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griffman · Apr 23, 2001, 04:14 PM

I have written a nine-page overview of using OS X. It's a collection of tips and tricks that I've found useful for working with OS X these last seven months. It includes tips on X in general, the dock, the finder, and a few of the key apps. It's not intended to be a complete guide, by any stretch, but it does talk about how I've gotten OS X to be a very usable primary OS on my machine.

To prove to myself that X was usable as a full-time OS, the guide was developed entirely using OS X native technology - AppleWorks carbon for the document, Graphic Converter carbon for image manipulation, Grab for screenshots, and OmniWeb to look up facts when I needed them.

Check it out if you'd like; it's sitting on my mac.com homepage:
http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff
(yes, it's an ugly page, but heck, it took five minutes to create!)

Feel free to email me with any thoughts, corrections, comments, etc.

-rob.

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Visit macosxhints.com ... a community-built OS X hints and tips site.

[This message has been edited by griffman (edited 04-23-2001).]

gorgonzola · Apr 23, 2001, 10:17 PM

I'll definitely take a look at it.

Thanks for the effort, Rob, I'm sure it's a great article.

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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

ibr80 · Apr 24, 2001, 01:14 AM

Good stuff man.

Kosmo · Apr 24, 2001, 07:51 AM

What a great and selfless thing to do! You've done something special here and I thank you.

Are you going to try to have it published?

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edddeduck · Apr 24, 2001, 08:45 AM

Billiant thanks will give it a read l8er on.... got lectures now hang on... I might as well read it now...

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I Took The Red Pill

griffman · Apr 24, 2001, 09:08 AM

>>Are you going to try to have it published?<<

it is published ;-). i doubt it; it's not complete, it needs an index, etc. however, i intend to keep adding little tidbits to it, especially in the apps section, to make it more useful to those starting the transition.

glad you found it useful!

-rob.

G4 Mac User · Apr 24, 2001, 11:53 AM

Rob your making the big time now. Do I still get to read the changes first?

Zadian · Apr 24, 2001, 07:16 PM

Thanks Griffman!

It's a good overview. While reading it i saw the picture of your Finder and noticed the trash in the toolbar. The idea of moving the Trash into the toolbar is great. I found the idea so good, that i instantly stopped reading, opend a new finderwindow and tried to move the Trash from the dock to the toolbar - no way.
I opened the trash and dragged the proxy (that little icon in the window title) into the toolbar - et voila, the trash was in the toolbar. After that i read on and noticed that you give the advice to move the trash into the toolbar.
So you don't need tinker tool to move the trash into the toolbar.

Thank you very much for that really good idea! :-)

Apr 24, 2001, 07:44 PM

Great job. Nice work. The only thing I don't like is that scriptyish font, it's kind of hard to read. Any chance for a version with a sans serif font?

Lots of great tips in there.

griffman · Apr 24, 2001, 07:47 PM

I'll create a sans version with the next update. I just really like the look of Papyrus when I printed it...

-rob.

gorgonzola · Apr 24, 2001, 08:51 PM

On the topic of FAQs, here is a Terminal Basics FAQ I've written: essentially UNIX for the Mac User.

I had originally written it for this forum, and I will post it up in a thread later, but I don't have access to the text right now so it's on hiatus (very long story).

That's the PDF if anyone is interested. Covers everything from "What's Darwin?" to compiling to Xfree. Written for the beginner, mind you, all you *nix heads out there.

If you do download it, tell me what you think. It's also at Scrod's MacNN hotline server at scrod.wox.org. You need Zombie (HXD client) to connect.

</shameless plug>

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the oddball newsletter
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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

tie · Apr 24, 2001, 09:59 PM

Some of the tips just won't work for everybody. Like, "Don't quit applications!" A better tip would be, quit every unused application as soon as possible -- and pray that it saves you some swap time.

Some tips need to be fleshed out, like "Work around the OS X speed issues." How? By not launching any applications? Or "Buy RAM"; how much RAM is enough? Does everyone need to buy 448 MB RAM (the number you give for satisfactory performance)? At $100 per 256 MB, that's not cheap.

[Edit: Didn't mean to be so negative. I especially like the section on customizing the Finder.]

[This message has been edited by tie (edited 04-24-2001).]

billybob · Apr 24, 2001, 10:08 PM

Griff: A great article, kudos to you.

Geez, what I wouldn't give for your setup though. OSX at 1600x1200 would REALLY make my day.

Especially on a G4/733. I can only run at 1024x768, since I have an imac. Your desktop shot looks great, with two HUGE column views open, and of course drag thing. What size monitor you got, 19 inch?

I agree with Zadian as well.. the trash in the toolbar is a great idea that I'd never thought of.

griffman · Apr 25, 2001, 08:53 AM

>>"Don't quit applications!" A better tip would be, quit every unused application as soon as possible -- and pray that it saves you some swap time<<

I'm not sure I understand this -- if you have enough RAM, you shouldn't be getting swap. The two are directly related, right? Tip #1 is to get RAM. On my previous machine, a G4/350, I had 256mb, and left pretty much everything going all the time. I hardly ever heard the drive. If you're getting constant swapping on a machine with enough RAM, then there's something else going on.

>> "Work around the OS X speed issues." How? By not launching any applications?<<

Well, the tip you want to disregard (not quitting apps) is directly related to working around the speed issues -- leave them running, you don't notice that they take forever to start up. So is the entire two-page section on working in the finder - column-view avoids all the window resizing issues, the toolbar avoids the complications involved in getting to where you want to go without spring-loaded folders, etc.

>>Does everyone need to buy 448 MB RAM (the number you give for satisfactory performance)? At $100 per 256 MB, that's not cheap.<<

Buy as much RAM as you can afford. The more you have, the happier you'll be. I'll add that clarifying statement. Note that this probably applies equally well to both 9 and X. How much is enough? I had 256mb previously, and was pretty happy 95% of the time. On the new machine, with 512mb, I'm very very happy. So for me, it was an incremental $91 for the extra 256mb chip, since the new machine came with 256mb.

I, of course, can't control how much someone has to spend or not spend on their Mac. The purpose of the guide was to offer some ways to make using OS X more productive. Having more RAM is one of those ways. It's up to you to determine how much you want to spend, if anything. Otherwise I would have had to call it the "OS X Guide and Budgetary Recommendations Worksheet Document" ;-).

>>Especially on a G4/733.<<

I got a lucky trifecta in that (1) OS X was only about six months ahead of my normally planned upgrade schedule, (2) my wife was very interested in the ability for us to record DVD's for the family, and (3) my mom was retiring shortly and my old machine would make a great gift upgrade from her Power Mac 4400/200. The stars aligned correctly. :-)

>>I can only run at 1024x768, since I have an imac.<<

OS X on a laptop is a trickier question. I'd love to hear some optimization tips from those with portables, as OS X loves high resolutions, and they simply aren't available, except on the Titanium. I wonder if the new iMacs will go up to 1280x1024, or if 1024x768 is the new 'floor'?

>>What size monitor you got, 19 inch?<<

One of the first investments I made when I started doing more work at home ... I've had a 19"+ monitor for over six years -- there's no substitute for screen real estate :-). Again, a tougher question for laptop users and those on a budget (although the particular model I use, a Sony 400, is now down to around $450, which amazes me ... I remember when 19"+ monitors were all over $1K!).

-rob.

zoloko · Apr 25, 2001, 09:20 AM

I am agree with you in almost everything. I run all the applications I constantly work with at boot-time like you have said (when apps are not in use they use 0% of CPU and at most 1 to 3 % of RAM), well I have to say also that I have 384 MB of RAM. The work around I use for the resizing problem is to save the size of the finder window so I have always 4 columns of icons (in normal view), this way everytime I open a new finder window always is the same sice. This way when I navigate through folders I always have 4 columns (Of course you have to give all the windows a "keep ordered by name" option (So the icons acomodate to the window). But I am going to give a try to the comumn view since I found it could be a very good way too.

And Griffman, I think is more practical the use of the "delete" button in the toolbar than to drag the selected items to the toolbar "trash" (you know, now we are on UNIX not in a mac)

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zoloko

gooz · Apr 25, 2001, 10:58 PM

griffman: As a mac virgin who has been diligently trying to get up to speed of all you seasoned apple pickers (but not easily due to OSX DP PPP potholes), I want to say, Thank You for this post. Your guide is a real nice gesture in a forest of threads that seem to otherwise sneer at any hint of "newbie" help. I'll look forward to any updates.

gorganzola: Thanks to you too for your FAQ on unix. It's given me something to refer to in regard to all the Terminal lingo I keep stumbling across in this forum.

yuriwho · Apr 26, 2001, 01:28 AM

Rob, great guide. I'm currently running your stacked finder windows and this set up is fast but it hides my beautiful desktop picture all the time ;-)

Also I like having the dock always open on the right pinned to the bottom with the dual finder windows.

Gorgonzola,

also a useful guide. Please include a brief description (with extensive caveats) of cp, mv and rm and of course a brief lecture on ssh vs telnet and the dangers of enabling ftp as these are the most useful and common things people will need/try to use.

In your discussion of ls please add ll, my personal favorite file listing command (alias) that has ls -la piped into more.

Cheers and keep up the useful info, we appreciate it.

Y

JHromadka · Apr 26, 2001, 10:15 AM

I liked the tips, but it would be nice to say how to do them. Instead of saying things like "disable web and sharing services," tell people where in System Prefs to do this.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com

tpitts1 · Apr 26, 2001, 10:51 AM

I like the font in that PDF, grif: It gives the doc something that docs don't usually have. It was refreshing, to say the least.

edddeduck · Apr 26, 2001, 01:57 PM

Read it during my lectures great read off to by RAM 448 is not enough

How about the dock killer app that needs a mention or the apple script kill appledock or something like that ... It very usefull at times...

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I Took The Red Pill

gorgonzola · Apr 26, 2001, 02:16 PM

I'll add some of those updates.

What exactly do you mean by caveats? I mean, you can delete all your files with rm, or replace the right file with the wrong one with mv or something, but I'm just assuming proper usage ... I suppose I could add that stuff in.

ll is a good idea. I should add that alias to my tcsh as well.

My machine is currently unavailable, so I should have it back along with the Terminal FAQ on Friday. Once I make those updates I'll post it up as a proper FAQ thread.

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the oddball newsletter
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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

willamina77 · Apr 26, 2001, 02:59 PM

Hey what happened to the article. The Apple site says this page couldn't be found. Did they take it down or something?

Xeo · Apr 26, 2001, 03:19 PM

It says this homepage couldn't be found, or the member doesn't exist.

Hmm... Bring it back griff! I have yet to read it.

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tie · Apr 26, 2001, 03:40 PM

Originally posted by edddeduck:
Read it during my lectures great read off to by RAM 448 is not enough

Are you joking? I just ordered another 128 to make 256 total.

milhaus · Apr 27, 2001, 04:53 PM

Dude,
what font is that you're using. Nice looking. Is it a OS X Base Font? Must be, since you said you used it to produce everything . . . let me know, can't seem to see it.

yuriwho · Apr 28, 2001, 12:40 AM

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
I'll add some of those updates.

What exactly do you mean by caveats? I mean, you can delete all your files with rm, or replace the right file with the wrong one with mv or something, but I'm just assuming proper usage ... I suppose I could add that stuff in.

ll is a good idea. I should add that alias to my tcsh as well.

By caveats, I am indeed referring to the fact that what you do with these commands is irreversible. There is no Norton unerase to undo what they do and thus people should be aware that the command line will do what you tell it and can bite you if you are careless with it. On the other hand it is extremely powerful and useful and people will benefit from understanding it.

As far as ll is concerned, you should already have it in tcsh courtesy of W. Sanchez...try it. Check out 'more /usr/share/init/tcsh/aliases' for a listing of the aliases he has built into OS X tcsh shell by default. I believe that anything listed in this file will work for any user created on the system (at least for tcsh). This is where you should make alias edits that you want everyone on your machine to have.

Cheers,

Y

griffman · Apr 29, 2001, 11:04 AM

>>The Apple site says this page couldn't be found. Did they take it down or something?<<

I think they had some problems a couple times over the last few days, but it's there now, I just downloaded it to check:
http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff

>>what font is that you're using. Nice looking. Is it a OS X Base Font?<<

It's Papyrus 10-point, and yes, it should be in the OS X base install.

>>I liked the tips, but it would be nice to say how to do them.<<

Good thought; I'll add that to the next version!

-rob.