Switching over from Windows to Mac is relatively painless because Mac has support for a lot of commonly used files like Microsoft Word documents, Powerpoint slideshows and Adobe PDF files. So, compatibility is hardly an issue. One thing which you do have to take note of however while switching over to Mac is your iTunes library. So how do you migrate your iTunes library from Windows to Mac
iTunes for Windows is built with Windows Media Audio (WMA) support - it is able to play and convert WMAs. However, because WMA is a proprietary codec, it isn’t available in iTunes for Mac. If you’re not careful, you’ll be left with a lot of WMAs which will be unplayable on your Mac.
Whenever an application stops responding, there are usually three options to get things back on track again. But first, how would you know if an application has hung? The three cardinal symptoms are the spinning beach ball, increased CPU usage and systemic unresponsiveness. If you’re experiencing any one of these, especially the infamous spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), you’ve definitely got an application that isn’t working the way it should.
So the first option when faced with a frozen or unresponsive application is to kill it. Not literally, of course! We can try to kill or “terminate” the program. The easiest way to do this is to simply right-click the application in the Dock and select ‘Force Quit’.
One cool thing about Macs is that most of their applications interrelate and communicate with each other out of the box. Information bounces across multiple applications seamlessly. Data from Mail can be sent to iCal and Address Book without raising an eyebrow, as I have written in a previous article. Many Mac users embrace this feature but I’m sure that as newbies to OS X, you might not be familiar with this newly-attained ability.
Make Use Of’s Mac section has been growing steadily over the past couple of months and we’ve published a lot of articles about random topics i.e. productivity, music, plugins, etc. So I’ve decided to start a biweekly column dedicated to people who have just started using Macs, a.k.a “Switchers”, focusing on the issues they might face with the operating system during the early transition periods.
Hopefully this will ensure that your switch to Mac is a smooth process with minimal hiccups. So without further adieu, here is the first Make Use Of “Macnifying OS X” column.
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