

Ask HN: Just bought my first Mac. What should I know? - maximveksler

Today is the first time I get to touch a MacOSX machine, on top of that I get to do it on a wonderful newly purchased Macbook Air. This after using Linux for the past 10 years. The world is shining with glowish colors of joy today.<p>What should I know, both practical and ethical/cultural about my newly chosen eco/techo system?
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jwdunne
I never really used a tool like it when I was on Windows or Linux but I find
Alfred really useful, where I can press Alt + Space that brings up a simple
dialog where I can type:

    
    
      app name
      find filename
      open filename
    

Just typing an app name will allow you to open it on pressing enter. Find will
reveal the file or folder in Finder. Open will open the file.

If it doesn't recognise a name or command, it'll default to giving options to
search in Google and other search engines.

Another really useful feature is typing an arithmetic expression and it being
calculated for, which can then be copied to keyboard by pressing enter. I use
this feature a lot.

I think there are a lot of other things I could learn about Alfred myself but
it's probably my most used tool! There's also a premium version with more
features but I haven't looked into it much.

I know there's Quicksilver and spotlight but Alfred is much quicker and
smoother for me.

~~~
rauar
+1 on Alfred. It's such a freakin' time-saver.

However I still miss the sexiness of Quicksilvers UI.

------
wriq
Homebrew - a package manager for OSX to install all those incredibly useful
applications you've been using for the past 10 years.

<http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/>

~~~
taligent
Before you do this.

Make sure to install XCode from the App Store and then goto
XCode->Preferences->Downloads and install the "Command Line Tools".

~~~
maximveksler
I did it, but I can't find anywhere what tools are being installed.

Is this documented somewhere or alternatively how can I inspect the downloaded
archive to learn about its content?

------
ciniglio
I know that as programmers/hackers, we're supposed to never use the mouse, but
the biggest thing that I've recently started to appreciate with macs is how
good the drag and drop system is.

Some examples:

\- If you want to open a file with a certain application, drag it to that
application in the dock.

\- If you want to send a url to your friend, drag the url onto the mail app.

\- If you want to get a folders path in the terminal, drag the folder into the
terminal window.

\- If you want to move a file into a folder in finder, hover over that folder
for a few seconds, and you'll see a new window spring up with the contents.
You can navigate deep trees quite quickly, without needing to know where
you're going at the outset (did I want to put this in Personal/ or in Vacation
Photos/?)

This behavior has really spoiled me, and is probably the thing I miss the most
when I need to use Windows for more than a few hours.

------
eranation
Was in the same place a month ago, here is what I wish someone told me.

\- You can move a file, just "copy" and then press option when "pasting"

\- Command + Delete is deleting a file (del on windows)

\- Rename file is Enter (f2 on windows)

\- Command + tab actually works as intended

\- Fn + Delete = del key

\- Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Dn - different, you'll get used to it

\- Learn Vim and Linux, as you'll use the terminal a lot

\- Installing stuff is a bit weird - dragging the icon to the Applications
shortcut, dmg files basically look like a virtual "drive" that you can eject

\- No easy way to maximize a window, really, you need a 3rd party app

After getting used to the little quirks, you'll get used to the stability, and
speed. Windows 7 is not a bad OS, but for some reason me and my wife fight
over the MacBook Air more than on my Lenovo Thinkpad...

~~~
tominated
You can use Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Dn by holding fn while using the arrow keys.

~~~
DerekL
Yes, that's how you use them on a laptop or Apple bluetooth keyboard.

But the point is, on Windows or Linux, they move the cursor, but on the Mac,
they scroll the view but don't move the cursor. Home scrolls to the beginning
and End scrolls to the end.

On the Mac, to move the cursor by larger amounts, you combine command or
option with an arrow key.

------
unvs
I use Vagrant (<http://www.vagrantup.com>) as a development environment, so I
don't have to pollute my OSX installation with dozens of server packages,
environments etc.

Other programs I use every day:

1) Sublime Text 2 - great editor

2) caffeine - prevents your mac from dimming or going to sleep when watching a
screencast/movie/etc

3) f.lux - Warmer color temperatures and lower brightness as the day
progresses, nice for working evenings

4) Alfred - program launcher.

5) BetterTouchTool - extra gestures for your trackpad or magic mouse. I use
this all the time.

------
harnhua
Often I need to create user guides and demo videos for products, and the
screen capture features help a lot.

To capture:

\- the entire desktop: Command-Shift-3. (Automatically saved as a PNG file on
your desktop)

\- part of the desktop: Command-Shift-4

\- specific application window: Command-Shift-4

Add Control to these shortcuts to place the screenshot on the clipboard. Also
try the bundled Grab utility for more related features.

------
anigbrowl
Page up/down and home/end don't work in Safari. You need to use
Command+up/down and option +up/down, respectively. Ridiculous.

~~~
Turing_Machine
They work fine for me.

Edit: are you using a real Apple keyboard?

~~~
anigbrowl
I guess it's been fixed. It drove me nuts last time I had to use a Macbook,
about a year ago.

------
phracktl
You should know that ever since the departure of SJ, Apple has been determined
to emulate MS software quality assurance principles

First things first - Upgrade to Snow Leopard from Mountain Lion.

Then set up Bootcamp to install a decent OS like Win7

;-)

~~~
phracktl
OK, only halfish-joking But "It just works" isn't so true anymore. Mac apps -
Safari, iLife, iWorks - are mostly weak or broken. Updates are like Windows -
in the Gb's and constant.

Also, I'm embittered as the demise of the 17" MBP leaves me nowhere to go in
Apple's future portable line-up. (Dont get me started on MacPro!)

For dev work: as others have said sort out XCode, grab Homebrew,
iterm/dterm/total terminal

For web stuff look at Bitnami stacks/vm's. Aslo tools like sublime, Fake,
codekit, charles http

------
Turing_Machine
While many popular FOSS packages have been completely ported to the Mac's UI,
there are still some packages that require X11. You can get it here:

<http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/>

------
bdunbar
Install iTerm2.

It's a much better terminal emulator that Terminal.

~~~
maximveksler
Thank you for this wonderful tip.

------
ssylee
Watch this: [http://www.nevblog.com/mac-shortcuts-watch-this-if-you-
use-a...](http://www.nevblog.com/mac-shortcuts-watch-this-if-you-use-a-mac/)

------
pkamb
Hotcorners for "Show Desktop" and "All Windows Exposé"

------
CyberFonic
Install Linux on it. That's want Linus did to his.

------
RollAHardSix
F12 / F11 All day.

------
001sky
prt scrn = shift+command+3

~~~
jwdunne
To print screen using a selector, CMD + Ctrl + Shift + 4

~~~
Couto
To print screen a specific window, CMD+Ctrl+Shift+4+Space

------
dmorgan
1) Install the Homebrew package manager for your simple OSS needs (wget,
haskell, ..., whatever).

2) For more involved OSS needs, instead of messing the system with tons of
Pythons, Rubies, RDBMSs, etc, or using MacPorts, I would suggest running those
environments in a VM (VMWare Fusion or Parallels) running Linux. It could even
be headless, and you could connect to it through the Terminal. You get a
development environment similar to your production setup, snapshots, etc AND a
clean base system.

3) For video watching: install some "codec pack" for Quicktime (it has few
built-in codecs). Also install VLC and MPlayerX. For audio, use iTunes and pay
some attention to proper tagging (if your mp3s don't have it already).

4) If you start buying programs now, use the Mac App Store. You get to install
the bought programs in all your Macs (if you have more than one Mac at some
point), and when you clean-install your OS or get a new Mac you'll be able to
download and have them installed automatically from one place.

5) Download and install XCode (this is also used by Homebrew [1]), but it will
be useful for you in general if you do any programming, as it has the C
compilers, headers, etc. Also install the "Command line tools" (see comment
below).

6) When looking for a solution for a OS X problem, a lot of people in forums
will suggest "fixing permissions" and "zapping the PRAM". Those are, 99% of
the time, BS cargo-cult non solutions.

7) You DON'T need an antivirus. Just exercise common caution. It's nothing
like Windows XP of times past.

8) You really DON'T need to shutdown your OS X. Maybe once in a blue moon.
Just close the lid and let it sleep.

9) All OSs have problems. Especially when you include the userland programs in
the possible bug space. If CPU is pegged at 100%, open "Activity Monitor" and
find the culprit program and kill it. More often than not, it's Flash.

10) Check the Applications/Utilities folder. Lots of useful stuff in there.

11) Learn about the "defaults" command. You can use it to enable many hidden
options and customizations from the command line.

12) If you like fine-tuning and customizing, get familiar with the /Library
and ~/Library folders. It's where a lot of programs keep plugins, themes,
settings, etc. There is a defaults [11] command to make the ~/Library folder
visible in the Finder (normally it's hidden from the average user).

13) Check the Automator for application automation (also: Applescript). You
can a lot of stuff with it, if you like these kind of things.

14) Read Siracussa's Ars Technica Mountain Lion review. All of it. And maybe a
book, like Mountain Lion, the Missing Manual. You'll learn a lot of things
that you will otherwise pick up randomly after months of using OS X.

15) Some apps to check: Alfred (must have: launcher), Evernote (note taking),
iA Writer (distraction free writing), Skitch (image capture / annotations,
though current version is botched), Fission (barebones audio editing),
Pixelmator (bitmap image editor), Reeder (RSS reader), Little Snitch (must
have: application firewall), Tunnelblick (VPN), Transmit (FTP/SFTP/S3 etc),
Unarchiver (compression archive handler), VMWare Fusion (virtual machine
host), Sublime Text 2 (programmers' editor, if you're not into
Emacs/Vim/IDEs). For simple multimedia needs, check the iLife programs. For
work needs, iWork programs are quite capable, though not as much as MS Office.
Adobe home user programs (Photoshop and Premier Elements) are available for
the Mac too.

16) Avoid HAXIEs and APE (cross-OS hijacking system used to attach extension
functionality to applications). Not very stable, and not really needed. (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie> ).

17) If you go with Apple's way, you get more integration between your OS X
programs.

E.g. if you're using Mail.app instead of Thunderbird and iPhoto instead of
some third party photo manager, then, while you write a new email, you can
select pictures in your iPhoto library to attach, from a built-in image picker
in Mail.app. Same for iLife and iWork apps. E.g you can select, through
Keynote, a song from your iTunes library to be use in your presentation.
Personally, I use mostly Apple's apps, but prefer Chrome to Safari and
Lightroom to iPhoto/Aperture.

18) Some things that might give you problems, from time to time: \- Spotlight
indexing (when you add lots of new stuff from an external disk to your primary
disk, or when it's stuck on a corrupted file, etc). You can turn it off and on
for specific disks and folders. \- Flash using 100% of the CPU. Kill it from
activity monitor, or kill the tab.

19) I personally tend to prefer installing new major OS X versions from
scratch. It's easy to port over your old files, mails, and settings from a
backup. That said, updating also works fine. YMMV.

20) Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper! for bootable,
incremental, backups of your startup disk. Time Machine backups are handy too,
but not bootable.

21) Have fun.

~~~
maximveksler
Highly useful. Many thanks.

Writing this response is the first productive thing I do with a Macintosh. To
me it's somewhat inspiring and sad that my virgin user experience on a Mac,
having clicked on Safari because it's the only thing that looked familiar, was
the memorial video being shown today[1] on apple.com for 1 year since Steve
Jobs death.

This feeling of sheer admiration is greatly reinforced by the pushback of a
thought that a past generation of great man (Being 29 myself) was here to
creatively pioneer the core culture values for us to build upon. I have just
recently learned about Apple and Steve, reading Walter Issacson point of view.
I found that honestly understanding how and mostly why Apple was build is an
easily traceable path to enable one to learn to admire the actions and mostly
the philosophy behind the company and behind Steve Jobs. Reading
<http://www.folklore.org> also gives it's magical touch of a time that once
was.

So thank you for your wonderful experience tips. Your assumption for this
macbook is correct it will be used as a tool to making software, I hope to
build something useful and fun for the world.

Will Have Fun, thank you for the suggestion :)

Maxim.

[1] [http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-
memoria...](http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial-
us-20121005_r848-9dwc.mov)

------
taligent
I highly recommend iStat Menus / MenuMeters for monitoring.

Also if you run "sudo fs_usage" in the Terminal you can see what is accessing
the disk. This can easily show what new app you've installed is causing
problems. Likewise learn about launchctl/LaunchAgents/LaunchDaemons so you can
disable startup daemons.

Big tip: Make sure to add to the Spotlight->Privacy section any folders that
you don't want indexed e.g. Downloads, Bittorrent Folders, External Drives.

------
D3
Only that you made a horrible mistake.

~~~
awfabian2
I got my first Mac about 1 year and 4 months ago. I've been pretty happy with
it. My fallback plan was just to install Windows or Linux on it. To me, the
worst case scenario was that I was over-paying for some decent hardware. As it
turns out, I never needed to exercise the backup plan.

