Sick of Windows, PC’s

Thinking of Mac, what are the benefits and pitfalls please folks..

I’ve recently switched to Mac. It’s a bit of a learning curve with some things a bit frustrating and counter intuitive to what I’m used to. I’m getting used to it though and overall I quite like it.
I still use a Windows laptop and work computer but like getting on the Mac.

Annoying thing is compatibility of external drives etc.
You just get used to it pretty quick I reckon.

I made the switch about 5 years ago for the same reason – got sick and tired of the constant maintenance just to keep the windows PC operating at an acceptable level of performance, and was quickly becoming a bit of a PC expert when I didn’t really want to be.

Macs do work differently and will take a bit of time to get used to them and think in a Mac way. You can configure things so it behaves in a more Window’s fashion, but I chose not to do this and to learn the Mac way. Now i’m used to it I find it very simple, logical and much quicker. The biggest departure for me was to get away from managing individual files. I hardly ever manage individual files on my Mac. I trust the applications to manage them for me and as a result they do a better job of it than I did. I’ve got a macbook and use the multitouch-pad and think its brilliant. far far better than using a mouse or the clumsy track-pads on PC’s (well the ones i’ve tried at least).

But other than that the very very best thing is the simplicity and speed. After 5 yrs mine is still running quicker than any PC i’ve owned (though boot up and shut down times have slowed, but it is 5yrs running the very latest version of OSX). Also in the 5yrs i’ve had it, it has never crashed, frozen, got a virus (i’m not running any anti-virus software but do run the firewall built into OSX). It literally has been perfect. I’m not doing anything particularly complicated or demanding on it, but it really is just like a white-good. I’ve definitely not regretted the shift.

Takes a little while to get used to the different operating system. Super reliable, very occasionally programs crash, but other than that never had the whole system lock up. System doesn’t slow down over time, my 2 year old mac still feels like new- I don’t ever feel the need to wipe it, or do any maintenance. Word for mac isn’t quiet as good, few little features missing.

Basically, if you can do it on a pc, you can do it on a mac, just slightly differently. Still use PC at work occasionally, its in no way terrible, but just different.

Reliability and build quality, customer service best things I would say. Learning curve initially the hardest part.

I have gone back to Windows. For me Win 8.1 works better than the latest OSX, main plus points for me are HyperV and being able to run SQL server management tools and visual studio etc. And games, lots of quality games…

If my work had different leanings away from .net and SQL server I could get by with an iMac and just boot camp for games and the odd program not available in OSX.

On the plus side for macs I quite liked the app store and simple utils like cloner that were much better to use than similar tools in windows land.

Just don’t get a Mac mini if games are important…

One thing that sometimes catches people out, but is logical when you think about it:

Some (not all) programs run even without a document open, so the menu will still say ‘Word’ or ‘Excel’ even after you’ve closed the last document, waiting for you to exit or open a new document.

I have an iMac 27″ (2009) and it is running Mavericks fine. I would be careful about the newer iMacs as you cannot replace the storage within them (filled with glue apparently) and for the smaller screen iMacs you can’t add memory either. If/when my mac goes pop then I will most probably jump to a Mac Mini so I can have a nice monitor which I can keep for the next one.

Obviously a Macbook Air is completely solid state and a single unit (no upgrades) and the Macbook Pro is going a bit that way too.

They’re good machines but they, like most computing these days, is going as commodities so if it breaks you throw it away and get a new one.

I tried Macs at my expense. Liked some aspects but found the software I needed to run was more clunky or none existent on a Mac. I tried the Apple take on the software and whilst I could get it do what I wanted my clients couldn’t open it or be bothered to jump through hopes to do so.
In the end I returned to PCs and straight into Windows 8 which I’ve got on really well with and not experienced a single crash but then Windows 7 was pretty reliable too. As for updates they are annoying and they are equally present on the Mac too.

I run Win8.1 for work, but much prefer my ancient Macbook Pro for everything else. Been running sweetly for about 8 yrs now, apart from a memory upgrade to allow it to run with Mavericks.

Hassle free, crash free, virus free.

I do miss a delete key though. That doesn’t seem too hard an ask does it?

I do miss a delete key though. That doesn’t seem too hard an ask does it?

Fn and Backspace.

Pitfalls: Hype for the most part. They’re OK, they’re not amazing. Nicely built for sure. The touch pad is great, multi-finger gestures work really well. You have to make sure they have lots of memory in. Don’t bother having one with less than 6G in.

Apart from that, they’re just a computer. Same computery problems that all computers have. My macbook boots slower than my windows 7 PC and takes longer to wake up when it’s gone to sleep. They’re really not that special.

could use Linux on your existing hardware

save yourself a crapload of money and not worry about security problems so much… just a thought

Oh, yeah. Stupid, stupid, stupid keyboard. No hash symbol No HASH symbol in the 21st century. Ridiculous.
No delete key, more nonsense. Apple really think they know best when they just look a bit silly really.

Yeah, yeah, I know the cmd key combinations, that’s not the point.

I killed my Macbook last Thursday so I brought an Asus Laptop on Friday and had a few issues with it so I took it back Sunday, played with a couple of other Windows 8/8.1 laptops and I couldn’t get on with them so went for an MacBook Air today.

It’s probably just me but after 12 years of Mac Windows just felt so alien and clumsy.

Samurai….

The hash is easy! Alt + 3 will do it.

🙂

No delete key, more nonsense. Apple really think they know best when they just look a bit silly really.

I automatically use the backspace key, always have done. I guess Wintel machines have a Del key is for the ConAltDel to access things, which I think is just bloody stupid; why should I have to hit three keys just to log onto my chuffing computer at work. 🙄
And my Apple BT keyboard has a # key.
Actually, it has a # key, but no £, however, shift3 gives the £, alt3 gives the #, it’s just I was sold a US spec keyboard by mistake, but it’s no big deal.

Mac’s are like Marmite. You’ll either love them, or hate them. Problem is, you won’t find out really until you’ve owned one for a little while… And this is generally the stumbling block for most people about Mac’s.

It’s just a computer at the end of the day, but IMO (and many others), one that’s a lot less infuriating than a Windows based PC. I’m a bit against the total integration of most modern Mac’s (I like being able to do upgrades myself on the cheap), but generally it’s the OS and the shiny hardware that you’re paying the money for. Being UNIX based, Mac OSX is a lot more stable than Windows, but a system is only as good as its weakest link, and there is still software out there that is known to crash regularly.

Some of the benefits of Mac’s are often glazed over though. We all know they’re less susceptible to viruses (they’re not 100% immune as some people think), that they come in a nice shiny case and look nicer than any branded Windows based PC, and that they are “reassuringly expensive”. You do get a heck of a lot of software for your money though, that you don’t get thrown in on a Windows machine (whether that’s of value to you or not is your call), they tend to last longer before needing to be replaced (1.5x-2x longer in my experience), and they hold their value infinitely better than any Windows PC. A Mac is more expensive yes, often twice the price even, IMO it’s nicer to use, comes bundled with a decent amount of useful software for free, lasts a long(er) time and will still be worth something when it’s time to upgrade.

Annoying thing is compatibility of external drives etc.

In what way? Usually, if the Mac hasn’t got a driver for a particular drive, it downloads the latest version, so the machine isn’t clogged up with thousands of drivers that you’ll never ever need. We have a Linotronic image setter at work, must be getting on for twenty years old, and we’ve held off updating one Mac to Mavericks, because the setter uses Postscript 1, and wouldn’t accept print commands from anything later than Snow Leopard, so one of the guys had a bright idea and compared the actual code, and found one line of code different, changed it, and it now works just fine, but that’s an exception; I can only think of an issue connecting an external device that’s many years old, like the
Linotronic, or a Zip Drive or something.

Last windows machine i owned was back in 1998, since then i have been mac and currently using a late 2008 MacBook 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo (first of the alloy mac laptops) and it’s never sat down on me once despite being carted about in my bag and used/abused in club/marquee damp environments. It’s my only mac and usually plugged in to a Acer LED 24″ monitor at home with a Audio Kontrol sound card/KRK speakers etc..

Last year i upgraded the memory to 8gb and the hard drive to a 1TB SSD drive and it’s just a joy to use, i have approx 500gb of music software and samples on the hard drive and some of the programs can be very labour intensive as i use a fair amount of 24 bit/192kHz samples but i’ve never found an excuse to upgrade yet, i also use photoshop etc and it zips through any processing tasks with ease.

For a 6 year old laptop i see no need to upgrade for years yet – how many windows machines can you say that about?.

I occasionally have to use a windows machine at work and it leaves me with my head in my hands on a daily basis.

For a 6 year old laptop i see no need to upgrade for years yet – how many windows machines can you say that about?.

Sat with a 4 year old Dell Windows machine, nothing special just an I3 machine with nvidia graphics. Been my work machine for 3 years now and still running fine. 1 memory upgrade and I was editing CAD files yesterday, doing some web stuff, building 3d simulation models and all that. Been in my hand and hold luggage for the last few years, hotels, airports, fields and campsites. It’s got another year in it easy and it’s still in good shape. I did one OS rebuild just due to having too much dev software on it that I never used and it runs like a dream. So yes plenty of windows machines will run for 6 years if you buy the right one to start with. This one probably cost 1/4 of the equivalent mac.

I think it depends what you are going to use it for – this says it all really:

I have gone back to Windows. For me Win 8.1 works better than the latest OSX, main plus points for me are HyperV and being able to run SQL server management tools and visual studio etc. And games, lots of quality games…

What is “better” depends on what you are looking for.

If you want (like I do) a home computer for internet, music, movies, basic word processing etc, and managing all your other devices – you will be hard pressed to beat a Mac…. as this is what they’re designed for.

Mine (a 2010 Macbook pro) hasn’t put a foot wrong in 4 years and is as good as the day I bought it. I bought mine because I was (like somebody above) fed up with having to become an IT expert in order to keep my system running smoothly. I know it’s a cliche, but my Mac “just works” without any of the d*cking about that was required with my old PC…. what the f*ck is debugging? Do I want to do it? How the f*ck should I know?!

Do they take a bit of getting used to? No, not really – unless you are particularly feeble minded you should be used to it within a day or so. It’s all basically the same but with a few tweaks like the toolbar is always at the top of the screen instead of at the top of each window. Go and have a play with one at the Mac store.

Talk of hardware compatibility is a red-herring…. pretty much plug anything in and it just works without having to faff about. The exception is external HDDs which sometimes need to be re-formatted (which takes about 10 seconds) depending on what format they ship in.

They are more expensive – but worth it IMO

Anyway – that’s by 2 cents.

Everything is subjective and everyones needs are slightly different. I’d recommend trying out mac ownership but don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work out.

I found owning a mac for proper computer work led to me being more of a computer expert than I already was; once I needed to scratch beneath the surface of OSX I was into the world of BASH and plist configuration files etc. Unfortunately spending time learning (or relearning) BASH was wasted for me as I really needed to be learning PowerShell for work…

I’m actually typing this on my 2006 macbook pro that has travelled all over and is now retired to being the kitchen computer – it is often on all day streaming music etc and has been rock solid since the original HDD died about 4 years ago. But saying that Macs have better life span than Windows machines isn’t quite true. If I wanted to get a modern operating system running on this macbook pro Linux would really be my only option as Apple dropped support for this hardware a while back (yes this is an Intel Mac) so OSX Lion was as far as this one could be upgraded. Which is ok provided you don’t want to run anything that requires Mountain Lion as a minimum. I might be able to get Windows 8.1 running on it, but its probably not supported on this macs version of bootcamp due to EFI issues or something…

Also with regards to older hardware (regardless of it being Apple/Dell etc) Windows and Linux are much better option to keep it going – you can get both in x86 (32 bit) flavours that will run well on 2GB or less RAM. Try running Mountain Lion or Mavericks on only 4GB and pretty soon you’ll notice the amount of paging going on if you are trying to run a few programs at once.

I’ve also had better stability from a Windows Vista workstation (Dell XPS 420) than I did my last mac mini when I first bought it. The damn thing was not a happy bunny until I did a complete reinstall of Mountain Lion and reapplied all patches.

The one really great thing about Apple hardware is its resell value – if you buy one and don’t like it you won’t lose much money. The chap who bought my mac mini off me paid more for it than a brand new one – all because I upgraded it to 16GB of Ram and he didn’t want to do it himself or pay the extortionate amount apple wants for a pre-upgraded machine. Mental I know…

Another Mac user who’s gone back to Windows 8.1 here. It’s running in Boot Camp until my Surface Pro 3 arrives at the end of August.

The Mac is nice, but un intuitive in some ways and has some major bugs that can be worked around, but only with fudges. There’s no sense that Apple actually care, and you’ll never find an Apple representative on their forums for example. Mavericks is slow and feels distinctly unloved.

One thing that I wish Windows has is Preview, though. And better desktop backgrounds.

possibly the best discussion I have seen on the web regarding the differences – ever :). For my part I keep on thinking about getting a mac to try it but almost every mac user I know has had to install some version of dual boot/parallels on their machine in order to do their ‘normal’ work. This is always due to MS Office: either macros in Excel (I believe) or MS Access. It doesn’t look too bad a way of operating but I suspect it might be a problem as the mac users I know tend to avoid using the software that requires them to be in Windows

I switched to Mac about 5 years ago and have never looked back since Windows was a pain in the backside constantly waiting for updates to install before I could use the OS or having to update drivers and the like to get stuff working.

From opening the Mac and switching it on I had to do very little to get it up and running and as for worrying about drivers, viruses that’s now a thing of the past also.

Software wise it depends on what you really need to do for me I occasionally use MS Word, Excel and on the Mac I do have an MS Office suite installed but I also use Apple Pages which can easily export documents for Word and other formats I’ve never had an issue with sharing data with others.

Initially I did install VMWare Fusion on my mac with a copy of windows and my usual stuff however I never used it so that hit the trash can.

Recently I had to fire up my old Windows laptop after about 2 years to pull a file off I needed it took over 3 hours to complete as Windows was doing around 60 updates before it let me into the OS.

I find my mac book pro quite fiddly. Was expecting iPad levels of friendliness.
Mainly used for itunes and it annoys me that when I try to search for a tune 400 odd mail notifications obscure the search box.
I realise there’s probably a way of sorting it but I paid a grand for a laptop,know nothing about computers and I shouldn’t bloody have to.
What’s with all this hold f and press an arrow to do stuff. Just give me a right click option ,I’ve not gone to Hogwarts to learn how to mind meld with an apple guru so remain just a normal person.

possibly the best discussion I have seen on the web regarding the differences – ever :). For my part I keep on thinking about getting a mac to try it but almost every mac user I know has had to install some version of dual boot/parallels on their machine in order to do their ‘normal’ work. This is always due to MS Office: either macros in Excel (I believe) or MS Access. It doesn’t look too bad a way of operating but I suspect it might be a problem as the mac users I know tend to avoid using the software that requires them to be in Windows

This is what I was advised to do get some programs running that weren’t available on a Mac. This was the last straw as far as I was concerned as I was sold on the line that Macs are far superior but to get them to run my main programs I had to install Windows on the machine. It made no sense in having to run two operating systems to be able to do my job so I went with the platform that suited my needs.
Today with the amount of hosted software I can see those problems been less of an issue for Mac users so long as they have internet access where ever they are.

The Apple build quality is very good but to compare them to Windows machine isn’t really a level playing field. Windows PC’s are in a very competitive market with 100’s if not thousands of manufacturers creating machines to for a price point. Apple only produce their own machines and price the machines as to what they can get away with. Many compare the quality of a £1700 Macbook pro with a £300 Advent laptop. If you compare similar priced Windows and Apple machines you will find the quality and performance less of a difference with plus and negative points to each platform.

@coolhand – having been using Microsoft since before Windows I was thoroughly sick of it. I made the switch the Apple in 2006 and I would never go back. I have a 5 year old Mac Mini which runs all the latest software, the upgrades are now generally free and even when you had to pay for the latest Operating System it was £15 not £200 for Windows. Apple have constantly upgraded and improved their software whilst Microsoft seems to lurch from some reasonable (like XP) to something appalling. Apple stuff generally just works and the computers integrate very well with other devices like iphones/ipad etc. The OS is much more secure than Windows as it’s built on proper foundations not the remnants of DOS. Apple is turning up the heat on Microsoft by making its word processor (Pages – excellent) and Spreadsheet (Numbers – not so good, certainly not for really complex stuff) free. Also with iCLoud you can update your Pages documents from a computer running windows via iCloud.com

Downsides. The computers are more expensive (but IMO much better quality, will last longer and there is a strong second hand market – good for selling, bad as a buyer !). It takes a little while to get used to Mac’s – there are so many neat features but you have to watch online tutorials or be shown them otherwise they are easy to miss.

If you can afford the hardware make the switch, you won’t regret it. I will wager in a year or two you’ll wonder why you didn’t switch before and you’ll probably have a phone and possibly a tablet too ! A quick note on hardware, Apple (like other manufacturers) is moving to “sealed units” so upgrading things like RAM (which I did myself) is not always possible. I would recommend buying the best machine you can, certainly from a RAM perspective (8 min). Storage you can add externally quite cheaply and with USB3 it runs as fast as storage inside the machine.

In response to above. I use no windows programmes, I don’t need to and love that fact. I love Mavericks, it’s fantastic. My Mac Mini (2009) boots faster than my work PC, and wakes from sleep instantly. Mac’s are not faultless but they are light years ahead of Microsoft/Windows.

Have a look around the excellent macrumors site

MacRumors – Buyers Guide

MacRumors – Forums

I switched to a Macbook Pro about a year ago – just to see what they are like really.

It looks pretty. Had as many crashes/viruses as my old PC.

I dont really like the way Macs do things. It seems to assume the user is an idiot.

At the end of the day, it’s the software that makes/breaks it. I miss having Word but that’s about it. For everything else there’s a decent enough program available.

@lefeboy – do you use Excel macros on your home machine ? I barely use them at work and if I could I would have a work Mac as well as it being my home machine. When I worked for myself for 18 months I used Mac 90% of the time, it was only complex Excel I needed a PC for.

Had as many crashes/viruses as my old PC.

What re you doing with it ? I have never had a virus in 7 years of Mac use (vs a number of PC ones including one which killed my machine and required a rebuild). I do have the odd programme crash on my Mac but never the whole machine, never had an equivalent BSD – Blue Screen of Death as per Windows.

Oh, yeah. Stupid, stupid, stupid keyboard. No hash symbol No HASH symbol in the 21st century. Ridiculous.

only the UK version.
pretty sure my US international version does, but…

After 5 yrs mine is still running quicker than any PC i’ve owned (though boot up and shut down times have slowed, but it is 5yrs running the very latest version of OSX)

…mine was made obsolete in much less than 5 years, so iirc Snow Leopard is the latest version that will run. But the latest Linux and probably Win8 will also run with boot camp.
Oh and the battery only lasted 1 year, as did the replacement battery.
So I never use it any more, so would have to go hunt down the lappy to confirm that # key.
edit: PS I bought an eeePC soon after too… this is still running, battery still usable, and indeed was using it last night. That cost less than the price of 2 Macbook batteries (if purchased at retail).

Only bought it, because at the time it was fractionally cheaper than an equivalent Dell, and being resident in Germany, it is one of the few online stores where you can tick the box for English OS and QWERTY kb (US international, but that’s what I use at work, so no big deal), and I didn’t need to pay for an unnecessary Windows licence on a machine that I’d have done a full disk wipe to install Linux.

Would I buy another? Probably not, even though I really really don’t want to pay another MS licence. Although it’s looking likely that next lappy will be Win8, but the first thing I’ll do is swap out the HDD install an SSD and do a clean Linux install. If I sell the lappy on, the buyer can get a brand new, unused Windows install.

I don’t think Macs are better quality than Windows machines. They are good quality, but there are Windows machines available with just as good build quality. They tend to cost similar amounts to macs though, and you have to look to find them unlike in Mac world.

I’ve only ever had one malware incident on Windows btw, the one that was in an STW thread. I have no idea what you lot are doing with your PCs! And you don’t have to ‘worry’ about it any more because AV is now built in to W8.

If your impressions of Windows are from 10 years ago a lot has changed, btw.

However – as above – the main factors I reckon are cost and software/hardware availablility. Beyond that, it’s just preference.

..what am I doing?

Nothing odd. A bit of video editing. Watching videos (and you have to buy a special Apple cable so you can connect it to a TV) A lot of Word processing. Some web-surfing. A bit of programming. The viruses have always been caught by the virus-checker. (Avast)

@Mackem – interesting. Curious as to whether they are viruses or tracking trogans for advertisting ? Genuine question as perhaps I need to run a checker. Some Mac models have HDMI out now, although I do use the connectors (only £25 though) as my 2009 machine doesn’t have it.

The keyboard is just bewilderingly crap, it’s like they designed the layout for a phone or a tablet or something. Have to say I really dislike the way Macs like to leave programs running in the background after you close all the docs, too- is that something you can switch off? Viruses really doesn’t seem to be much of an issue any more, I think most are self inflicted tbh. The macs I use are a lot less stable than the PCs I use but maybe that’s not representative- and it’s still at an acceptable level

Other than that I feel much the same about OS and Win8, both basically sound but sabotaged by prettiness.

The OS is much more secure than Windows as it’s built on proper foundations not the remnants of DOS.

Hmmm. There go the words of someone who clearly has no actual clue as to what they are talking about. That was true for, Oh, Windows 3.x and even 95 / 98. But that was a loooooong time ago. And as for the myth that Macs are more secure than Windows? Keep dreaming there. Those boys at the last but one Black Hat conference will be laughing their heads off having demonstrated about 15 ways to compromise and own a Mac in a 30 minute lunch break. Relatively basic stuff. The pervading view was that Apple’s approach to security was not at the leading edge.

But most of this is irrelevant. As was mentioned above it’s largely about choice and preference. Some people will love the Apple experience and others will hate it. I have been a long time Windows user and I personally find the Mac interface unintuitive and not really very pleasant. However, I have not persisted with it to overcome that initial experience barrier. I have also been through the experience of all the Windows versions including suffering at the hands of Vista which was an utter dogs breakfast. In my view Windows 7 was the best version of Windows ever. Most solid, reliable and best performing. Windows 8 is good but for me is below the levels set by 7. On the whole the current Windows OS is pretty stale and pretty secure. Probably the largest cause of virus and malware infestation is down to end user behaviour and not the inherent security of the OS. But then again, it is far easier to blame the OS and slam it for being insecure than own up to being a bit of a tit by opening an attached file in an email from a complete stranger or clicking to install random and rabid bits of tat from dodgy web sites.

OP. You don’t say why you are sick of Windows. But if that is the case and you have genuine reasons then your choice is really down to a Mac or some flavour of Linux. Give both a good road test and see which one you like the best. Whichever one you choose it will be a learning curve as they all behave differently.

it annoys me that when I try to search for a tune 400 odd mail notifications obscure the search box.

I realise there’s probably a way of sorting it

There is. Pop into System Preferences/Notifications and remove mail notifications from the list of…er…notifications.

Googling would’ve probably worked out quicker than sifting through 400 mail hits, though… 😛

Other than that I feel much the same about OS and Win8, both basically sound but sabotaged by prettiness.

You know you can turn off all the prettiness in W7 and it ends up looking like W2k. Or in W8 you can install classic shell of course.

@Biking, I am a computer scientist/programmer by background, built my first computer with a soldering iron and programmed it in hexadecimal machine code, 1975-ish. I also wrote compilers and did quite a lot of low level work too. My first work computer ran Concurrent CPM – a DEC operating system which could run 4 programmes at once, this was back in ’84 I recall, light years ahead of DOS so Gates bought CCPM and binned it. Microsoft had to base its OS on DOS as it was the exclusivity agreements on DOS which where the companies raison-d’etre. I point this out as it shows the foundations of Windows, it’s genesis and why it’s fundamentally so poor. I know there are many others here with more expertise but I do have an inkling of what I am speaking about.

Microsoft is a terrible software platform.

You know you can turn off all the prettiness in W7 and it ends up looking like W2k

exactly what I do -ok it’s more like Win2K with shinier window decorations, but it runs faster too, or at least is more responsive

did the same in XP also