Okay… so I’ve been a loyal PC user all my life, my company operates on the windows base platform, so obviously I bought a Mac? :o Anyway, just wanted to see if there were any other PC to Mac converts? any tips to make my transition any easier? What options are out there for loading windows OS on a Mac (requirement for work)?
Thanks ;D
Bootcamp is the way to go for a dual booting mac system. I switched from Windows to Mac in 2004 with a 12" iBook G4 which lasted me until 2010 when I went back to Windows (7). I switched to Mac as it was the cheapest 12" option at the time (and I got a free iPod!). I switched back as Apple Mac’s had gone mainstream and was anything but cheap!
Win7 is a fine OS and I’m loving my Thinkpad X230.
But the beauty of the modern Mac is their use of Intel CPU’s and resultant ability to happily dual boot OS X and Win7. Don’t go anywhere near Windows 8 (or 8.1) if you need work stuff to run.
http://www.apple.com/ca/support/bootcamp/
I bet you can book into an Apple Store genius bar and they’ll do it all for you.
I will never go back to windows after my conversion…lol
I use VMWARE fusion which allows you to run windows within your MAC OS. Your Mac will come with bootcamp, but I think you have to log in and out of each operating system.
Watch videos on all of the touch commands…it will make transitions through windows and desktops much less confusing. I think most commands are very similar.
One thing I see a lot of new users do…is double click everything…don’t double click…lol
Also two finger clicking is windows right mouse button (more of those OSx touch features)
The Magic Mouse is nice if you do phot editing and stuff, but not entirely necessary.
I think you will enjoy the MAC
This. Most people never go back.
It’s funny, though. Microsoft does a lot that’s right when it comes to game consoles (XBOX One is pretty awesome), but I won’t touch their PC software outside of work.
I use parallels every day at work on my mbp. (Same as VMware, just what I ended up buying at first). I run windows server 2003 x64 though for my windows as it’s more of a bare bones windows os and you just install the features you want. After all, you’re not using windows for the fancy graphics, you’re using it to pull up programs that won’t work on osx.
It’s very cliche, but I’m a big apple fan, and their products work very well together (other than icloud if you use gmail too). It’d be hard for me to go back though. And a lot of it is just little things (space bar on files to preview things, or command + p to print without opening them, and I love expose / show desktop).
Ask any questions you run into.
I hate all Apple products with a fanatic’s zeal…
I switched by accident, almost 4 years ago, I was a diehard PC guy from the DOS days and was the troubleshooter for at least 3 dozen people I knew, and basically felt like Axel did about Macs.
I swapped one of the original iPads the second day they were out with a guy for his MacBook Air. I loved the unibody and was going to simply wipe OSX and use it as a PC.
After using the MBA for a week I was like the coke delivery guy in the Pepsi ad lol. Never installed windows, lol, not even bootcamp or VMware or parallels.
I’ve got 4 macs in the house now and I even run a mini w/HDMI in the entertainment unit.
Being a Mac user is better than it’s even been with the amount of support and development…I laugh at the people who lament that they miss the old days when nobody else used a Mac.
Really? Most people I know that say that can’t give one good argument why. It usually starts out with something about iTunes and how they try to control everything you can download media and application wise. Funny thing is…that is what I love, you can’t really just make some shitty program for a Mac and have people download it. I’ve had my MBP for a few years now and haven’t had an issue.
…I even let my wife use it and she can screw up anything that plugs in or has buttons (let alone an operating system) haha
they’re both good. Anyone who says otherwise is a dork. It’s a fucking computer lol
I have owned Apple computers since high school. I have also owned PC computers since I was about 25.
They both break. i have a little PC for VCDS. I have an iMac, macbook pro, macbook, and just got a mac mini. I have had failed hardrives (3) on my macbook and iMac.
Apple doesn’t seem to get raped by adware and crap.
The people who designed the user interface for Macs have completely opposite brains to mine. I hate the GUI and the ergonomics. It feels completely and utterly illogical to my brain. For most people it’s intuitive but for me it’s a mess. I remember having to use a friend’s iphone for 3 days in Europe and it would take me 5 minutes to do anything with it. It just doesn’t make sense. My sister, my nephew and my gf’s sister all have Macs and whenever they ask me for tech support, I start clicking around and nothing makes sense to me. I always end up figuring it out but I get super frustrated and irritated. I keep saying to myself, why the fuck would they do it like this?? It makes no sense!! lol
I used to be an enterprise level UNIX and Windows system administrator and learned everything on the fly on my own and both systems made logical sense to me. Macs however, feel like they were made to fuck with my brain.
I have nothing against people that love Macs, to each their own and obviously, they wouldn’t be using them if they didn’t love them. Just not for me.
They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I almost bought a MacBook but decided agains it because a few programs I have for school are easier to use on windows. Namely autocad and solidworks. Both of them work on Mac bu I decided to go windows because that’s what I learned to use the software on. I’m using a Dell XPS 15 with win 7 pro and it works great for me. 95% of my use is browsing the forums anyways. The software for downloading a tune to my SCT tuner only works on windows as well. I know you can get software to run windows stuff in Mac but that seems like a hoop I shouldn’t have to jump through.
Now if I did a lot of photo or video editing, I wouldn’t think twice about buying a Mac
The reality now is that most of what we do with tech is platform agnostic. Writing a paper? Word is on both platforms. Browsing the net? Doesn’t matter. Even our patient records systems will run Mac, ipad, android and windows through a browser and secure VPN.
The more technically minded may be able to answer this question better - in terms of performance and compatibility, what’s better for windows: bootcamp or using VM?
My understanding is that bootcamp runs Windows natively whereas the VM method runs it in an emulation layer meaning more potential issues with drivers . Have I got that right?
It is hard to miss that left-brain PC, right-brain MAC split.
I always found PC’s intuitive to figure out. I think, “how would I program this?”… and that is how the Microsoft set it up. Very logical. Very left-brain.
To the contrary, my spouse is very artistic and visual (right-brain dominant), and she can’t figure out a PC to save her life. Not that she is some savant on Apple products, but they are absolutely less frustrating for her to use.
Although over the last ~5-10 years, MS has really tried to capture the right brain crowd. (Although, I would still rather use the old menu driven GUI in the Office suite to the ribbon format that came out in ~2007.)
same here, using a Mac makes me feel like this:
what take my brain milliseconds to figure out on a windows or android takes multiple seconds with a mac interface, adding up to a massive amount of frustration.
its not lack of familiarity either, I’ve had an iphone for 2 years now that i have to use (work phone). even with the iphone being 100% free, I’d rather pay $75/month to have my android.
Office 2010 is a massive steaming pile of shit, utter garbage, even compared to 2007. 2011 is far superior, 2013 is meh (interface screws with me) but still much more useable. Trying to use VBA in Office 2010 made me punch babies.
Thanks for the help fellas! Greatly appreciated!
This is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for, super basic but if you don’t know it, it becomes super frustrating! lol!
I’ve been researching Fusion, parallels, and boot loader to see which would suit my purpose the most. My main priority is performance went utilizing applications (ERP systems, Office, Etc.) and based on my researching it seems boot loader allows for the best performance as it utilizes all of the MBP’s processing power. However, I’m not in love with partitioning my HD as well as losing access to my files (depending on which OS I’m using and where the file is). Parallels 9/Fusion 6, on the other hand has come along way in improving its performance issues and provides the added benefit of a more seamless integration between the two operating systems which could be convenient.
For those of you who use VMware or Parallels can you please tell me what version you’re using, how much processing power you have, and comment on its performance (does it crash, is there a noticeable drop in performance, are there integration issues that drive you nuts, etc.)
Also, I plan on using dropbox to exchange files from my laptop at work with my laptop at home does anyone else do something similar? is there a better option?
LOL, priceless image and sums it up great.
That said, I also want to point out that I’m far from a typical computer user. I have been doing stuff since the early 90s when no “simple tools” were available. Very early on, I had to use my own methods for finding work-arounds (such as synchronizing between multiple systems, etc.). In other words, I’m somewhat of a dinosaur in that regard. However, they work well for me and I’m used to them. For people like my family, since they don’t have these tools and wouldn’t even begin to comprehend them, having these one step turn-key solutions for them is fantastic and often used. I just have no need for them so Macs don’t actually help me or make my computer life simpler. It just adds complications. So yeah, good for Apple for making this shit available to the non-computer minded folks.
With all that said though, I never miss an opportunity to mock my Mac friends when they come to me with problems. I always respond with, aren’t you using a Mac to avoid these problems? Don’t you have access to their support? Oh wait, you need to book an appointment and everything.
For example, my gf’s sister backup tools stopped working. Turns out it was a disk management issue, etc. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to get it working again. She asked for my help and, after mocking her a bit, I fixed it for her. With the Mac, it took me 20 minutes to figure out their illogical GUI and menu systems. With a PC, it would have taken me 5 minutes. That’s not to say the GUI was bad, just didn’t mesh with my brain well. I was thinking out loud, why would they even call it this way or why would they even present this option in this format. Made zero logical sense to me.
To each their own but yeah, it makes me laugh when Mac users have issues 
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x59/joec1992/51FCEF58-5FEB-48A3-8CDF-B9B82C13E77A_zpsupc4dtml.jpg
Update
After conducting some additional research I opted to go the bootcamp route for my windows application needs. The main issue I had with bootcamp was with accessing files that were saved on the other (Mac or Windows) drive. After speaking with a Mac expert at Future shop he demonstrated how you can access files from either partition in either OS. Once I saw it in action I was sold. The one set back was with Windows 7 as it’s only sold in DVD form I had to purchase a “super drive” to load the dvd on my Mac. Besides that, everything else was loaded and installed super easy and both OS’s work great!
Thanks you all for your help!
Glad it worked out. I have bootcamp on my Macbook Pro, and it’s always worked fine. The only time I use Windows, though, is for VCDS. Didn’t realize you could access all files in either partition.
Glad to hear you found a solution. BTW there are ways of installing Win7 from a USB, just not sure if they work on Macs though. Doesn’t matter, that superdrive will come in handy (or just return it when you’re done)