Just bought a MacBook Pro - first fresh batch of OSX Questions!

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KevySaysBeNice

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 7, 2001
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So far, I'm quite happy with my laptop. I switched from a similarly equiped Dell notebook (Dell D820 w/ 2ghz C2D, etc).

Anyway, there are a few basic probably easy questions I have that I'm hoping to get some help with. I've done some googling on some of these but often times the answers seem to varry a lot so I'm looking for a good, straight answer. Thanks for any help you might be able to provide <3


1. First, I have about a million various divx files (ok, more like a thousand probably) that I'd really like to be able to watch using front row (or whatever it's called when you hit the menu button on the remote and the fancy menu comes up). I've read online that you can watch divx/etc if you install soem custom thises and thats but I've also read things like "new intel macs support divx". Yesterday I put a Good Eats episode in my "movies" folder (which is another issue all together) and started up front row. Sure enough, the video showed up in the menu but when I tried to play it nothing happened - I got a black screen and Front Row actually sort of froze up for a few seconds.

2. Quicktime - I am probably going to use VLC (as I always have) to play video media 92% of the time, but it seems like it would be nice if quicktime could play things too, if for soem reason I wanted it to (I'm assuming this is part of the Front Row issue I'm having). Back with windows I'd install Combined Community Codec Pack and be good to go with 99.99999% of what I wanted to play, both with Windows Media Player AND with VLC, Media Player Classic, etc...

3. The whole "If you want to watch movies in front row, drag them to the "movies folder" in finder" thing is a huge problem for me. Even if that seemed like a good idea and I was OK with doing this will ALL of my videos/movies/etc, it wouldn't be possible because I have a good 500gb of videos. Yes, I could always drag the videos I wanted to watch there, but that sort of defeats the purpose for me. I have a dedicated server sitting in my closet (windows XP machine) that has all of my movies and larger files (including picture archives), I'm not going to move all of my stuff into the appropriate folders on my mac.

4. I've googled for "Windows to OSX guides", etc, and have found 1 or 2 that are worth reading in my opinion, but I'd really love a good, long, in depth read about OSX, it's more advanced features, as well as good workflow techniques for various things, such as for a person who using a lot of shared documents/files/folders on different computers (especially different Windows machines). Even a good book would be sweet. I'd like to learn about automater, "folder actions", and things like that.

5. I am a Computer Science major, but at University I'm a photographer for a newspaper and I've taken thousands and thousands and thousands of photos. 100 thousand photos EASY. I have about half of those photos on my server (again a windows machine). I'd like to be able to view them on my Mac in some organized sort of way. I'm thinking about purchasing Aperature, but in the meantime is there a good way to browse huge photo libraries that doesn't require importing them into iPhoto? I'd like to do this the "right" way without having to hack up the OS at all, as I bought this Mac in hopes of having a computer that "just worked" :)

edit: ANOTHER QUESTION WOO WOO! I almost made another thread about this here, but I already have a thread in General Hardware. I got sme pretty good ideas, however none of them were really Mac specific (other than a Mighty Mouse recomendation) so I was hoping to have some Mac user input..
6. A mouse. I want to buy a mouse, and I want it to be bluetooth. What's more, I want it to properly work with OSX. The only thing it has to have is a scroll wheel, a left, right, and middle mouse button, and a back button (for browsing). A forward button is a bonus. In a way the mighty mouse is tempting, however I already have rocked my own world by switching from Windows Vista (I've been using windows since 3.1) to OSX this week, and I'm hesitant to start using a strange mouse that requires somewhat special treatment when left/right clicking. The other big option is to buy a MX5000 keyboard/mouse combo, but I've heard mixed reviews of both the keyboard/mouse quality as well as their compatability with OSX. Anybody here use a bluetooth mouse they absolutly love? BTW, I should point out that although I don't play games anymore, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my game playing days and I'll still like to have the ability to play games if I so choose to do so.


I'm very happy with the computer, I just have spent years and years and years and years, with good portions of my days (sadly) spent on windows machines, so I have a lot to relearn :).

Thanks for any help!
 
1 & 2: Install Perian.

3: You can make a soft link from your Movies folder to where ever your movies are actually stored. An alias might work too, but I prefer soft links.

5: iPhoto sounds like it will do what you want. You can easily switch from it to Aperture. Why are you hesitant about using it? You can also just turn on thumbnails in the finder and make them really big. Also, Adobe Lightroom is a good alternative to Aperture and is better integrated into the CS3 suite if that's where you do your work. Worth checking out.
 
CEpeep said:
1 & 2: Install Perian.

3: You can make a soft link from your Movies folder to where ever your movies are actually stored. An alias might work too, but I prefer soft links.

5: iPhoto sounds like it will do what you want. You can easily switch from it to Aperture. Why are you hesitant about using it? You can also just turn on thumbnails in the finder and make them really big. Also, Adobe Lightroom is a good alternative to Aperture and is better integrated into the CS3 suite if that's where you do your work. Worth checking out.
Click to expand...


Wow, thanks for the quick reply :)


I was under the impression that "importing" photos in iPhoto involved actually copying them to a local drive (i.e. "photos" or whatever). I didn't/don't want to copy all 400 gigs of photos to my 120 gig laptop harddrive :)
 
KevySaysBeNice said:
I was under the impression that "importing" photos in iPhoto involved actually copying them to a local drive (i.e. "photos" or whatever). I didn't/don't want to copy all 400 gigs of photos to my 120 gig laptop harddrive :)
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. Yeah, you definitely don't want to use iPhoto then. With a photo collection that large, you're going to need a real workflow application. I suggesting picking up either Aperture or Lightroom as soon as you are able. There's not really an effective way to go through 400GB of photos without a workflow tool.
 
KevySaysBeNice said:
I was under the impression that "importing" photos in iPhoto involved actually copying them to a local drive (i.e. "photos" or whatever). I didn't/don't want to copy all 400 gigs of photos to my 120 gig laptop harddrive :)
Click to expand...

This IS the default behavior, but you can change this in the iPhoto preferences. You can set it to not "copy all photos to Library" when you import them.
 
Sweet, thanks guys :)

And, although I hate to derail my own thread too much, which product is batter suited for my Mac, Aperature or Lightroom?

My main concern is probably the organization features as well as performance. I have mainly 8+ megapixel images and I'd like to be able to easily browse through them. I also hope to go through my ENTIRE collection of photos and better organize them, as they are currently in a bit of a mess...
 
Still wondering about Aperature vs. Lightroom, but here is another Q:

I almost made another thread about this here, but I already have a thread in General Hardware about this topic (mice). I got sme pretty good ideas, however none of them were really Mac specific (other than a Mighty Mouse recomendation) so I was hoping to have some Mac user input..
6. A mouse. I want to buy a mouse, and I want it to be bluetooth. What's more, I want it to properly work with OSX. The only thing it has to have is a scroll wheel, a left, right, and middle mouse button, and a back button (for browsing). A forward button is a bonus. In a way the mighty mouse is tempting, however I already have rocked my own world by switching from Windows Vista (I've been using windows since 3.1) to OSX this week, and I'm hesitant to start using a strange mouse that requires somewhat special treatment when left/right clicking. The other big option is to buy a MX5000 keyboard/mouse combo, but I've heard mixed reviews of both the keyboard/mouse quality as well as their compatability with OSX. Anybody here use a bluetooth mouse they absolutly love? BTW, I should point out that although I don't play games anymore, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my game playing days and I'll still like to have the ability to play games if I so choose to do so.
 
discussions.apple.com is very helpful too......but your welcome to keep posting questions here too.
 
1. http://perian.org/

2. http://perian.org/

3. Just create a "shortcut" to the folder you are storing your videos to the Movie folder. You should be able to access them fine through Frontrow afterwards.

edit: boo... people already beat me with these suggestions :)
 
KevySaysBeNice said:
Still wondering about Aperature vs. Lightroom, but here is another Q:

I almost made another thread about this here, but I already have a thread in General Hardware about this topic (mice). I got sme pretty good ideas, however none of them were really Mac specific (other than a Mighty Mouse recomendation) so I was hoping to have some Mac user input..
6. A mouse. I want to buy a mouse, and I want it to be bluetooth. What's more, I want it to properly work with OSX. The only thing it has to have is a scroll wheel, a left, right, and middle mouse button, and a back button (for browsing). A forward button is a bonus. In a way the mighty mouse is tempting, however I already have rocked my own world by switching from Windows Vista (I've been using windows since 3.1) to OSX this week, and I'm hesitant to start using a strange mouse that requires somewhat special treatment when left/right clicking. The other big option is to buy a MX5000 keyboard/mouse combo, but I've heard mixed reviews of both the keyboard/mouse quality as well as their compatability with OSX. Anybody here use a bluetooth mouse they absolutly love? BTW, I should point out that although I don't play games anymore, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my game playing days and I'll still like to have the ability to play games if I so choose to do so.
Click to expand...

I got a MBP last fall and I'm in the exact same situation as you re: mouse. The Mighty Mouse looks nice, but from using it in a store, it's kinda lacking (ie scroll ball is a bit sticky and weird, have to lift your left finger to right click, the squeeze isn't as good as a real side button). Sadly almost all of the BT mice out there are portable style ones, so you just get 2 buttons + scroll wheel/button. There used to be a few full sized BT mice by Logitech and MS, but they've been discontinued, and required basestations to charge them (ie not very portable). Currently the best option aside from the Mighty Mouse, is the Logitech V270, which is BT, and close to a full size mouse, but only 2 buttons + scroll click.
 
The Hunter said:
I got a MBP last fall and I'm in the exact same situation as you re: mouse. The Mighty Mouse looks nice, but from using it in a store, it's kinda lacking (ie scroll ball is a bit sticky and weird, have to lift your left finger to right click, the squeeze isn't as good as a real side button). Sadly almost all of the BT mice out there are portable style ones, so you just get 2 buttons + scroll wheel/button. There used to be a few full sized BT mice by Logitech and MS, but they've been discontinued, and required basestations to charge them (ie not very portable). Currently the best option aside from the Mighty Mouse, is the Logitech V270, which is BT, and close to a full size mouse, but only 2 buttons + scroll click.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice/words.

I agree with you, that is looking to very possibly be my best solution. That said, I'm seriously starting to wonder if I should even bother buying a wireless mouse. I will NOT have a seperate dongle to carry around (i.e. RF), and with bluetooth I'm stuck with less than ideal mice for large chunks of change. None of them seem to have the feature sets that I want. I might just end up heading to the local staples and checking out the mice that they have.

The other thing is that I for some reason was under the impression that the fancy new "laser" mice would work on my frosted glass desk. I now see (I think) that the laser mice still don't work on glass. I could always install Gestures (or the firefox extension that does the same thing) and do away with the 4th mouse button requirment, but again it's not exactly ideal.

Let me know if you have any luck bruthar :)
 
not BT, but the logitech VX series mouse is great. the software works really well. the usb dongle fits inside the mouse, so if you have the mouse you have the dongle. my 1 cent.
 
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