So I finally got myself a brand new MacBook Pro!! Woohoo!

I vaguely remember using Mac many moons ago and realize now that my skills aren't nearly where I thought they were. Couple questions...

- Before I start moving my music and installing apps like Serato, are there any tweeks that people tend to do like with PC? Stuff that enhances the machine for DJ use? Stuff that comes installed that I can disable or uninstall?

- Should my music be in a certain spot on the laptop? Somewhere that's best for Serato etc?

Any advice or heads up in making this move would be great!!! Thanks in advance all!

No tweaks necessary really.

I just keep all my music organized in iTunes, then Serato will automatically show you all of it when you open the program. Smart playlists in iTunes are great.

I'm not completely sure what you mean by using Itunes' smart playlist...to date, I have all my files in my own folder structure that I like, and I remember being dissapointed when I installed my Ipod and accidentally let Itunes do some kind of auto change to all my structure.

Actually you have two options... in iTunes, go to preferences/advanced/general. The default is for "Keep iTunes Music folder organized".

This does what you didn't like, reorganizing all of your files into iTunes own artist/album file structure with its own names. If you don't like that, just uncheck that box. Set iTunes to use your own folder structure as it's music folder, and let it add all the files to its database.

Personally I just let iTunes do its own thing, since any playlists I create in iTunes just show up in Traktor. I don't access the tracks directly, but if I do need one, just drag it from iTunes onto the desktop to grab it. But to each his own, if you have other apps that don't integrate with iTunes it makes sense to use your own structure.

Smart playlists are a very powerful feature of iTunes. They look like regular playlists, but the contents of the playlists (rather than you dragging songs into them) are based on a filter you set up.

So you can say "I want a play lists of all my 'house' tracks, that are 7 minutes or longer" or something like that, and it'll populate the playlist with those tracks. You can filter on a ton of things, genre, artist, album, length, file type, bitrate, date added, etc.

Whenever I download new tracks, I change the genre tag to different custom ones based on what I think the track feels like (like "Ryan Funky House", "Ryan Tech House", etc). I then have smart playlists for each of these genres.

quote:

Originally posted by OTtrancer I'm not completely sure what you mean by using Itunes' smart playlist...to date, I have all my files in my own folder structure that I like, and I remember being dissapointed when I installed my Ipod and accidentally let Itunes do some kind of auto change to all my structure.

Wow...pretty slick!! I may have to try that.

Question that just came to mind...kinda silly, but do you use an antivirus on your Mac? I never did on my PC cause I kept it off the net as much as I could, but I want my Mac to be more versatile in being able to test downloading etc and don't wanna get infected...any suggestions?

I don't bother, no. Make sure you use a router at home, that's a decent enough firewall for you.

Man, you should return it and wait about another month or so when the new redesigned models are supposed to drop.

___________________
Click the link below to stream all of my mixes past and present. New mixes go up about once a month. Enjoy!

www.mixcloud.com/jluger

everything ryan said is pretty much spot on, except for one piece of advice.

if you can't find a track's file he recommended finding it in itunes and then dragging it onto the desktop. this creates a copy of the file onto your desktop so you essentially are taking up twice the space. there are a couple of things i'd do instead.

- the easiest thing to do is within itunes, you can right-click on the file and say "reveal in finder" which is the mac os equivalent of saying "show me where this file is in windows explorer".

- something else i think you may want to start taking advantage of is spotlight. this will help you regardless of what program you're using. with the newer versions of mac os you have a VERY powerful search/indexing feature already installed. in the top right-hand corner of your screen you'll see what looks like a magnifying glass. you can search for pretty much anything in there. just type the file name (or what you remember of it) and spotlight will find it. from there you can display the results. you can also accomplish this within any finder window (it'll be at the top right-hand side of any finder window).

hope that helps!?!? i have a macbook pro as well and have been using mac laptops for about 4 years now. i'm by no means an expert... i learn something new almost every day. enjoy your purchase!

oh and with respects to anti-virus software don't bother... i think there are 1 or 2 viruses for mac os period. so why bother slowing down your system for that? it's extremely unlikely you'll get a virus that affects YOUR computer. i do think, however, that you could receive a file that has a virus in it, it'll do nothing to your computer, but you could essentially pass it along to a windows user. but that's a whole other discussion...

-keith

quote:

Originally posted by miamitranceman Man, you should return it and wait about another month or so when the new redesigned models are supposed to drop.

maybe... but who knows what problems those will have. at least this version he has is a pretty well-tuned machine at this point. but hey, nothing is ever perfect...

quote:

Originally posted by keithos27 maybe... but who knows what problems those will have. at least this version he has is a pretty well-tuned machine at this point. but hey, nothing is ever perfect...

I'm with you on this one Keithos, although I trulely appreciate the heads up about the newer model...I'm not one to stay with the newest models of anything...I'm never a fan v1.0 of anything! haha. On the other hand, I"m going to be very upset if the price drops significantly in a months time when this new model comes out! Maybe I should get informed...

**Another quick question...I was a heavy user of remote desktop on my win laptop. I would remote to my server at home where all my music downloads goto. Does Mac support a means of remoting to a win station? I thought it would given the support of things like Boot Camp.

Microsoft is nice enough to make a mac client:

http://connect.microsoft.com/macrdc

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan0751 Microsoft is nice enough to make a mac client: http://connect.microsoft.com/macrdc

You da man Ryan!!!