Switcher tips

You wouldn’t buy a toffee apple, so why would you buy a bagel?

Here are 5, possibly obscure tips for people switching from windows to mac (I intended to do this months ago but forgot)

1. When you drag a folder over another folder of the same name windows will essentially merge the folders, anything inside the destination folder which doesn’t match a file from the source folder will be kept as is. You’ve come to expect this as normal behaviour, it would not make sense to do it any other way. Well then, you better pay close attention when using mac os x’s finder. When you move/copy a folder on top of a folder of the same name finder will obliterate the destination and all its contents first. To put it another way, after the action is complete the destination folder will be exactly the same as the source folder. Still don’t understand? Just be careful thats all I can say. If you need to merge a folder the unix commands will do it as windows does, so open a terminal and poop “cp -rf source_folder/ destination_folder/”. When I asked Jobs why finder acted this way he belched and blew the burp smell into my face.
2. There’s no registry database on the mac. Thank fuck for that. Instead there is ~/Library (”~” is a shortcut/alias for your own user area). This folders windows equivalent is rather like a combination of the registry database and the folder c:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data. Most applications will store their settings in a file similar to ~/Library/Preferences/com.supersoftware.teaspoon.plist The actual filename at the end there is rather like a website address only backwards. You open the plist file in an app called Property List Editor. Data files such as your address book go into ~/Library/Application Support and usually a folder named after the Application. Handy tip, if an application screws up somehow, you can usually get it back to year zero by deleting it’s plist file and its folder inside Application Support.
3. Most mac applications are downloaded in .dmg files. These are essentially the same as an .iso file, or a cd image. Double clicking a .dmg will mount it and it will appear as a new drive, in there, the application will be the file with a cute icon. You don’t have to install mac applications, you can even run the app where ever it is. And if you like the app and want to keep it, drag it into /Applications. Or anywhere on your HD, it doesn’t actually matter. When you run the app for the first time it will create all the preference files in ~/Library that it needs to without you knowing about the fact. If you no longer want the app, just delete it. There is no uninstall/Add Remove Programs. You will still have some gumph in ~/Library but usually we’re only talking a couple of K. That Application you’ve been running is actually a bundle, or in other words a folder. The equivalent to the .exe is actually inside it, right click on an application and choose Show Package Contents and you’ll soon get the idea.
4. Windows has quite a nice method of managing services, all listed in one place where you can stop and start them at will. On the mac services can get quite confusing. The main place where things like web servers are launched is /System/Library/StartupItems/ in there you will find such gems as apache. How it works is thusly, when the mac boots it goes through every folder inside here and runs any script it finds with the same name as the folder. To control a service find its folder inside /System/Library/StartupItems and run the script with a switch, for instance in Apache’s folder poop “./Apache start” or stop or restart. Alternatively you can use the SystemStarter utility by pooping “SystemStarter start Apache”. Oh yeah, I still haven’t a clue how these services determine whether they should start on bootup or be disabled.
5. Windows users tend to think of the window as the app and vise versa, on the mac an Application is conceptually something slightly different. An app just is, or at a push, the entry point of an App or even its very existence is the menu bar right at the top of the screen. What this means is that closing the very last window an application has open doesn’t mean that it is no longer running. You’ve probably just closed the document. So there :-p You can probably work the rest out yourself. But, don’t go mad feeling the urge to exit every single running app you haven’t a document open in. Most when sitting around won’t have an impact on your overall system performance, and hey, they’ll already be waiting for you next time you do need them.