Happy New Year to old and new Mac users!
CNET's Rafe Needleman bought a pair of MacBooks for himself and his wife, went on travel with the MacBooks instead of their usual Windows notebooks with, what looks to me, like minimal preparation, and then wrote this item on CNET...
Switcher's lament: The case against Mac
...that has more than 440 comments (so far). I didn't go "cold turkey" in switching from Windows to a Mac four years ago when I ordered my Mac mini after hearing its announcement come out of Macworld 2005 (my first Mac). But, I took a few comment lumps myself after writing about my first Mac experience since the late 1980s in this O'Reilly article...
Mac Mini Eye for the Linux-Windows Guy
Nearly four years later, I still don't consider myself a switcher even though I now spend most of my day using a Mac. I should note that, in fact, I've switched back from Mac OS X to Windows XP when running around because I find it easier to lug around a 2 pound netbook (and, yes, I know I could install OS X on it. But, that doesn't appeal to me) instead of my 5+ pound MacBook. If Apple would provide a lightweight (less than 3 pounds), low-cost (under $800), small device (9 to 10 inch LCD), I would order one today.
Two analogies come to mind about going from Windows XP/Vista to Mac OS X (or vice versa):
- Switching between a U.S. domestic card and a non-U.S. manfactured car. Everything feels different. Controls are in different places. Your may need to change your toolset (metric vs. imperial).
- Switching digital SLR camera bodies (say from a Nikon to a Canon). You need to replace all your lenses. Controls are in different places. There are little quirks that are different from the little quirks you are already comfortable with.
In each case, there is a lot of discomfort and a feeling of strangeness for a while. Most of this goes away with time, planning, and learning. Other things never quite feel right. For example, I agree with Rafe that having the toolbar separate from the application is a bit odd. And, it is even odder when you work on a multi-LCD configuration like I do where my app is on the external LCD and the toolbar is on the Mac's LCD (MacBook or iMac).
So, having been a very serious Mac "try-er" for nearly four years now and having looked at and written about dozens of OS X apps, I think I can offer some advice to people considering trying or switching to a Mac from a Windows PC.
1. Do NOT go cold turkey! If you can afford it, keep your Windows box around for a while to make sure mission critical tasks can be performed. I still have both XP and Vista PCs. And, I'm planning to test Windows 7 Beta soon.
2. If you do go cold turkey, don't drag your wife, girlfriend, significant other, parents, child, best friend along for the ride until you begin get comfortable with Mac OS X yourself.
3. If there is a nearby Apple store, go talk to the floor staff there. I've been to a bunch of Apple stores and their employees are uniformly friendly and helpful. If you can, make an appointment to discuss your needs before you buy a Mac. You may find, for example, you shouldn't buy a Mac mini if you plan to render video or use Photoshop all day long.
4. Make a list of the most important things you do on your Windows PC. List both activities and applications. Does your firm use Exchange Server or Lotus Notes? Do you need to use a VPN for enterprise LAN access? Do you run an accounts receivable application that only runs under Windows (or MS-DOS for that matter)? Do you work with government forms that only display in Internet Explorer? Do you use a Windows Mobile smartphone? Then ask if and how all of these requirements can be met on a Mac? Some (like syncing a Windows Mobile smartphone or a Blackberry in Rafe's wife's case may be a bit problematic).
5. Buy a couple of Mac OS X books including ones about switching from Windows to OS X. I understand O'Reilly Media publishes books or something and may have those types of books. And, come back here daily to read the O'Reilly DigitalMedia Mac blogs...
http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/mac/
I regularly read what the other bloggers have written and learn a lot from them.
6. Arrange to take classes at your local Apple store. A friend and his wife did that after buying matching iMacs a few years ago and were very very pleased with these after-sale sessions.
7. If you need to run applications that are Windows only and can't or don't want to keep a Windows PC around, take a look at Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or the free VirtualBox hypervisors that let you run Windows alongside OS X. Note that you will need to buy a copy of Windows XP (I don't recommend running Vista as a Guest OS unless you have a really fast Mac with lots of RAM - 4GB or more).
8. Be prepared for some radical differences in the way OS X looks, feels, and operates. Some things will never feel comfortable. But, you, like me, may wonder why you never had certain must-have features (like Expose) in Windows. I still press F9 and F11 on my Windows PC and feel cheated when the display doesn't change as expected there.
9. Speak with other Mac users in your area.
10 Be prepared to spend some money to replace software. But, don't forget there is a lot of great freeware and Open Source software for the Mac that can do a lot for you. I write a lot about freeware and Open Source software for OS X here. So, come back regularly and see what I've been playing with.
Finally, take a deep breath, relax, and have fun. Learning to use a different computer operating system can and should be fun. It should not be a hair raising or hair pulling situation. And, for goodness sakes, don't switch just before you do something important like give a presentation or go on travel. No one starts out doing anything as an expert. Don't expect to be a Mac expert on day 1, 100, or even 1000. I've been using Macs daily since receiving my Mac in 2005 and I'm still the resident newbie around here.
If you have your own Mac newbie advice, post them here as a comment!
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Hmm, looks like making a mistake on the Captcha erases a just-entered comment. Any chance of fixing that? : /
Mac'em X: Never too late to add useful. The problem is, I think, basically learning the way one thing works in Windows (X exits and app) to the way things work in OS X (X closes the window but leaves the app running). Oddly enough, Microsoft created this problem internally when they chose to have Windows Mobile smartphone's "X" work the same was as OS X instead of Windows. Starting with the Palm-size PC and on through today's Windows Mobile smartphones, the "X" in Windows Mobile close the app window but leaves the app running (just like OS X). The behavior change (from a Windows user point of view) added to Windows Mobile's poor memory management has lead to years of confusion and finger pointing regarding Windows Mobile overall performance. Most of us, I believe, get used to the way "X" works in OS X without having to look under the hood.
My comment's probably too late to be seen by anyone, but: There *is* logic behind Mac OS X's rules for whether or not closing a window closes an app. Nick's pointer to the developer guidelines lays things out nicely. If things still seem inconsistent, I offer a closer look at this article:
http://www.mactivist.com/blog/macemx/2009/01/understanding_macs_and_pcs_closing_apps
I think that overview will help out any newbies mystified by the Mac's app-closing behavior - but I welcome any corrections to my claims in the article!
to fahirsh,
but then when u have a window on Mac's LCD, u will have to move ur cursor to the external LCD if u want to access the menu bar.
"toolbar". I bet you mean "menu bar". It is located at the top of the Mac's screen. Tool bars are movable -- you can put them wherever you like, or hide them, just as on Windows.
The Mac *menu bar* is detached from app windows. And as others may have said, that's a good thing. I don't know how many times I've grabbed the wrong menu bar when I have many open Windows apps or docs in the same app (e.g., Word), and taken an action on the wrong document. Too easy to do with Windows. (I've worked in both OSes for years--programmed almost solely on Windows for work for 10+ years; definitely not a neophyte in either OS.)
On multi-display set-ups, having the Mac *menu bar* on just one screen can be a bit of a problem. One enhancement might be for OS X to display the menu bar on the display which has the active window, but I'm sure others would offer good reasons why not to do this. A switchable feature, maybe, one which I would probably turn on.
"Of course, there are a couple of annoying exceptions to this 'rule'... System Preferences, Disk Utility, and a handful of others, making the "close or quit?" decision ... confusing ..."
I don't know why I'm telling you, as you're an IT director and I'm an amateur, but there *are* reasons for this. Usually, it related to whether the application is *document-based* or not. It's up to the developer to make a judgment call in line with Apple's HIG. Quote:
"In most cases, applications that are not document-based should quit when the main window is closed. For Example, System Preferences quits if the user closes the window. If an application continues to perform some function when the main window is closed, however, it may be appropriate to leave it running when the main window is closed. For example, iTunes continues to play when the user closes the main window."
http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/chapter_18_section_5.html
I agree about the close window versus quit problem but there's an easy solution. You should NEVER use the red button if your intention is to Quit. I use Command-Q with System Prefs, the Calculator. I can never imagine a situation where I would want to close the calculator window (without Quitting) - I'd use command-h to achieve essentially the same thing, so the closing with certain one-window-only apps is never an issue.
Obbie Z: Great tip! I completely forgot about that. I made the same mistaken assumption when I started using the Mac mini 4 years ago.
yes reading that c|net article did actually make me want to scream.
the problems he was having was quite simply he had got too used to the way his windows based software worked. yes iPhoto keeps it's own database of your images just like iTunes does. is this really such a massive problem? iphoto will also import your photos for you if you have your media card (from your supported camera of course) plugged in while running apart from that other problems were actually down to software developers that weren't Apple.
Namely
Microsoft for, like idiots, having a completely separate team for Mac software and Windows and wonders why people get upset with the differences in the software
Research in Motion for not coding their own program for their handhelds like they've done for Windows (although I hear they have one in the works and passing the buck to…
PocketMac for coding a massive P.O.S that is their blackberry sync program and actually expected people to pay money for it, that was until RIM did a deal to get it released for free.
and whoever coded the VPN program which across the board are generally dodgy anyway, somehow I get the feeling they just plain get rushed and not tested properly
I'm the IT director in a Mac-based shop, and the most common "mistake" that Windoze switchers make is to think that closing a window quits the application. It may work that way in the Dark Side, but a Mac application can run with no open windows. So they call me wondering why their computers are running so slowly, and I'll look at the dock and find a dozen applications running with no windows open, consuming vast quantities of memory and processor cycles in the process. Then I have to explain that closing the window is not enough, that you must QUIT the application.
Of course, there are a couple of annoying exceptions to this 'rule'... System Preferences, Disk Utility, and a handful of others, making the "close or quit?" decision about as confusing as English-language phonetic rules.
If there are certain Windows programs you cannot live without, you may be able to run them under Codeweavers Crossover. It's not a free program (although it was free for one day a few weeks ago as part of a promotion) but what it does is allows you to run many Windows programs as if they were running under OS X - meaning you don't have to reboot, or run a virtual machine, or (most important) have a copy of Windows around. It is similar to Wine (if you are at all familiar with that program) but many more programs will run correctly under Crossover than under Wine. There's also a special version specifically for gamers, that presumably lets you run Windows games on OS X (not a gamer so can't say how well it works). I would definitely say this needs to be in any switcher's toolkit, IF you still have a need or a burning desire to run certain pieces of Windows software. Not EVERY piece of Windows software will run under Crossover (and some will work but you may need to tweak certain settings within the program, particularly display-related settings) but in my experience far more than half the programs I've tried will, though YMMV. The other drawback is that startup times for certain software can be fairly long, so try to start the program a few minutes BEFORE you actually want to use it.
SImdude: Shortcuts (beyond "save" & common features) are different or non-existent for many toolbar items. This is especially true for relatively menu-rich (complex) apps like photo editors. And, menus attached to apps in Windows are not always space hoggers. Many apps for Windows let you minimize or even hide the toolbar when needed to get maximum screen space. Two examples are Firefox (F11 on Windows goes full screen, hovering the cursor at the top reveals the tabs - I use this all the time to recover space when using my netbook) & many photo editors have a full screen mode to give maximum work area. In a two-display configuration, it really reduces mouse movement.
fahrirsch: Good tip. But, then my main built-in screen (MacBook or iMac) won't have a toolbar. Right?
Go read my Windows to Mac Switcher Manifesto on Mac|Life. Here:
A Switcher's Manifesto
My experience was completely different and yes I kept my Windows machine(s) around for a little while after getting my first Powerbook G4 (12.1" model).
You can also catch me on http://www.iphoneatlas.com and http://www.iphonesavant.com.
I'd appreciate you digging my Switcher Manifesto article. Not everyone has a bad experience switching and everyone that I talked into buying a Mac ended up embracing the platform whole heartedly. My guess is this was the WRONG thing for the people you write about to do considering they were leaving to go on a vacation!?!?! Wow. Mistake.
David
I've heard this same comment regarding the menubar from other PC users and I guess this is a comfort thing. I prefer the single menubar for an application because it's more efficient. If I have 10 MS Word docs open, I have a single menubar and tool bar eating up screen space. On Windows, every window duplicates the menubar and toolbar(s) wasting more screen space. This is really annoying on a laptop where space is at a premium. Plus, once you get comfortable using shortcuts, the menu is used less and less so why keep duplicating it in every window?
"And, it is even odder when you work on a multi-LCD configuration like I do where my app is on the external LCD and the toolbar is on the Mac's LCD (MacBook or iMac)"
If you go to System Preferences->Display Preferences->Arrangement you can drag the toolbar to the external monitor