Hi,well im an old time pc user who has recently made the switch,i have used my freinds brand new imac with 10.4.8,and i have whats left of my athlon 3500+(running),i aslo have an ibook 700mhz and a g4 400mhz,the problem i seem to have with mac os is,

Finding this looking for that, and nothing on hand unless i want to clog up the desktop,with pc most of what u want is one click away with the start button,also of course my pc kills the 2 macs i have here for speed,
Dont get me wrong i love the macs there a very exciting and interesting set up,but what is the os's created from is it open source like linux(which is ok,but a little overrated),i have noticed applescript i dont really now exactly its purpose asides from maybe running little scripts to assist programs?,i dont want to develop in mac,but has this software always been like this i remember the macintosh's of old with the green text and black screens,

Is there a possible way i can use the mac os x system like windows with it all at my fingertips,yes the dock is really cool but i have the dock full of stuff,and it wont stretch no further,the new duo core processors in the latter imacs perform great,but do they perform as good as they should,or do they perform as equals in terms the having one in a exact pc set up,sorry guys about all the jargon but it is really all overwhelming and im trying to get my head around hopefully the future leaders in the compter genre MAC'S thank you

Breath dude!

AGH!

Maybe you can switch to paragraphs and grammar in general.
Calm down buddy and enjoy your stay!

One word: Quicksilver.

quicksilver.blacktree.com

http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

try this.

wow, you have stuff 1-click away in Windows? apart from the items i have in the taskbar, finding another program i don't use that often is a right pain in the proverbial for me in Windows.

Mac is much much better. the dock, yes, the most common apps i use i place there. for other apps i use less frequently, i find Spotlight is great. call up Spotlight, type in the first few letters of the app in question and - boom - click on the app name and away we go.

... i'm afraid i couldn't make much sense of the other things you typed ... but it could be that i'm just tired and in need of sleep now ...

quicksilver is good. Launchbar is another one. tho with the alterations coming in Leopard, Spotlight will make these apps redundant.

Sorry guys,
Was trying to do 10 things at once
Thank you for the link im sure it will be useful,

As for my grammar yes i need help there!!
But this site is great
Keep up the good work guys
Exellent reading

Hey mate,

A mac does take time to fully get used to. I started using them at Uni, and loved the beautiful screens, how fast they were, and the OS interface in general. It's quite different to a PC!

Naturally, many things in MacOS are different from windows. Some for better, some for worse. Mostly for the better though.

What's on your desktop? If its all documents, save them in your home folder (usually your own name in the finder) or your Documents folder. If your desktop is all links to programs, 1) Double Click the "Macintosh HD" icon on your desktop, to open this in the finder, 2) click and drag the "Applications" in folder in Macintosh HD to your dock, 3) right click (secondry click, whatever) the Applications folder in the dock. This basically mimicks the windows "Start" menu. You can do this with any other folder you like too; or alternatively, drag individual documents to the dock if you use them frequently.

Hope that helps!

yes. good call. i highly recommend doing this aswell.

Or you could create aliases (shortcuts) on the desktop?

Unfortunately OSX no longer uses the apple menu to the extent that previous Mac OSs did.

You used to be able to put whatever you want in it - favourite apps, files, links to anything at all really - which served very well as the "1-click away" experience you mention.

Much like the start menu, but better.

Nowadays, we have either the dock (which I guess is kinda like a cross between the taskbar and quicklaunch). I personally prefer the combination of (apple menu and app switcher menu) that we used to have, to the dock - but hey each to his or her own.

A workaround as some have said, is drag your "applications" folder to the dock (to make a shortcut/alias of it in the dock), and get used to right-clicking on it all the time.

Spotlight works great, sure, but I think you're after a proper solution of where your apps/files are, not just a handy way of searching for them wherever they might be.

I find macs much better than Windows for having "everything at your fingertips".

Call me biassed if you like (hey look at the forum we're on!), but remember that I've used both macs and PCs every single day for about 15 years.

In terms of speed, I find the best "bang-for-your-buck" can be had by buying a reasonably new/fast, moderately-spec'd Pentium 4 and running windows 2000 on it. It can be LIGHTNING!!! Closely followed by the top-of-the-line G4 running OS 7.5 or 8.6 (natively). Bear in mind that the G4 is a good few years older in this situation but almost a quick in this situation.

In these days though, we all (or so they would have us believe) want glitzier, jazzier OSs that as an added bonus have a few extra features and can be quite powerful too. (ala XP, Vista, and all versions of OSX). The downside? SPEEEEEED!!!!!!

I agree with you OSX is based on some over-rated geek operating system which drags it down in some ways. (Traitors!). One could argue that all macs are now just another type of PC. However, the Unix foundations of OSX also offer it a lot of flexibility and possibilities that it wouldn't otherwise have.

Your 400 and 700mhz macs are under-sized and no match for an AMD Athlon 3500+. It is therefore not fair to compare.

New macs these days (by that I mean the mac pro not laptops) will eat almost any PC for breakfast these days.

How is that relevant to either of us? It probably isn't.

As for your friend's imac... well... how much ram does it got? I personally don't like imacs anyway.

Programming/developing in the mac environment can be quite powerful, in my experience more powerful than on a pc.

Applescript? Yeah I don't like it much. Automator? Almost useless.

The modern mac user should not have to use applescript unless they have an interest in it IMHO.

You could try running speed tests in winXP on your AMD vs XP installed natively on your friend's imac. It still wouldn't be a fair comparison though.

Err, is this a serious question? You were thinking that the Mac OS perhaps could have been the same as it was in the early 80s?

Actually, the Mac never was green on black. And ironically, when the very first Macintosh was released in 1984 (monochrome with menus, pointer, buttons, windows etc.) many PCs actually were Green on Black (or Amber on Black). I think you were referring to the Apple II, which the Mac was not a direct replacement of.

Your right Wonderboy,as i recall apple 2 was the machine i remember looking at!
Thank for setting me straight
Still learning!!

Thank you for the great reply RTC very informative!
Also thank you daveisbest exellent info,helped me immensly !

Sorry if my reply sounded a little harsh. I hadn't had my morning coffee yet Welcome to MacTalk.