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For Someone Who Has Used Both XP & OSX

H

HughScot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I'm a long time PC user who has windows XP and I'd like to hear from someone who uses both a PC and a Mac to tell me how the OS compare. Not a long dissertation just will I like Apple's OS.

Hugh
 
I recommend that, if possible, you go into an Apple store and try the OS out yourself.

I have used both XP and OS X and definitly prefer OS X.
 
They both have their ups and downs quite honestly. If you're not completely retarded you can make XP a nice experience, and OS X can have some rough patches.

Quite honestly I do enjoy the feel of OS X more, but I can help but feel a tiny bit limited. It's definitely a superficial feeling, but it always seems like where theres an awesome PC app, theres no OS X one. There are many exceptions, but this is true in a lot of areas.

I'd say go for something with Intel if you are going to buy a mac to be your primary unit. This way you can have both installed to keep it on the safe side. If its not a problem to have more than one unit, try out OS X on a PowerPC Mac. They're awfully cheap, and relatively still powerful.

All in all, I do believe you will be impressed with the simplicity of most tasks in OS X compared to XP. We get numb to the steps needed to complete something in XP, and OS X is a nice refreshing experience. I only recently gave up my last personally owned PC (Thinkpad to my sister) and now use a PowerMac G4 and PowerBook G4 as my computers. It certainly takes some bravery, and a good amount of time, but switching is relatively painless. Of course, you can never really detach from XP fully, but OS X is a perfectly good OS for everybody to use.

$.02 from a "Hybrid user"
 
I have been a XP user from Day 1 until a few months ago.

I can say that over all I have had less issues with OS X than with XP. Is that because I am using a new computer too? Probably. But whatever, it works and works well.

I can say that the first time I ever used OS X, I didn't like it. It was an older computer running Panther and was old. I always felt like nothing would do what I needed it to do (it was for a summer job). But after that I started using a friends PowerBook and really started to like it. There is a bit of a learning curve which can be very frustrating when you need to get work done right away. If you have time to leisurely work with it and explore the OS then it will grow on you very fast.

Side note: I find this learning curve especially noticeable when using Office. I still curse at Excel on a Mac because when I need to use a more advanced function it is hidden in a different place than on OfficeXP.
 
ChickenSwartz said:
To follow up on that...

I am so very glad that I don't have to click "Start" anymore. Whose stupid idea was that?

Agree?
Click to expand...

I agree, but also concede in that I added the Applications folder to my Dock. I guess its sorta nostalgic in a way, but hey; it is pretty handy for launching something quick.
 
SuperCompu2 said:
I agree, but also concede in that I added the Applications folder to my Dock. I guess its sorta nostalgic in a way, but hey; it is pretty handy for launching something quick.
Click to expand...

Yeah you are right. I have TigerLaunch. Kind of like "Start" but not as cheesy and it can be turned off.
 
SuperCompu2 said:
They both have their ups and downs quite honestly. If you're not completely retarded you can make XP a nice experience, and OS X can have some rough patches.

Quite honestly I do enjoy the feel of OS X more, but I can help but feel a tiny bit limited. It's definitely a superficial feeling, but it always seems like where theres an awesome PC app, theres no OS X one. There are many exceptions, but this is true in a lot of areas.

I'd say go for something with Intel if you are going to buy a mac to be your primary unit. This way you can have both installed to keep it on the safe side. If its not a problem to have more than one unit, try out OS X on a PowerPC Mac. They're awfully cheap, and relatively still powerful.

All in all, I do believe you will be impressed with the simplicity of most tasks in OS X compared to XP. We get numb to the steps needed to complete something in XP, and OS X is a nice refreshing experience. I only recently gave up my last personally owned PC (Thinkpad to my sister) and now use a PowerMac G4 and PowerBook G4 as my computers. It certainly takes some bravery, and a good amount of time, but switching is relatively painless. Of course, you can never really detach from XP fully, but OS X is a perfectly good OS for everybody to use.

$.02 from a "Hybrid user"
Click to expand...

Thanks to everyone, this is exactly what I was looking for in the way of info. I have just gotten tired of all the little glitches in XP and so forth. I've used several Dell's over the years and the service has gotten terrible and so forth, so I was thinking I might like an Apple as most people seem to like them. I want a computer that is very fast that I can use Firefox with and has good graphics. My brother in law uses a PC at work and Mac at home and he loves his Mac. But I was concerned with OSx vs XP and didn't want to go backward.
 
OK, yeah, I use XP at work (engineering, cad drafting, etc.) and have for many years (started in MSDOS). I have found MS OS's to be usable and they have worked well for me and our staff for the most part without many problems. I am not sure if OSX is comparable in that environment as most of the software we use is not available in a Mac format.

At home we have used a Mac since our first, an Apple GS. My wife is a teacher and her school district has used Mac's for many years. She uses an iMac G5 at her desk and uses it extensively in her classroom, she teaches art at the high school level. We use a G3 iMac at home with 10.3.9. My oldest daughter uses a G4 MacBook at Mizzou and she has been the source of many girls in her sorority switching to Mac's in the last two years.

So yeah, we have used both. Which will you like better? That depends on what you are doing, I think. I can not imagine using a Mac at work. By the same token, I can not imagine using anything other than a Mac at home or school. The Mac is just easier to use. When you buy a new piece of hardware or software, 99% of the time you just plug it in or drag it onto your hard drive and boom, it works. You don't have to figure out what settings to switch or drivers to load. It just works. That is why my daughter has grown out of her PC envy with her friends. Her Mac just works, for what ever she needs it to do. She now appreciates the simplicity of her Mac Book and it is now her friends who have Mac envy. My wife will not even look at a PC, she does amazing things with her iMac at school and uses a Promethium (spell?) Board with some eye popping presentations and demonstrations.

We love our Mac's. But my work PC is indispensable as well.
 
I've used XP since it was released, and have only been using a Mac since October of 2005.

Windows XP has some advantages over OS X. The obvious being the huge selection of software available for Windows. Also, if you have something like a satellite card that needs to be reprogrammed, the programmer is always going to require Windows. Same with many XBox tools.

Mac OS X has a much better overall 'feel' to it, although I wish it were more customizable. Some of the little things just piss me off. Like, why can't I have my screen saver randomly display images from my iPhoto library?

The main huuuuge difference between XP and OS X is security. I love that I never have to worry about running an updated virus scanner. Also, not to mention stability. OS X is stable. Very stable. I've had every app on my computer open, and over 150 windows open all at once, and it didn't crash. I even did an expose' with all the windows, smooth as butter.

Because we all know how smooth butter is.
 
I've used Windows since 3.1 was "eye-candy" for DOS. Now I can't stand using Windows or touching a PC. And I switched when Mac OS 9.0.4 was the current Mac OS.
 
The first time I touched an OS X computer (10.2 machine at work) I did not like it. Apps, such as Office, launched slow on a then-current 1Ghz Powermac, even in comparison to a spyware ridden ME laptop. Networking worked so-so. Safari was a bright spot almost immediately, though.

Honestly, it took me some time to get used to OS X (I had used both Windows and Mac OS 9 machines previously), but as of now I am not going to change it for anything, despite a few quirks that the current OS X still retains.
 
A fresh install of XP I like over osx, for a while anyways. Thats why I reinstall my XP once a month or so. But in the long run I really prefer the feel of OSX as a long term use, more stable. By the way I reinstall osx once a year or so.
 
I've found so many things I like more about OS X compared to XP that I don't even know where to start. But as I saw someone else on here say, it's like going from a horse and buggy to a rocketship. It's that awesome.
 
Short and simple -> Used DOS, Win95, 98, 2000, and XP starting in 1994 full time (and as a PC tech). Began using OS 9 right before X came out. Prefer OS X any day of the week over Linux, XP, whatever.

Try it for yourself, I think you'll agree.

EDIT: I should say that I still use both (OS X primarily). It just isn't fun setting up Parallels and having to install a FW and AV software just to use it.
 
HughScot said:
But I was concerned with OSx vs XP and didn't want to go backward.
Click to expand...

Especially when Leopard (the next OS, 10.5) comes out, you won't be going backwards. I don't know if you've used Vista, but it isn't great. Tiger works fine for what I do, what most people do. Web, text, basic multimedia. I get frustrated with little things if I'm pushing my Mac, especially when I'm beta testing, then go work on my Windows machine and immediately get over whatever problem I had. Windows was just built very poorly, and it's just all over the place. Apple has a lot to prove, and OS X is built with care. With a few decent addons like Default Folder X, FruitMenu, Witch, Onyx, etc. (some free) I can get it almost the way I want it. You can get along fine without them though, I just like them. Though I have some problems with the Finder, most of them are things most people wouldn't care about, and it's still infinitely better than Explorer.

Macs aren't perfect, but they're better than Windows PCs. At least in my opinion. In most of our opinions. Go in with that attitude, get an Intel Mac you can dual boot to Windows with, ask any questions you might have here, and you should be fine.
 
Started with DOS 1.0 and Mac OS 5.0 (but had used earlier versions).

Both WinXP and Mac OS X have their advantages and disadvantages. If I have to choose one it would be Mac OS X. And now with the Intel Macs it is even an easier choice because you can run WinXP via BootCamp or in emulation with Parallels (which is fairly fast -- much more so than VPC ever was).
 
Been a Windows user most of my life. I had a 3.1 box when I was a kid, then a Windows 98 one and finally a Windows XP one. I learnt everything I knew about Windows from Windows 98 (I was too young to properly use 3.1, and XP is practically the same apart from its more stable, looks different). It took me years to learn everything I know (and I plan to do Computer Sciences at A-Level). Then I got my MacBook with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. I've had for about 8 months, and I know equal amounts about both OSs. Infact, I knew about the same a few months ago, but hey. Its strange, in Windows everything was where it 'should' have been, but where it was wasn't logical. For example, in Mac OS X Flip4Mac preferences are in System Preferences, which is logical but in Windows it would be in the app's preferences, which is more logical.
 
SuperCompu2 said:
It's definitely a superficial feeling, but it always seems like where theres an awesome PC app, theres no OS X one. There are many exceptions, but this is true in a lot of areas.
Click to expand...

I find this quite interesting because I've come to experience quite the opposite. I find loads of applications for the Mac that I could only dream of having in Windows. Plus, the majority of apps I use are cross platform for Windows, OSX, and Linux anyway, so I rarely, if ever, have a problem.

I'm a life-long Windows user (briefly used computers as a child before 3.1, but really started with 3.1 when my dad got a new computer one year. I got my first personal computer with Windows 95 and moved up with each new version. I'd consider myself a power user probably ever since Windows ME especially (as horrible of an experience as ME was...)
I actually started getting interested in trying the Mac when OS X came out because of the eye candy. Eventually when we got an Apple store somewhat nearby, I used a Mac for the first time for a matter of minutes and considered getting one. With the Intel transition, I made up my mind to give it a try and bought a MacBook Pro.

Honestly, I immediately felt absolutely comfortable using it and only had to spend 15 minutes or so poking around the System Preferences to get my bearings of where everything was located. Ever since I got my MacBook Pro in February of last year, I've used Windows maybe a total of 5-6 hours... and at least 3-4 of those were solely for playing a computer game at a LAN with a few friends. I can do absolutely everything I want to do on a Mac and, in the vast majority of cases, I can do it much more quickly and easily in OS X.
 
I switched six months ago, and still use XP on the side today.

Here are my 50 cents, or whatever you call it.
In advance I'd like to apologize for the poor grammar and punctuation. English isn't my first spoken language - that's the excuse anyway.

  • I like how networking is very manageable in OSX. It does alot of the work automatically when accessing WiFi, and any manual settings are very logically places and makes it easy to get to want you want.
  • The robustness of OS X. Apple made the right choice in picking a UNIX kernel, Darwin.
  • There are hardly any viruses in existence.
  • The UI: It's very intiutive and makes a lot more sense than Windows. I'm not saying Windows is bad, but OS X has within the UI taken alot of shortcuts, avoiding unnecessary dialog boxes etc.
  • Comes with alot of stuff. OS X comes with alot of tools. Some useful, some not so much. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD etc. may be useful to some, although I find them lacking in features and encoding is very slow in iMovie/iDVD. However, for alot of people it's great stuff.
  • OpenGL all the way. Live OpenGL rendering of menus and windows etc. in OS X makes the UI very versatile. Exposé is awesome once you get it into your workflow.
  • More bundled stuff: iCal and the Address Book work extremely well. It's very easy to manage all contacts and meetings - also iSync makes it easy to sync it with your phone. I use this every day.
  • Great freeware. The Mac community produces GREAT freeware stuff. I still haven't found any task from the XP days that I can't find a program for. Some are free, some aren't. But they don't cost a whole lot. I paid 15 dollars for Disco, for burning. Some 20 dollars for Unison, for newsreading/usenet. That's it. Rest is done with freeware. This is for video/dvd encoding, image editing etc. If you ever need an app, go to versiontracker.com
 
I have been using mac for a while and I have a disability....I love OSx BUT I am going back to a touchscreen desktop......When my arm heals back to OSX 🙂
 
Used both since the W95 & OS 8 days, and definitely prefer the Mac OS (and the machines also).

I've had bad experiences with both, but even on the worst one, OS X is/was way, way better than XP ever was (or will be) on it's best day........

Simply put, IMHO, OS X is:

A) More stable
B) More consistent
C) Simpler underneath (command lines)
D) easier to learn & understand, even for newbies
E) WAY More secure
F) Easier to fix if/when something does go wrong
G) Was designed by people who care about design
etc
etc

However, having said that, and having taken the time to learn how to deal with most all of Windblows shortcomings, I can still be reasonably productive using it if i WANT to, and unfortunately I don't have any choice at work........so I do it anyway, but that doesnt mean I have to like it! 😀

And finally, I've already used Vista*s Pro on 2x brand new, maxed-out, top-of-the-line machines, and IMHO,if you think that it will solve/resolve any of the many issues w/ Windblows, you are in for a H U G E disappointment !!!!!!

Yea it looks pretty on the surface, but it is STILL the same crappy junk underneath, just more of it !!!
 
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