Supporting Macs

FarmerPete said:
I've used CD drives since they first came out.
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Odd... I thought you were new to Macs and other platforms. CD drives were on Macs before PCs.

I have never had a computer fail to recognize that it even had the CD-Drive installed due to inserting a disk that IS GOOD. I burned the DVD about a week ago. It runs fine in every computer I've tried it in. The Mac just doesn't like it.
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The Mac didn't like it or the drive in your Mac? If the Mac itself didn't like it, it would have had the drive spit it back out. That is another issue altogether from what you described.

What you described is the drive itself hanging on the DVD that you put in. When restarting your system, it hung again before Mac OS X could take an inventory of the hardware it found.

See, I have a hard time thinking that you are not following this. If we assume you are a professional, then this should have been your train of thought from the beginning.

On the Mac, there is no eject button.
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And even if there had been, it wouldn't have worked given what you told us.

The eject button is actually a tray extender button... it only ejects under Windows. With other operating systems, it is nonfunctional when a drive is in use.

But, the real problem here seems to be you more than your computer. If you are going to try to force your Windows habits onto another platform... then your in for a hard time.

Maybe you just aren't cut out for Macs. This issue alone has shown you're most likely aren't cut out for supporting them yet. :eek:

Of the two of us, you really are having the hardest time with platform bias. I have no problems supporting (or using) Windows. But then again, I'm smart enough to realize that Windows is it's own platform that does things it's own way. So I don't get hung up on the differences.

That is what you need to get past... and it doesn't look like it is going to happen any time soon.
 
RacerX, please stop this getting into a flame-war. that is not the way of things here.

we offer advice without judgement, and silence to trolls.
 
I think it was the media (i.e., brand) used. Some drives don't seem to like certain brands, for whatever reason.
 
Some people get emotionally involved and are very resistant to--and threatened by--change.

But Farmer Pete, you STILL didn't tell me what kinds of AMAZING things your PCs can do that my Macs can't. I'm dying to hear it!

Doug
 
Lt Major Burns said:
RacerX, please stop this getting into a flame-war. that is not the way of things here.

we offer advice without judgement, and silence to trolls.
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Well, he asked for help... I look at this as tough love. :D

I mean, honestly, any help we give is wasted until he can over come his own platform bias. This isn't flames, it isn't about Macs or PCs... it is about learning to learn, and Pete needs to over come a mind set that is stopping him.

If I didn't think he would be better off because of this, I wouldn't waste my time. But he put the money down on the table for one of these systems, so now he needs to get past the shock that the rest of the computing world is actually different than the Windows world he was used to.

For those of us who have moved from platform to platform, knowing not to carry habits and preconceptions to a new platform is the most important first step.

Pete has never used anything but Windows and he considers himself a computer expert... both of those are going to work against him in his current endeavor. And it wouldn't matter what platform he was getting started on (be it Mac, Sun, SGI, Linux, etc.).

Personally, I think doing anything else other than telling him how things really are is patronizing him. And I think we owe him more than that.

:rolleyes:

Even if it comes with a little sarcasm mixed in. :D
 
dktrickey said:
Some people get emotionally involved and are very resistant to--and threatened by--change.

But Farmer Pete, you STILL didn't tell me what kinds of AMAZING things your PCs can do that my Macs can't. I'm dying to hear it!

Doug
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Half Life.
 
FarmerPete said:
I swear I must be speaking Greek or something.
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Nah, you're just pissing people off with your anti-Mac bias and the fact that you don't need ANY book at all to learn OS X. I switched from a nice 2.4GHZ XP Pro laptop to a Mac mini at home and haven't needed to go back AT ALL.
And I'm a systems administrator at work for the largest Active Directory domain on the planet (even Microsoft says so). I can easily VPN into my work networks (Cisco VPN client) and use RDP on the Mac mini to get into any of my servers to fix things from home, should the need arise.
I got this mini back over the recent Christmas holidays and just worked with non-stop over the holidays getting it customized to my personal preferences and it's just fine. Since I not longer really play "video games" on it anymore, it's better than my laptop was and has not crashed yet. I've learned more than enough on my own to support not only work Macs but my friends Macs as well. You might as well dip your feet in with a Mac mini, but be prepared to dump a lot of what you thought you knew about computers when you first boot it up. Namely, no registry hacking needed.

FarmerPete said:
I say what I'm looking for and what I want to do and I get a bunch of replies that totally ignore it, down talk to me like I'm an idiot, and then tell me the "RIGHT" way to do things which is pretty much what I said I wanted to do in the first place. I want to buy a #$!( Mac. I said that in post #1. I wasn't sure about which to get, and I still am not sure. For the love of God, I just wanted a book recommendation.
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Then buy a Mac mini. Don't think for one second that you can "compare" processors between the PPC/MacIntel and regular PCs. You can't. That's like saying, well I have a Dodge SRT-4 with over 400whp but I like the 200whp Honda better because it actually looks like a drag strip street car.
Looks are deceiving, processor speeds even more so.
It's all about OS, baby.

FarmerPete said:
You guys do know about books, right? These things people read to give them knowledge? I could spend 1000 hours infront of a Mac, think I know the vast majority of what I need to know, but since I don't know what I don't know, I wouldn't know that I didn't know it. Thats where a book comes in. Every book I've looked at looks like it's designed for people who fit in one of the following catagories 1) Never touched a PC/Mac in their life. 2) Never fully understood PC's and thus are frustrated and going to Macs. I do not fit into either of those catagories. I figured that there must be a 3rd catagory of books that I just can't find. 3) People who know PC's well, but they want to give Macs a chance.
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Honestly, if you're so dependant on books, get the hell out of computer support. I've solved 100% of ANY support problem I've run into at work and home just by using Google. Everything from AD domain "issues" (MS TechNet) to OS X iPod w/video issues (here). No book is needed. Play around until you come to something you can't figure out on your own and then go query the nets for the information. NOTHING you have ever done or will do on a computer is "new", someone else has been there before and posted about it on the internet.

FarmerPete said:
I'm sure many of you don't like me and never will since I wont say that Mac's are the best thing since sliced bread and Microsoft can go suck-it.
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Actually, I don't know you and could care less.

FarmerPete said:
Did my crack on iPods piss a few of you off that spent $300 on your favorite possession of all times?
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Hey, bud, a TON of DAPs out there cost about the same, if not more.
Archos ring a bell?

FarmerPete said:
I just don't get why you guys can't accept what I'm trying to do. I'm not looking for easy answers or to cheat my way through things. I just find the entire prospect of buying a $1300 machine and having no clue what I'm doing as a bad one. I thought a learning instrument such as a book (and or website as I posted in Post #1) would be a step in the right direction to help me learn to use a Mac. I guess that was the dumb thing to do. Reading books = Dumb. Best to just jump into the pool and if you drown, who cares.
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Hey, if you're too scared to explore a new OS on your own without the aid of a "crutch" (read: book) then why the hell are you in tech support anyway?
That's not a job where you can just read a bunch of books and take a few hundred-dollar "exams" and think you know everything. That takes HANDS-ON experience. I have ZERO college degrees and ZERO certifications, yet I'm highly sought after in the job market. Why? Because four years of in-the-field experience trumps four years of drinking beer in college, every single time. Now tack on 15 more years to that for a total of 19 years in the "industry". Yes, I have some books at home and work. I call those "reference manuals" to the particular operating systems I have to support. NONE of them are "teach-me" books about the operating system.
Don't need those for ANY operating system, be it *nix, OS X (basically a *nix system itself) or Windows. I learned a hell of a lot from hands-on experience. You just sound like your too scared to drop that much money on a system that might actually be smarter than you.
Man-up and get hands-on or get out of the kitchen.

FarmerPete said:
P.S. Yes, a laptop would be a bad idea. 1) Because it would be slower and I wouldn't be able to replace a computer that I use every day with it. Thus using it would be more of a chore than a learning experience.
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How the hell can make this assumption when you've never used one?
You sound like you're just trolling here based on your obvious bias towards the PC architecture.

FarmerPete said:
2) Because I couldn't plug it into my work's network due to restrictions by my employeer.
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What restrictions? I work for the U.S. military and believe you me, we have stronger restrictions than banks and government networks do. Yet I can easily get a Mac OS X system accreditated for use on my networks. Sounds like your employer needs a few lessons on the DITSCAP and real network security.

FarmerPete said:
3) Because I already have a notebook that I can use for remote computing.
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So? I have a Windows XP laptop that I now never use except when I'm on the road, which is rare nowadays. You know you can have both, right?

FarmerPete said:
P.P.S. Yes, I would have to replace "A" PC. I have 2 PC's that I use on a regular basis. They are right next to each other. PC2 and PC3 (server) are hooked up to a KVM. I also have a Laptop that I use. If I get a Mac, if it doesn't use PS2 I will have to switch the KVM to my main computer's monitor/accessories. Thus I couldn't use my PC2 at the same time as my PC1. Thus PC2 would be replaced. PC1 is not going anywhere any time soon.
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How is your lack of technological foresight Apple's fault? I mean, you should have planned for and purchased a 4-port USB KVM switch and then this would be a non-issue. This is an "issue" that you created for yourself, so don't go blaming anyone or anything else for this. Seriously, all the new shipments of PCs (Dells and IBMs) that have come in came with USB keyboards and USB mice. PS2 mice and keyboards are dead, dead, dead. If you're still supporting/using those, then you're a techno-dinosaur working for a company that's behind the times in liffe-cycle replacement.
You have to remember the 6 Ps:
Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance.
 
But Farmer Pete, you STILL didn't tell me what kinds of AMAZING things your PCs can do that my Macs can't. I'm dying to hear it!

Doug
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Um, eject a DVD when I tell it to? (joke) Support for just about every game? I've seen tons of games that are never made Mac compatible, but what was the last game released only for the Mac? Manufacturers like Blizzard are not the norm. All but some of the most popular console games were either ported to or from the PC. The few exceptions being games like Mario.

If you want another example, SLI comes to mind, and no the Voodoo 2/3 does not count. As far as processor power goes, they have always been fairly equal, but intel machines spank Macs in gaming graphics power. Don't believe me? Here is a link. http://www.barefeats.com/mac2pc.html Has a decent comparison. It doesn't compare the new Intel Macs, but then most software doesn't run natively (thus horrid benchmarks) on the new Macs yet either. With the crossover to the Intel platform there is a lot more potential for Macs in this area, but as of now they are lacking.

iBall, your post was way to long. :) You also seem to have not read the entire thread. While it IS a long thread, I wish you could have saved yourself some time by reading more of it. I said a few dozen times, I KNOW that learning Macs wont be easy. I know that it will be a tough road. I guess wanting a book that could help answer some questions and show me how to do some of the cool things that I keep hearing about makes me dumb.

Yeah, my company is paranoid about security, and often they go about security in the wrong way. (For example, none of our remote sales reps can have wireless installed in their laptops because it could make their Laptops insecure!!! Funny thing is, the sales reps don't even have confidential data on their laptops. But I guess if you could hack into the laptop you could then get into the VPN...maybe...oh well) There is nothing I can do about their madness but put up with it. They don't allow anyone to connect non-company computers up to our network. The only exceptions are outside people who come in for meetings and such, and we setup a port in the room they are in so it is isolated. Our company is large, and we are also the best at what we do in the world. They are super paranoid about other companies trying to steal our secrets. But whatever, I wont get into it to much. Wether they are dumb, paranoid, or brilliant, they pay my check so I have to listen to what they say.
 
Um, anyone think Pete's coming back? ::ha::

Pete,

Really, people here will help you, but you gotta lose the "I AM an expert and if it doesn't work the way I think it should, it's a POS" attitude.

You came from a windows world, and it's the only one you've known.

I think your biggest problem is that you actually think you ARE an expert. I'd bet, there's a few people here that could give you a run for your money on what you think you understand about windows.

You came here to learn. Good deal. Drop the attitude, get into the guts of it, and ask when you need help.

(My take only, but your whole approach is akin to learning basic, dropping into a C++ forum, declaring yourself a programming wizard, and asking for help in C++ and stating C++ sucks because that's not the way it worked in basic.)
 
Farmer Pete:

So you're saying that Windows PC's are game machines. That's great. Really. Wow! How about that.

What else? I can't find the post in which you boasted about being able to do 100 things with your PC that Macs couldn't do--or something like that. I'm too lazy to look any farther. So anyway, you've mentioned that the PC is a game machine. I'm waiting for 99 more fascinating uses. ;)

Ok, I'm just playing around. I'll let you off the hook since you won't be able to do it. It's just that pretty much anything you can do on Windows you can do in any other major OS.

Doug
 
Yeah. Please read my last post again in the thread. And people: CALM down, please. The case is obvious, isn't it. DVD entered, unrecognised by the system, system doesn't know what to do. The only way to get it out is rebooting and holding the mouse-key down. That's NOT an obvious solution and it's NOT exactly user-friendly. Given that Farmer Pete's coming from Windows, it's perfectly understandable that he would get frustrated by this case. So: Let's just give him the right answer first, next time, shall we. (He OBVIOUSLY found it out himself, too.)

Now back on topic. How did everything else go, Farmer Pete? :)
 
fryke said:
Now back on topic. How did everything else go, Farmer Pete? :)
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Nothing to bad. Just getting around. I really don't like the program install process. It feels almost like it didn't actually install anything. I know it has a different system than Windows and I understand that the basic idea is better than the outdated 1000 dll, 10000 registry edits, and incomplete uninstall paths that Windows PC's have, but it would be nice if there was a little more confirmation. It's just it seems kind of silly sometimes. I download a .dmg and run it, and then it seems to install. Well, I don't want the .dmg file sitting on my desktop so I delete it, but given how the Mac handles CD's, I always half expect to be uninstalling the program that I just installed.

EDIT: Also, is there a good free video player? It seems like the Quicktime that it came with is a pretty horrible player. It wont even let you go into full screen mode with movies unless I buy the pro version. I'll have to double check, but I think even the Windows non-pro quicktime will run in full screen. I have a lot of DivX type movies that I've backed up from my DVD collection.
 
the .dmg is a Disk Image, like any other removable drive. if you run the application from within the dmg, then it is temporaryliy installed. it will be uninstalled when you eject the disk. to install a program on the mac, generally (if it doesn't have a traditional installer that is), just drag the application into the applications folder of your hard disk (it can be any folder fyi). Mac OS does the rest (very little actually). in this process, one or maybe two .plist files are added to the library folders. this is where all the user customised settings reside, usually leaving the application a read only file, to save it buggering up. if a program does get corrupt, the corruptions are usually within these .plist files, which can be easily found with spotlight, and then you can trash them. clean .plist's are created upon next launch of the program. when an application is trashed, these files remain, so that configs can be kept for a later re-install. if you don't want them on your mac, you can easily trash them manually, although they don't have any detrimental effects to the mac os.

for videos, try googling for either VLC (very popular, and very powerful), or Bitplayer, which i prefer, but is less powerful.
 
I just want to clarify some things that Burns said about installing:

Most applications don't really need to be "installed". You just copy them from the dmg to wherever you want them (usually the Applications folder), or you can use them straight from the DMG. Either way, preferences files and stuff will be created in your Home Library, and these will not disappear until you explicitly remove them. Generally this is not a problem, since extra preference files will NOT have any adverse affects on other programs, and they're too small to really care about disk-space-wise.

In the case of programs like that, if you want to uninstall it, just drag it to the Trash. The preferences, again, will remain. If you want to be a fanatic about it and eradicate all the preferences, search your Library folder for related items.

If the app came with a dedicated installer (usually a .pkg), then that usually means it needs to install support files and extensions into your Library. It ought to also come with a dedicated uninstaller to remove these things.

The whole DMG thing always confuses new users. It's certainly a little strange. But the process isn't too complicated once you get used to it:

1. Download the DMG.
2. Mount the DMG by double-clicking it.
3. Either copy the contents of the mounted disk image to your hard disk or, if there's an installer on the DMG, run the installer.
4. Drag the mounted disk image to the Trash to un-mount it.
5. Delete the DMG.

This is sort of a throwback to the older days of OS X. These days, most apps really ought to be packaged in zips instead. Don't ask me why so many developers still use DMGs. Force of habit, I guess.
 
Yeah, I just checked on my PC and saw that I am using a quicktime clone. It is basically a full featured QuickTime player with out all the junk and crippledness of the non Quicktime Pro.
 
many would argue that quicktime pro should be free with new macs, being as the entire iLife is free, and does so much more. Quicktime is basically crippled. but that's another debate.
 
Glad to hear that you're getting used to the system, especially considering how difficult it can be for a user who has been so accustomed to doing things the Windows way.

As mentioned before, installing an app is very easy. If you downloaded a dmg file, all that is is a disk image file that acts as if its a regular volume after you double click it. You should have noticed that once you double-clicked the dmg file, it ran through a process and something that looked like a drive of the same name appeared on the desktop. Well, if you go into that drive image that is now mounted, you'll see the icon for the application. Once you see that icon, all you need to do is drag that icon to the Applications folder (if it's an application, of course). Most of the time, the developers will tell you or give you a visual description of what you have to do. Adium, for example, will actually have an alias (shortcut in Mac-speak) to the Application folder for your. What I do when there is no description and all I see is a bare icon of the application is I look at the top bar of that window and click the lozenge on the right. That will switch the look of the window and should provide the aliases on the left side to the default locations like your home folder and Applications. Once I see that, I just drag the icon over to the Applications listing on the left and drop it in there. The app then copies over to the Applications folder and I'm good to go. If I want to uninstall that particular app, then I just drag it from the Applications folder (or wherever else I decided to place it...it needn't be in Applications) to the Trash and then empty it. Voila, the app is uninstalled from the Mac.

Now, sometimes you'll see some disk images with a file that ends in .mpkg. If you double-click this, an installer will show up and walk you through the process. OnyX (a free and wonderful maintenance tool) is like this. As for uninstalling these types of apps, I'm not quite sure if you can just trash it or if you have to run that .mpkg file again. However, I have gone and dragged the older versions of OnyX to the Trash to delete it and haven't had any problems.

And on rare occasions, you'll see some software that is very Windows-ish in its installation process and is provided as an installer app instead of a disk image file, or you might even find it inside of a disk image file provided by that software developer. Installation is pretty much self-explanatory, but if you need to uninstall it you have to re-run that installation app so don't trash it once you've installed that particular app.

So these are pretty much all of the installation experiences I have had in using the Mac over the years, even with OS X. Hopefully I've made it somewhat clear for you and I hope that youre experience with the Mac wil grow to be a pleasant one. :)
 
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