MAC???
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Hey Mike, i recall reading a little while back you changed or were thinking about changing over to MAC.... [i see a reference to MAC above.] if you did, why did you and how do you like the change? i have always been curious about MAC but never really spent the time to compare..... would you mind sharing a little insight into your experiences.....
Cheers,
utiler
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MAC???
Yes, please.
LisaMc
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Nice art Lisa, how'd you do it??
I agree with your comments about the toad.......
utiler
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I switched to mac 12 years ago, when doing so in South America was seen as suicidal (no support, very few applications ported to mac, etc). never looked back since then. switching today when macs can even run windows is a real piece of cake.
Edson
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Hi Utiler and Lisa, as Emahfuz says no one looks back
after switching to Mac.These days its so much easier to make the switch with
Parallels and Bootcamp (free). These programs allow
the user to run MS Win Apps if there is not a Mac version
available.I'm always trying out new software ! It entails loading
and more often than not unloading it if not any use to me.
This was causing lots of problems on the PC but not on the
Mac.It took a very short time to get used to the different
ways of doing things, a couple of 'control keys',filing etc
Oh, I did find a useful Mac program 'Mac Explorer' that has
eased me into things. BTW there are quite a few Mac programs
that are written for 'switchers' that quickly get them up and
running.I think Macs are really orientated towards 'designer brains'!
By this I mean they place a lot of emphasize on graphical
navigation and management rather than text. As an example !
I recently set up a new Broadband service connection. In the
Setup booklet there was 8 pages on setting up for PC and just
1 for Macs !!!!Also I've recently helped two friends get into computers, one
an Electrical Contractor and the other a Building Contractor,
both very smart guys BUT they were very shy about taking the
leap AGAIN after their experiences with PCs. They are now
becoming whizz kids on their Macs.There is ONE downside to the 'Switch' though ! My IT Support Guy
was and still is very disappointed that I switched. If more PC
users do so, he will have to start looking for a new avenue of
income generation
Mike
PS: They look and feel great / 'sexy' also !
Mike Lucey
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mike just said what I should have about the pc to mac transition. it is that simple and that great an experience.
mike, since you install and uninstall a lot, do you know of a shareware called appzapper? check it out as it is very useful: it gathers all files related to an app that you wish to get rid of and does the job for you. a kind of cyber-hit man.
cheers.
Edson
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Hi, Mike! And, hi to all y'all, too.
Utiler-RE the graphic:
In a nutshell, in Photoshop, duplicate one of your RGB channels, and do levels, dodge and burn, paint--whatever is necessary to bump up the contrast. Load the selection, invert it, make a new layer, and fill the selection with your color choice. Make a layer underneath and fill with white. And there you have it.LisaMc
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I bought a mac a couple of years ago thinking that I would make the switch like everyone above has. I am a student taking industrial design and I work in an architectural firm, I thought that there would be no downside to buying a mac! boy was I wrong.
I am a neat freak when it comes to computers, I must have a hierarchy of folders to store all my files in. Now while Mac can do this, they make it exceptionally difficult with the 'finder' application.
The next thing I found was that I hate any and all animations when it comes to useless things. Switching windows for example, I like it to just happen, without any delay or visuals of the current window 'squeezing' down to the docking bar. Windows 95 got it right if you ask me. I turned off as many animations as I could find in mac os, but there were a million others that I couldn't find that were application specific (ie; Ilife)
The last thing that made me toss the G4 in the closet was application support. Many people on macs use a virtual PC to run applications, which I shouldn't have to tell you is the slowest thing I've ever seen done. AutoCAD files that I have now bog down my dual core 3.4GHz PC and wouldn't even open on the virtual PC on my dual processor Mac.
Mac's, to me at least, are nice to look at, but too much of a hassle to use. But hey, thats just one guys opinion.
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hi will,
sorry to disagree with you. you must be one of the first persons to complain about something that is the mac's trademark: its user-friendly interface. you must have started on a wrong foot with it.
if you do not like animations just turn them off. the Finder is one of the easiest interfaces to work with I know! the students who work with me learn to use it in an afternoon so you should be able to learn it too. probably no one was kind enough to show you the way.
and finally, why would anyone switch to mac and not go all the way? why try working on a mac as if you were still on a pc? autocad files can easily be imported by all mac cad apps. moving to mac is to move away from autocad, as they do not offer a mac version. which is ok, too, as autocad is a lousy piece of software.
virtual pc is really slow. however, parallel and bootcamp are almost perfect and allow you to run a mac like a pc, strange as it may seem.
regards.
Edson
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Probably the first thing that made me start off on the wrong foot with my mac was when I tried to bring some photos off of a digital camera onto the hard drive. I forget what the program is called that comes with mac's to organize photos (its probably called iphoto) but it wouldn't let me just drag the files off of the camera's memory and onto the hard drive. It forced me to use this software to organize my photos. I absolutely abhorred that.
and I love Autocad! Architectural Desktop has no Mac equivalent... and the ADT files cannot simply be imported into other .dwg programs because of the unique AEC objects. (or at least I have yet to see a program that can accept these files without any glitch)
I was working with both a PC and a Mac because I hated virtual PC, and I was big into Rhino3d, Autocad, and a few others which didn't support mac.
also, although many claim Mac OS to be user friendly, I found it anything but... maybe because I have only used PC's my whole life. But even after I got it all figured out, I didn't like how it does everything.
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When working on a Mac, you do things the Mac way. Since this is generally the most intuitive and straight forward way, this is usually not a hardship. With the Unix underpinnings, the folder structure is basically fixed - you are in a multi-user environment and you are not allowed to make messes in other people's sandboxes and they try to help you keep your area straight as well. If you follow their lead and keep your documents in the Documents folder and music in Music and photos in Photos (you get the picture)- it is pretty simple to find things. It is also dead simple to make backups or even move to another machine.
Last night I wiped my daughter's old hard drive and installed the new OS. The machine used to be a family machine and it had 5 years of 6 different users junk on it, so she was running out of space. I backed up her user folder and the Applications folder to an external drive, then wiped the drive and did the system install. The OS took 45 minutes (how long would Vista take to install on a 5 year old machine?
). I then copied her folder and the Apps folder back and she was ready to go - all her email in place, all her preferences the same - no down time at all. Tonight I will let the automatic update install all the patches etc. that have come out in the 3 years since my install DVD was made, but that will happen while I sleep - the machine will reboot itself and be ready for me in the morning. I have to do this at work on the PC's and it involves a full day and a whole binder full of master CD's for each program, (since they spread themselves all over the hard drive 
) and then another day to get all the settings and preferences back to the way it used to be - that is too much like work for me, thank you very much. Don't even get me started on viruses and spyware - the hours I waste keeping everyone in the office up to date!!!So if you insist on doing it your way and swimming against the current of the OS, you will find Mac (and any form of Linux) very frustrating. But if your goal is to get work done and use the machine as a tool that you don't think about very much...
Kelly
kdjanz
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I definitely see where you're coming from when you say that you can't treat a Mac like a PC. and this is very true, and probably what I do.
however don't underestimate PC's when it comes to moving to new machines, or formating old ones. I used to work in a computer store fixing PC's and I had formats down to an art. Ghost the HDD, format it, load the OS then files and folders transfer and your done. I could usually get a 80 GB HDD done in around 30 minutes, updates and patches and everything, including preferences, emails, contacts, etc.
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But then you have all the crap from the old one and screwed up registry and the spyware and all the OLD stuff still there on the new drive. We usually want to do a CLEAN install to get back to peak performance on the hardware.
Kelly
kdjanz
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yeah, that is a clean install...with the old user documents, and a clean registry as you've described. and just to make things clear, PC's have more viruses. PC's also have more computers. Proportionately if one were to look at the ratio of virus/pc's and virus/mac's I bet you could find a very similar number. Its always easy to take shots at the big guys because they are much more exposed. if the roles were reversed, im sure that mac's would have just as many, its not because macs are magically engineered to be virus proof.
I also don't want to get into a big name calling argument here. Mac has a place in the world as PC's do. I happen to side with PC, you with Mac. we all get the same work done, so who cares about the means? Its like comparing writing with your right hand to writing with your left. yes there are more right handers, but that doesn't mean its right, or the only way.
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@will03 said:
yeah, that is a clean install...with the old user documents, and a clean registry as you've described. and just to make things clear, PC's have more viruses. PC's also have more computers. Proportionately if one were to look at the ratio of virus/pc's and virus/mac's I bet you could find a very similar number. Its always easy to take shots at the big guys because they are much more exposed. if the roles were reversed, im sure that mac's would have just as many, its not because macs are magically engineered to be virus proof.
I also don't want to get into a big name calling argument here. Mac has a place in the world as PC's do. I happen to side with PC, you with Mac. we all get the same work done, so who cares about the means? Its like comparing writing with your right hand to writing with your left. yes there are more right handers, but that doesn't mean its right, or the only way.
Will03
Hi Will,
While I'm very new to Mac and still in a learning curve, all be it fun, I have yet to have any serious difficulties. I am a bit of a nut when it comes to trying out new programs and utilities. Doing this on the PC was causing me all kinds of problems and down time not to mention money paid to PC tech guys, not any longer! I think I am probably looking and testing far more stuff these days without any hitches.
I was slow to make the switch. It was a combination of reasons, cost, laziness and non available Mac versions of some software that I use. When Apple adopted the Intel chip I felt that I had no real excuse so made the switch.
I agree with you when you say,
'we all get the same work done, so who cares about the means?'
But for me the Mac is the easier way to get the job done AND I was a PC user for many many years! Its simply are far more productive machine that does not need continous monitoring and careful handling. It handles a lot of this stuff in the background.
I find your comparison a little strange,
Its like comparing writing with your right hand to writing with your left. yes there are more right handers, but that doesn't mean its right, or the only way
I have quite a few friends that are 'lefties', my father was one. I often talk to them about the difficulties they have in this area and they all tell me that they live in a 'right hand' World. For example, it would be far more convenient for them if writing was right to left! There are lot of other ordinary things that are 'right hand' orientated, just check out one of the left-hand web sites its quite an industry!
On the matter of viruses, I really do believe that Macs are far better protected in their core than PCs. Mac manufacture is a 'closed shop' and I think this could be the main reason for its inherent stability whereas IBM opened its doors and spawned what we now call the PC. PCs will be around for many years to come with the current situation BUT I wonder what the situation would be if Apple opened its doors like IBM did years ago?
If you have not tried a Mac for a week I suggest that you hire or borrow one and give it a try. I think you could be pleasantly surprised. Its like taking a test drive in an auto transmission car for the first time after years of using a manual transmission car. On the other hand I like auto transmission cars but prefer manual transmission for the extra driver input, in cars yes, but not PCs
Mike
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