There’s a new arrival in the Maison Des Girrafes Wearable Office™:
Yes, it’s that thing on the left, that kind of fungoid podule thingy: a brand-new secondhand iMac, running OS9 OSX. I bought it to replace, eventually, my ailing Dell laptop (on the right), which gives me the Blue Screen of Death increasingly often, and whose keyboard is, in any case, shot to hell.
The iMac is lovely.
Or would be, if I had any idea how to use it. Being a confirmed PC-DOS man, even such things as file structures seem totally baffling, even absent. I can’t even work out how to edit the volume control.
I expect with a certain amount of head-scratching and fiddling about, all will become clear. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer: it’s so simple, that only a child can do it.
In the meantime, can anyone recommend an external wireless modem for this, so I can interface it with teh interwebz?
Bookmarking this for my imminent immersion in the world of Macs…
running OS9
Yegods. Don’t get used to it Henry, that is so old and clunky.
Any modem will work. Make sure you plug it into the ethernet socket (USB modems are horrible. Ick).
It ran OS9 when I turned it off. Then I turned it on again and it’s running OSX. I fully expect it to be sentient tomorrow.
What puzzles me is the file structure – I can’t seem to find one. I’m so used to the
cladogramstrees in Windows Explorer.I can’t even work out how to edit the volume control
There should be a little icon of a speaker and sound waves in the upper right corner of your screen. Click on it and a slider will appear, so that you can adjust the volume. It makes a little noise that my dog hates.
You can choose three different ways to view file structure in Finder. I prefer the view that least resembles Windows Explorer.
Since I’m not as clever as my other friends with Macs, I bought one of David Pogue’s “Missing Manuals” for OS X. I find that it saves me a lot of time.
Oh, yeah, and for more sophisticated tweaking of volume controls, go to Applications —> System Preferences —> Sounds.
or use the volume keys on the keyboard…
Thanks all. Have found volume controls. Deafened self. Frightened dog. Cat sprung up curtains. Have no discovered how to port my iTunes library into the iMac, and it’s now copying track 1641 out of 4631. I think I’ll leave it to get on with it.
Henry, in the top left of the screen there’s a blue apple. Click and hold and select ‘About this Mac’. What version do you have?
Oh, and get yourself a Mighty Mouse.
Aha! I see Blue Apple.
I has pressed button he say 50000000 bacterial volts extremely dangerous under no circumstances press this button again.
And this is what comes up
Mac OS X
Version 10.3.9
Processor 700 MHz PowerPC G4
Memory: 512 MB SDRAM
Closed Wednesdays
10.3.9 OK, that’s pretty good (I’ll try to find out if your model will run a more recent version) and you should try to get hold of some more RAM. Up to 2 gig would be nice. Again, I’ll try to find out for you.
You know, even these few years later, that particular stylee of Mac still has a certain “WTF?” charm. Enjoy. And phone RPG for technical support. Just remember that until the end of this month, it’ll always be three o’clock next Tuesday morning where he is. Or something.
@ RPG : Thanks. I’ll also need to
steal Mrs G’sacquire an external CD drive, as the one in the iMac doesn’t work (explaining why it cost me only £100). However, even with its relative lack of RAM, it seems to work very quickly and smoothly. Makes PCs seem very clunky.@ Richard W: The iMac is certainly a beautiful thing. Gee Minima was cooing over it yesterday. Soon Richard G and I will be in the same time zone, but teh interwebz are a wonderful thing – that and the fact that neither he nor I ever seem to sleep.
Henry, I think this is your model:
http://crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=iMac%20%28G4-700%29
100 quid gets you a gig of RAM. It won’t go any higher.
Henry, before Richard manhandles you into handing over the value of your computer again for extra
goatRAM, ask yourself, do you really need it?Remember what computers used to be like?
If only the financial sector had access to this sort of processing power
Seriously, unless you’re running lots of programmes at the same time, including gene sequencers, high level individual based model simulations or powering your USB cup-o-tea-warmer-matic, it may not be necessary to upgrade your
ageing, addledcomputer’s memory.Try carrying out some of your regular to heavy use tasks for a day or two before deciding whether or not you need to upgrade. If things run interminably slowly, you should. Or you could just plug in your iphone and use the iMac monitor as a screen…
After all, in this age of massive overconsumption,
big macsextra computer parts also contribute to waste eventually.@ RPG: Your reward will be
in heavenin the pub. Thank you! I have now transferred all my iTunes files and quite a lot of documents onto the iMac. Somehow it seems to manage without all that clunky DOS-era file management. You just dump the lot in … and there it is. What I need to do now isGee Minima has a computer like that! It’s invaluable for her maths homework.
… Actually, half a gig of RAM is fine. I have the same on my Asus Eee and it’s great for surfing, communicating with the
orificeoffice, writing, all without strain.I am now playing music on the tiny spherial speaker podules of the iMac. The sound is terrific. Since you ask, John McLaughlin, At The Heart Of Things.
Cool. The modem should be just a case of plugging it in and configuring via a browser… on the other hand, how do your other computers currently connect?
Can I just say (and I’ve stayed out of almost all of the Mac discussions) that there are things that are not so great… for example, if I want to remove a hyperlink from a Word document in the Mac version, I have to go through three steps (as opposed to right mouse-click, scroll to ‘remove hyperlink’ – done). So there.
(I already know you’ll say that’s because Word is a Microsoft program. There, you don’t have to say it).
@ RPG – once the wireless modem is configured, they automatically searh for one of my two routers. I choose one, key in the information, and there it is. My worry is about the preceding stage: I’ve never had to configure a wireless modem so that it talks to its host ccomputer before, but I expect I just earth one of the hildren to the central heating and get on with it.
@Steffi – there are pros and cons with everything, I guess! But I needed a computer in a hurry, I needed it cheap, and I thought I might go for a Mac, enamoured as I am of my iPhone. And the chance to get an iMac off one of my work colleagues came up, so there it was, and here it is. By the way, it’s been on all night, and has barely even warmed up…
Henry,
probably best you draw me a picture. You have my email.
Gee Minor did a nice one of a lobster yesterday. Would that do?
The iMac has Safari installed. As long as Safari talks to the wireless modem I should be fine I suppose.
No reason it shouldn’t. 192.168.1.1? Something like that.
don’t forget to turn airport on…
You’re assuming a wireless card, Mike…
@: Mike: Good call.
@ Richard – that looks familiar. just checking now through my PC, which is cnnected to the router I want to use, which does indeed have an IP address, which I’ll email you…
You realize, Henry, that you have just provided Richard G. with the ability to hack into your shiny
oldnew Mac and wreak all kinds of hooliganish vandalism, don’t you?I’m just sayin’.
But I trust him. Foolish, I know…
A visit to PC World has netted miles and miles and miles of ethernet cable. I just connetected one end to th router and the other to the apple, and, my God, it was full of stars….
Miles and miles and miles of ethernet cable is as good as wireless! You can go ANYWHERE!
Henry, did you eventually manage how to play a podcast?
Not yet.
Some things work better on PCs than Macs. My Mac doesn’t like hotmail or facebook, but most other things work fine. And the inbuilt iTunes, of course, works far better on the Mac than the PC. Still haven’t worked out how to sync my iPhone to the Mac – I might try again in a minute.
Henry, I just got given a MacBook for my birthday! Do you want to start a support group for people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing with a Mac?
p.s. one of the first things I did was sync the Mac iTunes to the master account on my desktop PC. It won’t sync podcasts though, just the music, so I think I’ll have to keep syncing the iPhone to the desktop…
@ Cath: I am slowly working out what it is, and what it does. It’s a bit like learning a foreign language, as the Mac and the PC have different words for the same things. But once that’s over, the Mac is breathtakingly simple. When I start my Mac and my PC at the same time, the Mac is up and running while the PC is still stirring from its slumber.
And one thing I enjoy about the Mac is design features that are so clever they’re almost cheeky. Take the USB sockets, for example. There I was, resigned to the fact that there appear to be only three USB ports, two of which are occupied by keyboard and mouse. Ho hum, I thought, it’s an old machine, and that’s why USB hubs were invented … until I noticed two more USB ports on the keyboard itself. Now, how cool is that? No more groping round the back when you want to plug in your camera, USB belly-button warmer, or whatever.
Here’s a summary of where I’m at.
- I can’t sync my iPhone to the iMac, because (I have learned) you need OS 10.4 for this, and I have OS 10.3.9. Strangley, though, it pulls pictures off my iPhone with the greatest of ease, something my PC has trouble with.
- Facebook and hotmail are inclined to be flaky, and Google REader won’t load at all. Thinking I might fare better with Firerfox, I downloaded it … which took three hours … and now I have it, it won’t open. Dang it. A friend has sent me a fix for this so perhaps it can be sorted.
- The iTunes experience on the iMac is amazing.
Otherwise it does everything I ask and need. Like the iPhone, and after a PC it’s just so beautiful to drive, rather like stepping out of a dodgy transit van and into my eVolvo. They both get from A to B, but the latter experience is much more fun. And after all, as I keep telling myself, it cost £100.
Happy birthday, by the way.
Thank you!
I’m running OS 10.5.something – I think (I’m at work at the moment and missing my new toy). The iPhone syncs the music etc. just fine, but I think I’d have to resubscribe to all my podcasts from the Mac in order to sync those, the subscriptions don’t seem to automatically transfer from the PC.
Facebook and Google Reader work just fine, and why would anyone still use hotmail when there’s Gmail?!
I’ve downloaded the free trial version of iWork, but haven’t had much time to play. And I got the latest version of the photo and movie packages included. My husband says that the store where he bought the Mac are hving some kind of iWork presentation/demonstration at the weekend – I think I’d better go!
and why would anyone still use hotmail when there’s Gmail?!
Indeed. Transfer from one to the other will be effected, but I can’t send out an all-points alert as hotmail will only allow me to send a message to just 50 people at once and, as you know, I have so many friends.
What’s iWork?
Office-type programmes, apparently! Word, Excel and Powerpoint analogues.
It shows the state of my mind that I actually considered whether ‘analogue’ was the right word there. I considered ‘orthologue’ (paralogue obviously wrong) but I think you’re right. It’s convergent evolution, innit?
I think orthologue is right, actually. Reciprocal best match: comparing Word to things from Apple gives Pages as best match, and comparing Pages to things from Microsoft gives Word as best match.
</ nerd >
There has been too much horizontal gene transfer to be able to say for sure.
,,, especially as my iMac runs Word for Windows (Mac version), which is very helpful, given that everything I’ve written for the past 58,907,216 years is in that form. What’s up, .doc?
You know on a PC, when you hover the cursor over a hyperlink, you see the URL of the link at the bottom of the screen before you actually click it? Is there an equivalent on a Mac? I can’t see anything… and I often like to know which website I’m being sent to before I click through.
Cath: in Safari, select “View> Show Status Bar”. View is one of the main menu options along the top of the screen.
In Firefox, pretty much the same.
Great, thank you – that should avoid me accidentally clicking through to that other magazine whose name starts with an N.
National enquirer?
Nice try!
Apparently I need iTunes help! I’d shared my PC desktop library over the local network, and all my music popped up in the Mac’s iTunes. But I realised last night that this only happens when the PC is switched on and running iTunes. How do I transfer all my music onto the Mac – permanently? I tried to do it through my iPhone, which is synched to the PC, but I couldn’t work out how to get the music off the phone and onto the Mac. It kept telling me that the phone can only synch to one library, and that synching it to the Mac would erase everything off the phone and replace it with the contents of the Mac’s library (nothing, so far).
Yes, I know I’m pathetic… in my defense the iPhone was my first ever iPod, so I’ve only been using iTunes for a few months, and only on one computer.
Get an ethernet cable and do it the old fashioned way… although obviously the two computers are already networked so just copy the iTunes folder across the network, into a place of your choosing (~/Music/iTunes, say) and tel iTunes on the Mac that’s where your music is.
‘tell’ not ‘tel’: and tell not show (subtle joke).
Cath – I am not the world’s biggest fan of iTunes (*cough*understatement) but it contains in its help menus a section on specifically this topic – how to move your music form machine to machine.
On looking at this FAQ, it seems pretty easy by using an external hard drive or whatever. But I confess I haven’t done it, so god knows if it actually works or not.
Possibly unhelpful – a friend of mine recommends Media Monkey instead.
Bugger. There’s Grant jumping in as I’m typing… do what he says, it’ll probably work. :P
OK, I will try this tomorrow… although I’m not sure I know how to do any of the suggested things! Sharing the iTunes folder across the network sounds like the most simple method, if I can figure out where to save it that both computers can see (I’ve never had more than 1 computer in the house before, the wireless router was originally for the benefit of our tenant).
well, if the Mac is always on, that’s the obvious place.
Hopefully I will understand that better when I have both machines up and running in front of me! (The “transferring music through your network” option on Richard W’s linked page seemed to only include songs purchased from iTunes, and one at a time – most of my library is from CDs).
Anyway, I’ll try it tomorrow and report back… Thanks for all the tips!
Cath, drop me a line.
Heh heh – “Richard gives up on giving perfectly good advice in comments threads in the face of the scale of the current incomptence”.
Will do. I do think it will become much clearer when I’m home and have both computers up and running – but that won’t happen until tomorrow morning.
Cath – what I did was this.
When my PC kept giving me the Blue Screen of Death, I copies EVERYTHING over to an outboard hard-disk drive.
When the iMac arrived, I connected the hard-disk drive to the iMac with a USB cable. The hd drive appeared as an external device on the iMac’ss desktop.
Then I opened the ‘My Music’ folder on the hd drive, within which there was a folder called ‘iTunes Music’. I opened the iTunes page on the iMac, dragged the iTunes Music folder over, dropped into the iTunes page … and left the computer to sort it out. Which it did.
Here’s a dumb question for any iPhone-using international travelers:
If my iPhone behaves like a British iPhone when I’m in the UK, what prefixes do I need when I call UK phone numbers? For example, if I needed to call Henry while I’m in Cambridge? Do I need the to dial “0” first?
And yes, I’m aware of the insane data roaming charges, so I’ve turned that off, as well as the Push function.
I’m also aware of the weirdness of using the term “dial” with an iPhone.
If it behaves like a UK mobile, you will need to key in the full area code, including the first 0. According to BT, the area code for Comer is 01263.
I have all my phone numbers stored on my ancient Nokia with international prefixes. It works fine in all countries I’ve tried in, from China to the Dominican Republic. For the UK, the prefix is +44, then the rest of the number without the 0, which for Henry in Cromer, would be +441263…666666. I guess the iPhone should be able to handle this approach.
Steve Jobs still has some work to do to convince me the iPhone is really worth the investment, on top of all my other
malt based expensesmac gadgetry. But the poor lamb’s in poor health, so he probably won’t be popping round for tea, scones and personalised advertising soon.If all else fails, I accept owl post.
Thanks, Stephen!
I would prefer to use owl post, actually; it would be an excuse to keep an owl as a companion.
Yes, the area code for Cromer is indeed 01263, but my mobile doesn’t have that code, so if you want to call my mobile from YOUR mobile you’ll have to dial +44 and then leave the first zero off.
Thanks all! Library is importing as we speak.
I think I might set up a group for this kind of question – there’s a lot of expertise on here that other people might like to tap in to.
Thanks all! Library is importing as we speak
Great news. Just out of interest, how did you do it in th end?
A group would be good – Tech Support for Scientists. A fine idea.
I was messing around with file sharing, trying to figure out how to do this when you need to be logged in as an admin but my music is not saved in the admin account, and then I remembered that there was an external hard drive under the desk… so I used that. It even copied my podcast subscriptions!
Well done – an external HD is always a very useful piece of equipment to have. I got mine when we had just the one (1) computer and were moving house, and I wanted to have the security of having a back-up if the computer got damaged in transit.
Anyway, enough about that. I’ve just seen the comments on this post, the most that any post of mine has ever attracted. Not quite of Rohnian proportions, but still… Sod science, sod even religion. The thing that really gets
geeks like uspeople going is computers. My next-most-commented-on post was about my iPhone…I got my fastest ever comments accrual on my other blog when I asked people if I should get a mac or a PC laptop. But my most-commented posts are about tea and football.
Forum is up
Henry – also talk to Charles Wenz who has access to all kinds of amazing Mac groups and is a Macophile. James McQuat similar, for when you really feel up to the hard stuff.
Cath: Does anybody actually post about
sciencenaturetopical issues on NN anymore?Mike: we’ve had that discussion before… it can be frustrating and feel kind of lonely, ‘cos you usually don’t get comments (or very few, as Cath has been pointing out).
If ever I feel a little lonely online, I’ll head to a place with real people and wine.
Damn, maybe I should have posted that in today’s poetry section
Congratulations. I had a Dell that did the old BSoD repeatedly, and although they quickly fixed the problem (a tiny plastic lug, snapping a pin on a chip!) I ended up buying a replacement that’s starting to go the same way…I have a very strong feeling my next machine will be a Mac too.
I had a Dell that did the old BSoD repeatedly
How interesting – and that the problem was mechanical. A tech friend of mine said my BSoD was probably caused by some part of the keyboard dinging the motherboard or something like that. Given that I’m on my second keyboard in two years, and my Dell has undergone a great deal of abuse, that’s no surprise. I’m a very heavy-handed typist so I think I’ll avoid expensive laptops in future. I now use the Dell via a cheap USB keyboard (cost £2) – and the great thing about desktop systems is that they’re modular. For the road I use my £200 Asus Eee … and of course my iPhone, which is a great little web browser.
Cath – glad it worked out. What Henry suggested (and apparently what you ended up doing) was what I was trying to get at with iTunes help – the part about copying it to a drive and physically moving the files to another computer. All this network sharing malarkey is just making the job more difficult (although I may just be saying this because of my lack of networking mojo).