For those who have transitioned from PC to Mac, how did it go?

Dean

in memoriam
I am thinking about making the transition.

My concerns:
  1. text editing. I use notepad, wordpad - any way to get the equivalent on a mac? I did see the Text Editor on the Mac, but it appears the only save option that might work is the open doc text (.ico) format.
  2. Any way to get a similar compare files feature as Notepad++ for detecting differences in template files?
  3. Any input on LARGE file size viewing (250k edit: over 3.5M lines)? Many times I have been using Word Pad because that is the only way to open the server log files locally without reducing them via grep on my server before I download (I need to be able to work without an internet connection)
  4. The Mac Terminal program - nice. I can see that opens a shell, where I can run several unix commands locally on the mac. Any limitations on that? Could I change permissions on files, etc?
  5. The Mac Terminal program - can I connect to my server using that, similar to how I am using puTTy on windows?
  6. Mail client on the mac, would that work for multiple email accounts? I have outlook set up to handle 8 different email accounts at the moment.
  7. Can I assume that I could use the unix rsync command if I wanted to do that instead of, or in addition to, the Time machine on an external drive?
I have noticed that many of the things I do daily seem much easier on the mac, and am thinking about switching. But wanted to get input from people who have made the switch, or know both systems.
:)
 
I have switched back and forth several times. It's no big deal.

1) OS X comes with a program called TextEdit which is like Wordpad. It does plain text too if you want (like Notepad).

2) I use gedit but it doesn't do comparison. I have seen TextWrangler recommended. It does comparisons:

http://www.barebones.com/support/textwrangler/updates.html

3) I never met a text editor that could handle 250k lines well. Of course you can use grep in the Terminal.

4) No limitations. It's a fully functional terminal. Yes you can change permissions with it. It uses all of the standard nix commands.

5) Yes. Type this into the terminal to open a shell connection to another server (like Putty):

ssh user@domain.com

6) I haven't used the Mail app in 10 years. But the last time I did I had 4 different email accounts running on it.

7) Yes you can use rsync:

http://www.haykranen.nl/2008/05/05/rsync/
 
Editor:
UltraEdit on both Windows and Mac OS can handle large files. Besides that, I kinda like TextMate.

Terminal
Let me tell it you that way:
sudo rm -rf /*
works. 'nough said? :–)

Mail:
In Lion there's even a tab in system preferences for that. Just add as many mail accounts as you have.
 
I rarely fall back to the PC now, funnily enough mainly for SSH using Putty, but I see in Jake's reply I have this facility all along on the Mac so I will try it later.

I use the supplied text editor to edit PHP and .htaccess files etc on the Mac and never had any issues.

I don't use the Mac mail program, I use the mail part of Opera, and it works the same on PC and the Mac, so is platform independent.
 
Things I've noticed...

MacOS *IS* Unix (BSD type). Anything you can do in Linux, you can do on MacOS. You can telnet/ssh to a Linux/Unix server, set your host variables and run windowed GUI apps on your desktop. Great for Oracle or SAP installs.

MSOffice Mac 2011 - much better than the Office 1010 version on Windows. For the life of me I can't tell you why it would be because you'd expect MS to "dumb it down". Outlook is noticeably superior.

From the "best of both worlds" department...
Invest in a USB SSD when you convert and get a copy of VMware Fusion for $70. Install the Fusion client on your PC to transfer your Windows image to your Mac. I run Windows 7 as a Fusion VM for a couple of things that I can't do without (Visio, IBM econfig) and it actually runs better. You can run "unity mode" and have both the task managers inning at the bottom of your screen.
 
Glad I moved, never looked back. Didn't need to. It's easier than most people think. The transition period seems to be less than I expected with friends/family that move.
 
Glad I moved, never looked back. Didn't need to. It's easier than most people think. The transition period seems to be less than I expected with friends/family that move.
I agree with Floris. Not as bad as you may think. I have had my iMac for more than a year. Very happy.
 
I edited post #1, I was off a bit on the text file - 3.5M lines. Because I had no way to grep locally on a pc.. unless I downloaded a grep utility from somewhere to make the pc more like a unix machine, which the mac already is. Though I can open those files up my pc, it takes several minutes to do any navigation in those large files. There are more details but suffice it to say that from what I can tell, if I got a mac, it would save a lot of my time and reduce the number of headaches.

I appreciate all the input. It has given me enough information to ask more questions at our local Apple stores, there are many in our area (14+). Think I will try a few different ones to ask various questions. There is a *huge* variation in knowledge level at the one store I visited e.g "why yes iCalc does come with iWork, it is a word processor", and only a small % of them at that store knew how to do a Print-screen.

I think it is fair to say most that have posted in this thread use xf. When a new version of xf comes out, how do you compare/update the templates?
 
Personally, I use PhpStorm and use it's file difference functions, though I'm sure that there's something out there for the Mac, I'll have a look.
 
The Mac seems far more logical to me. And much easier to use because it is built on unix and those are available in Terminal.

PC (at least what I have been doing) to get a screen shot of just a portion of the screen:
  • Print screen
  • Open MS paint, paste
  • Save as .png, then put it on the desktop so I can easily find it via file manager
  • In file manager find the newest file on the desktop, then open with Irfanview (public domain program that just happened to find)
  • Crop, save as the same file name, then confirm that yes I want to replace it.
Then either go to photobucket and upload, and get a img link, or attach directly to my forum in a post.

Mac:
  • Command + shift + 4
  • Select the portion of the screen you want.
  • It shows up on the desktop ready for upload
Then either go to photobucket and upload, and get a img link, or attach directly to my forum in a post

cpanel access logs on the PC:

  • Open cpanel or ftp client, copy home/mysite/logs/mysite.com-Aug-2011.gz file to another location (home/mysite/logs/mysite/dean) to preserve the original file.
  • Open putty, login either as root or cpanel user, go to home/mysite/logs/dean
  • Run the command gunzip mysite.com-Aug-2011
  • To see only the lines which come from googlebots: Run the command grep “66.249” mysite.com-Aug-2011 > filtered
  • Then close putty
  • Go back to cpanel or ftp, download home/mysite/logs/dean/filtered onto the desktop (again, that location is so I can easily find it from file manager)
Go to file manager, right click, and open in Notepad++

cpanel access logs on the mac:
  • ftp or etc and download: home/mysite/logs/mysite.com-Aug-2011.gz file
  • In terminal on the mac: gunzip mysite.com-Aug-2011
  • To see only the lines which come from googlebots: Run the command grep “66.249” mysite.com-Aug-2011 > filtered
Open “filtered” in TextEdit, or better yet, TextWrangler (similar to notepad++, I think, cannot test without a mac)

Do I understand things correctly, for the most part?
 
I went to the Apple store in Walnut Creek CA - infinitely better for my needs that the one in Pleasanton CA...

Both the 4GB i5, and the 4GB i7 13" Mac book Pros were acting sluggish at times. While that could easily be attributed to many factors, especially because they are being used by the general public, it did occur to me that things could slow down a bit.

Question: If I needed to choose between the i5 with additional ram making it a total of 8GB, and the i7 with 4GB - which might be better in real life when doing simple things such as I've described in this thread?

My first guess would be more memory would be better...

I did put in 4GB in my pc, later to find out that XP can only use 3GB max - I am assuming OSX can use 8GB in a useful manner.
 
I went to the Apple store in Walnut Creek CA - infinitely better for my needs that the one in Pleasanton CA...

Both the 4GB i5, and the 4GB i7 13" Mac book Pros were acting sluggish at times. While that could easily be attributed to many factors, especially because they are being used by the general public, it did occur to me that things could slow down a bit.

Question: If I needed to choose between the i5 with additional ram making it a total of 8GB, and the i7 with 4GB - which might be better in real life when doing simple things such as I've described in this thread?

My first guess would be more memory would be better...

I did put in 4GB in my pc, later to find out that XP can only use 3GB max - I am assuming OSX can use 8GB in a useful manner.

Apple RAM is superbly overpriced - I get mine cheaper from Crucial, (who are doing a promo in the UK actually)
 
Max the RAM and get a SSD. Bottlenecks be gone. The CPU is less important.

I did put in 4GB in my pc, later to find out that XP can only use 3GB max - I am assuming OSX can use 8GB in a useful manner.

Yes OSX makes use of the full 8GB.

Screen shot 2011-08-30 at 10.50.50 PM.webp
 
Lion is natively x64 so >4 GB of memory are no problem at all. And even Snow Leopard can handle, at least through PAE.

However, I think memory is way more important than CPU. Especially in Lion. As nice Apple usually is, they simply do not have an idea how to handle with memory :( (Look at Jakes screenshot: 6 GB are inactive (usually blue in the graph) but instead of using inactive memory, OS X starts swapping, kinda stupid.)

So go for the i5 and for some 8 GB SODIMM 1333 MHz memory (Corsair working well in my MBP, costs some 40 Euros at Amazon) and become happy :)
 
Lion is natively x64 so >4 GB of memory are no problem at all. And even Snow Leopard can handle, at least through PAE.

However, I think memory is way more important than CPU. Especially in Lion. As nice Apple usually is, they simply do not have an idea how to handle with memory :( (Look at Jakes screenshot: 6 GB are inactive (usually blue in the graph) but instead of using inactive memory, OS X starts swapping, kinda stupid.)
It's not stupid, it's like a VM (= virtual memory manager, nothing to do with a virtual machine in this context) works. Using swap space doesn't mean it is low on memory, it just means it needs backing storage for 50MB of allocated memory that cannot be backed by other means.

It also doesn't mean that memory is actually swapped out; it only means the swap space is reserved.

Quite normal and no need to worry and you'll see this in any modern operating system that doesn't allow overcommitment for the core VM.
 
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