# Questions about switching from PC to Mac **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 23, 2015, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394 "2015-04-23T22:03:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/41 "2015-04-27T05:33:45Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > Office for Mac is bad enough that if I had to work with Office a big part of every day, I’d just switch to Windows. I actually (mostly) like Office:mac 2011. It’s a _lot_ more Mac-like than things like LibreOffice. That said, because I use Office 2010 at work professionally, I can use Office a heck of a lot more efficiently (faster) at work than I can at home using Office:mac. It helps that Office on Window still allows me to use the old accelerator keys, despite not having menus to support them. I’ve been using the Office 2015 preview for the Mac at home, and although it also doesn’t support accelerator keys, it _does_ still support traditional Mac menus. This means it’s a lot faster for me to read and choose what I want from the logical menus than it is to use Google to figure out which stupid ribbon tab and icon represents a function that I don’t use often enough to remember where it’s at (yes, I know, it’s 2015 and I still choose to bitch about the stupid ribbon). Edit: I can’t seem to turn off the stupid cell animation, though. I hate stupid special effects. When I select a cell, I don’t need to get motion sickness watching is fly to a new cell. > [@elfkin477](#): > > Windows doesn’t crash “constantly” without hardware failure or user misuse and/or failure to do basic maintenance, like never deleting temporary internet files, never defragging, and downloading things indiscriminately so the computer is full of spyware, malware, and some viruses. Yes, pretty much this. Ever since Windows 7, Windows doesn’t really suck anymore. I still prefer my Macs, but at least Windows is reliable. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/42 "2015-04-27T08:44:18Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I’m sick of the constant crashes and other problems with Windows. What crashes? Crashes these days are generally indicative of a hardware issue, not software. Previous comments ask about the RAM. The Windows memory test and Memtest have failed to pick up errors in the past for me. The test that has worked reliably for me is [Prime95](http://www.mersenne.org/download/). As for the platform, Apple vs PC, gaming is better on PCs. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/43 "2015-04-27T11:51:58Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > KDE works just fine, as do Xfce, LCDE, Enlightenment etc… ( I never liked GNOME. ) > > Why having a choice in Desktop Environments, enabling people to work with what they prefer, would be a ‘further problem’ is inconceivable. Not everyone wants the soviet single model. > There is definitely a place for **The Great Fatberg** , Microsoft, in personal computing; but apart from games or applications _specifically_ made for their or Apple’s systems, I can’t imagine anything either system can do that is not done on Linux or BSD. Usually more simply and elegantly. All of those user interfaces are, as I said, a bad joke when compared to both Windows and OSX. Their user interface design is awful and generally not consistent. But hey, this year will the year of Linux on the desktop ™. Oh and for the record, I have Windows, Linux and OSX machines at home. Each has their own role which they are best at. Windows for games, OSX for general usage and Linux for my servers. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/44 "2015-04-27T12:59:05Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Then again I stick with German engineering: OpenSUSE, the Oompah Band of Linux. Exemplified by the included KDE. _(German accent)_ “Why have one option when we can have six million?” ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/45 "2015-04-27T13:32:43Z")
We have Mac’s at home because as the old phase goes, they just work. They have the Office for Mac but 99% of the documents we use work just fine on Libre Office, and the take less time to load. At work, it is 90% Linux. Miss DrumBum has a Mac laptop at school and they use Libre Office. The only issue she has had was a battery replacement about four years ago. Finally, I have quite a few shares of Apple stock so I recommend you buy a Mac. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/46 "2015-04-27T15:49:58Z")
Everyone talks about Macs and malware, but my dad got malware on the one at church just trying to install an adblocker. Macs are not foolproof. and, yeah, if Windows 7 is bluescreening so often, there’s something wrong. Hardware or drivers or a particular Windows update (the one upgrading to Direct2D 1.1–it doesn’t work correctly on some Intel GPUs). ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/47 "2015-04-28T15:51:58Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > [hijack] > > I’m a PC guy and I recently fixed a friend’s Windows laptop that had become really slow. Long story short it’s because _ **he’s not tech savvy and he watches a lot of online porn.** _ Consequently it was full of spyware, malware, viruses etc. I cleaned it up but it’s since gotten slow again. He asked me if a new Mac laptop would be more immune to this. Would it? Yes, if he doesn’t download a “required viewer” application or some other so-called required app, then give it permission to install. > [@Mister Rik](#): > > Yeah, not immune, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve been surfing porn on my Mac and gotten an alert warning me, “Your computer is not Win-32 compatible”. Pretty good indication that the page was trying to load something funny. That hasn’t happened in a while, though. That’s the equivalent of a poster-size statement saying “Here be Windows viruses.” > [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > [hijack again] > > Again, I know nothing about Macs but I do have an iPhone. Does the Mac OS support Flash? If not wouldn’t this severely limit its ability to surf porn sites? OS X supports Flash, but it isn’t installed at the factory. It must be downloaded, preferably from Adobe, not some site such as CNET that has a bad reputation for including shovelware, spyware and redirect malware in apps. If a Windows user is familiar with Firefox, it’s the same on a Mac, so there’s nothing to relearn. But it should be downloaded from Mozilla’s site, **NOT** from CNET or from anywhere else. > [@Chefguy](#): > > Absolutely never neglect these issues. I run virus and malware scans daily, rarely open email attachments, defrag and clean regularly, and don’t cruise iffy websites. I don’t worry about any of that. There are no Mac viruses in the wild (meaning outside of labs and wannabes in Russian basements), and no antivirus apps written for Macs can scan for OS X viruses, because there are none and no way to know what to look for. This has been the case for 15 years. Erstwhile Windows users find it hard to believe, though, and antivirus companies market to them. I don’t open email attachments from spammers or retailers I may have done business with only because they may contain web bugs (and any retailers have only a Yahoo mail address). OS X includes [**XProtect**](http://www.thesafemac.com/apple-cracks-down-on-adware/) that runs in the background to help protect against malicious downloaded apps. Apple updates it through system updates. A user might not know it exists. It’s invisible. OS X [**automagically defrags**](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Apple-claim-defragmentation-in-OS-X-is-unnecessary). I haven’t run a defrag since OS 9. > [@BigT](#): > > Everyone talks about Macs and malware, but my dad got malware on the one at church just trying to install an adblocker. Macs are not foolproof. If the adblocker was downloaded from a site like CNET that loads Firefox with crap, it would have contained adware and/or redirect software built in, and it would have required the user’s permission to install. The malware was not a virus. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394/48 "2015-04-28T16:47:06Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Absolutely never neglect these issues. I … defrag and clean regularly, Windows 7 and 8 defragment HDDs automatically; you shouldn’t defragment SSDs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-switching-from-pc-to-mac/718394.md?page=2)