Setting Up Your Mac
Mac Tutorials : ScreenCastsOnline

SCO0133 - Setting Up Your Mac - Part 2 [Extra Only]

25 January 2008
The Apple Store (U.S.) - Welcome to the Apple Store
Thought I'd break myself back in gently by putting together Part 2 of the mini series - Setting up your Mac.

In this weeks show, I make a couple of slight alterations from Part 1 as suggested by pman and wastern, then it's straight into a section on configuring your new shiny aluminium keyboard to get the most out of it.

Then onto a list of some of the top freeware and donationware applications to install on your brand new Mac (or existing Mac if needs be!)

A few suggestions on commercial software I can't live without, topped off with an announcement on the new ScreenCastsOnline 2007 DVD now available (members only - sorry!).

Finished off with news of a groovy prize draw for all those people who buy a DVD before the end of February.

You know what, I didn't break myself in gently at all!

Some links for products mentioned in the show:

iStat Menus - Website
VLC - Website
Adium - Website
Onyx - Website
AppTrap - Website
AppZapper - Website
Hazel - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode
1Password (Affiliate Link - 17% Off!!) - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode
Launchbar - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode
Rapidweaver - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode
SpeedDownload - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode
SpamSieve - Website - ScreenCastsOnline Episode

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
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SCO0131 - Setting Up Your Mac - Part 1

04 January 2008
The Apple Store (U.S.) - Welcome to the Apple Store-1


For the first show of the new year, I thought I'd offer a helping hand to all those new Mac owners fortunate enough to get a new Mac for Christmas. The theme of this show was suggested by a viewer and I enlisted the help of the guys and gals over at the ScreenCastsOnline forum to assemble a list of best practices and essential software for the new Mac user.

The resultant list is just too much for a single show so I'll make it into an occasional mini series of shows for the new Mac user.

This first show looks at several different aspects of setting up a brand new mac from the view point of a new Mac user. I look at:
  • Basic Dock Customisation
  • Converting to a Standard Account
  • Using Parental Controls
  • Switching on the FireWall
  • Setting a Screensaver Password
  • Pointers to Using Time Machine
In addition to these common tasks, I also recommend six free software packages to get you up and running as quickly as possible (including running through the different installation routines for all of them) The software includes:
  • Firefox - Web Browser (although I do recommend at least trying Safari for a short while)
  • TextWrangler - A Fully Featured Text Editor
  • Paintbrush - A simple bitmap graphics tool based on MS Paint
  • Perian - Some essential video codecs to allow you play many different types of video
  • Flip4Mac - Windows Media Playback
  • The Unarchiver - Free unarchive utility for many formats
These are just the start and we'll look at many more useful utilities and applications in the following episodes.

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member