Righty-oh as most of you are probably aware I acquired a PowerMac G5, Dual Procs 1.8GHz, 512MB RAM, OSX Tiger.

I've upgraded the RAM to 2.5GB now, and installed Leopard. So far so good, i'm liking it.

I've also installed iLife, and as such have been raging all over Garageband. It's a great tool that i've found immensely fun. It's not exactly professional grade, but even though I know HOW to do professional sequencing and use cubase and the like, i've never really enjoyed it as there's so much work involved.

The iWork package I didn't like. Just... doesn't feel right. Probably the Microsoft Office conditioning that i've had.

The preview function is nice - makes the horrible directory structure seem much more user-friendly and even though I know it's a complete waste of time (makes searching for things alot SLOWER) I use it for everything.

Apparantely I can't use iMovie as I don't have an intel processor. Oh well. Don't really care about that, I don't make movies. iDVD will probably never be used either as anything I need to burn i'll use the PC for.

So the Mac is a lovely machine, but I don't think I could ever use it as my main machine. I've had it for long enough to make an informed decision now. I can understand why people use the things as they're very pretty, but with everything so expensive and limited i've got to say that it's got to be the aesthetics that sell them.

A couple of issues however, hoping someone could help me.

Garageband - Having thousands of loops on-screen slows the monster right down. I popped in another 2GB RAM and it did nothing (though the RAM was registered, so it was properly installed). Could this be a graphics issue? The card is pretty ancient... and it makes it unusable when zoomed out as far as it will go (which with long tunes has to be the case).

Fans - Hot air is coming out the back. Which is understandable, and probably best that it doesn't stay in there. But when the Mac is idling (ie - nothing open, desktop, all programs force-closed) the fans will spin up to maximum which emits a deafening roar. This will last for about 5 seconds and then they're back to the quiet hum. What's up with that?

Keyboard - How do I change it so that Shift+' is the @ sign rather than Shift+2? I've tried American and English keyboard layouts.

Keyboard - How do I delete a whole word at once with backspace? In windows it's ctrl+backspace.

Network - How do I share my windows hard drives with my Mac and vice-versa? Both machines plus my server are currently connected to a Netgear gigabit switch.

Thanks all =)

Option (alt) + backspace.

Mark

The fans shouldn't be spinning up to full blast unless you are absolutely pounding the machine. I've got a 2GHz dual core G5 tower and the only time the fans ever span up to full speed was following a kernel panic when it went into emergency mode until it decided it wasn't, in fact, dead.
It's not go a lot of dust clogging things up has it?

If the preview (Quick Look function) is annoying your or slowing things down then you can turn it off. Right click in a finder window and select Show View Options from the contextual menu. There are options to turn off icons, icon previews and the preview pane. You choice will apply to the folder you are in and all of its subordinate folders.

Without getting all mac vs pc about it, considering the age of the machine is it any slower than a comparable PC of the same vintage would be running the latest version of Vista?

Re. Garageband - it's more reliant on the CPU than any other component. For the best performance, you'll be after a nice Mac Pro.

Crap - Apple did have iMovie 06 available for download, but I can’t find it on Apple’s site. They’ve removed it.

I've got the original installer for the free version of iMovie HD on my DropSend account - PM me an email address and I'll send you it. This will run on a PowerPC G5 fine.

Considering it's age yeah it's pretty damned nippy. I've got an Athlon X2 at 1.8GHz running Home Server and that's really fast, but I guess it's not comparable. I'm happy with the speed of the OS though, it's just Garageband that is the slow one. Only when zoomed out though, zoomed in close and it's fine. Definitely won't be getting a Mac Pro >.< I'm happy with this machine, it does everything I need it to at speeds i'll settle for considering it's price.

The inside of the machine is spotless; was going to clean it myself when I got it but saw that it had been done already. I don't reckon it's an overheating issue seeing as it does it quite rarely.

The preview function isn't annoying me, I love it. It's useless, but I love it =D

Thanks for the backspace tip Mark, and thanks for the iMovie installed steve =)

Do you mean the 'pressing space bar' preview, or the cover flow iTunes style preview?
The 'Space Bar' preview is very useful. Trawling through pictures with it is great, and I've a mate who's a music producer who uses it a lot too. The nice thing is it'll even play movie clips in the Finder. So much faster than opening an app to check the file.
I tend to rarely use the Cover Flow type of view, tbh.

I use the space bar preview - it's called Quick Look - a lot these days. It's very handy for a rapid overview of images, pdfs or text documents.

I played with the cover flow thing for a while, which is nice, but when Adobe insist on not supporting it and all you get is folders full of generic Adobe application icons you tend to fall out of love with it pretty quickly.

Mind you, that's the same for Quick Look, too. Damn you, Adobe!

I have to admit, I think I may have been onto something my mac-hate before. The more time I spend with my macbook pro the more it does my head in, same goes for ilife. It started off this week with keys missing and being hidden behind another invisible layer of characters - the hash key of all things! Why can't it be next to the Return key like it is on my PC? No delete key either! iphoto gives you three size options with it's built in upload tools - all of them end up the same size, the face detection seems to find faces in everything - trees, wheel trims, food, water...but often misses faces in photo's of people! It also imports all of your images into something that resembles a DMG file, making it's contents invisible to external applications such as firefox (you have to "browse contents" using finder and drag stuff back out again). With Ubuntu there's usually a free application for pretty much everything, yet they seem to want money for most of the equivalent apps for the mac. Oh, and I don't trust my magsafe adaptor to not catch fire if I leave it too long after it has finished charging...heard too many horror stories. Oh, and that annoying startup bong! It's really loud and I can't work out how to turn it off!

I hope it's just that I'm a bit stressed out with work and the wedding and I'm being over sensitive, but I don't think this is a good start. In many ways, linux is just better and I can use it with any hardware I choose.... except the macbook pro because the touchpad doesn't work properly, the motion sensors don't work properly and the battery doesn't last as long. <<sigh>>

Anyway, with regards to the network question, in Vista you select a folder and go to the sharing options in "Properies", set it to "shared". You can then, in Finder, in the "Go" menu, connect to server. You then type
smb//COMPUTER'S NAME
It'll ask you to log in and away you go. From the mac to Windows...I don't know, I haven't tried it yet!

And my Wintel keyboard has the @ above the 2 and the # above the 3. I live with it.



Such as? Give us examples and I'm sure a half-dozen of us use or know of a free alternative they can point you to.



Two years with my MBP and no issues yet. +1 for the non-horror stories.



Why are you shutting down your Mac? You really have spent too long in the PC world.

+2

Three years and counting.

Yeah, and don't shut it down. Just close the lid and let it sleep. Reboot once a week if you want to (apparently it helps to clear logs and caches and stuff, but I regularly go a month without turning the thing off and on again).

Apple made the iPhoto library into a package with the release of iLife 08, as a kind of safety measure - as lots of people used to rummage around in the library folder in previous versions and subsequently broke their iPhoto library! Apple have always recommend that you don't go into the library folder structures in the Finder, instead they suggest that you do any importing/exporting/editing within iPhoto itself. I think that was the reason why they made it into a package. I'm still on iPhoto 6, which has the standard Finder folders to store the library in, though I don't delve into it as I've heard too many stories of things going t**s up - so I do the following...

Importing photos: File > Add to Library
Exporting photos: File > Export
Finding a photo in Finder: Select the thumbnail in iPhoto, click-right it and select "Show in Finder" in the pop-up menu.

Hope that helps!

BTW: Hash is alt +3 keys

Funny, I use a lot of the same free apps I did under Linux on my iMac under OS X... For others, I've found better, free applications.

As I've written elsewhere, you should try the German Windows and Apple keyboard layouts if you are having an ahh Diddums moment with the # symbol on a UK keyboard!


I'm with Gav on that one. I switch all electrical devices off at the mains when I leave the house or go to bed.

That means, when I can't sleep and my partner is in bed in the next room, I usually end up using the Windows machine, because it doesn't "boing" on me...

The sound is nice, compared to the old PC beep, when you first switch, but after a couple of weeks, it is annoying.

The easiest way is to stick a screwdriver through the speakers Gav

How do you switch a laptop off at the mains?