Any PC users out there recently switch to Mac?

[road trip]

I'm not going to lie to you. The Apple commercials are starting to win me over. I've had enough bad luck with PCs that the thought of a computer w/o "freeze" issues or the "blue screen of death" or needing to reboot or .... sorta makes me think. Should I?

I'm by no means good at this computer stuff and would only be using it for media / internet / syncing up with toys (altimeter, GPS, etc) / some personal finance stuff (note: I'll still have my work PC if needed for things that I can't use on a Mac).

So has anybody made the switch? I know plenty of diehard Mac users who swear by it, but not many people who've made the switch. I know ZERO about using a MAC. I'm less than an Apple JONG. I can't even call myself a newbie. Is it like learning a new language? Am I going to get laughed at by the people in the Apple store when I ask about CTRL-ALT-Delete? I know I'm not cool and urban like the typical Apple owner, but I can learn...

[mtbakerskier]

I switched last fall, and I will NEVER go back!

[Sphinx]

Oh for the love of God.

I've been entirely PC-based for the last five years. I just started grad school at UCSD - and their entire mechanical engineering department is mac-based. So I'm just starting to use a mac.

First thing I was warned when I got an account - "This machine usually crashes once a week, just a quirk."

I use the machine for three hours, and suddenly *poof* firefox disappears, and a very windowsesque notice appears telling me that firefox crashed. No shit?

The commericals are full of shit. The main advantage of a mac is that you can use the unix terminal.

Here's a mac commerical for you: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6irAfABLsT0

[dirtybryan]

I've recently made the switch (about a month and a half ago). At first it takes a while to get used to it, but for everyday tasks I must say it is much more streamlined. There are alot of little shortcuts you can set up that make things like searching through a pile of windows you have open on your desktop a breeze. I do have windows installed on my machine as well, but besides the occasional game on there that I want to play, I find myself using the mac for everything else.

I have found it to be extremely stable, but I wouldn't say bullet proof like they claim. Occasionally you'll get a program that stops responding and you'll resort to the mac equivalent of apple+option+esc which pulls up the force quit (aka end program) menu.

If you know unix commands you can open up terminal which is a shell and use unix commands to do techy stuff.

I haven't tried any programming yet on my mac though, but it does come with a nice IDE (xtools) haven't fooled around wiht it much. The IDE does lack any gui tools for building anything other then mac style interfaces.

I know I'm pretty much babbling, any specifics? After a month and a half I feel competent using a mac, but have yet to "master" it like I have with windows. There are still system tools I'm not familiar with, shortcuts to learn, learning how to use automator, etc...

[p.blz]

I switched a little over two years ago. It took a few weeks to get the hang of it. I was never very skilled with a PC and am somewhat more skilled now with a mac...mainly because I don't mind using it. Things got a lot better for me when I learned about control-click. You kinda have to think like a 5 year old....when all else fails, click and drag.

I have had a few freeze-ups, but I can count them on one hand. I haven't needed any technical support from day one...just plug it in and go.

I do have a friend who more recently switched and is having much more grief than I ever had....so yeah, kinda depends on the user.

I'm not one of those die-hard mac users, but I doubt I'll buy another PC in the future.

[Sinecure]

I switched two years ago. Its awesome. The only time I need to get a PC out is if I need to bill Microsoft for something (seriously, their billing system interface only works with IE on a PC - surprise?). Programs (mostly browsers like Safari and apparently FF sometimes) do crash once in a while, but its actually a fairly elegant crash. You can continue using other programs without a degradation of performance, and even re-launch the same program and all is still OK. I do shut the thing down once a week just out of some feeling that I should. Otherwise I just close the lid when I stop doing something and reopen it to start again. It doesn't care that I've moved from my home to my office to my cabin to wherever, it just wakes up, finds a wifi network and I'm off again.

Spotlight is a great thing and getting better, iTunes rules, Safari is pretty good (I use FF and Safari), the MS Office suite is great and Entourage - the brand ms uses for Outlook on the mac - is perhaps better than Outlook. I sync it with a Palm device using a combination of Missing Sync and e2Sync and that works acceptably - it would be easier if I didn't need it to sync with Entourage and some other stuff. Skype and other things work fine. I don't use the creative apps like Photochop or Illustrator, but those supposedly rock on a mac. And I haven't gotten a virus once in two years. My machine runs nearly as fast today as it did when new (something every PC I've owned has been really bad about - they slow down over time).

[Platinum Pete]

I switched a couple years ago after using a mac at work and I can't imagine going back to windows for anything but droll officy tasks. My iBook has been really sturdy (even after drops) and most every gadget attaches to it without issue. I have not been limited in what I can accomplish, I would say I accomplish more because of how the Mac OS leads me to take full advantage of all the resources - that's the big difference between Mac and windows for me - Windows can probably do everything my Mac does and more, but it would take me forever to figure it out and keep it configured. Plus, no crashing and very little virus worries are good for me.

[Snow Dog]

I'm by no means good at this computer stuff and would only be using it for media / internet / syncing up with toys (altimeter, GPS, etc) / some personal finance stuff (note: I'll still have my work PC if needed for things that I can't use on a Mac).

First you have to make sure the software you need is available for a Mac. For example, Garmin's MapSource is Windows only at this time.

[mtbakerskier]

Oh for the love of God.

I've been entirely PC-based for the last five years. I just started grad school at UCSD - and their entire mechanical engineering department is mac-based. So I'm just starting to use a mac.

First thing I was warned when I got an account - "This machine usually crashes once a week, just a quirk."

I use the machine for three hours, and suddenly *poof* firefox disappears, and a very windowsesque notice appears telling me that firefox crashed. No shit?

The commericals are full of shit. The main advantage of a mac is that you can use the unix terminal.

Here's a mac commerical for you: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6irAfABLsT0

I can guarentee you that it isnt the mac causing it to crash. It is poorly writen Engineering software. At WWU we had a state of the art Engineering computer lab fully funded by Boeing. There was not a single day that the system didnt crash at least once. ESPECIALY if you where doing any stress analysis.

[f2f]

switched last fall. not from windows but from Linux/BSD. won't go back. i now do all my work and much more that i could never do before exclusively on my mac.

wifey switched from windows, hasn't looked back even once.

[Arty50]

syncing up with toys (altimeter, GPS, etc) / some personal finance stuff (note: I'll still have my work PC if needed for things that I can't use on a Mac).

Do some research into syncing your GPS device with a Mac. From what I hear, things have improved recently; but for a while Macs were supposedly lagging far behind in this department. Check out the Peripheral and Applications forums over at forums.macnn.com for some advice.

As for personal finance, lots of people complain about Quicken for the Mac. For some reason the Windows version is much better.
Here's a good thread on personal finance software options:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=284272

As for crashes, Macs can't be beat. I haven't had an app bring down the entire system since OS X 10.0. The worst thing that happens is an app becomes nonresponsive and so you just force quit it and bring it back up. On rare occasions the app is a little quirky still, which can be fixed with a restart. But I can pretty much guarantee you'll never have an app bring down the whole system.

Sphinx's issues are most likely related to a shitty system admininstrator and/or IT monkeys. But note that only Firefox is crashing, not the whole system. If other apps are crashing at random on his machine, then someone needs to look at the machine. Most likely it has a bad stick of RAM. Random app crashes are usually indicative of that on Macs.

[edg]

Garmin is coming out with native mac software 'Real Soon Now'.

My mate switched from PCs to Mac, and he's a computer retard, and loves it. I guess that means macs are for retards then!

As to the firefox thing - what version is it? There was a serous memory leak not long back IIRC.

edg

[TyWebb]

I spent 10 years on a PC and switched to a MAC about 2 years ago...very happy with the decision I made. Like any product, you still have the occassional freeze or have a browser shut down, but those occurances are so rare, especially relative to a PC.

From a techy side...we've even done the unheard of and given all of our programmers MAC Books. These are not "designers" these are hard core database developers and software engineers, and they absolutely love them. Everybody in the office has a MAC and a PC, and I can't think of the last time I saw a PC being used.

Except of course for visually testing of our products on PC IE....which is another story altogether.

[cj001f]

You won't find native MAC support of your altimeter or GPS. And "poorly written software" is the same reason PCs crash. And if you haven't used a PC in the past couple year (yes, they have improved).... you don't have a basis to compare.

The commericals are full of shit.

Oh for the love of god. Do what the commercials tell you to do so you can be an individual!

[Mcwop]

I spent 10 years on a PC and switched to a MAC about 2 years ago...very happy with the decision I made. Like any product, you still have the occassional freeze or have a browser shut down, but those occurances are so rare, especially relative to a PC.

From a techy side...we've even done the unheard of and given all of our programmers MAC Books. These are not "designers" these are hard core database developers and software engineers, and they absolutely love them. Everybody in the office has a MAC and a PC, and I can't think of the last time I saw a PC being used.

Except of course for visually testing of our products on PC IE....which is another story altogether.

Bingo.

I use PCs at work, and Mac at home (i do use my Mac for work stuff too). Hands down the Mac works better. Windows has not been updated in 4 years, unless you count security patches. And Vista will not be out until next year, if the date does not slip for the umpteenth time. OS X is leaping ahead of windows, will probably stay ahead in features, and updates are released more frequently.

The only thing that anyone needs to consider IMO, is if software is available on the Mac. But these days, you can load windows to the Intel based macs and switch if you need to. With Apple going Intel, it will be easier than ever for software developers to port to a Mac - so I expect this rift to close.

My Mac laptops have been far, far, more reliable than any windows laptop we have at work. My new 17" Macbook Pro Laptop is screaming fast.

Oh and did I mention that Macs are less prone to viruses and spyware? Not impregnable, but better situation than Windows.

I have switched 3 friends, and not one complaint. In fact my friends wife, who is not computer savvy, was emailing pics the day they got the Mac. She told me she could not belive how easy it was, compared to the software packages that came on their previous PC.

[comish]

Here is a stupid mac jong question. How do you "right click" on a Mac? I'm sure there is a way to say, open a link in a new browser window or copy/paste as I typically do with the right mouse button on a PC. When I borrowed a friends mac I had issues with that.

[Mcwop]

Here is a stupid mac jong question. How do you "right click" on a Mac? I'm sure there is a way to say, open a link in a new browser window or copy/paste as I typically do with the right mouse button on a PC. When I borrowed a friends mac I had issues with that.

Control Key + Clicking Mouse button. If they have one of the new Apple Mice, then that has right clickability.

[Arty50]

Here is a stupid mac jong question. How do you "right click" on a Mac? I'm sure there is a way to say, open a link in a new browser window or copy/paste as I typically do with the right mouse button on a PC. When I borrowed a friends mac I had issues with that.

If you're using a single button mouse or trackpad, hold down the 'control' key and click. Edit: McWop is faster on the draw.

Otherwise, just plug in any generic two button USB mouse and right click away. No cofiguration or software necessary (unless you buy a gazillion button mouse, in which case you'll need software to program buttons 3 thru a gazillion).

[Sphinx]

I can guarentee you that it isnt the mac causing it to crash. It is poorly writen Engineering software. At WWU we had a state of the art Engineering computer lab fully funded by Boeing. There was not a single day that the system didnt crash at least once. ESPECIALY if you where doing any stress analysis.

Yeah, that damn Matlab. It's such poorly written engineering software, it can't possibly be the machine's fault.

As for the virus argument, I've had one virus on my PC in the last five years. And that was my own damn fault, I effectively installed it. Not an issue imho.

What I like about the Mac is that I get a nice windows-like user interface, with all the power of unix/linux just a hop, skip, and terminal away.

[Orange Julius]

I have both PCs and Macs and I just use the tool that's best for the job when needed. 9 times out of 10 that is the Mac. And now that my Mac runs Windows at a smoking pace, there really is no question what the best choice is.

GPS software has improved dramatically for the Mac. Take a look at the Topo applications for starters.

It is an incredible platform for web development. Even an iMac out of the box is a shredding webserver running the standard in the industry, and all the coding tools are there.

It still is not the gaming platform of choice if you are into that shit though. Even the new systems don't support SLI. But if you are in that market you are probably on Leroy Jenkins' team.

[Sinecure]

Here is a stupid mac jong question. How do you "right click" on a Mac? I'm sure there is a way to say, open a link in a new browser window or copy/paste as I typically do with the right mouse button on a PC. When I borrowed a friends mac I had issues with that.

One of my favorite tricks that I learned recently is to Apple-Click on a link in a browser. It opens the link in a new tab (rather than window) automatically. If you want to read a series of pages of something, especially something image intensive (like maybe pron), its a great way to get all of them open and then you can use Apple-W to close each window as you go through them. Also Apple-~ is a great way to rotate through the open windows of an application.

[road trip]

Thanks all, great feedback.

Yeah, no Leeroy Jenkins here. My gaming days ended with Nintendo (minus a short Sega stint circa 1996 when Teemu Selanne was unstoppable in NHLPA hockey and Mortal Kombat was being made into a movie).

Ironically enough, right after posting this, my i-pod decided that it didn't want to turn on. Grabbed a friend's charger here at work and no dice.

[Arty50]

Ironically enough, right after posting this, my i-pod decided that it didn't want to turn on. Grabbed a friend's charger here at work and no dice.

Yeah, they really screwed the pooch on the first few gens of iPods. The battery issues have been a black mark.

That said, I've owed several Macs since 1988. The only problem I've ever had in 18 years was a hard drive that died when the computer was 2-3 years old, and that's not their fault. HDs fail all the time. I'm not saying Macs are perfect. Plenty of people have had problems. But in general, Apple computers have far fewer problems than computers from other companies.

[The Jackamo]

I used PCs for about 10 years and switched just last February and it's been a liberating experience to say the least. As much as I like fixing things, I don't like doing it every other day on a machine that I use to be productive with. The interface and commands take a bit to get used to, but after you get them down, everything becomes easier. And with design, once I stopped treating Expose as a novelty and started integrating it into my workflow, I was able to work so much faster and more efficiently.

Not to say there haven't been hiccups. About a month ago my file system got corrupted (from the way a piece of poorly written software was integrating with the OS) and I had to back all my files up, format (and zero out the drive), and reinstall the OS. Even then, getting back to all of my settings was easy, and the fact that I make backup discs of all my program installers was a help.

But if you're just going to be doing everyday stuff (and even if you aren't) the Mac is an all around great platform.

[edg]

For those with new mac laptops (MacBook and MacBook Pro), you can use the trackpad to right click by placing two fingers on it. It seems like it would be weird at first, but is really intuitive.

In the same vein, you can also scroll by placing two fingers on the trackpad and moving them horizontally or vertically.

As to the iPod... It seems quite hit and miss, as with a lot of technology. I got a first gen iPod back in 2001, and it still works fine. The only reason I got a new one is because they were thinner! That being said, I screwed my iPod royally once (yes, it was my fault), and sent it back to Apple who replaced the HDD and the back cover (so it came back nice and buffed) and perhaps the battery in early 2003ish, so that might have helped...

edg