Tips for a new mac user

[bex272]

I was bought a shiny new MacBook Pro for Christmas but it's the first one I have ever owned/used so taking me a while to figure it out, just had to google how to copy and paste! Any quick tips I need to know to make life easier. I have owned iPhone/iPad for a while so not completely new to apple products but always used windows pcs

Bex

[hideinpockets]

Most of it will come with practice but there are lots of super handy shortcuts which will be really helpful. All using the Apple hotkey. Apple + C = copy, Apple + N (new window), if you used shortcuts on windows they are similar. +T for new tab etc. If you google apple shortcuts they are all listed! Using the shortcuts is the quickest and easiest way to use mac's and you'll definitely find you get more used to it using them! I love Mac's and think they are brilliant computers! PCs always seem a bit rubbish in comparison!

[BevS97]

my favourite is hit the space bar for a preview of any item, I am always trying it on my windows computer and it doesn't work

Also, the little magnifying glass in the top right of the screen will find just about anything on your computer, programs, files, etc. Just type what you want and it pops up.

Give it time to get used to it, it does feel very alien at first but now I move between mac and windows all the time and apart from the space bar preview I don't really notice the difference.

[katiec68]

Loving these replies - I've had mine a year and i still dont know how to work it properly!

Katie x x

[BoxOfFrogs]

I'm a huge fan, I have an iMac at work and MacBook at home, my daughter needed a new computer, she wanted a Windows computer so I bought her a Mac book pro lol, they are fantastic, I used to need a new computer every year as they clogged up and slowed down to infuriatingly slow, I've had the MacBook maybe 6 years and MacBook 4, both as fast as new, wonderful things they are, I hated it at first though, really struggled as I was so used to word on Windows and the Mac had something else (pages?) I bought Word for Mac and have never looked back

I am not computer savvy I only really use them for surfing the net and word processing quotes and invoices etc so only need the basics (command p) for print is as clever as I get

You will love it when you get used to it

[Miss_Tangled]

Definitely getting your head around the hotkeys helps, they're great I think I'm still getting the hang of ours too!

[wanye]

a lot of the windows shortcuts (copy/paste/etc) are the same apart from instead of pressing CTRL, you press the apple key instead

most of it is just practice - if you get stuck with something in particular, either google it or post here, and we'll help. most things are obvious once youve worked out how to do it, and youll remember most pretty easily.

i moved full time to OSX back in 2008 (apart from my work machines - windows laptop and linux desktop) and apart from a few really frustrating things (which were mostly solved by googling) its been pretty much plain sailing. the main things to work out is how to install things, then drag a copy from your apps folder down to the app bar, and getting used to finder and its quirks.

ive still yet to find any file manager app as good as directory opus on the amiga. nothing comes close (well, except for directory opus on windows... they havent done a mac version yet)

[stevo25]

Learn all the gestures on the trackpad

[Guest]

Originally Posted by stevo25

Learn all the gestures on the trackpad

See more...

+ 1 for that suggestion by stevo25.


We moved over gradually from Windows to Macs - and wouldn't consider anything else now. My wife has the iMac 27" ( with Trackpad! ) and a MB Air 13" and I have the MBAir 11" which I take EVERYWHERE with us.

[Guest]

One of the main things I couldn't deal with was the "reverse scrolling".

Where you scroll down and it goes up?! Drove me mad. But after much googling I found out you can change this.