Macbook
Well, I have finally moved to the dark side and purchased an apple macbook (black) for my notebook.
I have contemplated the switch for so long now - I can’t believe I have finally have done it.
A couple of bloggers have been encouraging me (no, nagging) for long time now - so, I am sure they will celebrate another convert to the mac cult.
Expect a number of mac related posts soon 
June 19th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
looking forward to seeing how it goes for you!
June 20th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Congratulations, but you’ve got one point wrong. “The Dark Side” is what you’ve just left behind. It’s all sweetness and light from here on out, brother!
Just don’t leave the laptop on your lap for too long.
June 20th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Congratulations! Now we can envy your hardware.
June 20th, 2006 at 6:05 am
Cult is always a word used by the dominant religion. Hope you enjoy your Mac experience. It does not require “belief”.
June 20th, 2006 at 6:19 am
Yeah we’ve been calling PCs the Dark Side for years now. The Dark side is the side that causes you problems. Welcome, and enjoy the light side of the force.
June 20th, 2006 at 7:07 am
We had 4 PCs at home for the family. I added a desktop Mac to our home 3 years ago, and since then two PCs have been replaced with Mac laptops. So we now have 1 PC, a desktop Mac, and two laptop Macs.
The hardest things for us to get used to were:
1. On the Mac, windows do not open “full screen”. The little button in the upper corner does not help. The biggest they get is about 3/4 of a screen. You have to drag to resize if you want ‘em bigger.
2. You can only resize a window by grabbing the lower right corner. Grabbing side or bottom edges does not work.
3. Coming from the PC, navigating the Mac hard disk confused me. The Mac and PC both share a bad feature: If you organize files into particular folders on your computer, you will have a dickens of a time figuring out what folder you saved them in. Even figuring out where you currently are located within the directory structure usually involves mouse around a bit. Figuring out where you are seems seems more confusing on the Mac.
4. I’ve added a non-Apple brand keyboard, so I’ve got a right mouse button on my desktop Mac. The laptop Macs are left button only. Bouncing from Mac desktop to Mac laptop to PC is always a bit confusing. Even after 3 years.
5. The help menus ID the “Alt” key with an Egyptian sort of symbol. This symbol is not printed on the Alt key on the keyboard. Confusing? You bet.
6. Using the menu system from the keyboard requires memorization. You don’t see menu letters with handy little underlines, which on the PC allows you to easily use an alt-key combination right from the keyboard.
7. Mousing along drop down menus initially seemed difficult. The PC is more forgiving of mouse movements that are not perfect as you pull down menus and mouse across to submenus. After a few months you will perfect your mousing skills and this won’t be a problem. But initially, its a source of irritation.
8. Both PC and Mac allow you to switch apps using the buttons at the bottom of your screen. On a PC those same buttons also allow you to switch between individual documents in the same app. That doesn’t work on the Mac. You need to go to a pull down menu to switch between open documents within an app. I do not have a problem with this now that I’ve gotten accustomed to it. When I first switched, it was rough going for a while.
9. No eject button on the CD-ROM drive. You eject by clicking an icon. Irritating.
10. Ejecting all drives is mandatory. If you simply unplug a USB drive without a formal “eject” by clicking on the eject icon, the Mac will scold you with nasty messages. From a computer standpoint I understand this. But I don’t like it.
11. Move menu? There isn’t one. “Copy” can be done with the mouse, or with the menus. “Move” can be done only with the mouse. Initially confusing, even 3 years later it is still annoying.
12. The End button is erratic. On a PC it takes you to the end of the currentline, in almost all applications. Even after three full years, I constantly forget this does not work consistently on the Mac. It usually takes you to the end of the document, or to the end of the page like a “page down” button. It is only the Microsoft applications, such as Microsoft Word for the Mac, which give you the “end of line” function for the End button. I never thought I’d say it, but thank goodness for Microsoft!
13. Quicken for the Mac does not work with my financial institution. I don’t want to switch to another program (there are several good ones). So I am stuck using the PC for the checking account.
14. The Apple software team does not design its help menus for people switching from a PC. Remember when Microsoft Word took market share from WordPerfect? Word had a special help menu for “switchers” from WordPerfect. Now pretend you are switching from Microsoft Outlook on the PC to Mail App on the Mac. You want to organize your email into folders. On the Mac they are called mailboxes, not folders. Fine. But there is no entry for “folder” on your Mac’s help screens. Agolden opportunity to help ease the transition from PC to Mac. An opportunity lost forever. This lack of sympathy for the switcher permeates the Mac’s help menus.
Oveall, the switch to the Mac has been good. We like it so much that all three of computers we most recently purchased in our family are now Macs. The list above is the particular things that have been hardest to get used to.
- Dan Ashley, Chicago
June 20th, 2006 at 11:25 am
I completely switched at the beginning of June with my purchase of the Macbook. When I bought my Mac mini last year, it was just something to play around with. Little did I know that I would be abandoning Windows months later. I haven’t looked back yet. Have fun!!
June 20th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Thanks guys for your comments.
Angel, I too bought a mac mini to dip my toe into the world of macs.
Joe S, some very handy tips then.
How dumb am I as I have never seen the eject button on the keyboard! I am now scanning the rest of the keyboard for more surprises.
The right click with the two fingers on the trackpad is a great find as is the two finger scrolling..
June 20th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
There are plenty of useful tips on the web & Apples site. I use both platforms & find the mac a less obtrusive & productive tool. One you memorize the modifier keys & keyboard short cuts. They will pretty much work for most applications on the MAC. No need for relearning from app to app. Windows apps are inconsistent in this way. Always learning new shortcut keys for different apps.
Here’s a few links to get you started.
http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/
http://radio.weblogs.com/0141930/
http://macproductivity.com/
http://www.jdempsey.com/category/osx/
http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/index.html
http://automator.us/
Also click on the desktop go under the help menu to get info & tips about the OS. This works the same in all the apps for example want to learn how to use iPhoto launch iPhoto & look under the help menu for tutorials.
Have fun experimenting. Cheers.
June 20th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
One more way (what is this six? seven?) to eject a disk: Right click (or control-click or two-finger-click) on the item and choose EJECT from the contextual menu.
Also, in the side bar, you can click the eject symbol next to the disk name and icon. (At least this wasn’t spelled out, although it fits in the “Finder” category.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:14 am
Joe S.
Thanks for the great tips! These will help him get over the transition.
I still think Apple should have a great person like you, Joe, on their team, to ease the transition for switchers. There are a number of things that are better on the Mac, but are different enough to make Windows users fumble around. As is, most switchers stumble onto these little tricks and hints. This takes several months. It would be good marketing if Apple would exert a little effort to make the transiton a bit smoother.
I have one other transition issue. Lets say I have a 100 jpg vacation photos on my Mac. And I network my Mac and PC together so the PC can see those very same files on the Mac hard drive. Now I want to scroll thru the files and find a particular vacation photo. Which is faster? The Mac looking at its own hard drive, or the PC looking at the Mac’s hard drive over a network cable? Sometimes it seems the PC is actually faster using Windows Explorer. Alas, on panther 10.3.9 the Finder is rather slow to display the thumbnails. Any hints about what I can do to tweak the Mac so it is faster at displaying photos in the Finder?
Thanks!
-Dan Ashley, Chicago
June 21st, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Joe, awesome stuff. I have the next few days off and I will spend them going through your list - hopefully I will learn something.
Thanks again.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:00 am
Phil,
Are you near an Apple Store? I am.
Over the last 3 years I’ve found that the support for the Apple computers is superior to any PC. As much as I like the Mac, most things can be accomplished on the Mac or on the PC. Sometimes the PC is more annoying, or less consistent. But if you want to get it done, either road will take you there.
However, the road is smoother on the Mac, because Apple support is superior.
With my Pc, on numerous occasions there has been something I’ve wanted to do, or some spyware I wanted to get rid of, or whatever, and the PC stores and other resources were unhelpful, or tried their best but were too confusing to be helpful. Oftentimes, the solution was unattainable, especially if problems cropped up after a few years, by which time many different programs had been installed. Often the best solution was simply to buy a new PC or pay the store some money to wipe it clean, reformat, and start anew.
On the PC side, my usual support option for my home computer is to go to the PC techhie types at the office where I work, and ply them with questions. The Apple approach is astoundingly better.
Mac support, particularly at the Apple Store, is superb. Plus, they run free workshops from 10 a.m. to 6 pm and I frequently go over at lunchtime and get all sorts of free training. I’ve taken in depth computer classes for $1000 + and while the free workshops are certainly no $1000 class, the value is absolutely astounding.
I’ve rewarded Apple with three Mac purchases in 3 years, plus books, software, etc.
Mac supporters are proud of the operating system, the elegance and the beautiful design of the computers. But for me its the support that keeps me coming back. Particularly if you are near an Apple Store.
- Dan Ashley, Chicago
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 am
for me it is 12+ years of virtually problem free computing.
June 25th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Hi Dan,
Yeah I am near a couple of mac stores so thank for the tip - I will pop in and see if they offer some courses.