Which Mac did you get?

The Mighty Mouse needs a little care before it will act as a normal two button mouse.

Apple Menu >> System Preferences >> Keyboard & Mouse

That should let you change the settings so that it acts the way you expect it to. I agree: strange way to set the thing up.

There should have been a little extension cable for the keyboard. It buys you a little more space, although maybe not quite enough.

Damned, wussy speaker.

As for the itunes list, I have not answers, but I feel for you.

Good luck and have fun.

I for one hope you bitch slap his smug supercilious ass into next week. via your new Mac! What a way to break it in.

I read his drek and read the comments, which were even worse.

One thing I noticed is that everything he wrote and especially his commentors wrote is directed at..
a) Bush's administration
b) Republicans and (what they percieve to be) conservatives in general
c) What bloodthirsty, simpleton, inbred rednecks anyone who disagrees with them must be
... but in an oh so nuanced fashion.

http://www.apple.com/switch/

and http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/

A lot of great info on getting switched over.

Enjoy the new computer.

A good wireless multi-button mouse can be acquired for between $20 and $40.

Shame about the aggravations of transferring all your tunes, but you will probably get a lot of pleasure from all the goodies that come built in. I recommend you find a local Mac User group and ask a couple of pointy questions. You might get a ton of information so be forewarned.

David Pogue's Mac for Dummies, 8th Edition, is available in a 10 Mb .pdf file. Pogue is the NYT columnist who writes weekly articles on personal technology, and appears as a technology correspondent on CBS News Sunday Morning. More information available at two websites:

www.missingmanuals.com

www.davidpogue.com

You can find a document at one of those sites titled "iPod & iTunes: Missing Manual 2nd Ed"

The guy seems to be pretty darn prolific.

Get a USB extension cable for the keyboard. And yes, Apple should have put one in the box. CompUSA has USB extenders, or you can get one from Apple. Do change your settings on the Mighty Mouse to get two buttons. You will need to learn to lift your left finger off the mouse when doing a right click. After using the Mighty Mouse itty bitty scroll ball I don't like using the regular scroll wheels anymore. BTW, the squeeze buttons will break-in in a few days and won't require the a mighty-mouse sized effort to squeeze.

For speakers (you were actually expecting great internal speakers?) I bought the Logitech 5.1 surround sound system. Love 'em. There is a cheap set and an expensive set. Get the expensive set (but you knew that already). Do get the special digital/fiber adapter from Belkin that Apple sells. It makes a (booming) difference.

Be sure to post a picture of your new Mac so we can all drool with you.

Yeah, USB extension cables are cheap and they certainly beat having to drill a hole in your desk.

You got an iMac, right? The cable would have been short so that if you just have the keyboard sitting in front of the computer (without a keyboard draw) there is not too much cable clutter.

VP,
Welcome to the Kool-Aid Klub! Have you seen the new Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse ? I think it's the 510. Can't wait to get my hands on one for my wife's new iMac. I've already got an older Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse and I love it! But the new one really rocks. It's not bluetooth, but radio- based. The remote antenna is about the size of a small flash drive and plugs into one of the USB ports. CompUSA has them in the Apple section.

I'll see what I can find out about the XML issue and get back to you.

The other thing to remember about the Mighty Mouse is that because the buttons are touch-sensitive, you have to actually raise your index finger off it when right-clicking, otherwise it will register as a left-click. Not my favorite behavior in the world, but I've trained myself to work with it, and it's a small price to pay to get that great scroll-ball with its pinpoint accuracy.

As for the iTunes XML file-- have you tried using the other Music Library file? It should be a ".itl" file... you should be able to transfer it to your Mac by just dragging it into iTunes after you've copied it over. (The XML file is more or less a backup of the .itl file.)

I have my own iTunes+iPod book, by the way. Give me money, not Pogue. ;)

Did your editing of the file include the editing of the location of the music on your computer?

I'm looking at my own iTunes XML file on Windows and it looks like C:/Documents and Settings/My Music/ yada yada/iTunes. If that XML file is unchanged on the Mac it means it'll be pointing to a location on the Mac that doesn't exist. That's my guess, anyway.

I mean the value in the XML file that looks like this:

Locationfile://localhost/C:/Documents....

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Also, the thing about just dragging the Music Library database file into iTunes applies pretty much across the board-- it works for the XML file as well as for the .itl file, and I've seen lots of cases where that action magically resurrects the seemingly lost ratings and last-played dates. It won't create duplicate entries or anything, either. It's a pretty safe and usually beneficial thing to do, and I've had lots of luck with it in the various cases where I've helped a friend move to a Mac.

iTunes won’t recognize the XML file from my old Windows version, not even after I did some editing.

Did you try

File -> Export Library, copying the data over to the new Mac, and then File -> Import...?

Just dragging the Itunes folder over is unlikely to work.

Regarding this-

Tomorrow, however, I’ll have an answer for Kevin Drum.

I've read the article, and far more of the comments than I should have.

It's the same crap numerous lefties have been shoveling for the last year- no plan, incompetent management, not enough troops, etc.

Nevermind that the lefties' plan is to cut and run, couldn't manage a lemonade stand, and think that big numbers are what solve problems.

Why dignify it with a response?

Because it poses a serious question. What happens now?

I suspect that that is a question Stephen would have liked to answer anyway, and probably has some good thoughts on.

I've never tried a Mighty Mouse, but I *highly* recommend the MacAlly iOptinet mouse (incredibly bad name, but it's a great product):

http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/input_device/ioptinet.html

Because it poses a serious question. What happens now?

Sorry, I thought it was obvious.

Locate the enemy and destroy them. Repeat until enemy surrenders or is exterminated.

Mac's probably use different Line Break Styles than Windows... I'm no Mac guy, but given what OSX is built off of, I'd assume they use Unix style line breaks, not Windows style. There are tools out there that will convert line breaks from Windows style to Unix style out there. It may just be as simple as that.

2 words for you --- apple BOOTCAMP
www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

For CR-LF issues, see here for a bunch of Windows-to-UNIX utilities. My personal favorite (guess it's my Solaris/Linux admin side speaking here) is `dos2unix`. Couldn't be any easier

Heck, see MacOSXHints for all sorts of OS X goodies.

Joel:
Nooooooo! You got Pine Sol in my peanut butter!

Why not just buy a USB cable extender? Or... why not plop an extra $60 down for the BLUETOOTH keyboard???

I never read Drum, now I have to go and wash my hands.

The funny thing is, Stephen, you kind of covered this already.

I seem to remember a posting about W and the polls and I and another responded that we would also disapprove of W's performance since W wasn't hard enough. And I think you hadn't anticipated that response.

So, where's Drum been for about a year or 2?

At least pre-OSX, Macs used a third way of indicating a newline -- I believe it was LF-CR rather than CR-LF. Caused all sorts of nightmares for my software when I first ran into a CAD file exported from Mac software. I'm not sure what current Macs use.

But this should be completely irrelevant for XML anyway, shouldn't it? It's all whitespace, one way or another.

Nope, line breaks shouldn't matter in XML. You should be able to move over the library files fairly easily.

Alternately, I think there is software that can recreate an iTunes library from the contents of an iPod - although that assumes that your entire library is on your iPod.

New Mac? Why did you wait so long? How come you're so late to the party?

Jeez, man, it's good to have you aboard!

The hilarious thing, is now Apple has released software to let you dual-boot your new machine into Windows (assuming you have an Intel mac)!

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/04/05/bootcamp/index.php?lsrc=mwrss

Can I get a "best of both worlds"?

Yes, no FW800.

Because nobody really uses it except pro people, and they buy the G5 towers (or whatever the top end machine is at any given time), not the consumer machines.

I do *heart* Mighty Mice.

Sounds like Jay Reding is talking about Senuti. (You might also find something useful at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes site.)

Unfortunately... from what I understand if you loaded up an iPod with a Windows machine you have to reinstall everything with the Mac to use it with the Mac. It's worth a shot, though.

Brian:
Joel beat you to the punch in mentioning Bootcamp up-thread.

Word must have hit the street that you made the switch…

Apple stock is up $5 a share today!

You always struck me as a "Mac Guy" who just hadn't discovered that truth yet. Then again, all people with well-running brains (libertarians) strike me as Mac people.

Windows is positively Orwellian in it's stifling opressiveness.

Welcome to the club. I made the switch back in 1997.

As a long-time Mac user I have a few simple suggestions for maintaining the health of your new computer.

1. Buy a copy of Disk Warrior, the premiere Mac tool for maintaining the volume directory.

2. Download a copy of MacJanitor, a freeware utility that allows you to easily run unix housekeeping chores.

3. Learn to use the built-in Disk Utility program to repair disk permissions (a unix thing).

What's this I hear? A mac needs third party add-ons for optimal functionality? And support from users groups?

Based on past posts here, some mac-o-philes had me convinced that you just pull a mac out of its box, plug it in, and achieve instant and eternal nerdvana….

jmaster:
That requires one to not be an incessant tinkerer. Methinks Steve is one and thus the tools suggested by KZ will nicely scratch some serious tinkering itches.

A computer is just a tool. They all do pretty much the same thing. All computers need to be maintained, no big deal. The tools I listed above represent all the average Mac user will ever need to do to keep the machine running in top form. For dedicated tinkerers there is the unix CLI (Terminal) where they can type in obscure commands to their heart's content. On occasion I will run unix protocols to check for stuff like preference files corruption, but not often.

"A computer is just a tool." Yeah and a Ferrari is just a car:)

But seriously, I have been using Macs (and PCs) since 1987 and if you don't mess with them (using ResEdit on pre OSX Macs or running Unix command line software that you know little about) Macs don't need any maintenance except daily backup in case of an unusual emergency. In 19 years I have never had a virus and never lost any data, never had a disk crash, but I know of Mac users who have had all sorts of problems. Those people have a knack for breaking things.

Welcome to Macintosh.
=8^)

Personally, i don't recommend all those add-on programs. You shouldn't need to tinker with disks or repairing permissions unless something goes wrong.

You shouldn't need to tinker with disks or repairing permissions unless something goes wrong.

I’ve had this discussion several times before, and I usually put it like this: Do you change the oil in your car? (Yes) Do you wait for the engine to fail before you change the oil? (No) Well, that’s why it’s called preventive maintenance. ALL computers are vulnerable to data corruption, this is simply a fact. Tiny errors occur every time you use the computer and by themselves these tiny errors are no big deal, but over time they can add up and cause big trouble. Preventing the computer from breaking down just seems like a smarter strategy than waiting for it to break and then trying to figure out why it broke and how to fix it.

"ALL computers are vulnerable to data corruption, this is simply a fact. "

I haven't seen it in 20+ years (19 on Mac)-no corruption of my data-I have received corrupted files by email but none of my files has been corrupted on my computer.

I don't think you should have to buy a USB extension cable, as my Apple keyboard came with one in the box. I don't know about the iMac, but I'm pretty sure it should be in there.

I prefer it short - I hook it up to my iBook, which means no unsightly three-foot cable snaking on the desk.

I'm not a Mac person, but some friends who are have found this interesting:

Macs do Windows too

Download Boot Camp public beta today.

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple Computer will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp, you can download a public beta today. Boot Camp gives you a CD with drivers you need for Mac-specific hardware, partitions your hard drive to make room for Windows, and lets you choose which operating system to run at startup. Welcome to the new Mac world.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/