My first mac just showed up today but..

[miket019]

I love my new mac pro that's the most beautiful computer I ever own. My 30"dell is on the way also. I'm a hardcore pc user but have always admire the mac pro. never been a big fan of the imac.

It's my first mac so it's going to take me a while to get used to. I love the clean look and easy setup. I'm not so happy with iphoto, I have been using Picasa for a long time and it organized my pictures real good, iphoto is kinda messy to me. Photo, music, and accounting are the most important to me. I just spend the whole day trying to convert my quicken and quickbooks file but I don't think it's going to come out good. I think i'm going to have to purchase a copy of windows and try bootcamp. It takes me a few minutes even to do the simplest task, but i'll get over that.

This week I gain a lot of respect for mac fans because it's not easy being a mac fan. Everyone is trying to tell me, no you don't need mac, they overprice blah blah blah. None of my friend is into computer. Anyway i'm very glad I made the purchase and i'm loving it and i'm going back to try to organized this photos into iphoto. anyone with similar experience?

 

[tschoftner]

Hello there!
Can't really agree to what you're saying!
I have been a PC/Windows user for about my entire (computer) life and I switched to Apple two years ago. Bought an iBook G4 which I absolutely, utterly and truly love; it's the best Computer I have ever owned!!
Ever since I switched I wished I did this a lot earlier. Everything just works on a Mac. I love the iLife stuff. iPhoto is (to my mind) one of the best apps ever created, easy and simple to use.
Believe me once you get over the "get used to the MAC"-time you'll absolutely love it.
Best wishes from Austria,
Thomas

 

[TheAnswer]

A couple of iPhoto things...First, just let iPhoto decide where it wants to keep your photos in it's folders. If you try to move them around, it's not going to be able to find them. You can still export them using File > Export if you need to. Second, the View menu is your friend...you have lots of options for how to display things in the main window...Film Roll, Date, etc...and by ascending or descending order. Next, use albums and folders to organize by event or topic...remember you can nest folders inside other folders. Below is a portion of my iPhoto library just to show you how I have it set up:

 

[product26]

Well, the nice thing is that if the mac apps don't work out for you, you can always run windows. I would suggest running parallels to run windows and your accounting software.

For photos, check out Adobe Lightroom. I like it better than Apple iPhoto and even Apple Aperture.

 

[AlBDamned]

Have to agree that iPhoto can be clunky and slow (although shouldn't be too bad on the Mac Pro), but yeah it will definitely take a while to reorganize from PC to Mac and then get used to all the short cuts and get your system tuned to the way you want to run. I rarely do anything major to my setup these days in terms of interface but there are always little new tweaks coming along.

Good luck with the Mac Pro, I'd seriously love one of those and a 30" monitor.

 

[miket019]

thanks for the tips guys, they've been helpful. I like lightroom too but it's kind of expensive. Just finish organizing iphoto, it looks ok now. At the moment, i'm transferring 240gb of mp3 so it might take a while. If I used the S510 logitech keyboard, how do i add an eject button to it?

thanks

 

[tuartboy]

thanks for the tips guys, they've been helpful. I like lightroom too but it's kind of expensive. Just finish organizing iphoto, it looks ok now. At the moment, i'm transferring 240gb of mp3 so it might take a while. If I used the S510 logitech keyboard, how do i add an eject button to it?

thanks

You don't need to add it.

Just hold down F12 for a second or so (longer than the tap needed for dashboard).

 

[AaronICT]

I bought a Mac Pro in February and love everything about it except iPhoto's performance with my photo library. I have six years of family photos in Picasa, about 9GB total of pictures. Picasa handles a library this size easily -- even on my old PC which was 2.0GHz with 1GB RAM.

iPhoto struggles when starting and is not what I would consider "responsive" at all. Everything else runs great, but iPhoto is just lacking, in features and performance, in my opinion.

So to the OP, I agree, you're not alone. I use Parallels in coherence mode to run Picasa.

 

[miket019]

I just install boot camp and also install parallels from that partition and wow, that's all i say. it's the best of both world. I save so much money, i can use my ms office, picasa, quicken without having to buy new software for the mac. It was a lot easier than expected. thanks for the tips.