[rewind]

I have had my MacBook Pro now for around 7 months and still getting to grips with some of the differences versus a PC. Please could someone answer the following:

1. What's the point of the Desktop? I just use the Dock and the Applications screen by going to the top left corner of the screen with the pointer.

2. When I leave my Mac turned on but in Sleep mode (i.e. lid closed), sometimes it will just operate as normal when I open it but at other times it will be a faded black and white screen with a progress bar. Why is this when the time I leave it in Sleep is the same each time?

3. How do I quickly do Page Up/Page Down/End/Home on a Mac?

4. How do you stop new Finder windows defaulting to My Files?

5. Does every installation involve a "drive" appearing in the Finder window and then you having to drag the file into Applications?

Any websites that show PC vs. Mac differences?

Sure I will think of some others!

Thanks.

[chenks]

Originally Posted by rewind

I have had my MacBook Pro now for around 7 months and still getting to grips with some of the differences versus a PC. Please could someone answer the following:

1. What's the point of the Desktop? I just use the Dock and the Applications screen by going to the top left corner of the screen with the pointer.

2. When I leave my Mac turned on but in Sleep mode (i.e. lid closed), sometimes it will just operate as normal when I open it but at other times it will be a faded black and white screen with a progress bar. Why is this when the time I leave it in Sleep is the same each time?

3. How do I quickly do Page Up/Page Down/End/Home on a Mac?

4. How do you stop new Finder windows defaulting to My Files?

5. Does every installation involve a "drive" appearing in the Finder window and then you having to drag the file into Applications?

Any websites that show PC vs. Mac differences?

Sure I will think of some others!

Thanks.

1. use the desktop for whatever you want. you can place files or folders on it, or shortcuts to apps or folders.

2. the faded progress bar version is hibernate rather than sleep

3. for what purpose?

4. finder > preferences

5. the drive is a disk image (must like an ISO file in windows), some do, some just give you the app in a zip file.

[whoever,hey]

3.
I think i know what you mean, the keys dont do the same as they do on windows. But having used it for a few years now, believe it or not i cant remember how to do that unless i'm sat in front of my mac at the keyboard!

[chrisjr]

Full list of keyboard shortcuts here

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

If you read it all then you'll find the answer to 3

[whoever,hey]

Originally Posted by chrisjr

Full list of keyboard shortcuts here

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

If you read it all then you'll find the answer to 3

I'm sure i dont do that for 3. But i cant think what i do do till i do it. Maybe XCode has some other shortcuts i'm thinking of.

[cnbcwatcher]

Originally Posted by chenks

5. the drive is a disk image (must like an ISO file in windows), some do, some just give you the app in a zip file.

If you get it in a zip file you have to extract it first. With programs (I refuse to use the word app when talking about desktop software) like Office, Photoshop and most antivirus software you have to go through a Windows-style installation process, but you don't always have to restart after installing the way you do in Windows.

[psionic]

Originally Posted by rewind

3. How do I quickly do Page Up/Page Down/End/Home on a Mac?

4. How do you stop new Finder windows defaulting to My Files?

3. Fn+Arrow keys

4. Finder > Preferences > General > New Finder Windows Show: (Select Folder from List)

[Logon]

Suggest adding cheat sheet from App Store , which will tell you a lot of shortcut keys when you hold down the command key !

[ibatten]

Originally Posted by rewind

2. When I leave my Mac turned on but in Sleep mode (i.e. lid closed), sometimes it will just operate as normal when I open it but at other times it will be a faded black and white screen with a progress bar. Why is this when the time I leave it in Sleep is the same each time?

The logic here is a little involved. When you close the lid, the machine goes to sleep. The contents of RAM are preserved, and the processor and other parts of the system either are turned off or go into a very low power state. When you open the lid, the processor powers back up again and the machine is ready to run.

However, in this sleep state, the battery will eventually run out, because the RAM still needs to be powered in order to holds its contents. If the battery falls below a critical level (about 5%) the contents of RAM are written to disk and the machine powers off completely into a state called hibernation. When you open the lid, the machine has to restore memory (and some other things) from disk before it can continue, and that is the grey screen with the bar running across it.

You can if you wish configure the machine to say "OK, if the lid hasn't been opened for so many hours, we may as well save battery by doing the hibernation thing anyway, so that although we take a bit longer to wake up at least the battery has some life left when we do". I'm not sure if you can configure that from the desktop; it's the pmset standby and pmset standbydelay options from the command line. If you regularly close the lid and leave the machine for three or four days, and get annoyed that the battery is flat when you use it next, this is worth turning on.

There are some wrinkles to this if you're using FileVault disk encryption, affecting whether you need to type your password in order to get the machine to even contemplate waking up from a hibernated state. That's the pmset destroyfvkeyonstandby option. It's unlikely that anyone outside a classified environment cares about this.

[rewind]

Originally Posted by ibatten

The logic here is a little involved. When you close the lid, the machine goes to sleep. The contents of RAM are preserved, and the processor and other parts of the system either are turned off or go into a very low power state. When you open the lid, the processor powers back up again and the machine is ready to run.

However, in this sleep state, the battery will eventually run out, because the RAM still needs to be powered in order to holds its contents. If the battery falls below a critical level (about 5%) the contents of RAM are written to disk and the machine powers off completely into a state called hibernation. When you open the lid, the machine has to restore memory (and some other things) from disk before it can continue, and that is the grey screen with the bar running across it.

You can if you wish configure the machine to say "OK, if the lid hasn't been opened for so many hours, we may as well save battery by doing the hibernation thing anyway, so that although we take a bit longer to wake up at least the battery has some life left when we do". I'm not sure if you can configure that from the desktop; it's the pmset standby and pmset standbydelay options from the command line. If you regularly close the lid and leave the machine for three or four days, and get annoyed that the battery is flat when you use it next, this is worth turning on.

There are some wrinkles to this if you're using FileVault disk encryption, affecting whether you need to type your password in order to get the machine to even contemplate waking up from a hibernated state. That's the pmset destroyfvkeyonstandby option. It's unlikely that anyone outside a classified environment cares about this.

Thanks but this happens when I have it plugged into the mains or on battery but still well above 5%?

[ibatten]

Originally Posted by rewind

Thanks but this happens when I have it plugged into the mains or on battery but still well above 5%?

Unfortunately, the various options you need to look at aren't exposed in the GUI, so you'll need to wade around with Terminal. If you're happy doing that, the command you need is "pmset -g", and you can then use pmset ("man pmset" to read the documentation) to alter the power management set up.

If standby is set to 1 (which it is, by default, on modern Mac laptops) then after standbydelay seconds have passed, the machine hibernates (powers the RAM off) and will then have to restart from a copy of RAM that was saved to disk. I think that by default it's set to 4200 (ie, 70 minutes), but I could be wrong about that. So close the lid, open it 69 minutes later: fast restart from RAM. Open it 71 minutes later: slower (relatively) restart from disk. My previous posting was wrong about this: in 10.8, at least, it's the default setting (I think it was an option in previous releases) so this is the behaviour you will be seeing.

If you're feeling keen, you can not only raise this timer substantially, but for extra credit you can have different values for it depending on if you're on battery or on mains. I have mine set to hibernate after 30 minutes (1800 seconds) when it's on battery, but to wait three days (259200 seconds) when on charge.

$ sudo pmset -b standbydelay 1800
$ sudo pmset -c standbydelay 259200

Alternatively, you could just turn it off completely

$ sudo pmset -a standby 0

which would mean that on mains the machine would always wake from RAM, and on battery it would run your battery right down. Or you could set it to hibernate when on battery, but when on mains to never do so:

$ sudo pmset -b standby 1
$ sudo pmset -b standbydelay 1800 
$ sudo pmset -c standby 0

or whatever set of options suits your purposes. I didn't realise, that standby is now set to 1 with standbydelay at 4200 (or whatever) by default: that must be pretty annoying behaviour.

[kyussmondo]

Originally Posted by rewind

I have had my MacBook Pro now for around 7 months and still getting to grips with some of the differences versus a PC. Please could someone answer the following:

1. What's the point of the Desktop? I just use the Dock and the Applications screen by going to the top left corner of the screen with the pointer.

2. When I leave my Mac turned on but in Sleep mode (i.e. lid closed), sometimes it will just operate as normal when I open it but at other times it will be a faded black and white screen with a progress bar. Why is this when the time I leave it in Sleep is the same each time?

3. How do I quickly do Page Up/Page Down/End/Home on a Mac?

4. How do you stop new Finder windows defaulting to My Files?

5. Does every installation involve a "drive" appearing in the Finder window and then you having to drag the file into Applications?

Any websites that show PC vs. Mac differences?

Sure I will think of some others!

Thanks.

1. There isn't much point in the desktop in any OS. It should be removed to stop people dumping crap there all of the time. Fn + F11 is a useful short cut to get to the desktop if you do need it.

3. Fn + the arrow keys.

4. Finder > Preferences > General > New Finder Windows show

5. App installations open a DMG file which is a disk image like an ISO or CD/DVD etc. Just drag the app to applications or run the installer. Remember to eject the DMG after installing.

You could probably find some differences but on the whole if you are familiar with computers then learning the differences of Mac is not a big thing.

[whoever,hey]

I randomly feel like giving you some advice that your not even asking for

Have you discovered expose yet? That personally is ace and the best thing about OSX. I set the bottom corners to show all windows and all current app windows. Very handy.

[chenks]

Originally Posted by whoever,hey

I randomly feel like giving you some advice that your not even asking for

Have you discovered expose yet? That personally is ace and the best thing about OSX. I set the bottom corners to show all windows and all current app windows. Very handy.

it's called "mission control" now.
three finger swipe up or down does the same as your hot corners.