New Owner!!! need some help!

Hi everyone! I just purchased my Macbook yesterday and I am extremely satisfied and happy with my purchase. The Mac OS is pretty much for me, and with the help of these forum members I was able to figure out some stuff and proceed with buying my Macbook.

There are just two minor problems that I am having right now and I was wondering if someone here can help me out.
The first and more significant problem (although i can live without it) is the fact that I dont know any programs I can use for File Decompressing. On windows, I either used WinRar or WinZip in order to open these files, but I tried downloading MacZip and MacRar, but both dont work. I was wondering if this was because I am on Leopard? Can any Leopard user refer me to any program?

Secondly, I have some wma. files from my Windows PC from before, and I cannot seem to play them or import the song files into my itunes. (only 1 album, thank god) I tried downloading Windows Media Player 9 directly from the Apple Site, but I got the same problem from when I was trying to install MacRar or MacZip. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
And once again, I thank all members for helping me out for my decision because this has been my best laptop ever! =D

 

If you still have your PC you may be able to use a tool to convert them to MP3s(I think this may only be in Media Center though).

 

UnRarX
StuffIt Expander
These are both compatible with Leopard. Some people use The Unarchiver, but I'm not sure if it's compatible with Leopard? Check the Mac Switcher's Guide for more information and links to Mac Software.

Do your WMA files have copy-protection?

 

Play wma
Convert wma


Not sure if they're leopard compatible though

 

For converting the WMA files, I used a somewhat clumsy but very effective route:

1) Use iTunes on your PC to import your WMAs into the itunes library as MP3s (first go into the advance settings in itunes and tell it to import all files as MP3; then select "import files" from the menu bar in itunes)

2) go into the new "itunes" folder in "my music" on your pc and copy the new MP3 files into your Mac's itunes folder - either over your network or by good old-fashioned flash drive

[On your PC, the new MP3 files might be saved into each individual artist's folder instead...if so, you can go into Windows Media Player, view by song, sort by media type, and delete all your WMAs...then you can copy all your artists folders, which will now have just mps files in them]


I copied almost 3,000 music files this way..

 

Microsoft hasn't updated their Windows Media Player for Mac for like 4 years, and they advise you to use Flip 4 Mac which is a plugin for Quicktime that can play WMA and WMV.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=windowsmedia

 

Yeah, Window Media Player is awful for Macs.

Use Perian + Flip4Mac + QuickTime and/or VLC Media Player. Perian and Flip4Mac are just plugins (components) for QuickTime, similar to what the K-Lite Codec Pack is to WMP in Windows. VLC is a standalone application; the codecs are built-in. And use iTunes for music.

You should still use DVD Player.app (included with OS X in your Applications folder) to play DVD video. You can play ripped DVDs too. You can open VIDEO_TS and HVDVD_TS folders from within DVD Player.app (File --> Open DVD Media). Or if your movie is an image file you can just mount the image by double-clicking and then play the video through DVD Player.app.

And of course there is Front Row.app (also included in OS X).

 

iTunes does have plenty of issues with album art. Not that it doesn't work, but it associates album art with tracks instead of embedding them into the mp3 files like WMP would do. If all you use is iTunes + iPods, it's not a big deal. It means, however, that Quicksilver (a popular app) doesn't show the right album art nor will most other mp3 players.

 

Yeah, I've heard that this app does a better job of playing DVDs than VLC producing better image quality.

 

Unarchiver does work under Leopard. It has some problems with huge rar files though (but that's true in Tiger as well).

Also, rarlabs (the guys that make winrar) makes a RAR version for OSX too - it's command line only via terminal, but it's the most robust unarchiver and archiver for rar files bar none (of course).

If you want an archive browser as well, check out Betterzip and Zipeg.

Betterzip isn't free, but it's pretty good at having all the functions you're probably used to from winzip and winrar.

Zipeg is free, but kind of buggy (can't save prefs in leopard or update properly). Also, it's a bit inferior to Betterzip imo.

There are a variety of reasons not to use StuffIt...
1. Slow extraction compared to any other extractor (including Leopard's)
2. .sit files themselves are slow
3. buggy integration with OSX (context menus, etc..not sure if this is fixed)
4. conflicts with OSX and 3rd party software (norton, etc)
5. Unarchiver and Betterzip both extract .sit files

 

Actually, the paid version of Stuffit is quite nice. It's very snappy and there are no bugs what-so-ever.

They use the free version kind of like a beat(even alpha sometimes) for the pay for software to make sure the bugs are fixed before they release an update. Honestly, it's like a whole different program.