A few weeks ago, my husband decided I needed a new laptop. I’m not sure why, probably because mine was more than a year old. He’s like that with electronics. For example, our big screen HD TV is now three years old, so he considers it outdated and wants a new one, specifically a 3D TV. I’d be okay with just getting rid of the TV period, and just having my computer, but that’s just me. He’s definitely the “techie” in the house.
Back to the topic at hand….my new laptop. I mentioned that I thought I’d like a Mac this time, but that I was in no rush. Maybe it could be a Christmas present or something. So, in the next few days, he comes home with a 15 inch MacBook Pro.
After a few days and figuring out a few things, (I had to Google how to right-click), I love my new Mac! I’m still learning and know I’ll figure out things as I go, but so far so good! Also, I downloaded some software, or should I say apps?
I have MacGourmet Deluxe, which allows me to organize my recipes, import recipes from websites and easily enter my old favorites as well as print out recipe cards for friends. I haven’t even begun to enter all my recipes and get rid of all the scraps of paper and index cards I currently have, but that will be an ongoing project.
And the most exciting… I’ve got Scrivener now! Which for those of you who don’t know, is writing software. I imported my 2010 NaNo novel and learned all kinds of things I can do with Scrivener. One of the cool features is that I can compile my novel, complete with a title page, page breaks for chapters, etc., and save it as a PDF file, which makes it much easier to print or share with others. The best part about it is that it actually got me excited to start writing again. 
But more on that later. This post was just supposed to be about the awesomeness of my new Mac. And like I said, I’m still learning. So if anyone out there happens to stumble across this entry and can give me some pointers, leave me a comment. Any advice or suggestions about how to use a Mac, or interesting features or software, would be welcome.
For the Love of Words 
Sep 13, 2011 @ 02:22:17
Congrats on joining the Mac crowd. I’ve been a Mac user for many years and I too have a 15″ Macbook Pro. I love my computer! I can’t live without Scrivener. A couple of other apps I can’t live without are iWork, Evernote, Sparrow (for my gmail) and Dropbox to name a few. Most of them can be found in the app store, otherwise you can google them. Dropbox works with most apps and you can sync Scrivener projects with your dropbox to keep them backed up and/or access them from another computer. Have fun discovering all the neat features of your new computer. 🙂 And good luck with your writing.
Sep 13, 2011 @ 06:16:56
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll definitely look into these apps.
Sep 13, 2011 @ 02:51:11
Greetings, Shannon, and welcome to the world of Macs & marvelous software! I actually bought my 11″ MacBook Air right before NaNo 2010 just so I could use Scrivener in its native environment to write my NaNo novels (and DevonThink for research databases).
Might I recommend a book by a professional writer who is also a Scrivener aficianado, Writing a Novel with Scrivener, by David Hewson. You’ll find it on Amazon, available on Kindle too, probably on other readers too. It’s not a book about Scrivener itself as much as it is about *writing* with Scrivener.
But you can do like I did. I didn’t have any books to help me adjust to my Mac or to my lovely new apps. Just dove right in and have gotten along swimmingly ever since. 😉 so well, in fact, that I added a 13″ MacBook Pro to my gear in May. Now I don’t know how I ever got along without them. Oh, and DropBox too. And GarageBand and the list goes on. I love my Macs! 🙂
Sep 13, 2011 @ 06:18:41
I actually went through Scrivener’s tutorial, but of course that can only get me so far…. Sounds like a book about actually using Scrivener to accomplish what you want specifically to accomplish would be very helpful. I’ll definitely look into getting a copy! Thanks for your suggestions!
Sep 13, 2011 @ 04:24:33
Hi congratulations on your new mac, I must admit to being tempted to change to a mac just so I can get my hands on the scrivener that is already released and a way down the road, it will be sometime before the windows version catches up. I am writing a children’s novel at the moment and am not keen on putting it on a beta version of scrivener just because of constantly changing each month
Sep 13, 2011 @ 04:27:31
You were linked on Scivener’s FB page and I thought I’d drop in.
There are too many quirks and cool little features on the map to list. My personal favorites are the new ‘multi touch’ features which you can access by clicking on the apple in the top left of the screen and choosing ‘system preferences’ and then ‘trackpad’ to see what they all are. My favorite among those features is the tap-to-zoom. When on a website with columns double-tap (don’t click, just touch the trackpad twice with two-fingers) on the column you’re reading and it will zoom in and fill the entire space with just that. And in case you don’t know already, use two fingers on the trackpad to scroll.