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This is where I’m going to list all my “Stupid Questions”.  All Mac Friends are invited to let me know the best way to make the transition.  In the “Windows World”, our goal was to find keyboard shortcuts wherever possible.  Anything to reduce clicks, in the “Mac World” it may be different?  Look forward to reading comments….

01.           If you are 20 year vet of Windows (like me), how do you wrap your head around switching desktops and file structures?  On Windows, I use desktop shortcuts for EVERYTHING, and I even have shortcuts, inside my shortcut folders?  Is it messy?  Yes, but back in my software development days we made it our mission to “reduce clicks” and that’s what I use shortcuts for.  I’ve talked to several Mac people about file structures and none of them use shortcuts the way I do in Windows.  I finally figured out the whole alias thing, and the fact that it is that silly of a procedure, says that Mac doesn’t it like shortcuts.  What am I missing?  What is a better way to begin to view and use my computer file structure?

  1. a.              As a subset to that I should add that I have moved EVERYTHING to Dropbox this year, and I use Dropbox as my “Server” for lack of a better term.  I don’t want to go to iCloud yet, because I still collaborate with a mostly windows based team.

02.           Email… As we have discussed in the past it is the bane of my work existence even now.  I’ve tried Google and hated it, I tried Office 365 and hated it even more.  I went back to regular old desktop Outlook so now all things email reside in a 10 year old Dell Optiplex (P4), with infrequent backups.  Part of the reason I switched to a Mac.  Although I did start to move to IMAP from Pop mail so I do have a “sort of backup” for now.  Big question Outlook for Mac or Mac Mail?

03.           Screen captures?  I never knew just how often I used screen captures until I sort of lost them?  In windows I would use the ‘Prtscn’ or Alt + Prtscn to capture desktop images.  Then I would past into word because it’s easier to crop images in work, then I would copy the cropped image into Firefox if I wanted to save the image as a png.  I know I should be able to do this on a Mac, just don’t know how?

04.           Desktop is very uncomfortable, again something I may just have to get use to.  In Windows I’d use all my space and just drop everything to the system tray at the bottom.  I can sort of do that on the Mac, but it’s cumbersome.  I went into Sys Prefs and started to setup ‘Hot Corners’ which I think are good, but one of the options that seems to be gone in the newer versions of the Mac (or maybe it’s a Lion OS thing), is the option of ‘All Windows’?  I want one of my hot corners to let me look at all my open windows, but in a size that is usable?  Right now I can go to Mission Control, or Application Windows, but not All Windows?  I need Mac people to let me know how they use the desktop?  Especially if it’s more efficient that the “Window Way”?

More to follow…