I spent a few hours with my Aunt and her new black MacBook tonight passing on some of my newly aquired knowledge :) If you’ve been reading Keynote 2 Keynote for a while you’ll know that she’s my first Mac convert. The day her MacBook first arrived I told her to just play with it for a few days and write down any questions that popped up. When I stopped by to check on her I was surprised to find that she had learned how to change her desktop background and was getting fairly comfortable with the new interface. After taking a minute or two wireless networking our laptops we got started. Here’s a summary of what she wanted/needed help with in case you are ever in the position of helping a new convert.
- E-Mail: She uses AOL for her email and wanted to know how she could access her email without having to go to AOL’s site. I showed her Mail.app and set it up to retrieve her mail. I also walked her through checking her email, making mailboxes, and sending new email.
- Address Book: As I was walking her through composing a new message I showed her how she can get addresses out of the Address Book. This led to the creation of new cards and editing the data.
- Safari: Next up was surfing. She had already figured out how to access the internet on her own. I taught her how to make and use bookmarks. After showing her this site she wanted to know how to subscribe and got her set up with the built in Safari RSS reader.
- Dashboard: A few weeks back when I was showing off my MacBook Pro she was really impressed with the dashboard and all the widgets that I had installed. So I showed her how to add widgets to the dashboard and search for them at Apple.com. I installed RADMovieTimes for her so she could quickly check when the latests flicks were playing at the cinema.
- Software Install: I installed MS Office and QuickBooks for her. She was amazed how easy it was to just drag and drop new programs into the Applications folder to install them. This simple feat got her to yell out “I love my Mac!” She’s really happy that her MacBook is so much easier to use than her old Windows based laptop.
- iPhoto: She was recently in New York and wanted to put all her nice Statue of Liberty pics on her computer. After plugging her digital camera into her MacBook iPhoto fired right up quickly imported her images. “Thats it? I can’t believe how easy this is.” She proclaimed. Once we had imported all her images I helped her sort them into Albums and showed her how to play slideshows. I showed her how to use the simple editing features of iPhoto to rotate and enhance images.
You can’t imagine how impressed, amazed, and happy she is with her new MacBook. She was really excited when she ordered her computer, but I think also a bit aprehensive about throwing years of experience with windows out the… window, LOL. I’m sure that she’ll have more questions in the coming weeks, but think she’ll be a bit astonished at how fast she’s going to become proficient with OS X.
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Article Series - Switching My Aunt to Mac
- My First Mac Convert!
- Help Session #1, Meet Mr. MacBook
sweet business…
if only i could get my mom or family to convert, they would see the folly of windows…
People are so resistant at first, but if you let them try your computer out for a bit and show them that things aren’t all that different from windows they slowly become more and more interested.
I’m slowly working on my uncle and then hopefully my dad :)
converts are tough to get, that is why i am so impressed that you got 1 so fast.
i really wish that i had started my mom on mac. but at the time i was pc.
it is funny that my girlfriend at the time was mac and i was pc and fighting it like the plague. then it came time for her to get a new cpu and she only wanted pc when i had already made the conversion to mac. weird but true.
what do you think about using .mac for my blog?
i currently have an account with them. maybe there will be better picture integration or something. well i am going to give it a shot and update it later. i will let you know how it is going.
oh i got a new camera. i exchanged the sd500 that i dropped and got a sd800is.
the reviews were so so on it, but it takes good pics and i have not really been able to see a difference.
but i have been meaning to ask you, have you been using the different shooting modes on your camera? i noticed a huge difference when using them.
when using a foliage mode, the greens pop and there is a huge difference. i am though going to post the difference in 2 pics that i took with 2 different modes.
I’ve never used .mac so I can’t really say how good it is. Do you have full control over the files on it? If so you could probably install WordPress on it. That would prbably be pretty nice.
Good deal on the camera. As far as quality goes you might not see a difference by looking at the pictures on your computer. You will probably notice that the resolution on the sd800 is higher than the sd500.
I normally use my camera in the automatic mode. Then in certain situations I switch it over to manual. It has some nice preset modes, but I never seem to be taking pictures of the stuff that the presets are for :(
i am not sure if i can use wordpress on it.
.mac is like blogging, pic-posting, site making for dummies…
i am not a dummy, but it is easier and alot faster..
i like hte blogging part. i will let you know when it is posted so you can give me your opinion…
it should be up tonight.
it is odd about the camera that it is rated worse than the older model the sd700is. that is the one that i would have gotten, but it is only offered online and i do not like to wait…
trust me there is a huge difference from the auto mode to the other preset modes.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get your mom to switch :)
Anyways, let me know when you get your blog up and running and I’ll let you know what I think!
what i am thinking of doing is just getting an imac and configuring it then sending it too them.
but i want you to pay for it…
sorry, i have been busy… my birthday was this weekend and i have not been on…
but i did get a Wii…
Thats a cool idea. Or since she’s already got a monitor, keyboard, and mouse sitting around get her a cheaper mac mini and buy a a KVM so that she can use both computers at the same time :)