Tell the Mac user tips now that he's switched to a PC

Macbook Pro died. 17-inch model, late 2011. Was being officially declared obsolete in June anyway, but, yeah, I’m not going to try to be brave. I miss it.

Anyway, present circumstances lead me to be using a PC running Windows 10 Creator’s update. The one point of solace is that Outlook calendar syncs from Windows to my iPhone, whereas it didn’t (bizarrely) with my Mac.

So, what other cool or helpful things are there about using a Windows-running PC that I should know? My most immediate wish is to be able to text from the PC. I have tried setting that up with Cortana, but have failed so far, so any suggestions would be welcome.

Try to keep this from coming a Mac vs Windows debate, eh? I just want to pull things together and move forward. :wink:

I didn’t know Cortana could send messages to the iPhone. I forget Cortana is a thing.

Anyway - these are the instructions. They include Android instructions, too.

D18 - do you have a Microsoft account?

I have noticed that Mac software tends to lack an “overwrite” capability - that is, you can’t move the cursor to the middle of some text, change to “overwrite” mode, and type over what you originally had; you have to use the mouse to “select” the text you want to replace and then type. On PCs, a lot of times, you can press the Insert key to switch between the two modes (and the cursor should change shape to reflect the mode).

Note that it does not always work - especially on a web browser. For example, I can’t do it on this post as I enter it.

hm, now I want to try that.

on Ubuntu. Chrome ignores the “Insert” key, gedit and libreOffice Writer respect it.

Shortcuts:

You probably know the Ctrl ones, but the Windows key ones are especially handy.

I have never known anyone that actually uses that key to do what they want. Usually it just ends up creating calls to the IT helpdesk with the user saying “When I type, it’s eating the letters! Help!”

They should ban that key. Along with Num Lock.

I use both, because it’s worth the extra price to have less hassle at home, but at work I have to use what they give me.

On the PC I frequently use the Home and End keys to put the cursor at the left and right ends of the current line of text. That’s really handy during editing. I don’t know why that doesn’t have a single key counterpart on the Mac (and please tell me if I missed it!).

On the Mac it is normal good practice to work as a user who does not have system admin rights, and to switch user or log in as admin to mess with the system. This is nice because accidental damage is less likely. I think there’s a range of ways of dealing with it on the PC but they take initiative. It is also typical on the Mac to set up a user named Test or some such, and log in as that user if you want to try things you think might mess up the system, as any user can generally only mess up things in their own workspace.

I absolutely use Insert and Overwrite modes on the PC. Usually it’s in Insert mode, but for example when editing columns of numbers it can be much faster to use Overwrite.

On a PC the Delete and Backspace keys remove things in one direction or the other. On a Mac there’s the Backspace, and a Function-Backspace to do what the Del key does. I really do use the Del key on a PC often, whereas on the Mac my habit is more to position the cursor right of what I want to delete and the Backspace.

On the PC you have to deal with antivirus software, whereas on the Mac you don’t. This was a big deciding factor for me a decade ago when I switched at home.

On the Mac, after you have booted the system, if you use an application it remains open even when you save whatever file you created and close its window. The application code remains resident in memory. In the bar along the bottom (usually) of a Mac’s screen, this is indicated by a dot under the application’s icon. You have to close the application itself, with a right click on its icon or a Quit from the Apple menu, if you want the code to leave memory. On the PC, closing a window removes the application code from memory, and using an application for the second time since a boot takes as much time as using it the first time.

Macs do things with disk images. I’m not aware of a similar agent on PCs.

The default scroll directions are opposite. I go back and forth daily and every time I scroll it is a fresh journey of surprise and discovery to see which direction things move. Yes, you can change this. No, I never get around to it.

On the Mac, having multiple displays keeps screwing up, as they go dark or trade places or spontaneously rearrange themselves. Whereas, on the PC, exactly the same thing also keeps going wrong. I often wonder why this is so difficult.

Online vendors have been caught figuring out which kind of system shoppers are using, and showing higher prices to Mac users and lower prices to PC users.

These are all things I picked up on over the ten years I have been using both systems daily. I could have mistaken things and certainly some of these may have stopped being true without my noticing, so I would greatly appreciate anybody correcting whatever I got wrong!

I don’t think that’s currently true. I ran a system running Windows 10 and just the built-in Windows Defender anti-malware software for a year or so, and it seemed to be fine. Keep in mind with with either the Mac or the Windows OS, you need to update the OS regularly.

One possible issue for the new-to-the-PC OP; I believe on Macs, you can just install or remove a program by just copying the one file, or deleting it. But Windows programs need to be formally installed, through an MSI, EXE or other sort of executable installer. And you need to go to Add/Remove Programs to get rid of them.

If you get a full sized keyboard (one with numeric keypad) the Mac keyboards have the end and home keys, and separate backspace and delete keys and page up/page down. Unfortunately, they seem to all ship with the smaller keyboards. I just got a new iMac last fall, and I immediately put the wireless mouse and keyboard that came with it in a drawer and attached an older wired keyboard and two button mouse that I already had.

Apple sells full sized keyboards too, but they want $129.00 for theirs.

And for the last 5 years at least, there’s been a lot of malware targeted at Macs. Not as much as PCs, but enough that we saw (and cleaned up) a lot of it at the school I worked at for ten years.

Tip: Get another 17" MacBook Pro.

I’m using my 2010 MacBook Pro with a 17" display. I’d love to get a newer computer, but Apple doesn’t make 17" laptops anymore. I need a 17" display to do my work! (OK, I worked on my 15" PowerBook for a while, but 17" is much better.)

Are you my wife? These are her exact words. Heaven help us when that mid 2010 17" MBP finally dies.

I am pretty sure that the 17" is not coming back; not with Apple’s current design philosophy at least. All products must be thinner, sleeker, and less user friendly. Fewer ports, more dongles.

Not single-key by default, but command-left arrow and command-right arrow do the same things. If you really prefer the PC way, you can modify a key bindings file to do it globally – it’s not horrible, but it does involve some text editing: How to map the Home and End keys in macOS Sierra to behave like Windows – A blog from the lighter side

As noted, many Mac keyboards don’t have standalone home/end keys, so not many apps will care if you rebind these.

You can use both hands to type, as you can now put the Kool-Aid down.

:wink:

This is application-specific; it has nothing to do with the particular OS. If it happens in Windows, the program usually disappears from the taskbar but is still present in the system tray. But yes, as a general rule, the OSes work this way. Mac ⌘+W and ⌘+Q do different things in most cases. Windows Ctrl+W and Ctrl+Q often do the same thing if only 1 window remains, otherwise W closes 1 and Q closes all.

Not sure what this means. Like how .dmg files mount and open a folder? It’s not necessary for Win, though there are lots of programs that let you mount folders etc. as a virtual drive, if needed, e.g. DaemonTools.

Macs weren’t always this way, they introduced it awhile back (in Lion?). It was right around the time their Macbook pads got upgraded. The scroll direction makes some intuitive sense with these, but it’s infuriating with a mouse wheel.

I haven’t experienced much of this with either OS, but it does seem to happen with certain monitors. If the source is on autodetect, might make sure that you set it to DP or HDMI or whatever.

OP, here. Thank you all for your tips and, especially, the empathy! :wink:

Merneith, yes I do have Microsoft account, and I’ve done everything I’m supposed to, but still can’t get the texting to work.

I cannot believe there is no easy way to send texts from a Windows machine. iMessage was something that was so self-evidently beneficial on the Mac that it never occurred to me it would be an issue on Windows.

Know where your stuff is. You know how you get instant or near-instant results from a Finder search in OS X? Windows File Explorer sucks. Searching for even a file just sitting on the desktop for some reason requires the searching the entire system.

You may accidentally reorient your screen. I routinely do this unintentionally. Ctrl+Alt+Up Arrow will fix that for you.

When in doubt, right click.

I’m a data entry guy. Ain’t nobody takin’ my Num Lock away!

With Windows phone, I believe texts were available on any Windows running device. But you’re trying to get your iMessage texts from your iPhone on Windows, and that takes more work. Apple doesn’t have a lot of concern about making iMessage work with non-iPhones.

Are you sure you have Windows 2017 Fall Creator Update installed on your PC?

Here’s another article that’s a little more up to date than the last one. Unfortunately, I can’t really help much because I don’t use Cortana much. I can say that Office 365 works great transfering files between my iPhone and my PC. Also, OneDrive has been really helpful. Office 365 is not cheap, but I’ve never regretted picking it up.

You can install VMWare player, and look on Google for something called a Mac OS activator. This will allow you to install a macOS instance in a virtual machine on your Windows install. Note that this violates the macOS license agreement (which is not a crime in the USA, but only a license violation).

You can also install the official Ubuntu subsystem for Windows. If you’ve ever done terminal work in macOS, and try to use Windows’ cmd.exe, you’ll appreciate that you can avoid it almost entirely and run bash to get things done.

Well I use the enter key all the time, since sometimes I want to overstrike and sometimes not. And I mostly have the numlock off since I find the home and end keys there useful. I really dislike the MS Surface because it has no enter key and no home and end key. Okay it does but on the function keys and I turn them off because I use the function keys extensively for their original functions. I once tried a Mac and found it extremely frustrating.

I can’t give advice to the OP because, while windows has all sorts of features, they are undocumented. My wife discovered, quite inadvertently, that Win+space gives a new keyboard. Trouble was she didn’t want a new keyboard and had to reboot. She had no idea what she had done, but asked our son, the programmer who told her what she had done. But is this documented anywhere?