change from p.c. to mac?

[longhair75]

good evening friends,

how difficult is the transition from windows to mac? i started with win95, and moved along with microsoft through xp pro. i am planning to get a macbook soon. for starters i plan to use it for music and photo management, word processing, email and routine web surfing. i am interested in trying to do a web page or two once i get a handle on it.

any tips?

[Shagnasty]

Uh oh. You asked the question that should not be uttered. It is a little like saying BeatleJuice 3 times.

Have you used Macs recently? DO you know much about the current operating system?

To quote Pulp Fiction:

"I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different."

Macs are more than fine for all the stuff you list. You aren't exactly talking about obscure applications or uses. It basically just comes down to how you like their versions of the applications.

There are many ways to move your files from uploading them to a web site and then redownloading to USB drives to external hard drives. Some of that may take some tinkering. However, file formats like MP3 and standard image files like JPEG will work fine on a Mac once you get them there.

[AHunter3]

There's a web site, MacOS X Hints Forum (http://forums.macosxhints.com/), which I think you'll find helpful for answering questions, especially "I know how to do this on a Windows PC, how the heck do you do it on a Mac?" type questions. It's got a pretty even mixture of Mac lifers like me, former (or concurrent) Windows users, and Unix folk who have embraces OS X as a good Unix with mainstream commercial apps available to it.

[R. P. McMurphy]

I had MS Dos. I was early into Windows 3.0 which was the biggest piece of shit ever sold to the public. Everybody that worked for Microsoft at the time should be in jail for even thinking of releasing such an abomination.

Nevertheless, I suffered through 3.1, 95 (rat shit), 98, Millenium (old fetid rat shit), and finally XP.

Finally, I succumbed to wiser advice and bought a Mac with OXS. While the Mac isn't perfect, it is a galaxy better than Windows. I still have a laptop with Windows and I ask myself why, except that I can get the stuff on it that doesn't work well with the Mac (because the programmers are too lazy to write the code).

If Microsoft was an auto company it would be out of business. They are the Veg-a-Matic of operating systems. If you want a slicer spend the money for a Cuisinart, don't settle for the cheapie just because everyone else got one for a Christmas present.

Again, Mac and OSX aren't the be all and end all but at their worst they are a whole lot better than Windows ever pretended to be.

The switch isn't necessarily easy but in the long run it is worth it.

[longhair75]

friend shagnasty,

thanks for the response. the obscure stuff i need to run won't work on a mac. i will continue to use my thinkpads for work, but for fun, i think mac just might be what i need to break the monotony.

friend ahunter,

thanks for the site. i bookmarked it and will read there often.

[Eliahna]

Macs these days can run Windows so you can have the best of both worlds (or worst, depending on your POV).

My husband has a Mac. I want to love it, I really do. I want to use it. I want to be happy with it. I just can't do it. Five minutes on the Mac reduces me to a tantrum-throwing three year old. It just makes no sense to me - I think my brain is wired up Windows-style (and that's a scary thought). It's completely possible to transition and people do it all the time, but I can't do it.

[Johnny L.A.]

Once you try Mac, you'll never go back.

I switched to Mac (a PowerBook G4) a year ago. I love it. I like my PowerBook so much I bought an old iMac G3 that I have up at my house. There was a learning curve involved, and the Mac users here on the boards were a great help.

I got the G4 so that I could run Final Cut Pro in the studio I was involved with. I haven't gotten round to using it for making webpages yet, but (again, thanks to SDMB Mac users) got some free downloads for that. I bought MS-Office for Macs from the Apple website, so I have everything I need. One thing I don't have is The Blue Screen Of Death. My g/f has a PC laptop, and I find myself trying to use a two-finger drag on the mousepad to scroll. Doesn't work on her computer. ;) And I like the way the environment works (upper-left corner to show all windows, upper-right corner to hide all windows, etc.).

[longhair75]

friend sparty,

my main work application runs in ms dos. i use a thinkpad 770 to run it. it will never run on a mac, but that's ok. i think the macbook will be just what i need at home and on the road.

friend cazzle,

i have been saying that for years. i have just been windowed out....

[Onomatopoeia]

I switch between the two OSs (XP/OSX) all the time. All the applications I use on both platforms are either identical or virtually identical. There are a few applications I prefer to use on my Mac (Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Logic Express), but that's just a personal preference simply because I learned those apps on a Mac, not because they're really any better on the Mac.

The main remaining difference between the PC and the Mac from an end user persepective is how fonts are managed and used. On a Mac you'll definitely want to install some sort of font manager, like Fontbook or Suitcase. I highly recommend Suitcase. it's marketed by a company called Extensis.

The Mac still wins the ease-of-use challenge, though not by nearly as much as it used to. With the advent of OSX pretty much anyone who has experience with Windows 2000 or XP can use a Mac with no prior knowledge.

A major peeve of mine lately is the new Macs have the Intel processor but many of the applications haven't been optimized for it yet, so they're a noticeably slower than on a machine without the Intels. Because of this I highly recommend going with the dual-core processor if you're buying a new Mac. You'll thank me for that bit of advice later. Then when Adobe, Microsoft, etc... finally get around to optimizing their apps you get another bump in speed when you upgrade.

I guess the question to ask yourself is why you want to switch to a Mac. Is there something about a Mac that you find particularly alluring. i love the way mine looks, but I'm shallow like that. You may have more substantial reasons.

Crashes? PCs and Macs crash (or freeze, or lock-up...select the term you like best) about the same, which is extremely seldom. Our experience is Macs crash more. I have between 30 and 40 PCs running in my office at any one time, 24 hours a day, and they never, ever crash, of course they all have XP and are configured exactly the same. Our Macs, on the other hand, have been known to lock-up from time to time. You'll quckly learn that 'Force Quit' is your friend.

Using files between systems? No problems whatsoever. Files on a PC are usable on the Mac and vice-versa. A challenge you'll have is with Photoshop and Illustrator EPS files. The PC sometimes either doesn't recognize the file type or opens everything in Photoshop, even if it's an Illustrator EPS, but there are ways around that. The latest version of Microsoft Office on the Mac has the best compatibility with the PC version it ever has. The only challenge you'll have is with fonts. The most commonly used sans-serif font on the Mac is Helvetica. The corresponding font on the PC is Arial. Don't be fooled, they're not the same. The kerning and width of Arial is slightly different than Helvetica. If you type a page of text on your Mac in Word using the Helvetica font, and then bring your saved document over to your PC, when you open the document a font substitution will occur, changing the font in your document from Helvetica to Arial. When this substitution happens your entire document will reflow. You'll have the same challenge with the Mac serif font Times and the PC serif font Times New Roman. They are not the same font.

Speaking of fonts, I also recommend only using OpenType fonts. They're platform independent. You'll have fewer problems, especially if yo're going to be transferring files containing text or text elements back and forth.

Anything else you wanna know?

[mduser63]

friend sparty,

my main work application runs in ms dos. i use a thinkpad 770 to run it. it will never run on a mac, but that's ok. i think the macbook will be just what i need at home and on the road.

friend cazzle,

i have been saying that for years. i have just been windowed out....

You can run DOS programs on a Mac (or Linux, or Windows) using DOSBox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/) . I use it all the time to run a few old DOS engineering programs. Works fine, with no slowdown at all, even on a PowerPC Mac. It's mostly intended to run old DOS games, but it's really a general purpose DOS emulator and will run just about any DOS software. Of course you can also run Windows on a Mac using Parallels virtualization software, or Boot Camp from Apple. With current Macs using Intel processors, there is no performance penalty to running Windows on a Mac, it runs just as fast as it would on a PC.

As for the switch to Mac in general, I bought a Mac about 2 years ago, and at this point I don't any longer own a Windows machine (don't even have Windows on my Mac) and I get along just fine, with far fewer problems than I ever did on my many Windows machines.

There are several sites with active Mac-discussion forums where you can go to get help. MacRumors, MacNN, and macosxhints are all good choices.

[Tuckerfan]

From what I understand, Parallels is the software you want to use if you're going to need to run PC software on a Mac. Zero performance hit, and you can easily create "clone" PCs on the Mac, so that if you screw something up on the PC side, you simply delete the clone, and launch another one.

You can read a transcript of a discussion between Leo LaPorte and Steve Gibson on the features of Parallels here. (http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-059.htm)

[mrrealtime]

I have both, and I highly recommend having separate computers running for separate tasks if you can afford it. The Mac has a unique asthetic, but beyond its particular look, its not flexible. The pc is a tool that basically disappears and lets the software itself take center stage, which is why its "branding" is less powerful, but its essentially a better tool.

The mac is like a hammer that is encrusted with jewels...expensive and all about the hammer, not the job of nailing things.

The PC is that old dinged up hammer that gets well used and taken for granted.

I use my mac for some testing, and as a DVD and internet radio player. I also do some 3d modelling on it, which is nice on my 37" LCD screen. It crashes a lot more than my PC and I have both running 24x7, but the PC's endure a lot more abuse. Im starting to think that the more you use a computer the less it crashes, but who knows.

For gaming I use a gaming console (Xbox) which I also recommend. PC's for games just arent as good.

I have a pocket pC, cell phone, and and iPod(broke within a month of normal use), which sit in a drawer and never get used. Each is inferior to its "wired" counterpart at home, and when I leave the office, its great to listen to the trees, the sea, animal and people chatter, and be un-tethered to technology.

[Achren]

WRT USB thumb drives...this may no longer be a problem, but I know I would have to format the thing on a Mac if I was switching between a Mac and a PC because while the PC would recognize the Mac formatted drive, the Mac wouldn't recognize the PC formatted one. The was a year or two ago on school (old) computers so it might not be an issue with newer models. Can someone confirm this?

[beagledave]

A little surprised that no one has mentioned Apple's own switcher references

http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/

[mrrealtime]

WRT USB thumb drives...this may no longer be a problem, but I know I would have to format the thing on a Mac if I was switching between a Mac and a PC because while the PC would recognize the Mac formatted drive, the Mac wouldn't recognize the PC formatted one. The was a year or two ago on school (old) computers so it might not be an issue with newer models. Can someone confirm this?
Ive had the exact opposite experience with disk drives, mac formatted ones dont work on the pc but the pc formatted ones work perfectly on the mac

[mrrealtime]

A little surprised that no one has mentioned Apple's own switcher references

http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/
That's like asking Pat Robertson about switching from Islam to Christianity.

[control-z]

I'm not a Mac guy, but a Mac should be fine for what you want to do. You're going to have a to search a little for software, don't expect to go down to Wal-Mart and buy any game or software off the shelf, most is for Windows.

[Balthisar]

If you're getting a recent Mac, you're already getting a dual-core Intel processor. I recommend Parallels, but you can also go native and dual boot into Windows with Apple's Boot Camp installer for WinXP. I, too, still have a few applications that I can't do without on Windows.

The switch to Intel is what inspired my current round of product refreshening. I still have a PC that I mean to put on Craig's List when I get back home. I kept it around just for PC stuff, as VirtualPC was too slow for my patience. Now, there's no need. It'll run under Parallels at full speed (games, though, won't, since the video card does not run at full speed with direct hardware access -- yet).

As is, documents won't be a problem for you. I have all of mine on a Linux box served up to Macs, Windows, other Linux boxes, and anyone on the internet that can ssh into my system with whatever computer they happen to be using. It'll be seemless.

I've been using Macs since the Mac 128, and PC's since the Tandy 1000. I've always been more partial to the Mac, even when I was a Commodore Geek and Apples "sucked" (meaning the Apple II line). These days? I'm still much more productive on the Mac, if for nothing less than that I don't have to spend all of my time taking care of the operating system to keep it healthy.

[mduser63]

WRT USB thumb drives...this may no longer be a problem, but I know I would have to format the thing on a Mac if I was switching between a Mac and a PC because while the PC would recognize the Mac formatted drive, the Mac wouldn't recognize the PC formatted one. The was a year or two ago on school (old) computers so it might not be an issue with newer models. Can someone confirm this?

No, this is wrong. Thumb drives come formatted in FAT format, which works just as well on a Mac as it does on a PC. No reformatting is necessary.

As for other disks (like regular hard drives), the Mac uses HFS+ which the PC can't read. However, the Mac will read PC disks fine, assuming they're in FAT32 format. NTFS disks can be read on a Mac, but not written (yet). If you need a hard drive that will work on both a PC and a Mac, format it using FAT32. There are utilities available that add the ability to read Mac-formatted disks to Windows. MacDrive (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/) and MacOpener (http://www.dataviz.com/products/macopener/) are popular options.

[beagledave]

That's like asking Pat Robertson about switching from Islam to Christianity.

What the hell are you talking about?

From the OP:


i am planning to get a macbook soon.


The site I linked to is just for those type of folks who have already decided to switch. Did you actually read the site or did you just decide to throw that snark in?

[mazinger_z]

If you're getting a recent Mac, you're already getting a dual-core Intel processor. I recommend Parallels, but you can also go native and dual boot into Windows with Apple's Boot Camp installer for WinXP. I, too, still have a few applications that I can't do without on Windows. Does this mean that I can run games on Windows side (am I even getting the concept right)? Is there a performance hit?

[Cartooniverse]

Those long-time Mac users who remember my vicious hateful rants when I first transitioned to The Light Side by going to Macintosh can attest to this- it's hard sometimes. However, the system by very design and from the basement up is Integrated.

I started with an IBM PC 8088 with a full-height Winchester Drive.( 10 Megs I think, which was pretty hotsy totsy at the time ). The days of frantically remembering DOS code to make one bit work with another are long gone.

I think the sites folks have suggested are excellent. Take your time. Find someone who OWNS a Mac. They will, of course, be rabid Mac-Believers. ( I like to call us LightSiders, because trust me when I tell you that there is a lightness and ease of use in this OS that truly makes one happy. )

You will find that you can turn it on, do five things at once, have fun, work hard, and turn it off.

That's what it is supposed to do, and instead of being the NORM to do battle with a machine, it's peripherals and software interfaces, the NORM is just that. Turn on, work, play, turn off. Does it lock up ? Sure. Bullshit to anyone who claims a Macintosh cannot lock up. However, the basics of good machine and OS maintenance deal with that nicely.

My two cents? The day you buy a Macintosh, do not leave the store without buying a copy of Disk Warrior by Alsoft. Run it once a month. Life will be beautiful. :)

Cartooniverse

[Balthisar]

Does this mean that I can run games on Windows side (am I even getting the concept right)? Is there a performance hit?

Yup. In a virtualization environment, Windows has no ideas that it's not on a virgin PC. The difference, though, is that there's no accellerated video and games that require DirectX (3D shooters, probably lots of other games) won't work due to the video. I think Parallels is working on video accelleration, though. Most of my old games work, though. Virtualization is great in that it runs on top of your Mac OS, and you don't have to restart, and you can use them concurrently. If you need games, though, that require DirectX, you can use Boot Camp. It will partition your drive for you, and let you install Windows XP SP2 natively, i.e., at this point, your Macintosh is a Windows PC. At this point, you're dual booting. I've not tried Boot Camp myself, as I don't care to dual boot and all my good games are Mac native anyway.

My slow, 17", bottom of the line iMac is still faster running PowerPC code than my expensive, loaded, top of the line Power Mac G4. So, for me, the non-Intel code is still an upgrade to me. For the stuff that runs without Rosetta (the PowerPC translator), it flies. I'm on the road so only just got the iMac a few months ago, so the G4 is still in service. This iMac will be the Winbox replacement I mentioned earlier, and I see a 24" iMac in my future to replace the G4. It'll also be off to Craigslist while it still has some recoverable value.

For external drives to share between Windows and Macs, beware that FAT32 has a 4GB Limit on file size. I just use HFS+ and try not to need Windows connectivity. My 1GB Shuffle is enough for most transportability needs. You could partition the external drive so have both HFS+ and FAT32 partitions, and I tried that for a while, but sometimes the CD images I want to put on the Windows partition are larger than 4GB, and FAT32 pukes.

I never touch Disk Warrior, but I know that people that need it give it high marks. HFS+ is journaled if you want, so that takes care of my needs.

[AHunter3]

Balthisar: Yup. In a virtualization environment, Windows has no ideas that it's not on a virgin PC. The difference, though, is that there's no accellerated video and games that require DirectX (3D shooters, probably lots of other games) won't work due to the video

That would be Parallels you're talking about. And you would be right about Parallels. (Parallels lets you run a Windows environment as a process within the larger MacOS X context).

But there is also native Windows. Boot Camp is a special loading process that lets XP (or Vista, so I'm told) be installed on an Intel Mac, and, once installed, you're not running a virtualization environment at all. You're running Windows. If the specific hardware of the Intel-based Mac is supported with appropriate Windows drivers, you get all the accelerations and whatnot that you'd get on any other kind of PC, and the Mac is, at that point, very definitely a PC.

Most serious gamers use Boot Camp and run Windows that way, not as a virtualization environment via Parallels.

Or so I'm told... my Mac is a G4, the last computer game I played was "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", and I've never BootCamped or Paralleled, myself.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

I have both, and I highly recommend having separate computers running for separate tasks if you can afford it. The Mac has a unique asthetic, but beyond its particular look, its not flexible. The pc is a tool that basically disappears and lets the software itself take center stage, which is why its "branding" is less powerful, but its essentially a better tool.I'm not quite sure what you mean by "flexible" in this case, but I disagree. As far as letting software take over, by which I think you mean full-screen and use their own gui skin, Macs allow that just as much as Windows does. The fact that most don't do it is a testament to the elegance and usability of the Mac design in the first place.

And, at it's heart, Mac OS is Unix, making it much more scriptable and flexible than Windows has ever been.

The old joke is that Unix makes the easy stuff hard, and the hard stuff possible, while Windows makes the easy stuff easy, and the hard stuff impossible. Mac makes the easy stuff pretty (and easy), and the hard stuff possible.

I switched about 3 years ago for my personal computing. I still use Windows and Linux at work (and still have a Windows media box at home). It takes some getting used to, but I like the Mac. Parallels is very well done, IMHO.

[Absolute]

I have both, and I highly recommend having separate computers running for separate tasks if you can afford it. The Mac has a unique asthetic, but beyond its particular look, its not flexible. The pc is a tool that basically disappears and lets the software itself take center stage, which is why its "branding" is less powerful, but its essentially a better tool.
This makes no sense, especially considering that you can run Windows on a Mac now. A Mac is more flexible than a PC, because it gives you the ability to run both Windows and Mac OS. And Mac OS is inherently more flexible than Windows to begin with, partly because it's based on Unix.

A Mac is a better tool than a PC, because it can do everything a PC can, and more.

It's true that Apple pays more attention to aesthetics than PC manufacturers, but that's a positive, not a negative. To anyone who says aesthetics don't matter, let me pick the clothing you wear for your next job interview/date/whatever.

[Stranger On A Train]

No, this is wrong. Thumb drives come formatted in FAT format, which works just as well on a Mac as it does on a PC. No reformatting is necessary.USB flash drives are normally formated for FAT, but can in fact be formatted for a number of different filesystems (although given that FAT is a de facto standard that can be read universally by Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX/Darwin OSs, you might as well leave it that way). The only reason you might want to reformat it is if you want to retain metadata on a filesystem that forks it, like HFS+ (which then won't be readable by Windows).[/QUOTE]

You should definitely consider going to a Mac. Did you hear about Ellen Feiss? She was writing a paper on the p.c. and...

Stranger

[longhair75]

thanks for all of this input.

my work application will never run on a mac. it barely runs on windows. it will run, but not upload to the building hardware from windows xp. something in the communication protocols, i guess. i do not plan to shift many applications over. i am thinking of a fresh start in my non-work computing. i don't do any gaming.

i am really looking forward to trying out all the stuff i have been hearing about

[mrrealtime]

Well, you will certainly find that some mac users tend to be very committed to their platform, to the point of finding it necessary to go to extreme effort to find fault with the PC, and even make things up about what is "wrong" with windows.

Windows users (and microsoft for that matter) generally ignore the mac and just use the computer like any other tool or appliance, taking it for granted, like a phone or toothbrush.

Personally, I find the arrogance and sometimes fanatical devotion to the mac a bit of a turn off, so I tend to favor the pc when discussing them.

When it really comes down to it, they both have plusses and minuses, and are just machines. Use whichever one you feel most comfortable with, or as I said before, both if you can afford it. They are both all over the place and being proficient at both will always be to your advantage.

[AHunter3]

mrrealtime: Well, you will certainly find that some mac users tend to be very committed to their platform, to the point of finding it necessary to go to extreme effort to find fault with the PC, and even make things up about what is "wrong" with windows.

It dates back to a time when it was 110% true. We had a GUI, better apps, a mouse, and a hi-res screen when y'all were looking at green-on-black (or amber-on-black). And y'all were calling Macs "toys" and not at all acknowledging the superiority of the Mac, and it really was totally freaking superior.

If the MacOS and Windows just suddenly appeared out of nowhere yesterday, I doubt you'd see the attitudes. Just much milder personal preferences acknowledged as such.

Instead, there is history and a tendency to take it personal and hold grudges.


Me, I'll readily admit to having said "PCs suck", mostly back when they really did, but y'all have come a long ways. Windows95 was a giant step and XP another.

I still think the Mac is superior, but the gap is small enough that I tell folks that if they already know Windows well, are proficient in it, and are satisfied with it, that's pretty much going to erase any advantages the Mac platform might have to offer them.

For myself, I'd rather use a decade-old 7100 running MacOS 8.6 than the latest fastest Windows PC, but that's in large part because I know the Mac well, am proficient in it, and am deeply satisfied with it — and those aren't characteristics of the Mac but of me.

[Stranger On A Train]

my work application will never run on a mac. it barely runs on windows. it will run, but not upload to the building hardware from windows xp. something in the communication protocols, i guess.What work application are you using?

Stranger

[Ximenean]

And, at it's heart, Mac OS is Unix, making it much more scriptable and flexible than Windows has ever been.Mac OS is inherently more flexible than Windows to begin with, partly because it's based on Unix.
Flexible in what way?

[R. P. McMurphy]

Well, you will certainly find that some mac users tend to be very committed to their platform, to the point of finding it necessary to go to extreme effort to find fault with the PC, and even make things up about what is "wrong" with windows.

Windows users (and microsoft for that matter) generally ignore the mac and just use the computer like any other tool or appliance, taking it for granted, like a phone or toothbrush.

Personally, I find the arrogance and sometimes fanatical devotion to the mac a bit of a turn off, so I tend to favor the pc when discussing them.

When it really comes down to it, they both have plusses and minuses, and are just machines. Use whichever one you feel most comfortable with, or as I said before, both if you can afford it. They are both all over the place and being proficient at both will always be to your advantage.

I get your point but . . .

What lead to my earlier rant was my "straw that broke the camel's back" experience with Windows. I was uprgrading something like Explorer or Outlook (I can't exactly remember but it shouldn't have been a big deal). The upgrade totally crashed the system. I'll never know and don't want to know why. At that point my friends and family did an intervention and heavily suggested that I get a Mac. I capitulated and my life has been better ever since.

I find that the defenders of Windows are the geeks who understand register files, the thousands of nooks and crannies in Windows, shortcuts and the other BS that people that want to use their computer don't have the time or inclination to learn. I used to find that stuff a challenge. Now it is just a massive annoyance. I am so sick of the my laptop getting loaded up with crap that I never wanted or asked for. I travel with it and logging on to a WiFi network in a hotel seems to load it up with crap. Deleting a program never seems to really delete the program. Or, programs can load themselves in and you can't find them to delete them unless you are a Windoes geek. This is the kind of nonsense has turned me off to Symantec (Norton) which I used to think produced a good product.

Anyway, that's my rant for today. Life is too short to spend all of your time learning an operating system.

[Stranger On A Train]

(:3=
And, at it's heart, Mac OS is Unix, making it much more scriptable and flexible than Windows has ever been.
Mac OS is inherently more flexible than Windows to begin with, partly because it's based on Unix.Flexible in what way?You've never had to write a complex batch script or deal with Microsoft's crappily-defined, unreliable APIs, have you?

Even if you don't have a need to get down into the low-level stuff, OSX offers a lot of interoperability between applications, both via the OO design of the Cocoa framework and the AppleScript automation script tools. And the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html) seem far more developed than anything Microsoft does or recommends to developers, resulting in a more consistant graphic interface paradigm among applications. Also, for Unix/Linux geeks, you can compile and run *nix applications for both the command line and X11 interface. (I wend to a Condor Week conference a few months ago and most of the developers--admittedly heavy with Linux and FreeBSD nerds--were almost exclusively carrying PowerBook laptops.)

For the average user who does word processing, sends e-mail, and browses the Internet, the difference between the two systems is minimal (though I find much more reliability in my PowerBook than the crappy Dell laptops we have at work); aside from a couple of different keys and the default Aqua skin versus XP, the typical user isn't going to be seriously affected. As for particular applications (games, video editing, science/engineering solvers, whatever) the best platform to use is the one where your particular applications are best supported. For a developer or someone who uses scripting apps, Mac OS X is vastly superior and inarguably more flexible.

Stranger

[mrrealtime]

Mac OS X is vastly superior and inarguably more flexible

Thats exactly the kind of indefensible sweeping statment made by a typical devotee. You prove my point.

All computers crash. All computers have their hard disks crash occasionally. There are confusing things about the Mac OS depending on your perspective.

Anyone who promises all your problems will be solved and you will enter a perfect utopia if you switch to a particular operating system is clearly ... pardon the pun...bios-ed.

[mrrealtime]

You've never had to write a complex batch script or deal with Microsoft's crappily-defined, unreliable APIs, have you?

Cite?

[Ximenean]

You've never had to write a complex batch script or deal with Microsoft's crappily-defined, unreliable APIs, have you?
I've written plenty of Windows batch files. Batch files are obviously very limited so if they're likely to get complex I use a proper scripting language instead, plenty of which are available for Windows.

Not sure what you mean by Microsoft's APIs being unreliable. If you're making a point against closed source software, the point would apply just as well to Apple, surely?

I agree that having a widely-observed HIG is a good thing, and advantage for the Mac. I don't see how that makes OSX more flexible, though. If anything, by imposing conditions on software developers it ought to hinder flexibility.

[tashabot]

I recently, within the past two months, bought a MacBook (I had to sell my soul to my bank to get the, loan, of course...).

It's been bliss. I grew up on PCs. We got our first PC when I was seven. I learned how to use DOS, and after that, Windows 3.11. I was amazed by Windows 95 and 98 before it, astounded at the speed of Windows 2000 pro, disgusted by the bugs in Windows ME, and just flat-out annoyed at Windows XP.

I started my job in December of 2005, and had to use a Mac there - and the transition was very, very easy. I started on OS 9.1, but soon got an upgrade to OS X. If you get a MacBook, you're going to get OS X, which is very, very, VERY easy to transition to from Windows. Think of your dock kind of as part start bar, part QuickLaunch bar (the area of the start bar where you can keep icons). Keep everything organized - I keep all of my applications where they're supposed to go, and keep all of my files in folders on the desktop for quick access. And you know the search feature on your PC? Mac has Finder, which is LOADS faster than the PC's search function. If you lose something, don't be afraid to go to Finder. And Mac Help actually helps.

I still use my old PC (which I gave to my boyfriend) for stuff sometimes, but very rarely. Mostly to play .wmv's. Cuz other than that, my Mac has read everything I had on my PC. And there's a ton of kick-ass programs that work just as well as PC programs, if not better.

And my GOD is ForceQuit an awsome function. My Mac doesn't freeze NEARLY as often as my PC did. It still does, occasionally, but it's a LOT harder.

~Tasha

[tashabot]

I was amazed by Windows 95 and 98 before it

Preview is my FRIEND........

~Tasha

[TimeWinder]

Does this mean that I can run games on Windows side (am I even getting the concept right)? Is there a performance hit?

Others have answered this, but I think their answers are incomplete, so let me take a crack at it. My qualifications: I write cross-platform, native Macintosh/Windows software for a living, so I've got machines that run the gamut from PPC Macs through AMD-64 Windows machines.

There are basically three ways you can run Windows on a Mac. The terms for them aren't as universally agreed upon as you'd like to see, but I'll call them emulation, virtualization, and native.

Emulation - Everything is "faked" by the host OS. The Mac is basically running a program that implements a PC's hardware in software. The performance hit varies, but is generally very large. VirtualPC running on a PPC mac is an example, there are no current big-name emulators for the Intel Macs that I'm aware of.

Virtualization - The OS is "faked" by the host OS, but the CPU instructions don't have to be. Virtualization only works where the client OS (Windows) can run on the same type of CPU as the Host OS (Mac OS in this case). Parallels can do this on the Intel Macs. The performance hit is still pretty big (say 25-50%), but much less than emulation, and for programs that are compute-bound (i.e. they spend their time calculating things, not messing with the screen) it can be extremely small. Another example of this is VMWare Server (I don't know if betas of this are out yet, but it's imminent).

Native - There is no host OS, the client OS is installed and runs directly on the hardware. Aside from some boot-time interactions, the performance hit is zero -- it's just like running a real Windows computer -- because it is. Here's one of the few places where you can compare Apples and other PC's directly, and Apple comes out looking pretty good. For a few months when it first came out, my Intel iMac was the most powerful Windows machine I owned. Apple tends to use low/midrange video, but even Oblivion (for example) plays well on that machine. Apple's BootCamp will set up your Mac so you can choose at boot time which OS you want.

There's also a funny "middle ground" between emulation and virtualization, in the form of application emulator/virtualizers like Wine. This is basically a layer added to the MacOS that allows Windows applications to run "emulated" within the Mac OS environment directly. Betas are out now, I think. Performance is good, but compatibility is limited, only certain apps can be run with it (this increases all the time).

[longhair75]

What work application are you using?

Stranger


friend stranger,

i am a fire alarm technician. my largest customer uses an addressable fire alarm network programmed in dos. the software is proprietary, and doesn't even act like other dos software i have used. i type lots of exciting lines like:

ala 00 04 14 53 smoke detectorstudent center third floor room 351
06 0650 activate presignal four minute delay sequence
02 00 00 15 02 main hvac fan shutdown relay

[Taran]

Not sure what you mean by Microsoft's APIs being unreliable. If you're making a point against closed source software, the point would apply just as well to Apple, surely?Unfortunately, once you get past basic Windows programming you start running into API calls that are undocumented, underdocumented, or straight up do not do what they claim to do (or, worse, do exactly what they claim in a way that's not useful in practice; Raymond Chen gives one example (http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/09/27/773741.aspx) in his excellent blog, The Old New Thing). Then there are COM objects, which were really gross for a long time. I'm told that there's some .NET infrastructure for creating them automagically now, which if so, yay.

I got my Mac experience in college (the PC computer clusters were always full, the Apple orchards were generally empty), but I could never get past the different ALT-Tab behavior. My usual pattern is to have 15-20 windows in 5 or 6 applications open at any one time, with 2-3 windows of active interest at once. Having to switch between Command-Tab and Command-Escape AND either hold shift or not was too much for me.

[Stranger On A Train]

Mac OS X is vastly superior and inarguably more flexibleThats exactly the kind of indefensible sweeping statment made by a typical devotee. You prove my point.Yeah, thanks for pulling the quote out of the context of the post in order to make that point. :rolleyes:

Anyone who promises all your problems will be solved and you will enter a perfect utopia if you switch to a particular operating system is clearly ... pardon the pun...bios-ed.I said no such thing, and in fact, while I find OS X to be superior in many ways to Windows (which is sort of like pitching a race between a Corolla and a Pinto) it is by no means the "perfect utopia" of operating systems. The GUI is shiny and pretty consistant but not as accessible from the CLI as I'd like. It's also very top-heavy and resource intensive, moreso than X.org (and given what a boehemeth that is, it's saying something). It does many things right but there are other things that could be done much better. And while the underlying system, Darwin, is based upon the best refinement yet of Unix (the FreeBSD kernel), it still brings a lot of legacy junk from Unix. Apple itself is a peculiar company--half invested in open source code and robust, well-specified hardware, half obnoxious, pandering, money-grubbing jerks who charge an arm and a leg for an OS revision and yank the community that supports their core system back and forth. So don't go casting me as a starry-eyed Mac fan. I like a lot about what they do, but it's far from perfection.

I've written plenty of Windows batch files. Batch files are obviously very limited so if they're likely to get complex I use a proper scripting language instead, plenty of which are available for Windows.If by scripting language you mean VBA, color me unimpressed. And I have to admit a bias toward the way Perl and Python function uniformly on Unix-like OSs, whereas they operate in a kind of flaky way on Windows, and can't interface well (if at all) with most Windows apps. AppleScript, although (deliberately) limited in functionality, provides good-to-excellent interoperability between applications that a user can pick up quickly, and Apple presses developers to make their functionality available to AS calls. I'm surprised that Windows hasn't developed anything like it. (And please, no pointing fingers at the marginally functional, crippled OLE/ActiveX controls and the poorly supported ActiveX scripting. And nothing I've seen about .NET makes me impressed with the ease, consistency and functionality of it. You can do an impressive amount of AppleScript coding without ever opening an IDE, whereas JScript and VBScript require a fairly extensive base of knowledge before you can begin to crawl.)

Not sure what you mean by Microsoft's APIs being unreliable. If you're making a point against closed source software, the point would apply just as well to Apple, surely?Except for the more common Windows APIs, much of the interface specifications are treated as proprietary and available only to favored developers (especially GUI APIs), and even then, are not consistent between versions; software that works fine on 2000 goes seriously wonky on XP. (I won't even enter into the discussions the abominations that are 95 and 98, and it wouldn't be germaine anyway, since equally vaild arguments could be made toward pre-OS X versions of MacOS.) Apple, on the other hand, makes their Cocoa and Quartz specs completely open to developers, and the core Darwin system is completely open source (though some hardcore FreeBSD advocates will take issue with Apple's licensing scheme and attitude toward BSD developers...nonetheless, the source code is available for download from Apple's site.)

I agree that having a widely-observed HIG is a good thing, and advantage for the Mac. I don't see how that makes OSX more flexible, though. If anything, by imposing conditions on software developers it ought to hinder flexibility.It makes it easier for the user; you can uniformly rely on OS X applications to operate in a (pretty) consistent manner, whereas Windows apps each tend to have a widely varying feel and operation. Admittedly, Windows has gotten somewhat better about this in XP (though the stock GUI looks like something dreamed up by a Fisher-Price ad exec) but Apple has made operational consistancy a core development goal, even back well into the pre-OS X days.

On the whole, aside from security and infection issues, there isn't a great amount of difference in usability between the two OSs for the average user, and while I think OS X has a slight edge in consistancy and functionality, Windows gets a substantial plus for having a lot more applications available to run on it. (We'll sidestep the emulation/virtualization issue at this point, but it's worth noting that an Intel Mac can do most of what a Windows PC can do--aside from high end hardware accelerated gaming--and still do the things OS X does well.) And regarding laptop computers, I find the premium that Apple charged for the PowerBook to be well worth it compared to comperable PC laptop.

Unless you are an open-source/Unix developer either will work, and transitioning from one to the other is merely a matter of becoming acclimated to the interface quirks each has. From the perspective of getting under the hood and playing with the engine, or developing robust, cross-platform applications, OS X is superior.

Stranger

[Mister Rik]

WRT USB thumb drives...this may no longer be a problem, but I know I would have to format the thing on a Mac if I was switching between a Mac and a PC because while the PC would recognize the Mac formatted drive, the Mac wouldn't recognize the PC formatted one. The was a year or two ago on school (old) computers so it might not be an issue with newer models. Can someone confirm this?
I'm a little late with this, but ...

When my old Windows 98 computer died (actually, I think it was the C: drive that died), I thought I'd never see the data on the D: drive (I had the foresight to keep applications and data files on sepatate drives) again.

When I upgraded on the Mac side from an old PPC 7200 up to a shiny new G4, I saw that Apple had ditched SCSI hard drives if favor of ATA drives. My old PC had been sitting in the corner, awaiting the day I bought a new one into which I could install that D: drive full of data. Well, it had been a couple years and I'd never gotten around to buying a new Windows machine, and the data on that D: drive wasn't all that important. So I popped the drive out of the PC and installed it into the second ATA slot of my G4, intending to simply reformat it and use it as a second Mac drive.

I was pleasantly surprised when my Mac mounted that FAT32-formatted drive and showed me all that data I hadn't seen in two years. Got it all back :)

[lissener]

The switch isn't necessarily easy but in the long run it is worth it.Hear hear.

Most of the little differences will frustrate you because they seem arbitrary. They are, but this is why you shouldn't worry about them; you'll just gradually develop new habits of shortcut keys, navigation, naming conventions, etc. I've been Mac/PC ambidextrous since 1995, have used both systems wide and deep and long, and for so, so many reasons I prefer Mac to PC by a factor of gajillion.

Congratulations on crossing over from the dark side.

[thirdname]

I still use my old PC (which I gave to my boyfriend) for stuff sometimes, but very rarely. Mostly to play .wmv's. Cuz other than that, my Mac has read everything I had on my PC.Do you know that Windows Media Player is also available for OSX, and there's a thing called flip4mac that lets you play wmv's right in Quicktime? The latter is better because you can move around to directly where you click on the "timeline" at the bottom..

Anyway, I grew up with the Apple //e and then Macs. They were all hand-me-downs until I got my current Emac. I've always had software to move from one to the next and it's what I'm used to. It has always sounded crazy to me that anyone would deal with all the viruses and things of Windows.

[mazinger_z]

Others have answered this, but I think their answers are incomplete, so let me take a crack at it. Cool. Thanks TimeWinder for the info! I'm thinking about buying a Macbook Pro (15" which looks suprisingly big, and more cost efficient than the 17"). The computer I built last year is already obsolete, not only is my processor old, but so is my motherboard. On top of that, the new top of the line AMD chip is like $1200, which is more than what it cost me to build the computer. I saw Oblivion on the Mac, and it looks pretty damn good. Plus, since I'm out and about a lot, I would rather take the Mac around with me than my new Thinkpad (seeing as how, one is for work and all).

[Roadfood]

Personally, I find the arrogance and sometimes fanatical devotion to the mac a bit of a turn off, so I tend to favor the pc when discussing them.This ought to tell you something, though. There are many people who are fanatically devoted to their Macs. There are no people, near as I can tell, who are similarly fanatically devoted to Windows. Many people love the Mac OS; I know of no one who loves Windows (yes, there are people who strongly prefer Windows to the Mac for whatever reasons, but I've never heard such people speak of prefering Windows because they just love so much about it, the reasons are more pragmatic). So the Mac, clearly, has something that can engender that kind of devotion, while Windows does not. Looking down on or eschewing something for no other reason than that many people really love it and are devoted to it, and instead favoring something that people merely accept and use, seems oddly backwards somehow.

[mrrealtime]

Well...theres lots of people fanatically devoted to a lot of things. No need to go into examples here. My point is that I actually find fanatical devotion repugnant, so that, for better or worse, tends to taint whatever the product is, be it Oprah, the Beatles, the OC, or Apple...even if the product may indeed have some innovative features.

Anyway, thats clearly my problem and I have no regrets about it.

[Cartooniverse]

I still use my old PC (which I gave to my boyfriend) for stuff sometimes, but very rarely. Mostly to play .wmv's. ~Tasha

Why? I am writing this on a Macintosh Titanium PowerBook G4 that is 3 1/2 years old. I am looking at the icon on my desktop that reads " WMV Player".

They exist for Mac OS-X platform. Just download it and leave the poor boyfriend to his sad, sad second-tier machine. :D

Cartooniverse

[Cartooniverse]

I just woke up- what was I thinking??

Here is the link for Windows Media Viewer (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13112) for Macintosh OS-X platform.

Enjoy !!

[Mangetout]

This ought to tell you something, though. There are many people who are fanatically devoted to their Macs. There are no people, near as I can tell, who are similarly fanatically devoted to Windows. ... So the Mac, clearly, has something that can engender that kind of devotion, while Windows does not.You may be right, but that something may not be any feature intrisic to the actual Macs themselves; Fanatic devotion can be a cultural thing, brought on by group dynamics, or the simple fact of being a downtrodden, obscure, misunderstood or underestimated minority, for example.

[Mangetout]

I hasten to add that I am not actually stating those things to be true of Mac users, only the general principl that fanatical devotion need not necessarily reflect anything of value about the object of devotion.

[gotpasswords]

As Longhair's post about the unhappy experience with getting the new Mac to work on a network was closed, I want to add here...

The Mac was just fine. Whatever the "genius" did could have been easily undone by simply deleting the relevant prefs files. It IS the network that's Mac-phobic. I had a hell of a time a few months ago when my Linksys broadband router died, and Linksys does not support setup of the current version of the device (same model number, but completely different insie) manually or with a Mac. The installation and setup now works only in Windows. The original router was easily configured by a web page and was completely computer- and OS-agnostic. The new one is crippled so that a "wizard" is required. As a result, I had to pull an old Windows PC into service for five minutes to get the network running.

Once that was done, my network's back up and it's now equally available for our Macs or any visiting Windows laptops.

[Stranger On A Train]

As Longhair's post about the unhappy experience with getting the new Mac to work on a network was closed, I want to add here...

The Mac was just fine. Whatever the "genius" did could have been easily undone by simply deleting the relevant prefs files. It IS the network that's Mac-phobic. I had a hell of a time a few months ago when my Linksys broadband router died, and Linksys does not support setup of the current version of the device (same model number, but completely different insie) manually or with a Mac. The installation and setup now works only in Windows. The original router was easily configured by a web page and was completely computer- and OS-agnostic. The new one is crippled so that a "wizard" is required. As a result, I had to pull an old Windows PC into service for five minutes to get the network running.With regard to the network connection issue (why was that thread closed) it sounds like more of a protocol problem. Aside from the encryption comm getting unsynced with WPA occasionally, I've never had a problem connecting with a standard 802.11b/g, although I've seen some problems with the various proprietary pre-N schemes used by various router makers if you don't have the compatible card. (They're all supposed to be 802.11g compliant but some seem to be kind of wonky.) So I have to go with something being out of spec with the router. (The Airport Extreme, aside from the inclusion of WDS for creating ad hoc WiFi networks, is straight 802.11g, and I've never heard of anyone--Mac, Windows, or Linux--being able to connect to it.) So don't blame Apple because WiFi vendors can't adhere to an accepted bloody standard.

One thing to note about PowerBooks (and especially the Titanium Macs) is that the case, being metal, does tend to shield the internal antenna. I get somewhat less range on my PowerBook than a plastic-cased PC notebook, and significantly less distance than a computer with an external antenna. But this shouldn't be an issue if you're right up next to the router.

And yeah, the Version 5 revision on the WRT54G was a seriously grotty move on the part of Linksys. Fortunately, they now offer what is essentially the previous version as the WRT54GL and the WRTSL54GS, so you can flash a Linux OS onto it and make it dance and sing instead of sit and blink.

Stranger

[gotpasswords]

And yeah, the Version 5 revision on the WRT54G was a seriously grotty move on the part of Linksys. Fortunately, they now offer what is essentially the previous version as the WRT54GL and the WRTSL54GS, so you can flash a Linux OS onto it and make it dance and sing instead of sit and blink.
Either you've been poking around in my garage, which is where my LAN hardware lives, or I'm not the first person to be completely pissed at Linksys and had an email to customer support asking why they became PC-only cheerfully ignored.

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

First, if you've decided to switch from Windows to Mac (or even get a Mac while continuing to run Windows), then pick up a copy of Switching to the Mac. It's a great book. My favorite section is the one that takes common actions on Windows and shows how to do them on OS X.

I've used every release of DOS since 2.0, ever Windows since 3.0, and every MacOS from 1 to 8 and from 10.2 to current. I still keep a Windows PC on my desk next to my MacBook Pro, because when I switched back to Mac I simply couldn't afford to re-purchase all of my software.

I find myself doing everything on the Mac that I can, and going to the Windows machine only when forced to--and that's after 8 years of not using Macs. For the most part, the Mac is the appliance that Steve Jobs originally intended. It just works. Take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on, and it runs.

[Stranger On A Train]

Either you've been poking around in my garage, which is where my LAN hardware lives, or I'm not the first person to be completely pissed at Linksys and had an email to customer support asking why they became PC-only cheerfully ignored.That router used to be renowned for its flexibility. Once you flashed out the resident firmware for a third-party Linux-based firmware like DD-WRT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT) you could make it do all sorts of things that the default firmware didn't support including running IPtables, acting as an ssh server, et cetera. Plus it had a lot of RAM and memory which were cut in half with Ver. 5. Big suck.

Stranger

[longhair75]

the manager of the apple store called me this evening. she is really trying to work my problem she is setting an appointment for me with her lead tech. i am boxing up the router too. we will see how it turns out..

[longhair75]

it took bekka two hours to configure my linksys router to work with both a macbook and my ibm thinkpad at the same time. point to those trying this: evidently d-link routers work better on a mac/pc network. back home, my router back in place, all the wired machines are up. the thinkpad and my daughter's dell are up on the wireless connection. i am about to boot up the macbook.

here we go again!

[longhair75]

so the macbook is working fine.

once again i would like to thank everyone for the help

[gotpasswords]

Glad to hear it's all been sorted out for you. Speaking as someone who started with computers before the IBM PC and has experienced various versions of DOS and Windows through the past two decades, switching from PC to Mac is a bit of a shock at first.

Booby-traps like poorly-designed routers certainly don't help. either!

Welcome to the other side! :D