DV for Teachers

I just met with Dr. Kamphaus, the new dean of our college, to help him prep for a presentation tomorrow. He uses a black Apple MacBook. I said, “Oh, you have a MacBook.” He said, “I don’t like viruses.”

Thanks to the venerable and venerated online Maczine TidBITS for pointing to My First Mac – Help Buying and Getting Started with Your New Mac. At first look it has a lots of information specifically for the new and Windows-familiar user. I plan to check it out regularly.

Malaysian blogger Famous Chris posts his Top 40 Most Useful, Free Mac OS X Softwares on his blog, because you value your mind. Good title for a blog, and a good comprehensive list of apps. I use some of these, ImageWell, especially, which I used to make (and upload via secure FTP with one click) the little banner on this post. Please go take a look at these apps. If you don’t know what they do, it’ll be worth your time to study them a bit. In the process, you’ll learn a lot about your Mac and what kind of cool things it’s capable of.

I don’t recall where I saw this linked. Sorry.

The previous post got me wondering about learning more about Macs for those who are unfamiliar. If you’re new to Macs, or returning after being away for a while, here’s some help.

There’s the Mac 101 section at Apple, as well as Switch 101 for switchers from Windows, and there’s a “series of posts called Mac 101 at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

New to Macs? Apple Matters offers a list of 20 Useful OS X Tips. Many are for working with windows, some are application-specific, like this one for Word:

Holding down the option key in Word while selecting text will let you select any rectangular body of text. Useful, for instance, to select a single column of text in the middle of a document and delete it.

“The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows…

Helpful tips and a good discussion with more.

They’re cute – and this one about viruses is correct , but disingenuous. A handful of potentially serious vulnerabilities have cropped up in the last few months – potentially serious. They were properly reported to Apple several months ago, and there are no reports of outbreaks, but Apple has issued no fixes for these yet. Despite some strongly worded criticism, for the moment I believe thatcautious concern and awareness are called for. I know much more about end-user multimedia applications than operating systems, so I encourage you to do your own reading and come to your own conclusions. Add to that persistent requests that Apple do the right thing and help us keep the doors locked.

Scott Moschella give us his Top 10 Things All Switchers Should Know at his site, Plastic Bugs. Clever, well explained, and good info even for an experienced Mac user.

Sometimes Jobs’ vaunted taste has a tin ear. “MacBook” is awkward to say. It lacks what I’d call “verbal ergonomics” because it has too many hard consonants too close together, and “MacBook Pro” is worse because it has no rhythm. “PowerBook” had rhythm.

Pronunciation aside, I’ve used three PowerBooks in the last few years, and this new one is suspect because a) it’s the first major reconfiguration of an Apple product – historically too many of their 1st generation configs, portables especially, seem to utilize their customers as beta testers – and b) the metal cases of the titanium and aluminum PowerBooks limit their wifi reception. I hoped that the new pro laptops from Apple, whatever their case material, would have “the best wifi reception of any portable” as a selling point Jobs would crow about. Poor to fair wifi performance is one of the PowerBook line’s dirty little secrets, though it’s not little or secret.

Sleek metal cases and the name “MacBook” are equivalents of the round Apple mouse of several years ago: coolness in Jobs’ eyes, not highest performance, über alles.

I tried to post this at Dave Winer’s WordPress blog, but it won’t post.

Ten Things Every New Mac User Should Know – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Paul Stamatiou has compiled a list of ten things that every new Mac user should know. I like what he’s come up with and don’t disagree with any of them. I’d add to that list: Command-Tab is handy for switching between programs and the home/end keyboard keys don’t work the same way as in Windows. I might also add that the delete key is not a forward-delete key.

Make sure to read the comments for other good tips.