Another Mac discussion...

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We've brought a Mac. Being delivered this week.

My windows pc and laptop may well become redundant as long as I can work it all out.

Any tips that have made the transfer easier? In that I mean:

• documents transferred?

• using their equivalent of word, excel and PowerPoint?

• iTunes (I have music I burned on to pc with a physical disc, will that transfer? Or do I have to burn them on the mac? I don't think there is a cd drive (??)

• actually using it; anything that you've picked up as you've gone along that wasn't written down as such?

• are there any good training videos I can watch?

I'm nervous because I'm very proficient in windows and this will be a big change for us.

Thanks

When you set it up there will be the option to transfer information from a windows machine. I can't remember the exact wording but it will come up as an option

In my opinion Pages (word equivalent) is quite different, bt I find it more adaptable. It's more like publisher in my opinion.
If you are making documents to open in Word get in the habit if using a font that is installed on both, or if they are just to read convert to PDF.

I find keynote (PowerPoint equivalent) and numbers (excel) very easy to use.

I think the first few weeks will be horrible because you are used to being efficient using windows but you have to persevere and then everything will click.

Look up mouse gestures as they are different - eg use two fingers on the mouse pad to scroll.

This might be helpful of you have never set up a mac before.

OH bought a Macbook recently and is struggling to use it for his work stuff. He isn't a fan of Microsoft but uses it because all of his customers do. He is quite geeky with technology and recognises that the Macbook is a good piece of kit but it isn't a replacement for a PC or laptop as it isn't that user friendly with Linux either.

Thanks Thistle - this is great info to help me!

I'll always have my work laptop but I've got an 4/5 year old Toshiba laptop with windows on which I doubt I'll use any more. And we'll completely take out the desktop too and replace with the Mac.

I'm nervous. I hear either really good things or really bad things!

To be honest I think the best way to do it is to initially just Immerse yourself in Mac.

When you first change the temptation is to turn on your windows machine cos you'll be quicker. Of course, this means your mac skills never improve.

Give it a month of using the mac as much as you can and you'll be able to use both efficiently.
I've always googled any problems and found lots of answers and advice available.

You can get one to one advice sessions at the Apple Stores.

Well I've just taken the plunge and I'm loving it!

I guess I was never "proficient " with my win 8 machine. It annoyed the crap out of me for a year till my eldest had a fortuitous computer crisis and took it away!

I did buy the personal training package though. I'm reasonably techno competent but the people who would help me with windows issues couldn't help with mac, and I needed to know I could rely on being able to do work stuff (or have a fixer to approach I'd I couldn't).

If you haven't taken delivery of your mac you can probably still call up and buy the training package. I've had one very helpful session so far.

Moving stuff is apparently easy - there is a migration assistant - but I've not done that. Previous computer moves have just moved everything , and in a very chaotic way as I'd no real system(each move compounding the chaos). I'm moving slowly this time, keeping what I want/need and filing/tagging it etc. so far I've just used a USB stick! ( you Can drag and drop from windows and drag and drop into the mac. You only need to re format the stick if the mac is to write on it ).

As regards basic set up, browsing the net, basic word processing etc . Very easy. Track pad is great but just different. Moving 2 fingers up the track pad to scroll down the page felt a bit "wrong" to start with but it's just " pushing the page up".

Going for iPhoto education this week.

I'm three years in with my Mac and still don't like it . I do google for solutions and usually find them but still find the whole thing quite unfriendly, I much prefer my work Windows computer. File management is my big bugbear, maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I find it very hard to organise my files on the Mac compared to a PC.

Maybe it's because I'm only just starting our actually " managing" files at all, rather than just saving them in a big Soup of stuff, but it seems easy to use the " finder" button and set up folders!

You can set them up OK, but for some reason when saving them in Word it only lets you save to either Documents or recent places, not browse through all the available locations. Over time I tend to want to change what is in which folder and move things around, create new folders etc, again a lot easier in Windows than Finder. We have agreed we're going back to a PC next time we need a new computer.

Anyway, sorry, these comments are not helpful to the OP who has just bought a Mac, I'll stick to threads where people are still thinking about buying one in future.

I have moved to a Mack but wanted to use some of my Windows SW so purchased Parallels. This created an a ability to have Windows on a Mac. I had to buy Windows 7, but so far I have not had any problems. May not help the OP but, just a thought.

WKWTTG, don't you get a triangle to the right of the "Save As:" box, which you can use to expand the view and save anywhere?

I LOVE my mac, it is vastly superior to my windows machine. It takes a little getting used to but I have a massive 'eureka' moment a week or so in and think it's absolutely brilliant now. As for iTunes it will set up with your account and password so I can only imagine they will pop up there all ready for you to listen too. It's been a few years now but I'm sure that's what happened. You won't want to go back once you have adapted.

So DP and I have our own iTunes accounts - how will that work?

You could log out of one Apple ID and into the other on iTunes (I think) or set up separate logins for each of you where the iTunes, Mail etc are set up for each of you.

prism "WKWTTG, don't you get a triangle to the right of the "Save As:" box"

I've had instances where file management is poor - for example, given the Unix background, ~// ought to save a document called in but created a document in the "default" folder with the name ~//

(I actually felt lucky it was saved at all, and blessed when I managed to rename it and place it in the correct folder, but there are lots of times I curse at OSX, for being highly restricting or just f&^%$#$ about with my files, compared with Win XP, Win 7, or versions of linux, which I also use… some a lot more than others.)

Yes, there are things the Apple gear does well, but others which make me want to tear my hair out, and the "it just works" mantra can sometimes make me think "yes, only just!"

I'm not flying the flag for Mac OS X- I could write a long post about how crap is has been becoming since about 10.5/10.6- I was just wondering about that disclosure triangle, which people sometimes don't notice, and hence think they have restricted options about where to save. But unless WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes answers my question, we'll never know.