SWITCHERS ONLY: What might we NOT like about switching?

[Draythor]

GGJstudios

Thanks, man. I connect to other drives so rarely that I have never bothered to look this up myself.

OT: Does anyone one know why Apple hasn't got this built in? Licensing rights?

 

[rcp27]

Actually, I do think this would bug me. I love that I have all of my most used programs (Word, Excel, Photoshop, Lightroom, Notepad, etc, plus one particular folder) right there for easy access with 1 click of the Start button -- yet hidden away completely out of sight (until I click on Start). I also love having quick access to my "Recent Items" list, to quickly open a file I was recently working on.

Basically if you want to use it a lot (say top 5 or so programs) drag it to the dock and it's always there, one click to launch. On the right side of the dock is instant access to the applications folder. One click and the full contents are visible, so two clicks to launch (same as start menu). Next to it is the documents folder, same idea. You can set the dock to hide unless you bring the mouse to the edge (like auto hide on the windows task bar). It's not quite the same but offers basically the same degree of easy access and flexibility.

eek... I use "alt-tab" and "copy & paste" A LOT!

Doesn't Mac have these things too?

Copy and paste are there. I believe alt tab is too (or is it command tab?), but exposé and spaces handle the problem sooooo much better that I never feel the need for it. When I switched and discovered exposé I really did wonder how I ever lived without it (and when I have to use a Windows box it is the one thing I really miss most).

 

[balamw]

OT: Does anyone one know why Apple hasn't got this built in? Licensing rights?

NTFS does not have a public/licensable specification or implementation. NTFS-3G was developed by reverse engineering and building on the HPFS spec. This is also one of the reasons many flash drives and SD Cards and devices still only support FAT32 or exFAT.

B

 

[shaun319]

screen maximizing is an annoyance on mac

 

[ZilogZ80]

screen maximizing is an annoyance on mac

RightZoom

 

[stompy]

As someone that has used Windows since before Windows (DOS) and has never used a Mac, what might I NOT like about it?
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I'm sure you get what I'm asking here so please share whatever info you can.

I've read almost the entire thread, and had a couple thoughts. Not sure the OP is still here, especially having read his reactions, but just in case.

Based on what I know about the OP (i.e. always used windows, just curious about Macs), I'm not really sure he could have come to a different conclusion based on this thread.

(side note: Now, don't everyone freak out, but here comes an analogy. I'm going to compare a non-computer object to Windows/Mac. I know there will be differences, you know there will be differences. Forget them.)

I start a thread on restaurantrumors.com

"I enjoy Restaurant Win, but sometimes, I see an ad for Restaurant Mac and several friends tell me how much they love Restaurant Mac. I'm starting to wonder if Restaurant Mac should be my new favorite. I've passed by and looked in the window, I've checked out the menu by the front door. It seems nice, there's usually a good crowd. I really don't have specific reason to change, but it could be better than Restaurant Win. Please tell me all the negatives about switching.

Later on in the thread, I comment: "Gee, you don't like the filet mignon at at Restaurant Mac? That stinks, I order that a lot at Restaurant Win; and no shrimp scampi on the menu? Lots of other comments that make this look like a bad change. Well, I was mostly curious, I'm good with Restaurant Win."

I honestly have no interest in convincing you to switch, you may be better off with windows, but the fact is, I set myself up for this outcome. Why?

-- I assumed I had discovered the "good" about Restaurant Mac, and now I just need all the "bad" to weigh things objectively.

-- I expected responses to be accurate.

-- Finally--the big one--a few vague postives will never outweigh a long list of negatives.

(Leaving the restaurants behind now.)
I often seek out negative opinions myself--on Amazon, I usually read the worst reviews first--but it ultimately comes down to two questions:

1. What are my needs and tastes.

2. "How will I use a new tool in a new way"--not "how can I make a new tool behave like a different tool." If a new tool adds nothing for me, why would I buy it?

Of course, #2 assumes I can come up with an accurate list.

 

[r0k]

Stompy, a few posts back somebody mentioned that the OP was later banned. That might explain why he hasn't come back. I am a fairly recent switcher. In fact I can honestly say I switch daily.

I switch whenever I manage to unchain myself from the Windows oars at the office and sit down in front of my lag-free, freeze-free, are you sure? free, (almost) trouble free, pleasant to use, easy to look at Mac.

There has been some good discussion here and there has been some wasted discussion. I think it's worth keeping this thread around for the sake of the good stuff. One of the things I like to do is to come in here and be reminded of some of the misconceptions I had when I first started switching over 5 years ago.

I don't have an ignore list for MR, but it's threads like this that draw out the kind of posts that make it fairly easy to put one together if someone is so inclined.

One thing that I stumbled across today was this...

One of my earliest Macs was a lowly Quadra 605. I was gonna put a picture of the 605 in here when I stumbled across this...

We all know how Macs look nowadays (iMac, Mini, Macbooks, etc) and with the possible exception of the Mac Pro, none of them look much like the 1990s era Mac Quadra 800. Meanwhile, if you want to see something that looks like this today, it's readily available from Dell, HP, and half a dozen other "mini tower" PC makers. Wow.

That ancient form factor is one thing I don't miss after switching. It's like somebody on the PC side hit the "pause" button when they got their 1994 mini tower PC design completed and all these years later still I see more mini towers than any other PC form factor but I see very few Macs with this ancient form factor.

At the end of your post, you mention needs and tastes and I must admit that industrial design figures prominently in my tastes since switching to Apple gear. Even if the OS were equal (which they are not), I want stuff that doesn't take up more room than necessary, isn't noisier or hotter than necessary and looks good.

 

[GGJstudios]

Stompy, a few posts back somebody mentioned that the OP was later banned. That might explain why he hasn't come back.

The OP was not banned. Just check the 1st post of this thread to see the OP is still around.

 

[r0k]

The OP was not banned. Just check the 1st post of this thread to see the OP is still around.

Doh! That's what I get for repeating something I read in a forum without checking it out for myself. Sure enough, clicking on the OP user name reveals they posted as recently as yesterday. Oops!

Edit (updated info): I got this thread mixed up with the "mac vs pc spec for spec thread". It was the OP in that thread that was banned. Double Oops!

Your comment about "suffering with 7 all day" is surprising to me. I don't know if I've seen Windows 7 experience a full OS crash. And I've been toying with Win 7 since it was in beta.

Sure, it ain't perfect, but I find Win 7 pretty darn efficient overall. I haven't encountered any OS related issues with 7 yet. Application quirks, sure, but not really any OS problems.

I'd say OS X and Win 7 are much more comparable than Vista or XP.

Again, it comes down mostly to what you need a computer to do.

Cheers, all.

Actually I should mention that it's not simply 7 I'm suffering with. It's the crap our IT people do to 7 that I'm suffering with. I can't watch any Youtube video without freezes and pauses and the applications they make us use should be outlawed as cruel and unusual punishment.

One of the biggest annoyances I brought on myself by dragging my start button to the top of the screen so it would look more "Mac like". I wound up fighting with it day in day out as it overlaid window controls and refused to get out of the way. Once I dragged it back where "it belongs", my life got a lot easier.

Granted I can move my dock around in OS X at least the OS X menu bar stays where it belongs and I never get into conflicts where some window control I need is hiding off the edge of the screen or behind the menu bar. OTOH, the dock gets in my way any time I'm near the bottom of the window I'm using. I should really do something about it.

 

[stompy]

, are you sure? free, (almost) trouble free,

Agreed. All the little things add up quickly.

I like to do is to come in here and be reminded of some of the misconceptions I had when I first started switching over 5 years ago.

Yep. People often confuse bias with knowledge. I'm guilty as well.

We all know how Macs look nowadays (iMac, Mini, Macbooks, etc) and with the possible exception of the Mac Pro, none of them look much like the 1990s era Mac Quadra 800. Meanwhile, if you want to see something that looks like this today, it's readily available from Dell, HP, and half a dozen other "mini tower" PC makers. Wow.

My company just replaced a co-worker dead desktop with this:

Well, it's utilitarian. Some would argue that they want a computer, not a sculpture. Ok, but there are reasons behind every object designed. This object says "cheap. cheap. cheap."

That ancient form factor is one thing I don't miss after switching. It's like somebody on the PC side hit the "pause" button when they got their 1994 mini tower PC design completed and all these years later still I see more mini towers than any other PC form factor but I see very few Macs with this ancient form factor.

At the end of your post, you mention needs and tastes and I must admit that industrial design figures prominently in my tastes since switching to Apple gear. Even if the OS were equal (which they are not), I want stuff that doesn't take up more room than necessary, isn't noisier or hotter than necessary and looks good.

On a checklist, those things don't seem like much, but I agree: when you put it on your desk, it all matters (some things, obviously, more than others).

 

[chaoticbear]

Stick shared files on a NAS or in the cloud. Problem solved.


My last PC laptop decided not to go to sleep one one trip, I put it away in my backpack and when I took it out the battery was drained and the sleeve was discolored by the heat.

Plus, I just love trying to shut down or log off and be told that Windows needs to install updates. Right now? WTF! If I need to shut you down it's because I need to go. Now.

This is really better?


B

Regarding the first point - we have a NAS set up at home, but trying to format that sucker to where both of our computers could use it, the NAS recognized it, and to where we could stick >4GB files on there was a wreck. At this point, I don't remember what we put each partition in, but I know the onboard BT client only accepted one format, I had to download some tool to make a small partition for that, and then we partitioned the rest as... something. If I ever need to plug directly into my computer for anything, I'm sure it'll be a blast.

And I don't generally mind the close = sleep behavior, but it'd be nice to have the option, you know? At least my new MBA charges my phone while it's closed; the old MB had to be open. It spent a lot of time open and idle.

 

[balamw]

Regarding the first point - we have a NAS set up at home, but trying to format that sucker to where both of our computers could use it, the NAS recognized it, and to where we could stick >4GB files on there was a wreck.

Weird. That's the beauty of an SMB/CIFS NAS. It can run on Linux with ext3 and Samba and you'd think it was Windows/NTFS. Supporting >4GB is just a matter of getting the right format that the NAS understands, because it will translate that to a generic SMB call.

My current NAS is an HP Mediasmart running Windows Home Server, but I also used the Apple Time Capsule before that. Neither had any trouble with the issues you raise.

And dropbox has been a godsend for me. Drop a file in there and once synced it's accessible at full speeds from all of my three Macs (under OSX or Windows) my PC and even my iDevices.

B

 

[mojohanna]

My only dislike of OS X: You can't cycle between windows that are open with command+tab, you can only cycle between applications. In windows, you can cycle between the open windows with alt+tab.

cmd ~ gets you the cycle between windows.

 

[WilliamBos]

After getting a new mini for my b-day, I have to wait until tomorrow to use it, as I need the apple only DVI-VGA adapter. Aftermarket stuff don't work...

 

[ChrisA]

One off the top of my head is that everything costs money application wise, there is very little freeware.

Not true at all. Almost everything that run under Linux will run on the Mac. Linux is an entire OS with thousands of apps. 90% of that runs on the Mac

 

[ChrisA]

If you felt confortable with Linux and its command line, Mac OS X should be no real change for you. Its command line interface is no different. If I remember right, Mac OS X's standard Shell is in bash, but you can change it to the many other popular shells that are used with Unix and linux and even install your own.

Once you are using the shell program in OS X, you will find the not much has changed UNIX wise but remember that OS X is based on BSD and not linux so I guess there are some small (very small) differences.

The shell that interprets your typing into the command line is just another program. There are several different shells and you can install many of them and switch between them if you like. If you see difference between Linux and Mac OS X it is likely because on one system the default shell is /bin/sh and the other it is /bin/csh or /bin/tcsh or whatever. The defaults on both Mac and Linux at set on a per user basis so each user gets his favorite shell. Difference in syntax are subtle and mostly are noticed only if you write shell scripts. It's not a BSD vs. Linux issue, either OS can run either shell or even run different shells in different windows on the same machine

 

[balamw]

It's not a BSD vs. Linux issue, either OS can run either shell or even run different shells in different windows on the same machine

This is generally true, but there are other subtle differences. Some of the provided utilities in Linux are GNU versions of the same utilities provided in Mac OS X. They sometimes can have different command line options than other versions. Fortunately you can install the GNU versions from MacPorts easily.

e.g. the Mac OS version of ls has an option "-@" which is not implemented in the GNU version for Mac OS specific extended attributes, and the GNU version implement verbose options like: --recursive instead of -R.

B

 

[Sounds Good]

I start a thread on restaurantrumors.com

"I enjoy Restaurant Win, but sometimes, I see an ad for Restaurant Mac and several friends tell me how much they love Restaurant Mac. I'm starting to wonder if Restaurant Mac should be my new favorite. I've passed by and looked in the window, I've checked out the menu by the front door. It seems nice, there's usually a good crowd. I really don't have specific reason to change, but it could be better than Restaurant Win. Please tell me all the negatives about switching.

Later on in the thread, I comment: "Gee, you don't like the filet mignon at at Restaurant Mac? That stinks, I order that a lot at Restaurant Win; and no shrimp scampi on the menu? Lots of other comments that make this look like a bad change. Well, I was mostly curious, I'm good with Restaurant Win."

I honestly have no interest in convincing you to switch, you may be better off with windows, but the fact is, I set myself up for this outcome. Why?

-- I assumed I had discovered the "good" about Restaurant Mac, and now I just need all the "bad" to weigh things objectively.

-- I expected responses to be accurate.

-- Finally--the big one--a few vague postives will never outweigh a long list of negatives.

Do you honestly believe that I am ONLY using THIS particular thread to gather info about Mac machines?

This ENTIRE FORUM is FULL of positive feedback about using a Mac. I don't need to look too hard to find it.

But the potential negatives that a Windows user might encounter on a Mac? That question must be asked... so ask I did. Nothing more, nothing less.

It just so happens that FOR ME, the potential negatives that I discovered within this thread started to outweigh the potential positives that I found outside of this thread.

Truth is, this thread has been a tremendous help to me. And I'm guessing it can help others too, although not everyone will come to the same conclusions. But that's what good about "choice", right?

 

[ThunderSkunk]

0. "Get Info"on multiple items. WTF.

1. Crazy mouse acceleration curve. Why there isn't be a simple config option for this under mouse controls I'll never understand.

2. Trackpad acceleration. Why there isn't a simple option for absolute coordinates on the trackpad, so your finger position is mapped 1:1 to your position on screen, I'll also never understand. The trackpads are big enough. A corresponding area of equal size on a wacom digitizer is fine. ...but i need to lug around a wacom just so I don't have to chase my cursor all over the screen? Crazy.

3. Finder. If I delete a file, don't kick me out of the whole folder and make me come back in and go through all the files again to get back to where I was in the file list. It's rude.

4. Finder. Apple has all the pieces, now if they'd just put em together. Cascade thru folders in column view, and when your selection lands on files, display details. Let us see previews in coverflow. Like this:

 

[stompy]

Do you honestly believe that I am ONLY using THIS particular thread to gather info about Mac machines?

It's clear you want to make an objective decision. Other than what I read in this thread, what else could I know about you? Here's a couple quotes that made an impression on me:

11 posts in you wrote "Are you guys sure that switching is really "worth it"?"
#27 "Ya know what? These may all be little things individually, but collectively as a whole I think they'd drive me nuts."

Here's what I wrote at the beginning of my post:

I'm not sure he could have come to a different conclusion based on this thread.

It won't show up in this quote, but I originally highlighted the phrase "based on this thread;" it certainly seemed that you were using this thread to sort things out. I apparently ruffled your feathers on that point, sorry about that.

not everyone will come to the same conclusions. But that's what good about "choice", right?

I said pretty much the same at the end of my post.

 

[Sounds Good]

Nah, no feathers were ruffled.

Just trying to show some FEELING by using UPPER CASE words.

 

[itickings]

I still miss the ability to easily control the computer with only a keyboard without reaching for the mouse/trackpad all the time.

Sure, there are many shortcuts, but no real equivalent to the underlined entries in menus, and the obvious keyboard navigation in dialogs. But then again, I'd been primed to that since Windows 3.0 through XP and other systems.

I'm sure some people will want to correct me now by pointing out the keyboard control possibility available in the accessibility settings, but that'll only end with uncontrollable laughter...

 

[r0k]

0. "Get Info"on multiple items. WTF.

1. Crazy mouse acceleration curve. Why there isn't be a simple config option for this under mouse controls I'll never understand.

2. Trackpad acceleration. Why there isn't a simple option for absolute coordinates on the trackpad, so your finger position is mapped 1:1 to your position on screen, I'll also never understand. The trackpads are big enough. A corresponding area of equal size on a wacom digitizer is fine. ...but i need to lug around a wacom just so I don't have to chase my cursor all over the screen? Crazy.

3. Finder. If I delete a file, don't kick me out of the whole folder and make me come back in and go through all the files again to get back to where I was in the file list. It's rude.

4. Finder. Apple has all the pieces, now if they'd just put em together. Cascade thru folders in column view, and when your selection lands on files, display details. Let us see previews in coverflow. Like this:

I really like #4. The whole cover flow thing in Finder seems like it's useless but merging cover flow with another view, now that's awesome. I tend to like one feature in windows explorer better than finder. I like the view where the entire folder structure is in the left pane and the current folder is in the right pane. Finder offers a column view that I never quite got used to. But one thing prevents me from even thinking about liking windows over OS X: Quick View. There is nothing like it on Windows. I know MS tried. They added some sort of thumbnail sort of a thing but they don't offer anything that I could use the word "quick" to describe. Meanwhile quick view on OS X and on iOS knows how to open the majority of files I use and care about. For this reason, even though I like your #4 suggestion, because we have quick view, the merged cover flow view is only a nice to have. Have you brought this suggestion up to the folks that make Pathfinder? I bet they would consider doing it. Of course once somebody is doing it on third party software, Apple is more likely to pick it up as a feature in future versions of OS X.

I'm not sure I've ever noticed #s 1-3. I don't use a trackpad and leave it disabled. In fact, when my BT mouse batteries being replaced, the tired old trackpad on my Macbook misbehaves badly. For deletion I always right-click and pick "move to trash" and I'm not kicked out of finder at all. Every now and then I lose track of the mouse on my two monitor setup. OS X doesn't want to allow the mouse back onto my Macbook screen from the bottom of the external monitor. I have to go up and then right to get my cursor back. It's mildly annoying but I live with it.

 

[iSee]

1. Pressing delete when you've selected a file in finder doesn't delete the file. You've gotta use the context menu or <gasp> actually drag it to the garbage.

I know this one: Use Command-Delete

 

[darktiger]

I am mostly a windows user (have been since 1986), but I did buy me a 2011 macbook pro two days to edit videos. So this thread has been helpful. Thanks everyone.