Just got a MacBook Pro :-D

[Tonestar1]

I've just bought a MacBook Pro with the intention ripping all of my CD's to lossless.Looks really smart and I am messing about today trying to familiarise myself with the OS, Safari, etc.

I will be buying a NAS drive, airport express and probably a DAC in the coming weeks/months. I have an ipod touch which I will hopefully using as a remote when I work out how to do it!

Can anyone recomemmend a half decent NAS drive that will work well with the mac?

Will airport express play straight from the NAS drive withouth the need for the laptop to be on? If not I think I'll buy a Sonos unless anyone has any other suggestions (not squeezebox, demo'd and wasn't keen on the sound).

Any other tips or hint for setting up/using my mac would be greatly appreciated as I hav't used a mac since higher accounting which was long, long time ago!

Thanks

Tony

 

[Tonestar1]

First stupid question...

How do I get Safari browser to maximise to full screen without having to strech the windo manually?

 

[John Duncan]

You don't. Macs don't really do 'maximising'. The closest you'll get is Window/Zoom, which will stretch it vertically but not horizontally.

 

[John Duncan]

Tonestar1:Will airport express play straight from the NAS drive withouth the need for the laptop to be on? If not I think I'll buy a Sonos unless anyone has any other suggestions (not squeezebox, demo'd and wasn't keen on the sound).

No it won't. In fact, NAS drives don't really work with iTunes as stand-alone boxes at all, you really need a laptop or other computer on. An alternative to Sonos is apple TV - and further, that might work as a 'NAS' for you anyway depending on how big your collection is, since it has 160gig of storage built in, which can be extended with some hacks.

As for tips, I found David Pogue's Switching to the Mac (O'Reilly) useful, since it looks at the Mac from a Windows User's perspective.

 

[Tonestar1]

Cheers John.

I suppose i'l just need to get used to the different features. There will no doubt be plenty more stupid questions. Perhaps I should try reading the instructions lol.

Any opinions on a good cheapish NAS drive? And do you know the answer to my OP about airport express from NAS?

 

[Tonestar1]

U already answered my question.

Thanks

I'll check out that link and do a bit of reading up.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi

You're doing exactly what I was planning to do - though I still haven't decided on mac or pc (check out the thread mac or pc). I love the look of the macbook! I checked with the store today and another option is using a mac mini as a media server. I was planning to rip to a lossless format (FLAC was my first choice) to listen to at home and then have an mp3 copy of everything for an ipod. Still not sure how you set up 2 libraries to make sure the ipod synchs with the mp3s and that I pick up the lossless files to stream to speakers at home.

I'd found out about how to do this all on windows using a media server (Tranquil pc T7) or QNAP (NAS drive I think) + squeezebox but still not sure which way to go. Have you tried ripcaster? They are really helpful. Will be very interested to see any solutions. Good luck.

 

[professorhat]

Do you need a NAS or will just an external drive do? If so, I don't know if the Macbook Pro has a Firewire 800 port, but if so, I can recommend one of these. They come in a few sizes from 500 GB to 1.5 TB - the extra speed of the Firewire 800 is worth it in my opinion (basically nearly twice as fast as USB 2.0).