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

IMO, then again, I use these tools a lot, Pages and Numbers aren't great replacement for Office - I sugguest you download the trial and try iWork before you commit to buying it.
 
Bought the littlest mbp yesterday. So far I have found 1000 things I like better about it than the PCs I've been using since the 8088 days.

But there are definitely things that are frustrating at the moment, as I fully expected.

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.
That ssh worked fantastic! Thanks!

One of the things I *really* do not like is the Lion email client, far too easy to miss emails because apparently they expect people to see a little read number change on the email (I've got thousands of unread emails). Also when scrolling through them they are marked as read, even though I've not opened them up - that is 2 things that my old Outlook did well. Perhaps those where the only 2 things..

Any suggestions on an email client?

edit: an email client that can do pop3 from my server, and send using smtp on my server. It took some time but both outlook on my pc, and apple email client can do that. I've no interest in imap at the moment.
 
I find this thread interesting, as I also am a long time PC guy from the 8088 days.

One of my big concerns is gaming, I'm big, big, big into gaming, and it seems to me (and I could be wrong), that major developing houses to not port to Mac that often.

What's a solution to that?
 
I find this thread interesting, as I also am a long time PC guy from the 8088 days.

One of my big concerns is gaming, I'm big, big, big into gaming, and it seems to me (and I could be wrong), that major developing houses to not port to Mac that often.

What's a solution to that?

That is a problem. If a game doesn't have a Mac version then you can install Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Camp comes preinstalled and makes it easy to manage a Windows dual boot.
 
Apple RAM is superbly overpriced - I get mine cheaper from Crucial, (who are doing a promo in the UK actually)

macsales.net

That way you know the ram you're getting is not only affordable, but well tested for the machine you're getting it for.
 
I use Sparrow and Outlook for Mac
Sparrow is imap and not pop3, at least per the documentation I've found.

I am trying to stay away from MS office if possible.

At the moment, the only simple solution I can think of is to forward all email accounts on my server to my yahoo email account. I don't see any email client much better than the Apple email client at the moment... perhaps actually receiving a visual pop up that goes to a new email that has just arrived is undesirable for some reason?

:confused:
 
I see this place has 8GB for $54 - 2) 4GB chips. LINK

Can I assume there are only 2 memory slots on a mbp 13" i5, and the options are 2GB or 4GB for each slot?

I was in terminal using the Top command and it was definitely using close to 2GB without too many things running.

At the moment I am tempted to go cheap and if the 2) 2GB chips are not enough memory I could later upgrade to 2) 4GB chips.

everymac.com has a list of exactly every mac ,and their specs .. allowing you to see what comes default, what can be upgraded and not. very handy.

macsales.com
everymac.com
macrumors.com
apple.com

my go to sites for apple
 
A bit off topic but after my recent Lion upgrade I found watching this guys recent lion install Funny As Hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9d7ZRlnBs (swearing involved)
I can certainly see why he is not happy with the ui changing so significantly. Lion (OSX 10.7) appears to have changed the ui in some significant ways. I've been searching / researching and while many are quite unhappy with the Lion update and have significant problems, I've seen absolutely no issue. I tunneled in with the Terminal program via ssh and the connection was perfect with no resets at all. Because I've not used an apple computer very much in the past the ui changes don't apply to me.

Still struggling a bit with the email issue, but 'bonding' with the mbp so to speak. Some of the things I thought were incredibly silly such as the 2 finger scroll left for Alt-left arrow now makes sense. A lot of sense.. Incredible how fast the internet can be surfed with the ui improvements - in addition to the computer operating much much faster than any non-apple computer I've used.

Still deciding how to handle a few things..
 
Firstly, its a learning curve. Mac functions better by learning shortcut key commands. That is the biggest learning curve, however; that also seems to allow for far more built-in functionality than I have ever experienced in Windows.

Jake and others have answered most things... I have added some more from a newbie perspective to mac.
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.
The built-in text editor saves in .rtf, .rtf with attachments, .html, web archive, .doc, .docx, .odt, .xml or you can export to .pdf.

There are then a myriad of freely available text editors available throughout the web OR through the mac app store built-in, free and paid.
Any way to get a similar compare files feature as Notepad++ for detecting differences in template files?
Plenty available, both free and paid, that do the same job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PHP_editors
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?[/quote]
Works fine.
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.
This is exactly why we ended up going to mac ourselves... initially it was difficult to understand, but when asking a tech guy in the store can it do x, y, z... he did it there and then on the spot to demonstrate, and it was standard, without programs. That impressed me immediately, that so many basic functions you need, just aren't in Windows standard, they are in Mac, but you just have to learn the shortcuts usually to use them, as not everything comes with a physical command selection from a menu like Windows.

A direct example is the different ways you can snapshot / capture, any part of your screen: http://www.finseth.com/parts/mac-keys.php#other for use, depending on what you want to do with it and use it.

So far, as I discover I want to do something, I Google exactly what I want to do, and the solution appears, 99% of the time the solution is already built-in and just requires a shortcut sequence / is hidden within an existing program.

I also really like that it costs $30 to upgrade to the next OS, not $400 like Microsoft, and that excludes point releases which is the same as Microsofts service packs and constant flood of updates. Very rarely does the OS need any type of update, which instills more confidence in me from the get go.

It just works... it hasn't crashed on me to date, it doesn't give me any headaches. Shutting down has sometimes stopped because it couldn't close a program, and was awaiting me to select force quit, but that is the worst issue experienced after many months of use so far.
 
I can certainly see why he is not happy with the ui changing so significantly. Lion (OSX 10.7) appears to have changed the ui in some significant ways. I've been searching / researching and while many are quite unhappy with the Lion update and have significant problems, I've seen absolutely no issue.
Lion is a little more... pretty with some of its methods in opening, closing, etc... but you can turn those off, change them, but the one thing I do notice is that shutdown takes about an extra 5 - 10 seconds compared to leopard, which was near instant within 2 - 4 seconds.

The shutdown reminds me more of Windows... waiting... which is something I have not experienced with mac until Lion. I would be very shocked if that isn't fixed promptly within the next month, with a point release, improving some of those UI functionalities by default.
 
Lion is a little more... pretty with some of its methods in opening, closing, etc... but you can turn those off, change them, but the one thing I do notice is that shutdown takes about an extra 5 - 10 seconds compared to leopard, which was near instant within 2 - 4 seconds.

The shutdown reminds me more of Windows... waiting... which is something I have not experienced with mac until Lion. I would be very shocked if that isn't fixed promptly within the next month, with a point release, improving some of those UI functionalities by default.

Windows clears the paging file on shutdown. I've set the timeout to be less than 2 seconds for each service. My 3 year old Dell laptop now shuts down faster than my MBA Late 2010, 13-inch. Still trying to get Lion to shut down faster... then again, I rarely shut down, or reboot, I just sleep all the time.
 
My Mac Pro has 6gb ram, I could install more (probably will since the MC map is over 2,5 gb now haha)
But, the swap is 64mb most of the time, and I have 500mb free at most times.
Sometimes swap increases to 128 or 512 .. it rarely goes over 1gb, and it always clears itself up.
Mac Pro uptime is on average 132 days.

The iMac has 4gb ram and I am considering upgrading it to 2x 4gb (8) next year. Just because I tend to hit the 4gb limit a bit more - with a single cpu (mac pro has 2 physical cpus dual core xeons, the imac is just a single core2duo) and swap is usually around a gb, but cleans up quite well.

I've never seen swap management so effective as on a mac, and that's coming from a UNIX background.
 
Put 16GB in your iMac and you'll never care again. Gonna disagree with Bootcamp. I wouldn't want an either/or situation. VMware Fusion is reasonably priced and includes an agent for creating a virtual machine from your existing PC/laptop. Run it in unity mode and you have two task bars, two OS's and one screen.

One Screen to run them all, One iMac to use them,
One agent to P2V them all and on your desktop fuse them
 
VMware Fusion is reasonably priced and includes an agent for creating a virtual machine from your existing PC/laptop. Run it in unity mode and you have two task bars, two OS's and one screen.
Yep, that's what we use, however; you cannot run vmware fusion with windows 7 on a standard mac, you WILL need additional RAM installed for it to run correctly, ie. standard is 4Gb, double up when using Unity... even mac techperts recommended this with Unity.
 
I just upgraded my PC from a pretty nice 3-4 year old system to a mind-boggling, state of the art system for $650 shipped. I just added a 64GB SSD drive that will make Windows7 boot up screaming fast and smoke any system for a total of $740 shipped.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/looking-to-upgrade-my-pc.18832/page-2#post-250299

Don't get me wrong. I enjoying my Macs long ago when I was able to upgrade the components without fear of losing a huge part of my investment in Apple. Now the hardware is so much more expensive and, while it's prettier to look at in some respects than PCs, it's not easily upgradeable at all. This is not a slap at the Mac camp. It's just a reason why I don't foresee myself leaving the PC camp for a long, long time.
 
I did my transition back in 1995, and it went smooth ;) and I never looked back.
This is my current rig:

about this mac.webp
 
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