On Saturday, August 2, 2003, at 05:02 AM, Dana Collins wrote:
Greetings to all.
This query is for any and all OS X gurus out there. I finally got my B+W G3
up and running w/ OS X (10.2.6) and it's smooth as silk (so far! ;-).
Being new to OS X, I would have the obvious questions any user would have in
trying to emulate features that were known in the older OS while migrating
to the new OS. So, I have a few questions, please. Answer all or as few as
you wish. Any and all opinions/suggestions/advice appreciated.
Unsolicited advice: Go right now and get "OS X-The missing manual" by David Pogue or "The Little MAc OSX Book" by Roberta Williams. Both are quite good reference manuals.
If you're feeling adventurous, and wish to play with the raw industrial strength of your new big cat under it's pretty spotted coat, get the Oreilly book "Learning Unix for Mac OSX".
1) Does one zap the PRAM the same way as on the "old world" machines?
Same way...this is a ROM-based thing, not dependent on the OS involved.
2) Can one boot w/ extensions off? Is there a need to? Are there extensions
anymore as I knew them in OS 9? (I see a folder in the Library)
Not really, no, and not exactly. :-) Holding down the shift key at restart prevents programs that start up on login from running, but those are not extensions, per se. OSX does not run in such a way that extensions (generally) are needed, nor can they foul things up as they could in OS 9. Unix just doesn't work that way...
Login items can be found in the Login Items preference pane of System Prefs (aka Control Panels)
3) Drag and Drop seems more selective than it did before. Trying to drag a
pict out of a Quicktime movie onto the desktop proved unsuccessful
(perhaps the issue is that QT is not QT Pro yet)
I suspect that's the case.
4) (related to #3) Can you still take a snapshot of the screen and have it
show up as a pict in the HD folder? Can you drag n' drop this into an
appropriate app? (I could save a .gif file in the Text reader app,
but iPhoto didn't read it)
Yes, and no. The same old Command-Shift-3 and command-shift-4 screen shot key combinations work as before, but they now create a .pdf file labeled Picture <n> on your Desktop. Yes you can drag it onto an appropriate app.
5) What happened to SimpleText?
Morphed into TextEdit, a much more capable text editor.
6) iMovie (v3 I believe) doesn't recognize QT movies; is this common?
Yes, actually, has been common since iMovie 1, in fact. The only video type that iMovie recognizes is DV streams (as form a video camera)...with QT Pro you can export any QT content as a DV stream.
7) I really like the "click-and-a-1/2" movement to get the spring-loaded
looking glass cursor - I can't seem to do this in OS X
(the "click-and-a-1/2" motion doesn't get recognized). Is this common?
(Maybe the preferences are corrupt, which leads me to ask...)
That doesn't work, though dragging something over a disk causes the old sprig-loaded stuff to work. I miss this too.
8) Are there preference files or .tmp files of any sort in OS X? A common
fix for glitches would be to trash the preferences - anything equivalent
in OS X?
Yep. Go to your home directory, to Library/Preferences all of those are prefs files, called .plist files in OSX. One *very* good idea for OSX is to create another user, a backup user with administrative rights. It's possible for a users prefs to become corrupted so that they can't even log in. You can force the login screen then log in as a different user. Then, as an adminsitrative user, you can go in (via terminal) and delete the offending preferences. Or, if the other user cannot log in, then you know it's a more serious system problem.
There are also System preferences, found in the root Library folder. Those can get corrupted as well.
System-wide preferences -> /Library/Preferences User-preferences -> /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences
--
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