New iMac Shock

October 26, 2007 12:19 PM

New imac on the way. The one it's replacing has been with me since 2000 (330ghz, 18GB hd) so I'm expecting to be a mite overwhelmed with all the stuff I can do now. I'm also overwhelmed by the amount of advice/tips/hacks/other out there. Where's the best information for the layman (that is, not totally ignant but not a developer either) user?
posted by mundy to computers & internet (11 comments total)

It might help if you tell people what was the last OS you were running?

Off hand, I believe new iMacs eject CDs via a button on the keyboard, not a button on the computer. Not knowing this beforehand is enough to drive you insane.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:25 PM on October 26, 2007

Follow your tags.
posted by mkultra at 12:26 PM on October 26, 2007

Last OS is 10.3.9. I guess I was also asking for sites, weblogs, forums etc. that people have had luck with. Thanks
posted by mundy at 12:35 PM on October 26, 2007

Well you might want to update it to 10.4. I'd wait on 10.5 until the first point release (10.5.1), just from long-established habit.

Plus after 10.5 comes out there will be a glut of 10.4 install discs on the market that you can purchase, quite legally. Just make sure you get a retail box version. Or you can go through one of the used-mac retailers, most of them sell old OS versions pretty cheaply. (Keep your eye on SmallDog's Garage Sale, for instance.)

10.4 was a decent upgrade and on my machine brought a bit of a speed boost over 10.3, plus there's a fair bit of software that requires it. And a lot of the documentation/instructions/blogs/etc that you'll find on the 'net will assume that you're using 10.4. (And once 10.5 comes out there will be a flood of stuff on "how to do x in Leopard")
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:43 PM on October 26, 2007

A new iMac is going to come with 10.4 or 10.5 installed, and should at least include a 10.5 install disc.
posted by designbot at 12:50 PM on October 26, 2007

Your new Mac will come with a program called the Migration Assistant to move over all the stuff from your old Mac. It will run during initial setup of your new machine or you can cancel it and manually run it later. So, what you'll want is a firewire cable, and to figure out if your old iMac can be put into "FireWire target disk mode," where you can access its hard disk from another computer. Things will go smoothly from there.
posted by kindall at 12:57 PM on October 26, 2007

Here are some links that I like:

Macintouch. Pretty much the granddaddy of Mac news sites. New-product blurbs, testing, reader reports, etc.
Unofficial Apple Weblog. more bloggy, less meaty.
Hawkwings. Kind of in stasis, but has a lot of tips on using Mail, iCal, etc.
Daring Fireball. Mac commentary and links. A little rah-rah Apple, but still interesting.
I use this List of programs people use. Not sure if this is gamed.
Open Source Mac List of OSS for OS X. Lots of good stuff there.

Anyhow, that's a lot right there. Pointing you at tips for how to use your computer kind of depends on, well, how you want to use your computer. There's going to be an assload of product updates thanks to the release of 10.5, meaning that if you're trying to catch up, you'll feel like you have more to catch up on—but you're in the same boat as the rest of us.
posted by adamrice at 1:28 PM on October 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

First place you can start is right at Apple's site... they have a guided tour of Leopard.

Then if you're looking for more information, lynda.com is a great resource for well done video tutorials. You can usually watch the first few minutes of each section for free but in order to get to the juicy stuff you need to pay a monthly fee... and considering they have a very wide range of content on there, the amount they charge is almost nothing. Right now they only have Tiger (10.4) videos available but I'm sure they're probably recording the Leopard videos as I type.

My final two suggestions are only useful if you live near an Apple Retail store. All Apple Retail stores have free workshops throughout the week. The topics change daily but don't worry if you miss one that you're interested in since the topic schedule repeats itself each week. You can just show up in the store a few minutes before the workshop begins and let an employee know you're there for the workshop (sometimes if its busy and it looks like nobody showed up, they wont bother running the workshop).

The last suggestion I have is a service offered at all the Apple Retail stores called One-to-One. Basically for $99/year you can go into the store once per week and have a 1 hour private training session. You can learn the basics your first few sessions and then slowly progress into more advanced topics.

Enjoy your new mac!!!


.//chris
posted by hummercash at 3:30 PM on October 26, 2007

many thanks folks! this is good.
posted by mundy at 6:54 PM on October 26, 2007

If you want some Apple Feeds then you should check out this list of Apple Feeds
posted by Inetdave at 6:57 PM on October 26, 2007

We just got an iMac on Friday, upgrade from the same old one you had. One thing I would recommend:
If Leopard isn't pre-installed on your iMac, make sure you do the Leopard upgrade (I did a Clean Install) first before you migrate old files and stuff from you old computer. I wasted a night migrating over all my old stuff and then upgrading to Leopard, and there was scary issues and crashing until I wiped it clean and re-installed Leopard. Also be aware that some of your old Applications may not work on Leopard.
Have fun and enjoy! It's a gorgeous machine and Leopard rocks, I'll be learning all the stuff it does for weeks.
Oh...make sure you try the "mosaic" option for the screensaver that uses your photos...crazy.
posted by chococat at 3:58 PM on October 29, 2007