Dopers who've switched from PC to Mac: How difficult was the transition?

In My Humble Opinion
21

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Apple’s unparalleled customer support. I had the last generation G5 iMac. After a year, my computer was starting to overheat, and I took it into the Apple store for some repairs. They couldn’t figure out what the issue was, so they replaced the entire computer for free. Since they didn’t make G5 iMacs anymore, they gave me the latest Intel model, and matched my crappy RAM with their own.

This month, that computer’s 3 year warranty was about to expire, and I took it in again after I noticed some new overheating issues with it. They looked it over, ran some programs to stress it out, and figured I had a couple of bad components that were overheating and causing some problems for the system.

And they replaced the whole computer, again, for free. That’s right – they replaced the replacement computer. Both times I got a free iPod and printer with the new computers. And they apologized profusely for my bad luck.

You just can’t beat that kind of customer service, or their willingness to fix anything that keeps your computer from working. I hope that gives you a little bit of insight into why some folks love their Apple computers so much.

22

I was a PC user since the mid 80s, and just bought my Mac Pro desktop last September. It took me about 2 days to feel comfortable with Mac OS. The only thing that I found myself doing wrong for a bit after that was always going to the upper right of a window to close it; on Macs it’s at the top left.

As others have said, it’s just like xferring from one PC to another: you use an external hard drive, or a USB thumb drive, or a CD/DVD-ROM and they load in just fine. They’re just data, after all. For any .wmv files, Quicktime has a plug-in that it will download (after asking you for permission) and then it will play .wmv files just fine.

I am ecstatic and do not ever use Windows unless I have to for a particular software application (I’m looking at you, AutoCAD!). I have 100g of my hard drives set up for Windows via BootCamp, but I absolutely never use it unless I need to use the 1 or 2 programs that don’t run on MAC OS. I still have a PC laptop that I use for work when on-site, and I hate it. It’s slow, clunky and feels like trying to subdue a rabid wolverine compared to the sleek, purring MAC OS.

I’d say that nails it pretty well, and I also agree that the MAC is much easier to deal with hardware wise than a PC. I bought more RAM a couple of months after I got my Mac, and the case cover comes off easily with no tools, the RAM cards just slide out and back in, no tools, and when I had it all reassembled, there isn’t that feeling that the slightest bump will knock a card or component out of whack.

Overall, I’d have to echo that switching to Mac is prolly the best consumer decision I’ve made since I bought my first guitar (a Les Paul Custom).

23

That’s not an Apple thing - you’d have to ask Adobe about that bit of weirdness, and I’d love to hear their answer as well. I have no idea why, but they seem to be off in their own little world, and using Photoshop is just a strange experience rather unlike anything else.

OTOH, it sounds like you’d hate the current version of Parallels and its “Coherence” feature that lets you run Windows applications in their own Desktop window next to Mac applications, rather than having to toggle over to the Windows environment.

24

Keep in mind that Windows was developed in response to what Apple was doing with a GUI interface. Windows beat the Mac to market, but it was, and still is, a bad copy of the Mac OS.

25

I’ve been using a Mac for about the last four years, I think it is, and I’m not desperately in love with them. Mine might be a bit of a lemon - it has serious, weird issues that my computer geek friend has not been able to fix. Other than these stupid glitches, I don’t like Mac’s file maintenance system, and I HATE HATE HATE how it deals with photographs. I don’t want all my pictures in descriptionless Roll Numbers, but if I try to organize them into proper descriptive files, iPhoto loses the path to all the picture, the useless git. I also don’t like the iTunes file system. Mac errs on the side of a user needing to use Finder to find everything - Finder does work pretty well, but I want to set up my own filing system, and Mac is not happy with that.

Would I buy another Mac? I’m torn. There have been big pluses (not worrying about viruses for one thing, peripherals truly being plug-and-play), but big negatives (the landscape program I need only runs on Windows, the games I like only run on Windows (I do have Boot Camp, but it’s a pain to shut down and switch over), the file management issues, etc.).

26

If gotpasswords means what I think, it IS an Apple thing.

The MacOS is designed for multitasking: it is expected that you will want to not only run but actually look at multiple applications at the same time, perhaps 4 or 5 different applications with windows from each onscreen and positioned and sized so that you can refer to them. For example, you may have an email with project description in the email body over here, the main window of your Photoshop (or iMovie or Filemaker or PowerPoint or whatever) window in front of you, an open Finder folder window full of source JPEGs down at lower right, your Chat software at upper right, and the various toolbars and palettes of your main application dragged off to the second screen on your left, with a different email containing your email-in-progress back to the boss to the left of those, your inbox to the left of that so you can see incoming emails… What facilitates this is that none of the applications have an “application window” sitting behind the various document windows, and most of the applications do not auto-zoom document windows to eat up your entire window when you open them either. The EXPECTATION is that you are, more likely than not, going to want to see windows from other applications on screen while you have the windows from this one open. So a newly launched application or document normally will leave space around it where you can see Finder/Desktop and/or other running applications’ windows.

It does drive many new Windows converts nuts (“WTF?! How do I “maximize” a window? What’s WRONG with this thing?!”), especially at first, but it’s really very efficient and lets you get work done.

Windows is slowly slowly moving in that direction. Having everything maximize, with the assumption that you normally operate with just one window of one application visible at a time (and everything else minimized or sitting behind, completely hidden), makes less and less sense as typical monitor resolutions have shifted from 640 x 480 to 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768 and now for the most part beyond that. And where a decent % of Windows users utilize multiple screens as well. Several prominent Windows applications now no longer sport the “application window” and just show the document window, like a Mac: Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word prominent among them. (Their “menus at the top of each document window” approach sometimes makes menuing awkward when you size a window as a long skinny vertical stripe, though).

27

[pedantic]

Windows did not beat the Mac to market. The Macintosh was up against MS-DOS, not Windows, originally. The Macintosh “fanboy” phenomenon came into existence in a big way at a time when a Mac had a mouse and a graphic screen with icons and menus, and the PCs they derided as inferior were, umm, genuinely inferior: text-only screens in green or amber characters, no icons, no mice, very klunky, no ability, even, to copy from one program and paste into another. Mac users could not believe the PC was king in market share. It wasn’t quality, it was the IBM nameplate.

Windows did not simply beat the Mac in the market either. That war was won by proxy, by a one-two punch consisting of IBM, manufacturer of the original one-and-only PC, whose stature as a manufacturer of business machines got them into corporate doors despite a substantially inferior operating system (MS-DOS); and “clones”, cheap knockoff copies of the IBM PC which could run MS-DOS and programs written for it for a fraction of the cost. IBM didn’t sanction that, they just didn’t have any easy way to keep it from happening. Apple’s Macintosh computer was not so easy to reverse-engineer, so cheap MAC clones did not go up against the cheap PC clones. Both Apple and IBM lost market share to the cheap PCs, and Microsoft was the beneficiary.

Windows was a bad copy of the MacOS GUI. Then it became a somewhat better copy of the MacOS GUI with an idea or two of its own. It has gone on its own evolutionary track since then, still copying ideas from the MacOS but retaining other differences, and the MacOS has copied a handful of things (menus that stay down when you click them, the contextual “right-click” menu, a little arrow on the icon to indicate an alias, the Dock, the Command-tab application switcher, etc) from Windows over the year as well.

[/pedantic]

28

[hijack]
Speaking as a non-mac user:

If you are feeling daring, you might try using symlinks (ln -s; man ln) to create your own filesystems that are arranged however you want without interferring with however the mac software is setup
[/hijack]

29

As a linux user (using PC hardware), I have to agree. Apple’s design/engineering is astoundingly good. It helps when a company has very tight control over the product line.

But that also raises two (minor) down sides I’ve found: (1) Apple tends to limit their hardware selection (as I just found when attempting to purchase a 24" DVI monitor) and (2) they tend to force moves to not-yet-widely-accepted standards (as I found with their MiniDisplayPort adapters). I think most users never have to worry about it, though.

I’d recommend making the switch from Windows to Mac. While I don’t prefer Mac to all other options, Windows to Mac would be relatively painless and decidedly worth it.

30

Adobe breaks this - When I fire up Photoshop, it dominates the entire screen with its dark gray workspace - all of its palettes and menus and such are on this workspace and it’s impossible to see Mail or a Finder window or anythng other than the Dock and two tiny corners of Desktop at the bottom.

In comparison, what might be more un-Mac than Microsoft Office? Surprise! It’s a model citizen and it behaves very nicely - all of the formatting palettes and whatnots are not bound together by a workspace, making it easy to move around on-screen between a Word document and an Excel sheet or a website or whatever.

31

I had no idea. I have Photoshop CS 1 on my computer but I blow right past it to fire up Classic and Photoshop 3.0 which I infinitely prefer.

32

This is not my recollection. People forget that computers are tools. When Visicalc came out, people had to have it, so they purchased Apple IIs on which to run it. The IBM name opened the door, but it was the use of Lotus 123, with its dual screen capability and ability to make use of the whole 640k addressing range of the PC (vs 64K for the apple II and Visicalc), Wordstar, and Wordperfect, and terminal programmes like Attachmate that ensured the sales. Apple had a chance to fight back with the Apple /// but they botched it. PCs then became entrenched. Apple Macs simply could not replace PCs without major work. Sure there were replacements for the main applications, but by that time there were lots of little utilities, custom applications, macros, templates, and more, which meant that change was far from simple. So gradual change became the order of the day.

33

1 - It took a week or so to figure out how it all worked to where I felt comfortable with it. But the process was painless; that, to me, is one of the biggest differences.

2 - Nonissue. I use a thumb drive or external hard drive to do it. Never had a problem, as long as you have software installed that can open that file type.

3 - I’m very glad I switched. I now find it immensely frustrating whenever I have to use a PC for whatever reason. As an example, my parents’ house is infamous for being a Bermuda Triangle for electronics. I can’t count how many hours of my life I spent trying to get my PC to connect to their wireless network. If I ever did managed to set up the subnets and IPs and workstations and whatnot all correctly, so that the PC could see the network and even occasionally connect to it, it would all fall apart within a couple of hours so I’d be back at square one. On the other hand, I unboxed my Mac laptop at their house, and by the time I’d decided on a picture for my profile, it had already found and connected itself to the network, all in the background. I was online from the first minute. That’s how it is for me. Macs work right, PCs don’t.

34

Macs *are *PCs. I suppose that Apple may well have made a Mainframe or a Workstation at one time, but if you go into the Apple retail store all you’ll see is Personal Computers.

35

Much like using the term “Congressperson” to mean “Representative”, the use of “PC” to refer strictly to Windows machines irritates me.

But I realize it’s a lost cause, so I roll with it. :frowning:

36

I sort of switched earlier this year. I replaced my Windows laptop (the only computer I have) with a Macbook.

1- How difficult was it to learn how to use a Mac after using a PC for years?

The general stuff? Not bad. There were/are little things, though, that did and DO drive me up a wall. Some of the keyboard commands are not intuitive or easy to remember for me at all. I had to google how to do a print screen, and even after following the directions it took forever for me to realize that it saved the images to the desktop instead of saving it in my clipboard.

I also flat out detest how Finder only lets you drag and drop or copy and paste, but not cut and paste. I’ve gotten around it by dragging the files to the desktop, going to the folder I want to move them to, and dragging them there, but I still think it’s monumentally stupid to not be able to cut, dammit!

2- How difficult is it to transfer your files from PC to Mac? (I have lots of MS Office documents [mainly Word and PPT] and a gazillion pictures I want to move)

Haven’t really gotten around to doing this (I have an external harddrive with my files saved, but I haven’t really needed to use any of them yet).

3- Generally speaking, are you glad you switched and why or why not?

Meh, ambivalent. I’m glad that I figured I’d learn a new OS, but I don’t think it’s the bee’s knees. Some things it does better (IMO of course) than Windows and other things I can’t stand. Granted, I haven’t really tried to be a power user or anything, so I’m sure it’s possible there are solutions to my irritations, but if they’re supposed to be so “intuitive”, why haven’t I figured them out already? :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t like the almost condescending impression I get from it, though. “Software Updates!” bounces on my dock. I click on it and it tells me there are updates (duh), and more info just tells me what programs need to be updated. What, specifically, is it going to do for those individual programs, dammit? I get a feeling of, “there there, don’t you worry your pretty lil’ head about these complex software updates! Just let this Mac take care of it alllll for youuuuu”.

I’ll be getting a desktop in a few months, after I get married and we’re in a 2 bedroom flat instead of the 380 sq foot studio I’m currently in, and I already know it’ll be Windows (though I’m going with XP since I don’t personally care for Vista. It’s much much improved from when it debuted, but it’s not my cuppa). It doesn’t mean I’ll be getting rid of the Macbook; just that I really don’t see Mac as superior.

37

*Personal Computer * was a brand name of IBM Corporation.

My operating system has windows (I’m typing in a browser window right now) but when someone asks if I am “using Windows” I don’t say “Yes I am, I am using a MACINTOSH window and I have other windows open elsewhere on my Macintosh screen”.

PC means “IBM’s microcomputer named the ‘Personal Computer’, or PC, and/or one of the clones thereof that can run the same software”.

38

So here’s a more brass tacks question. Counting the $300 discount as cash, can I get a decent Mac (preferably laptop) for $1200? (I’ve priced them on their website and some are that price, but
1- There’s not an Apple store here
2- If it’s like Dell or Gateway a computer that has a base price of $699 somehow becomes $1400 if you add on a couple of features

Again, I want it for general web browsing (high speed/movies don’t buffer), MS Office products, and photo & video editing.
(I don’t know if DVD burners are standard but I do need one of those.)

39

Yes. Apple doesn’t make a “bad” computer–they intentionally forego the bottom of the market.

40

I don’t think the Windows ones are anymore intuitive. You’ve just been around them longer. At least the Mac ones are customizable.

http://macphobia.com/no-cut-option-in-mac-finder-window.macphobia

The official position of Apple is that hackers would exploit the vulnerabilities in unpatched versions of the software if you let them know what you were patching. It makes some level of sense, but i agree that it is annoying.

OP: I find PCs and Macs equally easy to use. I do find the MacOS a bit cleaner, though. Still, when it comes to my personal needs, I’ve found that I’ve never really needed anything other than a low-end computer, and Apple doesn’t sell those.

PC verses Mac: The thing is, the new Intel based Macs are just PC’s with a weird BIOS and a chip to prevent people from running the OS on a non-Mac. (As proven by hacks that let you run the OS on a Pentium 4 or greater.) A Mac is completely compatible with other PCs now.