Moving from Windows to Mac OS X

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a PC and a Mac on my desk, but I use my PC as the primary computer.

I’m thinking of changing over.

Pros[ul][li]Simply gorgeous operating system.[/li][li]All the latest applications.[/li][li]Really good mail app.[/li][li]Excellent calendar app.[/li][li]Seamless synch with my Nokia 7650 via bluetooth.[/li][li]Faster.[/ul]Cons[ul][]Bad font handling.[/li][li]If something goes wrong, I don’t know how to fix it.[/li][li]There doesn’t seem to be an HTML editor for the Mac that comes anywhere near Allaire Homesite.[/li][]I don’t know of any freeware FTP clients for OS X (as in easy-to-use ones, not command-line nonsenses).[/ul]Anyone have any suggestions to counteract the cons?

2

Forgot another con:[ul]I need my archived mail from Outlook. I tried this import procedure but it didn’t work.[/ul]

3

For the Font handling I use Suitcase x1, but hate it.

The good thing is: hardly nothing goes wrong.

I use “Transmit” (get it here)

Can’t help you with your other Problems, though.

4

I wrote:

This does not make sense.
It should read: hardly anything goes wrong.

And the link to your mail import procedure did not work.
I did not have problems importing my mails from Eudora, but I can’t remember how I did it.

5

FTP is built into the Finder in 10.3. So you don’t need any FTP software at all.

Check out BBEdit for HTML editing. It’s da bomb.

6

This past year, I debated about keeping with Apple or switching over to PCs. I have a PC at work (fairly new) and it is a dinosaur. Plus, it’s quite vulnerable to viruses. So, I’ve been using OS X on my new iBook for a couple weeks and have been extremely pleased.
I also had trouble importing my mail from Outlook to the OS X email program! My iBook also has OS 9 installed with the latest Outlook. I imported my archived email and now use OS 9’s Outlook for my email. It takes a little longer loading OS 9 but I have my old emails, address book plus I know how to use the program so it’s worth it.

7

You could try CuteFTP for Mac. There’s also a front-end for Finder’s built-in FTP called FUGU (sorry, I don’t have a link). I haven’t used either, but I hear good things about CuteFTP.

I think Panther does a good job handling fonts. Are you using Panther? Maybe my font-handling needs are easily satisfied.

Oops, CuteFTP isn’t free; it’s shareware. $29.99 to buy it.

8

If you’re running the latest version of MacOS X, check out Font Book, included free. It is not a pro-level font management tool, but I’m managing 300+ fonts with it, and think it’s great for consumer work.

That comes with any new computer. :slight_smile: Fortunately, MacOS X is very bulletproof, and tries to automatically fix itself if things go wrong. A handy all-purpose problem-solving tool is to use the “Disk Utility” program and run the “Repair disk” command.

If you want a good all-purpose reference book, I’d recommend MacOS X: The Missing Manual. Actually, all of the “missing manual” books are great, and you may want to consider Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual as well.

Can’t recommend anything there; I prefer to code my HTML by hand, and find BBEdit indispensible for that.

Others have listed FTP clients, but I’d say Transmit is well worth the $20 they ask for it.

9

Welcome aboard!

  1. You think of yourself as a newcomer to the world of Mac, but so are we Mac folks (give or take a maximum of four change-filled years) – MacOS X is a Whole 'Nother Thing for lots of us long-term Mac-heads too. In some ways, you’ll be more at home in MacOS X than some of us old-fogey Mac folks who still don’t see any reason why a file ought to have an extension.

  2. If you really want lots of freebie software and have a sufficiently geeky streak, head for the world of X11. Any unix GUI app for which source code is available can be baked for consumption in the MacOS X11 environment and far more often than not you can bake it in automated mode using Fink.

  3. Having said that, my favorite FTP client is NetFinder, which is a bit of an underdog (most MOSXers embrace Transmit) but quite nice and reliable. It’s affordable shareware, not freeware.

  4. Folks who have said that the Finder’s built-in FTP functionality is enough are cutting corners unless they know something I don’t – last I heard you could not upload via FTP using the Finder, just download.

  5. Font problems?? How odd! What kind of probs?

10

I’ll echo the above folks for just about everything. And feel free to contact this lifetime Mac user if you need anything.

11

If Adobe and other Big Software Vendors offered a no-cost “sidegrade” to change the Windows versions of their software to the Mac versions, I would be switching to the latest OS X. OS X is gorgeous and built on Unix–it’s like the tantalisingly-beautiful engineer you haven’t met yet, whom you can’t quite believe works in your lab.

But as it is, I’d have to buy Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Premiere, etc, etc, all over again. So I just put a faster motherboard in my PC every now and then and plan my escape to Linux.

12

I’ve never used BBEdit, but I’ve always heard and read good things about it. However, if you’re still set on Homesite, it’s built in to Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004.

For FTP I’ve always used (the formerly freeware, now shareware) Fetch. It’s got a GUI and is pretty simple to use.

Learning how to use and maintain a Mac is easy-- so easy, in fact, that most of us can get away with knowing little about the inner workings of the OS. For general OS X info, I second the recommendation for the Missing Manual series. I note that David Pogue’s the author of both the OS X and the Switching books; he’s very readable. For more in-depth material, there’s an O’Reilly book on Unix for Mac OS X that’s pretty good. Prior experience with Unix is helpful but not necessary.

I echo the welcome and offer for assistance.

13

I’m using RBrowser Lite (find it at Version Tracker) for FTP – it’s the freeware version of a shareware FTP app. It’s not as full featured as Fetch (I couldn’t extract my registration number for Fetch :frowning: ) but what it can’t do can be done (by me, at least) from the command line and I think it’s quite sufficient for a general user.

14

Have you called Adobe and asked if they would let you “sidegrade” for a nominal fee? At a minimum, I believe the next time they have a major release of their suite, they’ll let you use your Windows discs to upgrade to the Mac version of the new stuff.

Actually, in thinking about it, it’s slightly scary how few commercial apps I have for my Mac. 90% of my stuff is either provided free from Apple, or shareware/freeware/garageware stuff. Shareware on the Mac is often as good as the commercial stuff.

15

After having been a Windows user at least at home for most of my adult life, I have recently switched to OSX and Apple hardware (I have a G5 for work–w00t!)

I’ll never go back. OSX is so incomparably superior: easy to use, stable, and fast as hell compared to Windows I can’t believe I didn’t switch earlier. Why did I suffer with Windows for SO LONG?
:smack:
People who tell you the variety of software available to OSX is indaquate and full of it. That hasn’t been true for a couple years already, though it was true when OSX first came out.

My only gripes: a few things require rebooting WAY too often, though not as often as Windows, certainly. After using Linux at work and school for several years, I have grown intolerant of rebooting, which is one reason I was really ready to switch to OSX this year. However, OSX is stable as a well-made piece of oak furniture. I’ve never had it crash, no matter how much I torture it (and I have, believe me.) The OS almost never even stutters!

Apple, you’re really doing something right! Keep it up!

(By the way, I never liked the MacOS until OSX.)

16

And often better!

17

I’ll have to back TeaElle on the RBrowser Lite for a free FTP app.
I use Transmit too, but IIRC, it is shareware and not freeware.

And, yes, VersionTracker is an essential site to bookmark.

I’ve used Suitcase, Font Reserve, and the built-in Font Book for over 1500 fonts. Suitcase, by far, has been the easiest way to wrangle the wily critters into a manageable state, so I highly recommend it. Font Reserve had a nasty tendency to corrupt it’s font database file and crash the app. Font Book slowed my system nearly to a crawl, though that may have more to do with it being new and with my tendency to not read directions.

Enjoy!

18

Thanks for all the good advice everyone, and sorry for not checking back sooner to express them! Thanks too for the standing offer of assistance, Troy. And thanks too for nobody turning this into another “my OS is better than yours” pissing match…

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that, at 2pm, Friday, 16th January, I did the ol’ switcheroo. I have the Mac in front of me, and the PC to my left, running Outlook so I can look up old mails if needed.

First thing that happened was I had to use Adobe InDesign to produce a really urgent brochure yesterday evening, from scratch. Despite never having used the program before, I was able to knock something together in half the time it would have taken me using Quark. And whaddya know - all the fonts I needed were there, and then some - so I don’t think I’ll need a third-party suitcase app after all. I recently upgraded to Jaguar, so that might explain it. Furthermore, InDesign’s “export to PDF” function was mighty handy, and saved me a whole lot of dicking around. An absolutely superb experience.

I too code raw HTML, and I’m afraid the last time I used BBEdit it bit the big one. I will have another look at the OS X version, but Homesite is just such a good code editor I doubt anything will ever touch it. I have Adobe GoLive, but it’s simply horrible. I think I’ll have to use it on the PC in perpetuity, unfortunately, unless there’s a freeware Windows emulator available…?

friedo, how do I access the FTP from Finder? Is it like Windows’s version where you just type the ftp address into the address bar? I did a find for “FTP” on the Mac but nothing turned up.

BTW, I myself was a “Mac person” from 1992 onwards, and only touched a PC for the first time in 1996; but as you all say, OS X is a whole nother creature. Now if only I had a Mac at home… One can but dream.

19

If you type an FTP URL into the address bar of Safari (not sure if it works with IE or not) then a Finder window should automatically pop up showing you what’s in the FTP server. You can then navigate and copy stuff as you would a disk or network drive.

20

The Finder’s “Go” menu, “Connect to Server”, supports direct FTP URLs, which is how must folks use built-in FTP, although as I said it only lets you download. You can’t copy files to your own site from your hard drive without using 3rd party software (or the Terminal’s command line, of course).

They’ll probably fix that, but have not done so yet AFAIK.