Popagandhi

What I would tell every new switcher.

Full Charge and Software Update
If it’s a portable, fully charge it and run Software Update (just hit the Apple in the top left of menubar). Fairly standard stuff. There may have been significant updates to the operating system since your machine was shipped. Usually you can just download whatever Software Update tells you you need to.

Active Screen Corners
I’m usually too lazy to even hit F9 (Exposé, All Windows) or F11 (Show Desktop), so I can’t live without active screen corners. In System Preferences, Dashboard and Exposé, setting top right corner to All Windows and bottom left to Show Desktop usually does a great job. If you use a mouse too you can also set up Exposé settings with mouse buttons here.

Applications Menu
This is such a simple but invaluable trick. To have Applications readily available in your dock, producing something akin to a Programs list in XP (eww), you just have to click on Macintosh HD (or whatever you’ve named it) in Finder or Desktop, and drag the Applications folder into the Dock, right next to the Trash.

Holding and clicking on it (or ctrl-clicking, or right-clicking with a mouse), will produce something like this.

What is IE doing there? To check my results in one of the many badly coded portals my school uses.

Alt: You can just hit Command + Shift + A while in Finder.

Setting Up Chat
If you were in North America then right out of the box you probably don’t have a problem, with iChat built into OS X. Over here, all anybody cares about is MSN. The official MSN messenger for Mac client from Microsoft (free download, or from Microsoft Office) sucks balls. Nobody uses it. Use Adium. It connects to MSN, and every other network you can think of. It’s highly customizable. It does MSN multi-chat. And yes, it displays your stupid display pic and everyone else’s. It’s free!

Unlearning Everything You Already Know
While we’re on the issue of installing an application.. it is absolutely essential to unlearn everything you already known about installing and deleting programs in Windows. Applications you download inevitably come in files ending in .dmg, or .zip or .sit or .tar.gz (archived files containing more installation files, usually in .dmg). This is a simple thing but it appalls me to see so many new Mac users with hundreds of mounted disk images on their desktops AND running applications on a daily basis off them. The proper procedure (which is in fact very simple) is: mount the .dmg file (this is usually automatic after downloading), drag the Application icon into.. Applications. That’s all. When you’re done, unmount the disk image (dragging icon from desktop into trash, clicking the eject button next to the disk image in Finder, OR selecting it and hitting Command-E). You can now delete the .dmg file and launch the application from the applications folder, drag it into your dock, whatever. Just don’t let me see another MSN Messenger running off a disk image permanently. Ever again.

Quicksilver
A lot of us can’t live without Quicksilver, and rightly so. It’s wonderful as a launcher — hitting a hotkey invokes Quicksilver, then typing letters of the program or file you want to launch. Opening iTunes, for example, would only require you to type “TU”, and so on and so forth. The strength of Quicksilver, however, isn’t in launching — it’s in everything else, and it appeals to geeks for this reason. We use it for everything: moving files from one location to another, browsing into folders, emailing files and pictures to somebody in our address book with just one hotkey and three tabs. It’s free too. It won’t be easy at first glance.. but once you get it, you’ll never use a Mac without it again.

Browsing Heaven
The first thing anybody needs to do once they start surfing (usually with Safari, if you still use IE for Mac.. you don’t deserve any help at all), is to go to Preferences (Command+comma), Tabs, Enable Tabbed Browsing. Why doesn’t everybody do this? While you’re in Safari Preferences, also kindly Save Downloaded Files to a folder called “Downloads” or “To Sort Later”. A cluttered desktop is an eyesore.

If you’re missing the WYSIWYG buttons on sites like Blogger, you’re probably better off with Firefox, the free and wonderfully extensible multi-platform browser.

For Sharing
Bittorent clients: Transmission, Azureus, Tomato Torrent or the original BT client for Mac.
Other P2P: Limewire. Also check out other clients (Poisoned, Acquisitionx, etc), search in MacUpdate for Gnutella. (P2P that isn’t BT or DC or eMule died last season, I think.)

Configure Mail
If you would like Gmail to be your default mail client instead of Mail.app, downloading Gmail Notifier and setting Gmail as default in its settings will do the trick. Also try Growl, which works very well with mail notifications, and Gmail Notifier + Growl.

Target Disk Transfer
For quick and easy transfers (especially of files in large capacities.. like… censored) to and from another Mac, simply get a Firewire cable (6 pin to 6 pin), which should run you a couple of bucks (though the Apple stores want to charge you $30 something for it!). Just look in any computer hardware store for 6 pin firewires, or as it is more geekly known, IEEE1394. Connect the two machines, restart the target machine, hold down T after the chime, and there you have that computer’s hard disk connected to yours, into which you can put very many episodes of TV shows, movies, installation files and.. music.

Network Transfers
Enable personal and/or Windows file sharing in System Preferences (Sharing), note the IP address at the bottom (it’ll read something like \\192.168.0.2\yourname), key all of that into Windows Explorer or the Run prompt on a PC (or afp:\\theaddress\ in Connect To Server in OS X’s Finder).