group has an impressive suite of applications.  I use OmniFocus on a daily basis, and OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner several times a week.
• Get a fancy signature in Mail.app
• “Act without Doing” with Quicksilver.  This takes some getting used to, but when you do you can’t do without it.
• iAlertU sounds an alarm and takes a picture if someone tries to steal our laptop.  Neat.

Lastly, a little vignette that took me a couple of hours of pulling my hair out.  I have several email addresses, and want to be able to select which one appears in my From: line.  At first glance, this seemed impossible in Mail.app.  In fact, the solution is so simple it’s hiding in plain site:  On your Mail.app Accounts settings, in the “Email Address” setting, enter as many addresses as you want, separated by commas.  

That should be enough to get you started.  Questions? Comments?  Something I missed?  Got a favorite Mac app/hint?  Please leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Show me how!, Techy Stuff, Total Mobility, Web News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.