To help you get the most out of your mac!
In: News and Views
28 Nov 2006In my previous post I discussed about the three common excuses that people have to not switch to Mac. This is the second part of my SWITCH FROM PC TO MAC article. Today we are going to talk about:
Three reasons why you will be happier with a Mac
(1) Things “just work” on a Mac
I must say (if you haven’t already figured it out) that I am not a computer whiz – and I don’t pretend to be. This is why it is so great that things just work on a Mac. Whether that’s the printer that you just bought or had for three years, or it’s the scanner at the Department that just has not been compatible with the PC it’s been hooked up to for the last year and a half. For some reason, stuff just seems to work on a Mac.
(2) A Mac just feels better
I am so much happier when I start my day with my Mac than I ever was with my PC. The icons and text is much more visually –pleasing and programs such as Mail and Safari are much easier to navigate than the Windows-based alternatives.
(3) No more stupid viruses!
This is not to say that I had much experience with viruses, but I’ve heard many horror stories. The computers at my University have not been immune either – much of our expensive equipment runs on PCs – and many of them have acquired viruses or something of this nature. I guess I am expecting that there will be some virus created by someone out there that at some time will strike Macs, but as of yet – we have had little to no worries about this.
And so I am sure that this article will not convince everyone to make the switch, and I am sure that there will be criticism concerning the things that I have highlighted, but this is only a perspective. I was a PC-only user until a little over a year ago, and now I wouldn’t dream of ever going back.
What is my advice to the person thinking about this conversion? Do your research, and talk to Mac users – maybe even try one out – you’ll be amazed with the experience.
Please share your comments with us below, and let us know if you have a similar or different experience.
The outside of the box said "Windows base machine or better", so I bought a Mac.
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16 Responses to THE SWITCH FROM PC TO MAC – A “BEGINNERS” PERSPECTIVE (Part 2)
Dave M.
November 28th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
The just works part is not quite true. OS X did handle “my” HP laser jet printer just fine. But my parents have this “all-in-one” printer that copies, sends faxes, etc… OS X didn’t recognize that printer and the drivers for it were rather confusing.
They have it working, but sometimes I have to go over and fix it. I can’t explain why, I don’t really understand why it gets messed up, but it does.
Mind you I’m not complaining. After spending nearly 7 hours reinstalling Windows on their Windows box because my parents “accidentally” went to a malicious website. I say accidentally because they went there with “IE” even though their default browser is Firefox. There are some programs that think that they need to launch IE no matter what your default setting is.
Part of that time was trying to convince Microsoft that the Dell Reinstall version of Windows was, in fact, genuine.
I now have then on a Mac Mini and they love it.
I made the switch a month prior to that due to a slightly similar issue. I wanted to reinstall Windows for a couple of reasons. It had been about 2 years since I got the computer and Windows sometimes need to be reinstalled for speed issues. When I went to install, my Dell box couldn’t find the Hard Drives in the computer. After a couple of hours on the phone with Dell’s support and $99, I was told to set the RAID configuration to something else. Apparently, the setting that Dell sets it to in the factory increase the performance of the drives. I have been running on the “slower” setting ever since and the performance seems the same to me.
I contested the $99 charge since the issue wasn’t a software issue,the software support guy was the one who solved the problem. The hardware guy in India should have been able to see what the problem was and correct it before sending me off to the software people.
After all that, I vowed that I would never buy Dell again. I didn’t I bought a MacBook and later a Mac Pro!
Mac Thinker
November 28th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Thanks for sharing your story with us Dave. That’s great stuff. Indeed for some reason the All-in-one printers don’t do very well on mac unless you use the Gutenprint driver…
It is amazing how life become so much more enjoyable with the Mac.
I would like to hear more stories from switches…
John
November 28th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
My high school gives out iBooks to all the students (we’re too lucky for our own good, we already know), and that was my first experience with OSX. This lack of choice in my OS probably puts me in line as having the best opportunity to disprove of Macs, but even I can pretty readily admit that the OS, at least, is far superior to Windows. The biggest thing a Mac lacks is hardware customizability, but if that’s not an issue for you (it sure isn’t for me) then Apple’s really worth a try.
Also, I’d try not to put too much stock in the “virus-free” argument. That’s just the friendlier side of the double-edged sword of Mac’s diminished sales compared to Windows computers. If Apple were to become as successful as Microsoft–and that’s a very obvious and understandable goal–then we all know the virus issue would be pretty much the same on both sides.
And finally, to the harcore Maccies: want to convert more people to OSX? Quit being pricks. Most of you probably aren’t, I know, but the percentage of elitist Mac users is incredibly higher than Windows, and perhaps even Linux. Act like a jerk, and all you’ll do is drive people away. Uncool.
Dave M.
November 28th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
John, the Mac Pro is finally a newer Mac that is fully customizable. At least in the sense of options, slots for PCI-Express cards and HD’s. HD’s are a dream to install. The best thing is the lack of cables dangling all over the place. The Mac Pro would actually look great with a Plexiglas cover instead of the brushed aluminum it has now. The inside of this thing is a work of art.
Mac Thinker
November 29th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Good point Dave, I agree with you on that. Also Mac desktops have always been quite customizable from my experience. Part like hard drive, memory are usually the same as the one you get for PCs…
John
November 29th, 2006 at 1:48 am
Really? I was under the impression that the architecture was very specific.
Mac Thinker
November 29th, 2006 at 10:14 am
The architechture could be very specific at time but it does not prevent you from upgrading some universal components like hard drive and memory and pci cards… And Apple even made it easier on MacBooks and MacBook Pro to replace those component.
One of the things however that is probably no longer replaceable by the user is the wireless card. It comes built in and unlike the iBooks you can’t replace it yourself.
Nevertheless in my opinion, PC users problem is more psychological than anything else. They tend to claim things that they sometime never use or need…
What do you think Dave?
Dave M.
November 29th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
John, yes they are limited in what video cards the Mac supports for instance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Look at how many video cards are out there for the PC, and look at what you have to do to run a modern game. Every time you get a new game, you pretty much have to go out to the website of the company that made the card, and download the latest drivers, then install them. That used to be a hellatious job. They have made the process easier these days, but it’s still a bit dangerous. You could get stuck with a machine that only supports VGA graphics. :shiver:
Apple decided that they would take a few really good video cards and use them in their products. This makes driver support much easier. Kind of like a video game console.
Sure it’s limiting, but I really like that. I finally don’t have to worry about video drivers anymore.
Tom
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:21 pm
John, you know nothing about PC or Mac, so don’t even go there.
“If Apple were to become as successful as Microsoft–and that’s a very obvious and understandable goal–then we all know the virus issue would be pretty much the same on both sides.”
No, actually, it wouldn’t be pretty much the same on both sides. Macs currently have no virus specifically designed to damage their system. There are millions of Mac users. Do you think that someone along the line decided to try and get a virus to work on a Mac? Of course. Have they worked? Nope.
It is fine to express your opinion, but if you claim something you don’t even know, expect people to get on your case about it.
aurin
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I shifted to mac last month, after having recommen ded macs for some time to other people (mostly due to lots of virus and spyware problems) but i am having big pangs because of
the shop promised my palm would work perfectly with mac, which turns out to be completely false, with isync it transfers only parts and mixes up calendars and adresses, the palm application for mac is useless (the one on windows is amazing compared to it, and absolutely easier to use than ical and adress) i bought missing sync and now have a semifunctioning palm, but find myself not making any appointments on ical and the memos are stuck in a small ancient application that spotlight does not even know
1) my entire cd-collection has been made to wma, – if i convert it to aac (with quality loss) it canot work on my creative mp3 player, and there is no space on the mac harddisk for it (the music sits on an external drive) so the way ituens is made simply means that my music is only useable in quicktime, one song at a time
2) the filesystem on mac does not let me do actions directly with rightclick, like emailing files, rotating photos, moving to other folders etc, and the automator is quite confusing for a novice, i am used to seeing thumbnails of all my photos and folders with photos on them and really feel a setback here
3) my 10000 photos need to be fixed, but they are properly placed in ordered folders, now it turns out there is no fast and simple editing program like picasa, either iphoto with no resizing and own idea oabout folders, or adobe programs that are good for lots of manipulation of single photos (i tried lightroom, lots of raw tools, but i am a mainstream user, who likes to rotate loads of photos and enhance colours permanently, and dont want my useless originals to be kept)
4) safari is not fond of using tabs, if i select text and choose the menu “search in google” i fo course want this in another tab – safari understands this but does not have the menu, and cannot work with my banking system
5) starting programs with the mouse is a hassle if it is not in the dock, but with the keyboard i used to press “windows” and the arrows to get to any program, fast and easy, not nessesarily knowing the title
6) my mac has 512 ram, and when i close a program it still stays open in memory, and using the dashboard turned out to eat up my memory as well, so i had to turn off most widgets, and of cannot use parallels nor any other big program
7) heard lots about bootcamp and thought at least i could use that for my beloved webexpress application that i have made all my webpages in, but bootcamp needs a xpsr2 cd – so now i need to buy another xp to have it work (or some frightingly complicated ways to make your own)
9) the delete buttom seems to be nonfucntioning – i just want a one keypress to send things to trash
10) i have installed programs and later dragged to trash but they still leave stuff or keep being activated (stoplight, nuclearmouse, hp printers..)
– so i consider getting a pc again, maybe trying out linux, but if the remote was working i would consider simply using the mac with windows, its pretty silent and has a wonderful sleepmode
(othervise shelling out 250 for memory and getting another harddisk without ntfs so i can also write to it…)
aurin
finland
Mac Thinker
December 4th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Aurin,
You clearly sound like an impatient new switcher who has not invested time into learning how to use the mac the proper way and is already frustrated.
Remember if you switch to a new OS and hope to have thing working as in windows, that’s not the right attitude. Most of the points you make do not make much sense to me. For instance let me answer your point number 1:
my entire cd-collection has been made to wma, – if i convert it to aac (with quality loss) it cannot work on my creative mp3 player, and there is no space on the mac hard disk for it (the music sits on an external drive) so the way itunes is made simply means that my music is only usable in quicktime, one song at a time
ANSWER:
- iTunes on windows allows you to convert any wma into an mp3 or AAC.
- you can launch an iTunes library from a different location than your music folder
- you do not have to import music files into iTunes default music folder. From the iTunes music preference pane you can choose that iTunes read music from wherever the music files are.
With this being said, if you combines the above three points you should be able to convert all your wma in your external HD into MP3 (or else) within the same external HD. Then make your mac read those songs from your external HD if you do not want to import them into your mac because of space issue.
I am not going address all your points but I hope someone else in this forum pick up from here and reply to your other points.
Clearly you need to know how to use your mac. And if you are not willing to learn how to use a new system, then DON’T BUY IT. Same as the day you are not willing to learn new things, your will lose your job! And if you expect Mac to be exactly as windows, then DON’T SWITCH.
PS: With Parallel you can run windows from a window on your mac. They just released an upgrade that actually let you run windows apps without even launching windows.
Also you can right click from your laptop trackpad I believe by putting two fingers on the trackpad while clicking. (you might have to activate this functionality from System>Preferences>Keyboard and Mouse.
Dave M.
December 6th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
I’ll step up. I just switched about 4 months ago. However, I have been exposed to Macs for quite a while. The original Mac 128K and a dual processer PowerPC G4 system that was running System 9 and later the beta of OS X.
4) I rarely use Safari. I was using it for a bit when Firefox 2.0 was acting up on me. It’s a fair system, but I have grown to love Firefox with all the extensions I use. I have had no problems with Firefox or Safari for that matter when it comes to online banking. I would check Firefox and Opera to see if they work.
5) There is an absolute must program that all Mac users swear by. It’s called Quicksilver. I suggest grabbing it as soon as possible. I use it to launch most of my programs. I use a smart folder and a program called Overflow to launch my games from. Using a smart folder, I “get info” on each game icon, set the Spotlight Comments to “Games” and make sure the smart folder looks for the keyword “Games” and it’s an application on my main HD. Only games appear in the smart folder window. You can do what works for you, of course.
As for not knowing the name, it’s kind of hard to find an app in Windows’ Program Files menu if you don’t know the name or even the name of the developer. A lot of times the group folder name is that of the developer. I went back and changed all those to the name of the App to make finding App’s a lot easer.
6) 512MB’s of RAM is usable on a Mac. My MacBook came with that. However, I went to NewEgg and bought 2GB’s for about $180 to get the machine up to 2GB’s. A vast improvement.
OS X is a little odd about the way it closes Apps. Some Apps will close out completely, and others will only close out completely when you actually do a Command-Q or the menu item Quit. I have found that if the App can have more than one window that is the same open at a time, you will have to menu/Quit the App. If it’s like a desk accessory like Dictionary or Calculator, then it will close out when you are finished. Mind you, that isn’t always true, but it’s pretty close.
I found that it’s easy enough to check to see if it’s still running by looking at the Dock.
Using Parallels with 512MB of RAM is just not an option. You need at least that much RAM for your Virtual Machine. 2GB’s is the best RAM size for any machine that is going to be doing Virtual Machines like Parallels.
I had no problems with other Apps when I had 512MB’s. I was actually surprised compared to a Windows box with the same amount of memory. In fact, even twice that amount and my parents Windows box would crawl. They have 512MB’s in a Mac Mini and it runs easily twice as fast now.
7) Yeah, running Windows in Boot Camp will require XP-SP2. I am facing that dilemma myself. I have a Mac Pro with 2GB’s and I still haven’t installed Boot Camp. I have tried, but wasn’t successful. Also, there is a bug in the way OS X partitions the drive that when I switch back, I have to manually adjust the partitions to get the space back. Hopefully, Leopard will fix that.
I’m not all that fimiliar with WebExpress, but there are a ton of great tools for OS X that are not all that expensive and do some amazing things. CSSEdit for instance. That thing is amazing! Just do some googling around, I suspect you will find something that suits your needs.
Palm… Hmm.. I didn’t think anybody used those anymore. I thought everyone was using smart phones and such now. Hmm. I do have some old Palm devices here, but I don’t use them. My Motorola Razr does what I need and works flawlessly with the Mac.
If you don’t like iCal, I would suggest staying away from Vista then. Vista will have a program that is pretty much iCal for Windows. Same is true with Address Book too.
You can always go to Thunderbird and other Mozilla tools to replace iCal and Address Book. Free of course.
9) Now I think you are being a little silly here. Command-Delete is not that terribly hard to remember. It’s just a matter of getting use to it. Just like getting use to the close button being on the wrong side of the window and Command-C instead of Ctrl-C. It didn’t take me that long at all to reprogram my brain for those.
10) OK, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to throw rocks when living in a glass house friend. I don’t need to remind you how Windows programs install, do I? I believe I have heard the term: DLLHell?
There is a great program that is really cheap called AppZapper. Drag the application icon into it and hit the Zap button. AppZapper, searches for all the files that the application created and removes them. I do still have some things that I have installed laying around that I haven’t figured out how to remove yet. It’s just a matter of working out where to look and spending the time to do it. They haven’t bothered me that much, so I don’t really bother.
Over all, I think you will find that Mac Apps are way easer to fully get rid of than Windows Apps. Vista doesn’t fix this either.
Well, that’s your 10 points. Looking at Linux is kind of interesting considering that OS X is OpenBSD Unix as a Kernel with a lot of amazing systems attached to make the Mac do some amazing graphics effects and work with text easier, etc…
Mac Thinker, I would suggest just going out and getting a good 3 button mouse for the laptop that is wireless. I have a really good Microsoft one that I use for my MacBook. It wasn’t too much and is pretty compact. Makes using the MacBook much easier. I never really liked track pads all that much.
Dave M.
December 7th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Oh almost forgot, there is a free program like AppZapper that essentially does the same thing. I think it’s called AppDelete? I’m not sure now. I got AppZapper really cheap from MacZot.com. They run daily specials on Mac software.
Mac Thinker
December 7th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Thanks for your great response Dave,
For once, the Mac OS X platform is like the only one that really cares about the consumer experience. We’ve got to teach those who don’t know how to approach it, the right way to do so.
Concerning the mouse, I am fully satisfied with the wireless mighty mouse. Great feeling and I love that multi-directional scolling and customizable buttons…
Dave M.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
No problem Mac Thinker. I got to tell you and everyone who is considering the switch…
Sure, the PC has more software and the Mac doesn’t have as much. But I’ll tell ya. There is a quality difference between the two that is just amazing. Mac software has such attention to detail and keeping a common UI, that it makes Windows software look like DOS based software.
Just take a look at AppZapper, or Disco, or iChat, Overflow, Dictionary, Path Finder, etc… Every one seems to just have such a great look and that really makes using the programs so fun.
I found a program recently called MemoryMinor. It’s a piece of software that is like iPhoto, but with a little work, allow you to link pictures with places and people so that you can create slide shows that are centered on specific people. You could create a slide show that shows someone from birth to old age if you have all the photos and set them up. This program is amazing. It’s easy to use and has a potential to be really great for folks that like to keep pictures all organized.
I am so happy that I made the switch and have not regretted the change at all. Loving ever minute of it.
monica
July 2nd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I am a photographer and I have a problem with rotating photos. I use photoshop and i photo sometimes and both programs have the ability to rotate photos or the vertical images automatically appear correctly when I look at them on a Mac but when I burn CD’s to clients, the slideshows have vertical images sideways instead of right side up on their PC. How do correct this problems for the PC users?