The OFFICIAL Mac User Support Thread

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My bet is that they require a warranty before repairs and say that without a warranty, they can't do anything about it.

The Genius bar guy's are nice, but the guy in charge of managing the Genius Bar.. i.e. appointments etc.. is very curt, has no sense of humor and visibly favors the people who walk in wearing designer clothes.. BUT our Apples store is also in the elite, wealthy section of town.... so maybe that's why...

Anyway, to say the least I was nervous the first time I went in for an issue and he was just not very 'nice' :p but luckily the other guys took care of me ^_^' (and complimented my computer..hello instant winna)
 
okay, so next week I am getting a Mac laptop as a hand me down from my brother. The problem is that he had gotten it from my godfather and he forgot his user info...so I guess we can't install any programs or something like that w/o his password. Is there anyway that I can do a system restore so I can just get it to factory settings?
 
I'd forgotten how easy it was to reset the admin account. Not much security if your laptop is stolen.
 
I'd forgotten how easy it was to reset the admin account. Not much security if your laptop is stolen.
 
Not sure if this was a result of a recent upgrade to SL, but my internet keeps getting cut off over wireless. The wireless connection itself is fine when this happens, but for some reason the internet won't work.

But when I restart AirPort, it instantly works again. Until it loses the connection a few minutes later. What's going on?
 
Not sure if this was a result of a recent upgrade to SL, but my internet keeps getting cut off over wireless. The wireless connection itself is fine when this happens, but for some reason the internet won't work.

But when I restart AirPort, it instantly works again. Until it loses the connection a few minutes later. What's going on?

This used to happen to me under Leopard. Haven't seen it in SL yet. My Mac would say it lost it's connection, but when I clicked on the network icon, it would do a rescan, see my signal, and reconnect.

Not sure what's going on. It might not even be a problem with your computer or AirPort. It could be something like someone in your neighborhood now using a signal that's interfering with yours. Try changing the channel your router broadcasts on and see if any others give you a more stable connection.
 
So I'm thinking about finally switching over to a Mac Book. Can someone give me the pros and cons for a computer layman?
 
I'll give you some pros and cons.

Well, everyone complains about the price of Macs. But seeing as how their customer service is top notch, the free help you'll get from the Genius Bar at their stores, the tight and efficient integration of their hardware and software (which means they can outperform PC's that on paper have better specs), and the lack of bull you have to put up with when getting stuff to work and keep working as opposed to Windows, it's worth the extra money.

You don't have to worry about viruses on Macs. The only ones out their are proof of concept viruses, there are only a couple, and they require you to be stupid enough to open a suspicious email and grant access to your system or something.

Mac works. Don't believe the hype that says Macs and Mac software never crashes. They do. I've done both plenty of times. But that's still only a fraction of the number of times it's happened to me on PC. I might have a app like Firefox crash maybe once every week or two on a Mac, if that. (FF and Chrome crashed on my Windows machine half a dozen times just today, no exaggeration). And while Windows crashes and requires me to reboot probably a couple of times a month, that usually only happens on a Mac maybe a couple of times a year. And it happens to me more frequently than other Mac users I know because I tend to push my machine.

OS X does many things far far better and easier than Windows. If there's any advantage Windows has (besides more available software and hardware) it's that you can do more customization in Windows (not really a big selling factor) and that Apple relies too much on the mouse. If you sit a Windows and Apple user down at their machines, and told them to do the same things, and took their mice away, the Mac user would be screwed. The Windows user would just use keyboard shortcuts, which are much, much nicer than they are in Mac. (If only Mac's Alt key worked like it did in Windows). But that's still not a huge thing.

Time Machine makes backups on the Mac painless (especially since they've sped it up so much in Snow Leopard). Their track pads now handle multi-touch gestures like the iPhone/Touch (although I do miss having the mouse button, clicking the pad itself doesn't feel natural). Graphics on the Mac are some of the best I've seen. And their displays are some of the clearest. I've yet to use a Windows machine that looks better than a Mac. (There's got to be some, but they're probably the very expensive, professional graphics PCs).

The AppleCare warranty is pricey, but they'll fix pretty much anything with the Mac. Even if the paint wears off (which I think is only an issue with older Macbook Pro's like mine). But, beware if you get a dent. Because AppleCare claims they invalidate the warranty because you can't prove the dent didn't cause the damage, and will refuse to do any work for free. Even fixing worn paint (which is how I got screwed out of my repairs. Thanks sis. :cmad:) But the new Macbooks are stamped from single pieces of titanium and far stronger than the aluminum of my older laptop. AppleCare also won't cover batteries, citing normal wear and tear. They will cover new power cords and adapters. (My dog chewed mine, and the Apple Retail Store got me a free replacement.)
 
Wow, sounds like the choice is clear. I may wait to read some reviews of Windows 7, but I'm leaning towards Mac. Thanks Wieg :up:
 
I just read a comparison between 7 and 10.6 a couple of days back. Somethings Windows wins, some things Mac wins, some things are really close. I think 7 just squeaked ahead because of the extra customization Windows provides and a couple of other minor things.
 
Is anyone else having an issue with Snow Leapord that kicks them off of WiFi? I have read a few things about it, and I guess there is no fix at the moment. I can tell you however, it sucks.
 
Is anyone else having an issue with Snow Leapord that kicks them off of WiFi? I have read a few things about it, and I guess there is no fix at the moment. I can tell you however, it sucks.

A few posts up.


I still haven't had that problem.
 
OS X does many things far far better and easier than Windows. If there's any advantage Windows has (besides more available software and hardware) it's that you can do more customization in Windows (not really a big selling factor) and that Apple relies too much on the mouse. If you sit a Windows and Apple user down at their machines, and told them to do the same things, and took their mice away, the Mac user would be screwed. The Windows user would just use keyboard shortcuts, which are much, much nicer than they are in Mac. (If only Mac's Alt key worked like it did in Windows). But that's still not a huge thing.

You can't say things like that. Talk about generalizing. I rely big time on keyboard shortcuts on my Mac in between Quicksilver and if I'm not using my mouse I use my Wacom but 95% of the time I use the keyboard.

I'm not trying to convince anyone but just because a lot of Apple users rely on the mouse doesn't mean there's others out there that do. There's plenty of Apple keyboard users out there.

I hope you're not the type of person that holds onto the old lame excuse that quite a number of Windows users hold onto. The one button mouse. I really cannot use Apple's mice. The most uncomfortable thing ever made. Talk about giving you wrist cramp. The amount of Windows users that slag OS X for a 1 button mouse is unreal. Even to this day. Or they wouldn't use it because of that or no right click for that matter. Even though ctrl click works just fine.
 
You can't say things like that. Talk about generalizing. I rely big time on keyboard shortcuts on my Mac in between Quicksilver and if I'm not using my mouse I use my Wacom but 95% of the time I use the keyboard.

I'm not trying to convince anyone but just because a lot of Apple users rely on the mouse doesn't mean there's others out there that do. There's plenty of Apple keyboard users out there.

I hope you're not the type of person that holds onto the old lame excuse that quite a number of Windows users hold onto. The one button mouse. I really cannot use Apple's mice. The most uncomfortable thing ever made. Talk about giving you wrist cramp. The amount of Windows users that slag OS X for a 1 button mouse is unreal. Even to this day. Or they wouldn't use it because of that or no right click for that matter. Even though ctrl click works just fine.

Well, including Wacom's sort of defeats the purpose of pointing out differences since they're used the same on both systems. I really doubt very many people actually use them. And the example was about using a keyboard to carry out tasks, not a Wacom.

And Mac has always been more mouse intensive than Windows. Sure you could memorize keyboard shortcuts (in both systems), but not every command has one. Whereas on Windows, even if there are no shortcut commands, you can always press the alt key to activate the menu, and navigate through it with arrow keys and letters (as opposed to only arrows in Mac), making repetitive commands much, much faster. Now, OS X has made some progress here, but it's still not as fast, intuitive, or easy as Windows. Especially with the Window and Properties buttons on PC keyboards.

And I'll dog on Apple's one button mouse as much as I want. It's a silly design decision after this many years to not have one (the Mighty Mouse is barely passable). Sometime Jobs' philosophy that he knows best what consumers need works, in cases like these, it doesn't. But it's never been a deciding factor for me, otherwise I wouldn't have bought my Macbook, just an annoyance. And one Apple could have avoided many years ago. I mean, I can't tell you how many students and mac users I worked with and taught who never knew about Ctrl-click. And why should they? It's a non-intuitive thing.
 
I never said a Wacom isn't different to the mouse but I use my Wacom the main purpose it was designed for. Drawing/air brushing and even still I have functions bound to it for keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop etc etc custom keyboard shortcuts in fact.

Again, I'm not even praising Apple's mice. Soon as I unpackaged my Mac(s) I ditched Apple mice and plugged in my Logitech mice. As for changing learning new things, you don't seem to realize the amount of people that wont learn new ways of doing things or how to interact something. I'm not saying all but the majority's attitude is "this is the way we've always done it and we'll keep doing it".

For me personally switching to Mac was the best thing *I* had ever done. Between design learning new things, colour balance, better multitasking. I've never looked back. I'm not trying to tell anyone what they should do, but I bought it for me to help improve skills, better working with the computer and so on.

Windows was really beginning to annoy me anytime updating drivers between bugs with the UI that the drivers created. Or it fixes one problem it creates another or multiple. It's not the first I've had UI drawing problems with graphic drivers under Vista in Photoshop. Then there's the whole mess of the Windows registry that irritates me. It's like a mowing headache in there if anything goes wrong and dll's. I don't need to be faffing about trying to fix something in Windows like it has happened in the past trying to get work done because something had broke from an update. It didn't happen all the time but it happened more than it needed to.

The only time I ever use my Windows machine is for gaming. I always like to keep it on the side for anything but the majority of time Windows is off.
 
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Vista is far inferior to XP in most ways. And I refuse to upgrade to it. Windows 7 looks promising (the best of XP and Vista without the crap), so I'll probably be upgrading to that once Microsoft finally cuts XP support.

If I could afford to buy one, I'd get a Mac Pro and bootcamp 64-bit Windows 7 for when I need it. Although, I'd probably still use Windows most of the time for various reasons, having that slick Apple hardware, and being able to switch back to OS X whenever I need, would be so nice.
 
I've got no complaints. Everything seems a little faster, and I got some hard drive space back.

I've only done one backup with Time Machine, but since it had been several months since I last used it, and it had to backup all the changes from the SL install, I can't really judge if it's really faster yet.

The only complaints I've heard is some people having issues with wi-fi connectivity.

If you can, get the five license version. If you can split it with four other people, it'll only cost you ten bucks.
 
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