Going to buy a new iMac.

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Is that your first Mac ever or just your first iMac, andrewg? If it is your first Mac it will take a little getting used to but not long. If it is your first Mac I would recommend going to the bookstore and buying a book on whatever operating system will be on your computer. One bad thing (or good thing in some ways I guess) about Apple is that they are always coming out with new operating systems every year or two. And they support (really support) only the last two operating system releases.

I would also recommend that you look into iWork and Aperture software from Apple. The iWork software is excellent for word processing and even a limited amount of page layout. I think it costs something like $49.00. I have Aperture 2 but Apple has greatly improved Aperture with version 3. You definitely might want to take a look at Aperture (it is something like $79.00) because you can organize and work on photograghs. I don't know if you have ever heard of Ken Rockwell (some people hate him and some really like him) but he claims that Aperture is much easier to use than Photoshop and actually can be a relacement for Photoshop. Rockwell is a little strange in some ways but he seems to know his stuff when it comes to photography.

It is a crazy world today on the internet. Check out the free Sophos antivirus or the free iAntivirus. And be sure that your firewall is turned on. I don't know about the most recent Apple Mac OS X operating systems but they used to ship on a new computer turned off. You want for a firewall to be turned on.

The new iMac has not come out yet but I got a look at an iMac a few days ago. The mouse is actually a two button mouse now and seems great. I did not care much for the tiny keyboard I saw but it was an optional wireless one. I don't know if the standard keyboard is small or larger. I maybe would get a different keyboard. That tiny one would be difficult to type on unless you could get used to it. Just my opinion.

Check to see if your printer and scanner are compatible with the Mac OS. I already checked and I found out that my Epson printer and my Epson scanner are compatible with Lion. I don't know if they will be compatible with Mountain Lion. So when the new iMacs come out I may buy one and then upgrade to Mountain Lion when my printer and scanner are compatible. he upgrade would be only about 20 bucks.

Thanks Mystic. Yes, my first Apple computer of any sort. Good idea about those publications. I'll need to have some guidance since the whole thing will be like starting over for me.
I'll check out Aperture. I've got photoshop but I must admit I find it difficult to use as I am not real good with software applications that are so complex. Fortunately most of my photo editing is very minor as I believe a truly great photo occurs at the moment of shutter release. I'm not much into real artsy photo editing but some folks are very talented at it. About all I'll do is sharpen a bit, maybe some saturation....exposure perhaps, and some cropping of course.
Thanks for the firewall hints and anti-virus stuff. I'll check on my printer/scanner combo. I really like it so I hope it's compatible.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Our iMac is our first real Apple product. We've had it for about 3 months now I'd say. It's a 24" iMac with a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo. The screen is absolutely fantastic. I just bought a new Asus 23" monitor for the PC at Christmas, but the difference between that new monitor and the iMac's display is huge. It's like going to an HDTV from an old cathode ray tube, seriously. You'll love that iMac display.

iPhoto is fantastic, as is iMovie. On our PC, we needed proprietary Sony software to download video from our Sony HD camcorder. It would download it in its raw format, and you could only view it and encode it with Sony's software. I was worried because Sony doesn't make the software for Mac. But happily, iMovie downloads the video straight from the camcorder and you can work with it right in iMovie. It's brilliant.

I have Sophos anti-virus on ours and it seems to be good. It's very well reviewed, and it's free. Most printers will have a Mac driver. We have an older Canon MP250 multi-function device and the iMac found the driver right away and installed the software; no biggie.

There won't be much difference between Lion (what is pre-installed now) and Mountain Lion. Most of the interface is the same. The differences are likely those that you won't really experience much of anyway, based on what you've said earlier; Mountain Lion brings iCloud integration to the desktop OS. Great for iPhone users who work a lot on the cloud, but probably a moot point for someone who uses a desktop as a desktop.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Our iMac is our first real Apple product. We've had it for about 3 months now I'd say. It's a 24" iMac with a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo. The screen is absolutely fantastic. I just bought a new Asus 23" monitor for the PC at Christmas, but the difference between that new monitor and the iMac's display is huge. It's like going to an HDTV from an old cathode ray tube, seriously. You'll love that iMac display.

iPhoto is fantastic, as is iMovie. On our PC, we needed proprietary Sony software to download video from our Sony HD camcorder. It would download it in its raw format, and you could only view it and encode it with Sony's software. I was worried because Sony doesn't make the software for Mac. But happily, iMovie downloads the video straight from the camcorder and you can work with it right in iMovie. It's brilliant.

I have Sophos anti-virus on ours and it seems to be good. It's very well reviewed, and it's free. Most printers will have a Mac driver. We have an older Canon MP250 multi-function device and the iMac found the driver right away and installed the software; no biggie.

There won't be much difference between Lion (what is pre-installed now) and Mountain Lion. Most of the interface is the same. The differences are likely those that you won't really experience much of anyway, based on what you've said earlier; Mountain Lion brings iCloud integration to the desktop OS. Great for iPhone users who work a lot on the cloud, but probably a moot point for someone who uses a desktop as a desktop.

Thanks Hokie. Yes, those iMac screens look stunning from what I saw at the Apple Store. My girlfriend even told me to get the 27" when she saw it (I was just planning on the 21"). My Cannon printer is the MP240. Hopefully it will integrate.
You may be right about the actual differences in the newest OS X coming out. I'm not into all the iCloud stuff nor would I use the machine for much more than photo work and multi-media surfing. I'll need to look into this further to decide if I should wait.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: andrewg
You may be right about the actual differences in the newest OS X coming out. I'm not into all the iCloud stuff nor would I use the machine for much more than photo work and multi-media surfing. I'll need to look into this further to decide if I should wait.


You may elect to wait, only if to get some sort of a break on the price of a new "old" model. When the new ones come out, they may discount the old ones a little bit.

You'll love it no matter which one you get.

 

[Mystic]

I kind of doubt anybody will be able to get a price break. Apple is good at having all of the old inventory changed out by the time the new ones arrive.

The 27 inch iMac really is beautiful. But I will probably just get the 21 inch model. I like the mouse. It looks like it is just a one button mouse (like what Apple used in the past) but it actually has two button functionality. And it can do more than that, too! But the keyboard I saw (which was an optional keyboard) seemed to be too small for me. I might have to get a different keyboard. Is the standard keyboard larger?

Most Apple Computers are coming out with Thundebolt. There are not many Thunderbolt devices out, but when a Thunderbolt external hard drive becomes available I will get one. Thunderbolt is flat out fast! Twice as fast as USB 3-that is assuming USB 3 will ever achieve the speed it is supposed to be able to achieve(not likely).

Apple is not too good supplying information on how to use their software so I usually get a book at Barnes & Noble whenever a new operating system comes out. Not too much changes for Mac OS X but there are changes and a small cheap book helps. Actually, we are obviously coming to the end of Mac OS X. Apple will probably have an operating system 11 before too much longer.

How much is iMovie? I will have to check it out. If it is cheap enough I will get it too.

If Aperture works out like I hope another good thing will be that most of the software on the computer will be Apple software and will be updated whenever Apple issues updates.

I do recommend the Sophos antivirus. It runs pretty good. There is a university (Cambridge University?) that recommends Sophos also.

 

[Mystic]

As far as Photoshop is concerned andrewg there is no doubt of course that Photoshop is the best. All the professionals use it except for some people who use very specialized software. But try and find a book on Photoshop that REALLY, REALLY explains how to use it! I recommend that you try to find a book on Photoshop by Jennifer Smith. She really knows how to use Photoshop. She wrote a book On Photoshop CS5. Of course there is now CS6 but that book would still be useful.

It has been my experience that you should forget any book written by a professional photographer on Photoshop. I may be wrong but I have yet to see a good Photoshop book written by a professional photographer. You need a Photoshop book written by a Photoshop computer graphics artist! Unless you need to do a lot of work on a photo the adjustments are easy-just curves and then unsharp mask for sharpening. You will destroy a jpeg photo is you don't use layers and if you do more adjustments than are necessary. Of course RAW photos require a somewhat different work flow.

Remember that you are going from Windows to the Mac. Adobe may make you pay full price for Photoshop for the Mac. So taking some classes on Photoshop and getting the student discount is a good idea.

I took two classes on Photoshop. A beginning class and an advanced class. Photoshop is one of the most complex software programs ever written.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
The 27 inch iMac really is beautiful. But I will probably just get the 21 inch model. I like the mouse. It looks like it is just a one button mouse (like what Apple used in the past) but it actually has two button functionality. And it can do more than that, too! But the keyboard I saw (which was an optional keyboard) seemed to be too small for me. I might have to get a different keyboard. Is the standard keyboard larger?


The Magic Mouse is awesome. You're right, it looks like a mouse with no buttons, but it's actually incredibly versatile. It senses where you press on the mouse, so you have left- and right-click functionality. You can also swipe your finger up and down the mouse as if you are scrolling on a tablet; intuitively, as you swipe your finger up and down, the window on the display swipes up and down, whether it's a webpage or a Finder window or anything else. You can also swipe left and right on the Magic Mouse to call up the Dashboard, which I think is an excellent feature. It's almost too easy to use; you end up trying to over-think it.

Originally Posted By: Mystic
How much is iMovie? I will have to check it out. If it is cheap enough I will get it too.


iMovie is absolutely free; it comes with OS X.

I will also highly recommend Microsoft Office for Mac. I have the 2011 version and it's excellent. Parity between the PC and Mac version is very good. Office for Mac used to (version 2008 and previous) not support certain things like conditional formatting in Excel cells for instance, but I have not yet found something that Office for Mac 2011 doesn't have. I believe that the 2011 version also supports VBA, and that is something the 2008 version didn't have either. It's very full-featured, and I have found zero issues sharing MS Office files between PC and Mac with the 2011 version of Office for Mac.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
As far as Photoshop is concerned andrewg there is no doubt of course that Photoshop is the best. All the professionals use it except for some people who use very specialized software. But try and find a book on Photoshop that REALLY, REALLY explains how to use it! I recommend that you try to find a book on Photoshop by Jennifer Smith. She really knows how to use Photoshop. She wrote a book On Photoshop CS5. Of course there is now CS6 but that book would still be useful.

It has been my experience that you should forget any book written by a professional photographer on Photoshop. I may be wrong but I have yet to see a good Photoshop book written by a professional photographer. You need a Photoshop book written by a Photoshop computer graphics artist! Unless you need to do a lot of work on a photo the adjustments are easy-just curves and then unsharp mask for sharpening. You will destroy a jpeg photo is you don't use layers and if you do more adjustments than are necessary. Of course RAW photos require a somewhat different work flow.

Remember that you are going from Windows to the Mac. Adobe may make you pay full price for Photoshop for the Mac. So taking some classes on Photoshop and getting the student discount is a good idea.

I took two classes on Photoshop. A beginning class and an advanced class. Photoshop is one of the most complex software programs ever written.

Good tips...thanks.

 

[Volvohead]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
. . . There are not many Thunderbolt devices out, but when a Thunderbolt external hard drive becomes available I will get one.


Promise has had an external TB raid stack line for some time now, so get one. Apple offered it as an option, at a premium over what others sell it for.

 

[MrHorspwer]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
. . . There are not many Thunderbolt devices out, but when a Thunderbolt external hard drive becomes available I will get one.


Western Digital has a couple models of their MyBook Duo line in Thunderbolt. They are big and expensive, but Seagate is doing smaller Thunderbolt drives in their GoFlex line. All these are available now at Newegg.

Seagate also has a Thunderbolt dock that will dock any of their GoFlex drives.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Two notes about external HDD speed (I just did some research on here and other forums recently):

1) Make sure that the physical drive's speed can maximize the speed of the transfer protocol. For example, a Thunderbolt connection won't be maximized if the little drive spins at 5,400 rpm.

2) Consider what you will be using the drive for. If you will be using it for Time Machine backups (you definitely want at least one drive as a Time Machine drive), consider not spending extra for a faster transfer protocol. Time Machine will do a full backup when you first set it up. That will take some time, sure, but the full backup runs only once. After that, it does incremental backups, which only copies files that have been changed. So if all you do one day is edit your budget spreadsheet and download a few motor oil PDSes, all Time Machine will do is copy those modified files across. What I'm getting at is a super-fast connection would really only benefit you the first time you do a backup. For day-to-day operations, you probably wouldn't notice the speed difference between USB 2.0 and anything faster. Of course, if you are doing constant movie editing or encoding on that external drive, then your situation will be different from many.

I just bought a Seagate GoFlex drive for our iMac. BestBuy had the FireWire cable as an upgrade, but it was another 20 bucks. So I stuck with the USB 2.0 interface and I can't even tell the drive is connected to the machine. It does its thing on a daily basis and runs in the background. I've played with Time Machine, going back to older versions of my data on the drive, and it seems to be as fast as it would be if it was an internal drive.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
1) Make sure that the physical drive's speed can maximize the speed of the transfer protocol. For example, a Thunderbolt connection won't be maximized if the little drive spins at 5,400 rpm.


It would take a large array of several 10,000 rpm drives to push Thunderbolt or even Firewire 800 under real-life conditions.

 

[rjundi]

My portable computer(laptop) ends up being a 2nd monitor and processing unit. I use a 30" monitor, keyboard, ethernet, mouse with it.

When I have to use it off my desk for work I find it so restricting and cumbersome to use.

 

[PandaBear]

If my memory from 2009 serves me right, most 3.5" 7200rpm hard drives will saturate USB 2.0 but not USB 3.0, 1394/firewire, thunderbolt, etc, for the drive read write sequential speed to the media (not the cache).

So if you are doing large backups, you will not notice the difference between anything faster than USB 2.0. What you can get boost on is the random access that is already in the cache (i.e. if you run programs or do large editing on it), but IMO those should be done with internal hard drives (and SSD if you really care about speed) to begin with.

If it was me I'd just buy whatever make sense right now for my need, instead of overpaying for thunderbolt drives till it comes down in price. Having the port is great but that doesn't means you have to use it right away.

 

[Mystic]

Will Thunderbolt be available eventually on Windows computers? I know Firewire (and I think Apple developed Firewire) eventually made its way to some Windows computers. Or will Apple make sure that Microsoft does not get Thunderbolt?

 

[MrHorspwer]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Will Thunderbolt be available eventually on Windows computers? I know Firewire (and I think Apple developed Firewire) eventually made its way to some Windows computers. Or will Apple make sure that Microsoft does not get Thunderbolt?


Thunderbolt isn't really an Apple technology. It was developed by Intel with support from Apple. Apple was the launch partner, but they do not have exclusive rights to the technology.

Thunderbolt for PC is just now really starting to trickle into the market on some of the high-end X77 chipset motherboards. I want to say that Cactus Ridge is the Intel name for the Thunderbolt controller that is being used on X77 boards.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Originally Posted By: Mystic
Will Thunderbolt be available eventually on Windows computers? I know Firewire (and I think Apple developed Firewire) eventually made its way to some Windows computers. Or will Apple make sure that Microsoft does not get Thunderbolt?


Thunderbolt isn't really an Apple technology. It was developed by Intel with support from Apple. Apple was the launch partner, but they do not have exclusive rights to the technology.

Thunderbolt for PC is just now really starting to trickle into the market on some of the high-end X77 chipset motherboards. I want to say that Cactus Ridge is the Intel name for the Thunderbolt controller that is being used on X77 boards.


It will be suicidal if Apple keep thunderbolt to themselves, or charge ridiculous high royalty like the 1394/Firewire ($1 per port), and would force others to get together to create a competitor.

It is Apple's fault that 1394/firewire got shafted. It would have been really popular if they didn't ask for these ridiculous royalty (typical Steve Job) and the plan backfired.

 

[Mystic]

I liked Firewire better than USB. Firewire is streaming technology and not packet technology. Firewire was more expensive but it was able to achieve the speed goals. USB always seemed slower than it was supposed to be. I had high hopes for USB3 a while back but now I am not even interested in USB 3. Firewire 800 is pretty fast and Thunderbolt is very fast.

I never really cared much about Steve Jobs. He did probably save Apple but the more I learned about him the less I liked him. At one time there were a few devices that did use Firewell but not much today. I tink we would have been better off if Firewire had been more commonplace.