[ Mac] New Users

[CMcK]

Yes, if you don't take the appropriate precautions.

[wakka]

If I install XP on my MacBook will it open it up to all the nasty PC based viruses etc?

Windows will be open to infection from viruses, spyware, etc. OS X will remain unaffected.

[Richard.John]

Here's a question for ya...

Can the inbuilt camera on an iMac be used as a general webcam, not just via iChat or whatever? I mean can it be used by third party software or web apps, etc.

[muddy]

Here's a question for ya...

Can the inbuilt camera on an iMac be used as a general webcam, not just via iChat or whatever? I mean can it be used by third party software or web apps, etc.

Yes. Any app that scans the USB bus for connected cameras should find and use it. Third party software like Skype, Yahoo Messenger and even an entire Windows OS and all apps (when using VMWare or Parallels) will use the cam.

[demon9k]

Well I just bought my first Mac. Its going to be used for iphone development , asp.net dev on vista and a movie player in my living room.

17" Mac Book Pro , just over 2k

Look out for threads in the trading forum soon to pay for it

[Taka]

Welcome to the club and say "goodbye" to all disposable income as you partake in the Mac ecosystem...

[Brad]

Anyone mind if I get rid of the Apple logo in the thread title? It doesn't display properly on anything except a Mac.

[muddy]

Anyone mind if I get rid of the Apple logo in the thread title? It doesn't display properly on anything except a Mac.

That's the point. It's part of being in The Cult of Mac

[Brad]

But I have to use poxy Vista at work!

[demon9k]

Welcome to the club and say "goodbye" to all disposable income as you partake in the Mac ecosystem...

I'm hoping that it can maybe create some disposable income through the iphone applications but only time will tell.

[Lyris]

That's the point. It's part of being in The Cult of Mac

I kind of feel like sticking a big grubby Windows sticker over the glowing Apple on my laptop to horrify the cult people, but that would leave gooey residue and spoil the Macbook Pro's resale value.

[Lyris]

Question for the Mac heads: how do I defrag my OS X drive? It's slowed down a lot since I first got it (I do shift large files around quite a lot), I'm seeing that spinning beach ball quite a lot now. Windows XP's partition (which I barely use on this laptop) showed a stark performance difference when I was using it a few moments ago.

[Taka]

iDefrag might be what you're looking for, it ain't cheap though at £23! A free, though more laborious method would be to clone your disk using SuperDuper, format your Mac's hard disk, then restore the contents again using SuperDuper.

[Brad]

Generally OSX needs no defragging. However, shifting large files around, a lot can cause things to slow a bit.

The absolute best way to do things involves having an external drive, performing a full, bootable backup, formatting the Mac drive and then restoring the backup. A bonus is that you end up with a backup of your system.

Taka's suggestion sounds good although I've never used SuperDuper so can't comment on that.

[Taka]

Generally OSX needs no defragging. However, shifting large files around, a lot can cause things to slow a bit.

The absolute best way to do things involves having an external drive, performing a full, bootable backup, formatting the Mac drive and then restoring the backup. A bonus is that you end up with a backup of your system.

Taka's suggestion sounds good although I've never used SuperDuper so can't comment on that.

It doesn't have to be SuperDuper, OSX's Disk Utility will do the job just as well, or Carbon Copy Cloner. SuperDuper is just what I prefer since it gives you a nicer interface and arguably more options than Disk Utility. Benefit of using Disk Utility is that you can use it from any OSX installation disc, whereas SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner require booting into your newly created external backup, and then launching these apps. Horses for courses really.