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Reaction from windows to mac

dwonder3

dwonder3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2008
5
0
What was your guys reaction to mac coming from windows? I'm just kind of curious. I will be getting a new MacBook soon. I've always been on windows and truthfully NEVER been on a mac.

EDIT: BTW sorry if this isn't a good section to post in.
 
Reasonable simplification of UNIX home directories (not that it's that different from /homes), drag and drop system/user level modifications via /Library or /Library, no registry, and any decent program does drag and drop installation.
 
I swapped at the start of the year.

Simple to say
Its not Ctrl+ C
its command + C

That's one thing that is really hard to wrap your head around at first.

the "X" on the window is on the wrong side and it does not "close" the program as such, it closes the window, so the application is still running :D
I can run about 12-15 Applications at once and the OS is still very stable. compared to windows which seemed to bog down after 3-4 programs.
I could elaborate more. But they are the main differences I personally found.

~Regards
Name101
 
A few things off the top of my head...

- No "C" or "D" or any other drive letters. The layout of the file system is unfamiliar to anyone not used to a Unix environment
- The green "Maximize" blob does not fill the screen
- Only the bottom right corner of a window can be dragged to grow the window
- The red blob only closes the window/document, not the application
- The menus are on the top bar, not in the application window
- You can safely sleep the system and expect it to wake up exactly as you left it
- Installing and uninstalling applications is as easy as dragging them in and out of the applications folder
- A .dmg file is a disk image that mounts and unmounts like a disk. Most applications are downloaded inside a .dmg file. Once you have dragged the application out of the .dmg file to your applications folder, you can unmount and delete the .dmg file
- The Trash does not empty itself on a regular basis, you have to do it yourself or get a utility to manage it for you
- You can boot from USB/Firewire devices that have a bootable image on them (eg, a backup of your system disk)
- You can drag images and/or highlighted text snippets on to the desktop, and drag them into other documents
 
blodwyn said:
- Installing and uninstalling applications is as easy as dragging them in and out of the applications folder
Click to expand...

Except that it leaves files all over your computer... this is one of the things where I think windows is better; it's not exatly hard to uninstall a program in windows either.
 
lamadude said:
Except that it leaves files all over your computer... this is one of the things where I think windows is better; it's not exatly hard to uninstall a program in windows either.
Click to expand...

Not really. It may leave a couple of preference files lying around. But they are small (generally less than 10k each) and do no harm to the system and do not adversly effect performance. In fact leaving them is an advantage because if you ever want to reinstall the program again you won't need to reconfigure all your preferences again.

The reason Windows needs an uninstaller is mainly due to the registry. If you don't keep the registry clean on a Windows machine it will start to slow down over a period of a few months. Because Macs do not have anything like a registry this is a non-issue for them.
 
You don't see macs with the processor usage constantly sitting at 95% like you do on windows because of background software or malware. I've been asked to "fix" countless slow PCs and they were all slow because the user was fighting against a virus scanner, a bit of malware and limewire for their share of the CPU.
 
Cromulent said:
Not really. It may leave a couple of preference files lying around. But they are small (generally less than 10k each) and do no harm to the system and do not adversly effect performance.
Click to expand...

They sometimes leave stuff in Application Support which again, does not affect performance if the files just lay dormant. What it does do is take up space. Like the iLife music loops and such. Some 40gb if you install every loop, sound, and template for all 5 iLife apps.
 
Well, I just got my first Mac on Monday. There is a bit of a learning curve, as things are definitely done differently. Not better or worse, just different.

I am probably a little slower doing things right now than if I were using Windows, but things are speeding up. Part of it may be that I am using the trackpad for everything, instead of a mouse. I have always used a wireless mouse with my laptops in the past.

The trackpad gestures are just awesome. Last night, I was using my wife's Gateway and kept trying to 2 finger scroll. And 3 finger go back. I find it quick to use the 4 finger expose swipe to switch apps as well.

Getting used to using Command instead of Control is a little frustrating, as my fingers aren't used to it yet.

Not having an actual forward delete key is a little weird as well.

I love how quiet the computer is, and the keyboard is great as well.

I switched to run Aperture and Final Cut, why are you switching?
 
My biggest reserve is for finder over explorer.

To me explorer is a lot easier to use. That said I get by on finder but it is a bit annoying. Coverflow is pretty, but not particularly useful apart from images or movies.

Other than that I prefer almost everything that OSX has to offer.
 
lamadude said:
Except that it leaves files all over your computer... this is one of the things where I think windows is better; it's not exatly hard to uninstall a program in windows either.
Click to expand...

this used to bother me a lot too, i got little app called appzap and all you gotta do is drag whatever it is that you want to remove and it will remove every file that s linked to that app,, saving you lots of space... hmm awesome
 
juanster said:
this used to bother me a lot too, i got little app called appzap and all you gotta do is drag whatever it is that you want to remove and it will remove every file that s linked to that app,, saving you lots of space... hmm awesome
Click to expand...

Appzapper is the name, and I always use it to uninstall. I also throw new applications on there after I've run them the first time just to see where they're installing stuff. I know it doesn't matter from a performance perspective, I just.... like to know.:eek:
 
fxstb2002 said:
… The trackpad gestures are just awesome. Last night, I was using my wife's Gateway and kept trying to 2 finger scroll. And 3 finger go back. I find it quick to use the 4 finger expose swipe to switch apps as well.

Getting used to using Command instead of Control is a little frustrating, as my fingers aren't used to it yet.

Not having an actual forward delete key is a little weird as well.

I love how quiet the computer is, and the keyboard is great as well.

I switched to run Aperture and Final Cut, why are you switching?
Click to expand...

welcome to Macs! i too love two finger scrolling and find it funny trying to use a Windows laptop.

forward delete is fn+delete. on the Apple desktop keyboards there is a forward delete key just called "Del".

MacBooks have a unique fan design with more fins than usually that allows it to move more air and lower rpms.

but when a process strop responding and start using all of your CPU youll soon here the fans. time to open up Activity Monitor (like task manager) in the Utilities folder and sort the processes by CPU to find the culprit and force quit it. thankfully this is pretty rare and the process quits straight away.
 
The Dock -- that is something really different from the Windows Taskbar.

The left hand side of the divider is for applications; the right hand side is for everything else (folders, documents, aliases, etc).

Applications on the Dock behave differently compared to the Taskbar. When an application is running, it has an icon in the Dock, with a glowing dot below telling you that it's active. Furthermore, you can also keep (frequently used) applications in the Dock when they are not running. Either by right-clicking a running app and choose "Keep in Dock" or by dragging it to the Dock from the Applications folder. This is something that could catch Windows users out since there are both active and closed apps in the same place.
 
I Just switched from windows to mac and things seem pretty good. Initially things are really easy, its only when i went to dig a little deeper that things seem so completely foreign. Especially the file structure. Still trying to figure that out.
 
First time i used my first mac, I was not completely bowled over by its power or superior OS. It was an improvement, but not a huuuuge one. Enough to keep you hooked tho.

The True 'wow' factor comes from when you have another go on a pc afterwards. Then you realise how superior Mac OSX is, seriously, you'll wonder how you ever survived before
 
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