Things PC users should know before switching to the Mac

[FallingLeaves]

I don’t think it would have changed my mind, but when I switched from a PC and bought an iMac 2 years ago, I had no idea I’d be wasting so much paper and ink, or it would take me a so many steps in order to print just a single page from a multi page document. I’d really like it if Apple added the ability to print a certain page or selection like you can in Windows.

[Astral_Rejection]

Macs actually do have that feature! When you go to File > Print, you see the printer name and the presets toggles, right? Click the blue arrow (it’s pointing down) to reveal more print functions, including print selection options.

[FallingLeaves]

Thank you!! I thought I had tried everything by now, I’ve asked other mac users, etc. How did I miss that button all this time.

Happy!

[beowulff]

@FallingLeaves

Thank you!! I thought I had tried everything by now, I’ve asked other mac users, etc. How did I miss that button all this time.

Happy!

In the future -
OS X has built-in help. Go to the help menu and type “print range.” One of the results says:

Printing part of a long document
If you want to print only a range of pages from a long document, you can specify the range when you print.

To print part of a document:
Open the document you want to print.
Choose File > Print.

If the Print dialog contains only two pop-up menus and some buttons across the bottom, click the disclosure triangle beside the Printer pop-up menu.
Type the first page you want to print in the From field and the last page you want to print in the To field.
Click Print.

[FallingLeaves]

I had searched, used help (although I don’t think I used the word “range”), asked other mac users for this. I don’t get it. Maybe everyone was playing a trick on me - don’t tell FallingLeaves about this one…

Now I just feel stupid, but eh, I’ll get over it.

We now return you to the real things PC users need to know before switching to the Mac.

[Petey]

@beowulff

Cmd-Tab shows all currently running Applications and allows you to switch between them easily. As does F9.

But you can’t switch to a minimized program with Cmd-Tab. Unless I’m missing something, the only way to switch to a minimized program is to click on it. I don’t like that a lot of the Mac’s mouse commands have no keyboard equivalent.

[beowulff]

@Petey

But you can’t switch to a minimized program with Cmd-Tab. Unless I’m missing something, the only way to switch to a minimized program is to click on it. I don’t like that a lot of the Mac’s mouse commands have no keyboard equivalent.

Well, that’s “True,” in the sense that selecting a program using cmd-tab keeps the current window state. Remember, in OS X, Programs don’t get minimized, Windows do. So, if I have 25 windows open in Photoshop, and 24 of them are minimized, it would be obnoxious to have cmd-tab unminimize them all when I selected it.

If you really need to do this from the keyboard, you can do it with DragThing (which I highly recommend).

[Punoqllads]

@Polerius

[ul]
[li]No PageDown or PageUp key (at least on MacBook Pro)[/li][LIST]
[li]Need Fn+DownArrow for PageDown and Fn+UpArrow for PageUP, which is a hassle[/li][/ul][/LIST]

If you’re on a notebook, you don’t need those. Swipe three fingers along the trackpad to either move all the way up or all the way down to the bottom of a page. Check out the four-fingered swipe while you’re at it.

D’oh! As stated on post #2…

[Polerius]

@Punoqllads

If you’re on a notebook, you don’t need those. Swipe three fingers along the trackpad to either move all the way up or all the way down to the bottom of a page. Check out the four-fingered swipe while you’re at it.

Three-finger swiping doesn’t do anything for me in Safari.

I think you may be referring to two-finger swiping, which scrolls the page up and down.

In any case, as I’m browsing, say, the SDMB and reading my threads, pressing a single PageDown button is 100 times easier and more convenient that having to put two fingers on the track pad and scroll down.

[LunarPlexus]

@Polerius

Three-finger swiping doesn’t do anything for me in Safari.

I think you may be referring to two-finger swiping, which scrolls the page up and down.

In any case, as I’m browsing, say, the SDMB and reading my threads, pressing a single PageDown button is 100 times easier and more convenient that having to put two fingers on the track pad and scroll down.

Three finger swiping is a relatively new addition, so you may not have that. Space bar functions as PageDown in most cases.

edit: Shift-space bar is PageUp.

[rbroome]

@Polerius

I recently had to switch to using a Mac (MacBook Pro) and some of the details surprised me. Some of the stuff is just muscle memory and you can get used to the new status quo eventually (like the fact that the close window ‘x’ is on the left side rather than the right side of the window title bar), but some are actually big inconveniences. Some of these things are not right or wrong, it’s just that if you are used to one way, the other way stinks.

I decided to jot things down as I experience them, and I’m posting them hear as a “buyer beware” for people who are contemplating switching to a Mac.

The list:
[ul]
[li]No PageDown or PageUp key (at least on MacBook Pro)[/li][LIST]
[li]Need Fn+DownArrow for PageDown and Fn+UpArrow for PageUP, which is a hassle[/li][/ul]
[li]In Finder, selecting a file and pressing the Enter key renames the file instead of opening it[/li][ul]
[li]Need Command+DownArrow to open file on Mac[/li][/ul]
[li] There is no way to delete a file in Finder by using a key press which then prompts for confirmation (basically, what the ‘delete’ button does in Windows)[/li][ul]
[li]You can delete without confirmation by pressing Command+Delete (basically, what Shift+Delete does in Windows)[/li][/ul]
[li]The green “Maximize” button on a window does not maximize like it does in Windows. It does not fill the whole screen. It increases the size to what it thinks is the max that is best for that application.[/li][ul]
[li]One work around in Safari is to add the bookmarklet javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);[/li][li]For other applications, I believe there are some programs you can download that make the Mac maximize behave like Windows, but I haven’t tried any.[/li][/ul]
[li]Double-clicking on the title bar of a window does not maximize it[/li][li]There are no docking stations for Macbooks!!! (The exclamation marks are there because this was very surprising, as it is very unelegant, and thus un-Apple-like, to have to manually connect the monitor, power, keyboard, mouse and speakers every time)[/li][ul]
[li]The closest you can get, I believe, is by buying an Apple monitor, in which case you have to plug three cables every time you connect, and disconnect them every time you disconnect. Compare that to my ThinkPad, which I just plop down onto the docking station and have everything ready to use.[/li][/ul]
[li]When you close the last window of an application (e.g. Safari), the application does not exit. [/li][ul]
[li]You have to manually tell the application to exit, via mouse or keyboard. That is, if I have three browser windows open and I close them one by one, when the last is closed, Safaris is still running. I have to either press Command-Q, or from the menu select “Safari->Quit Safari”[/li][/ul]
[li]You can’t resize a window by clicking on any edge of the window, only from the lower-right corner [/li][ul]
[li]This is quite unfortunate, since it means that if a window is on the right of the screen, you need to move it left, then enlarge it, which is pretty stupid.[/li][/ul]
[li]There is no equivalent of MS Paint. There is Paintbrush, which you can download for free, but it does not have all the features of MS Paint.[/li][li]A lot of Control-<Key> on Windows become Command-<Key> on Mac[/li][ul]
[li]Command-F to search[/li][li]Command-A to select all[/li][li]Command-C and Command-V to copy and paste, etc[/li][li]The solution I’m using is that I remapped the CapsLock key to become the command key in Mac Keyboard settings. Since the CapsLock key is conveniently placed where the Control key is on UNIX keyboards, I do CapsLock-C for copy, etc, which works for me due to muscle memory.[/li][/ul]
[/LIST]

I’m sure long-time Mac users have a plethora of issues when moving to the PC.

I wish computers were more configurable so that one can get the awesomeness of, say, OS X, or Windows 7, but can decide which side of the window the damn ‘x’ goes.

It seems to me that a lot of these things are frosting (i.e. where the ‘x’ goes, whether to close the application when the last window closes, whether pressing Enter on a selected file renames it or opens it, etc). The selling point of an OS should be how stable, reliable and fast it is. There should be configuration utilities allowing much more freedom for configuration than current OS allow. There should be a program that puts a “Windows skin” on a Mac and a “Mac skin” on a PC, not in terms of visual elements, but in terms of what each key does and how things behave.

Can you imagine if cars decided on different places to put the gas, brake, and clutch pedals? Cars put the basic stuff in the same place, and then distinguish themselves on performance and reliability. Why don’t OSs do the same?

thanks!
as a long time Mac user, I have wondered what the differences are between using a Mac and using a PC. While I certainly have used PCs, I have done so only for specific functions and so don’t really have any understanding of how to operate them in general. This list points out several features on both machines that I find interesting.
And I agree about the docking station-I guess Apple didn’t want to go to the expense of putting the special connector on the laptop (docking stations require a special connector?). Too bad, it is a convenient feature.