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Switcher goes back to windows.. but thanks!

jburrows500

jburrows500

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 26, 2007
135
0
Hells Kitchen NYC
Having researched my purchase for the better part of 6 months I came upon a pretty good deal on a refurbished Mac Pro from Amazon three weeks ago. I added 4GB of ram and 2 500GB hard drives to complete the video editing rig. My first impression of the box was outstanding in terms of build quality and lack of a mess of wires so common in windows machines. The ram and HD were both installed within an hour.. Start up times was seconds rather than minutes.

Having been a windows user for the better part of 15 years, coming over to the mac camp was a more difficult transition than I had anticipated. Almost within the first hour I realized it wasnt so easy just to select and right click on 25 photos to rename.. I actually needed a third party app to batch rename.. that was an odd one.. but ok. Then I tried Quicken for Mac... yeah.. Then I tried iMovie.. then I scratched my head and said... and I spent close to 3200 for what again... I ordered Final Cut Express and played with Lightroom for the better part of the 3 weeks.. but I have to say.. working on it didnt feel any different, better or worse than on any windows machine from my prespective.

I sent the system back today.. Mac OSX just isnt me.. I really didnt see what all the hype was about. I know it was only three weeks but my 30 return window was approaching and my gut was telling me to get out when you can... However, I didnt want to leave without saying THANKS to all of you that answered my questions and helped along the way.. I wish you all well and it was an interesting experiemnt.. wish it had gone better, but hey, we live and learn.. it just didnt work for me...
 
I'm sure some people here will be shocked. It's unfortunate that OS X didn't work for you. Have you ever used OS X before buying this Mac Pro?
 
It's too bad. I just switched and could never go back. From the sound of it, however, my needs aren't nearly as specific as yours.

Stick with what works for you.
 
troll.jpg
 
I have only used Macs for about 2yrs and i can say it took almost a year until i felt completely comfortable with Os X. The first 6mo's were the worst i think everything was extremely foreign, the simple things became very difficult. But after that i started to embrace the diffrence and really began to enjoy Os X to the point that when i have to go to work and use windows i want to vomit ;) I wish it would have worked out for you, consider get a mini and test the waters again :D

product26 said:
troll.jpg
Click to expand...

LOL
 
I did the exact same thing in the opposite direction. Vista was nothing less than appalling. The 32-bit version had less problems with 3rd party software, but it still didn't have the refinement and simplicity of OS X. I prefer my old G4 to a brand new overclocked PC. And yes, no regrets here - it was fun and I loved messing around with the hardware.

You should get a cheap as dirt Mac and use it for a while so you can get a feel for the differences.
 
suneohair said:
how does one batch rename in Windows?
Click to expand...
I just tried it and it works as he said. I've never heard of renaming multiple files like that before...

Highlight all the files then rightclick rename - rename one and it cascades through the other files bob.txt, bob(2).text, bob(3).text etc.
 
jburrows500 said:
No.. other than playing with it @ the Apple store, no experience with it at all prior to purchase...
Click to expand...

That a shame. I remember my first PC XT and how long it took to just learn auto.exe and the config.sys driver setup.

It takes time to learn a new OS, more then three weeks for sure.

I'm switching to Mac cause they work! Unlike microsoft who invents nothing and turns me into slave to fix thier bugs. So I started taking classes for the last six months, So i'm not behind the Eight ball when I buy one.

You might have signed up for Apples classes for $99.00 to help you make the change.


Just my option
 
JB, I feel your pain. When I switched over, it was right at the transition from OS9 to OSX. I bought a TiBook 800 and within ONE DAY, it was unbootable! All I did was install one app and it was hosed. Luckily, AppleCare guy walked me through a repair but my confidence was shaken, to say the least. This happened during the "Switcher" campaign. "It just works." Yeah, right.

I'm typing this email on my aging, homebuilt PC with WinXP and I'm here watching all the threads about the upcoming Mac Pros. The timing couldn't be better as this PC is on its' last legs. I'm happy that I can still run Win apps on the newer Macs and that will make the final transition a little easier. But you know what? I still hate BOTH of these platforms!! Every time I run a Mac app on my present MBP 2.3 and the darn pinwheel of death appears, I get REALLY upset. I don't understand why I have to put up with this c**p when the Mac is supposed to be so much better. If I wasn't so pissed off at what Windows has been doing with their OS and DRM, I might consider going back to Windows. However, the things that I love to work with (FCP, Photoshop, Mac-only audio apps, etc.) all dictate that I need to stay with the Mac. On the whole, I've been able to have my feet planted squarely in both worlds, but it hasn't been as much fun as I was led to believe it would be. Good luck with Vista, buddy. I don't think this will be of any benefit to you but I had to vent.
dave
 
thxdave said:
JB, I feel your pain. When I switched over, it was right at the transition from OS9 to OSX. I bought a TiBook 800 and within ONE DAY, it was unbootable! All I did was install one app and it was hosed. Luckily, AppleCare guy walked me through a repair but my confidence was shaken, to say the least. This happened during the "Switcher" campaign. "It just works." Yeah, right.

I'm typing this email on my aging, homebuilt PC with WinXP and I'm here watching all the threads about the upcoming Mac Pros. The timing couldn't be better as this PC is on its' last legs. I'm happy that I can still run Win apps on the newer Macs and that will make the final transition a little easier. But you know what? I still hate BOTH of these platforms!! Every time I run a Mac app on my present MBP 2.3 and the darn pinwheel of death appears, I get REALLY upset. I don't understand why I have to put up with this c**p when the Mac is supposed to be so much better. If I wasn't so pissed off at what Windows has been doing with their OS and DRM, I might consider going back to Windows. However, the things that I love to work with (FCP, Photoshop, Mac-only audio apps, etc.) all dictate that I need to stay with the Mac. On the whole, I've been able to have my feet planted squarely in both worlds, but it hasn't been as much fun as I was led to believe it would be. Good luck with Vista, buddy. I don't think this will be of any benefit to you but I had to vent.
dave
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I hear what your saying Dave and agree... I'm not here to bash Apple by any means but for me, it was a let down. Using automator for renaming files was for me a five step process that was both time consuming and un-necessary. Right off the bat I had issues with iPhoto in capturing my 4000 photos and making a mess of them as iPhoto wanted to sort them by what it saw in the metatag.. not by the file date... and I could go on but hey.. its really finding the best system for what you want it to do for ya.. As for me.. spending 3,000 is a lot. I expected the system to be a screamer. It wasnt. The pin wheel was still ever present even with 4gb and I wasnt even doing any rendering... For me, I'll buy a Q6600 either custom, or and xps from dell.. throw 3 sata drives on it, go vista 32 bit w/4gb of ram and call it a day... shouldnt be any more than 1500. I know windows and in reality, having been on the other side for a bit... it aint all that bad....
 
I always feel the switch is most difficult for those who are technically adept in Windows. They know how everything runs and how to maximize their performance. I do recommend OS X to anyone else though for its simplicity and stability. You gave it a good test run and realized what worked best for your needs. Good luck with your new computer.
 
Vista is so full of trash I needed a dump truck to carry the the stuff off. The OS requires count them 5 steps to open a folder. 5 clicks to say yes run this app and on it goes on. And they still have DOS running on it!

The first time I installed it Down loaded 32 updates, and 14 patches.

I could not install any CS3 apps! I had over 52 serves's running and it takes 1.3 gig of ram right of the bat at startup. The driver support for HW is a joke.

If I had a dollar for all the lost time, I could retire right now!
 
It seems your needs far exceeded what the consumer programs that come preinstalled on a Mac can provide.

Aperture might have done a far better job with your pictures.

But if you did not feel that Mac OS X was for you, then it probably wasn't.

And I would say that a 3 week window is giving it a fair chance, it just didn't work out for you in the end.

I switched 17 months ago and have not looked back ever since. Just watching a Windows PC makes me cringe and shiver ;)

Good luck with your next platform.
 
Brave of you to post this

Glad to hear someone was honest about their experience and not afraid to post it on MR.

I think I concur with a number of people by stating you didn't spend enough time using OS X to be comfortable. I used Macs starting with the Mac Classics and left after the Mac IIci (many years ago ...) and stayed with PC's 80x86 iterations. I never felt Macs were stable enough and had enough software choices.

This summer I bought a MacBookPro 15" and during the first month I almost returned it numerous times. First irritation was the lower res screens compared to what I get on my Dell - but now I appreciate that text is more legible on smaller screens. There are some things like batch file renaming that I find easier in Windows but at the same time, the Windows batch renaming using the (1,2,3) naming is crap and I always used a 3rd party utility anyway. If you read David Pogue's "Switching to the Mac" it helps a lot as we've done things the Windows way for a looong time.

Using the Mac is like being comfortable with a foreign language, it takes practice. This is not meant as an insult, but trying it for 3 weeks is like tourists who visit another country for 3 weeks and claim they saw all they needed and it's not for them.

After using my MBP for a couple of months, I bought a MB and now an iMac. After 4 months I'm still discovering the Mac way and I don't have the same familiarity with software choices like I do with WinXP but it's coming.

I was an Adobe Premiere and Lightroom user. Lightroom on XP is slow and bug-ridden compared to Mac given the same hardware requirements. I run QuickenXP via Vmware Fusion as the Mac version isn't that great. The biggest problem with Mac is their 5% market share and because of that software developers will always go after the Windows market first, but it's not as bad as the 80-90's and Mac versions are coming around fairly quickly.

If it wasn't for Vmware Fusion and Parallels I wouldn't have switched to the Mac, but now that I'm on Mac, I prefer the stability over XP (I won't go Vista until a major Service Pack is released).
 
jburrows500 said:
Having researched my purchase for the better part of 6 months I came upon a pretty good deal on a refurbished Mac Pro from Amazon three weeks ago. I added 4GB of ram and 2 500GB hard drives to complete the video editing rig.
Click to expand...

I wish you could have gotten used to it, I do know that for lots of people, it takes a month or two to fully get used to a Mac after years on Windows. Most of what you want to do can be done, you just have to re-learn how to do it.

As for iMovie... yeah, the general consensus is that iMovie '08 is *NOT* a 'video editing' app as much as it is a 'video cataloging and YouTube creation' app. If you bought the computer specifically to be a 'video editing rig', then Final Cut Express (or even Pro) should have been your first pick. If you are even a semi-serious photographer, then, again, Aperture should have been your first pick, not iPhoto. (Although iPhoto does a decent job for me, with my over 20,000 photo library.) If you are going to 'settle' for a $1500 PC, then the Mac Pro was also probably significantly 'more computer' than you needed. Unfortunately, Apple really doesn't make a true 'high end desktop'/'low end workstation'. The iMac is a mid-range desktop, and the Mac Pro is a high end workstation. They have no equivalent for the $1500-$2000 (before monitor) PC. If that is what you really want, then you just have to go with a PC.

I, for one, was really hoping that the latest iMac revision would use a 'desktop' chipset (P35, for example,) with a desktop processor socket. Especially combined with a replaceable graphics card (even if not a standard PCI Express; but the 'MXM' mobile graphics card form factor,) it would have been able to compete with the 'high end desktop' market, while making the lower-end models cheaper than they are now using notebook components. (I would love to slap a 2.66 GHz quad core in an iMac, but instead I get to choose from 2.4 or 2.8 GHz dual core notebook models.)
 
I'm sorry but what crack are you on...honestly?

-takes one double click to open a folder

-takes one double click to run an installed application (or a single click if its in the quick launch)

-takes a double click plus a couple single clicks to launch just an .EXE file or any application which does not go through the install process. Dont like the extra click? Disable UAC.

-My friend is running Photoshop CS3 on his Vista notebook. I installed the trial version on my Visa64.

-There is no DOS in NT3.51, NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista or any of the Windows server series such as NT4, 2000 and 2003. If you are talking about the "command prompt", then you're misinformed. Command Prompt is as much DOS as the Terminal window in OSX is DOS.

-I installed 10.4 the other day and it did a fairly big update so......

-On my Vista64 which is not a fresh install but has everything I want installed in it, I have 36 processes (I'm not sure if thats what you meant by 'serves')

-You need to read about how vista uses memory because clearly from you being shocked about the 1.3 gig I'd say you have not read anything about it.

-Please tell me what computer and what hardware components you had trouble with. If the only trouble you had was installing Vista on your mac, then I wouldnt consider that a whole bunch of experience with hardware. We've got it on about 20 machines at work and there are at least 4-5 different model computers with different board vendors. I'm running X64 version at home and the 32bit on my Asus notebook. I'm not sure what issue you had with hardware but clearly I have not had issues as my XP CD is sitting on my shelf and has not come out of its box since I installed Vista about 6 months ago.


wizzracer said:
Vista is so full of trash I needed a dump truck to carry the the stuff off. The OS requires count them 5 steps to open a folder. 5 clicks to say yes run this app and on it goes on. And they still have DOS running on it!

The first time I installed it Down loaded 32 updates, and 14 patches.

I could not install any CS3 apps! I had over 52 serves's running and it takes 1.3 gig of ram right of the bat at startup. The driver support for HW is a joke.

If I had a dollar for all the lost time, I could retire right now!
Click to expand...
 
I was running it on a Sony laptop $1500.00 not cheap.

And yes Adobe "Corel" Master Collection CS3 would not load after four tries. Coral had a work around on there site four pages long.

HP had no drivers, you had to use some plain jane ones. No software was ready.

Vista does have DOS still on it cause it would run 16bit apps in native mode. And yes I did turn off almost all the retard proof "Protect the user" from there self settings.

I figure if i had to learn a new OS all over again, I might as well just do it on a Mac and fore go the pain of of being a tester for Microsoft again. Twenty years of MS free beta testing is enough for me!

Anyways MS does not create one thing on there own. They buy it or copy it and then try to make it work. Problem with that is the kernel was never designed to do that! It's built on a house of cards waiting to BSD on you.

It's ok for email and games for the kiddies. I need to be able to create something without being chained down by a PC.

Or if you think it does not have DOS, then why say bootup in DOS mode!
 
ezekielrage_99 said:
LOL....

But if the build quality was so good why didn't you just put boot camp on the Mac Pro?
Click to expand...


This was on a Sony laptop PC not a Mac!

I have had it with MS. Bill Gates can and eat dirt and die for all I care!

We had a old PC and a bat laying when his sht died on us. I swear it looked like a car crashed it after Two months. Then we got a new one beat on!
 
After being on Mac since 2000, the thought of editing video on Windows scares me.
 
Sorry it didn't work out for you. I remember when I returned to the world of Mac back in the days of OS7.4, lucky you didn't have to deal with that.

There is no sense in getting stuck in a $3500 hole if it's not for you.

Do you have any idea of what your video rid will be now?
 
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