Migrating from Windows on the Mac. What I Learned (Part 1)
Makradar Technologies / / December 19, 2019
If you are reading this article, certain phase transition from Windows to Mac for you have passed (and if not, then sooner or later it will happen). Platform change, especially if it is your working OS, which you need for serious problems - it is always a major change. But fortunately, in the case of OS X, this changes, especially joyful.
Our colleague Owen Williams, a portal thenextweb.com just I decided to replace the platform by buying MacBook Pro Retina. He shared his impressions of the transition that is called, without delay. I offer you a translation of his article. It will be useful for beginners description of possible difficulties and overcoming them. And advanced users can remember their history and to share in the comments tips and advice to newcomers.
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In the past month, along with OS X Mavericks, Apple introduced the new MacBook Pro with Retina display. this was more than enough for the user's PC to finally try to go on a Mac with Windows. Almost all my friends are gradually switched to Mac in college, but I still stuck on Windows. For a long time I thought it was the best choice, because buying a Mac was just wasteful than buying an ordinary personal computer on Windows. I was wrong.
What I liked
After the installation, which took place fairly quickly, I did not find any preset debris. No advertising labels on the desktop, free antivirus software, and most importantly - no problems with the installation of drivers. Mac is ready to use right out of the box and it's a good change, compared with Windows-PC.
Applications that are part of OS X Mavericks, just fine - work with the Mail and Calendar is a pleasure. Integration with iMessage messages, notes, reminders - all of this is perfect and works well together, especially if you have an iPhone. Over the past year, I have used Windows 8 This is a good operating system, but complete "modern" applications are not always well elaborated and require a touch screen for easy interaction with them. Therefore, a good set of applications "out of the box", it is, again, a change for the better.
Notice in the same style himself Notification Center - the perfect solution. It is strange that Microsoft still has not added anything like it in Windows. There is hard to find and remove the old notice, and on a Mac, you can easily see what you missed.
Spotlight Search is incredibly powerful and gives you instant access to everything that is on your computer. It's fast as lightning, with brisk background indexing, does not go to any comparison with the search in Windows, which is very slow and only disappointing (especially when searching for large documents and folders).
With regard to productivity, it nice to withdraw completely from Microsoft Office. I've never been thrilled with bloated applications, overloaded functions, whether I'll barely use. Mail works with Microsoft Exchange my account, Pages - can open any Word document that I send, and Numbers copes with an Excel spreadsheet. Sometimes difficulties arise during the conversion of documents, but there is nothing with which Google Drive could not cope.
Spaces are changing the manner of operation of the computer. They are well suited for the separation of different projects I'm working on, or applications for work and entertainment. At one table I keep open Mail, Twitter and other social networking applications. On the other - the application to work. This approach allows us to share projects and concentrate on a specific task.
Most of all, I was impressed with the power management and battery life of my Mac. Apple promised that the MacBook Pro Retina will last about 8 hours on a single charge, and I am convinced that it is quite an accurate prediction. I was able to get even more than 8 hours when using Safari, instead of Chrome for browsing and avoid heavy, demanding applications. Maverisks OS X makes it easy to keep track of such applications, indicating them in the battery menu. I have never had a notebook on Windows, which could boast such impressive results. It totally changed my experience of using - now I do not need to carry a charge when I go to work in a coffee shop or other place.
One of the biggest problems was that the extensive collection of games that I have collected, will not work on a Mac. But I was pleasantly surprised at how much there is now a game for Mac, especially considering Steam. Half the games in my collection were the official version for the Mac. The rest I run in a virtual machine and they work surprisingly well.
In my not so advanced test, I installed Civilization V in the Parallels, run it with maximum graphics settings without drawdowns frame rate, and it was impressive. I think that other games like first-person shooters, will not work as well, but there is always a Boot Camp, which will help with this.
It is often said that Apple equipment "just works." I believe that in the case of OS X the way it is. The AirPlay - a great feature for quick duplication OS X screen and watching movies - it works fine if you have any other devices from Apple (like Apple TV). In OS X, there are other pleasant things, such as a centralized address book that allows other applications to access the contacts and make the operation more convenient.
That was not pleasant
There are some oddities, which initially will be painful. I was struggling to figure out how to rename a folder (after the usual F2 in Windows), and only after being pressed Enter, to open a folder - figured out how to do it. Also, there are mixed keys on the keyboard: ⌘ instead of the Ctrl, and you will have to withdraw from the stubborn in memory of keyboard shortcuts.
Another thing that confused me is a way to install applications. In Windows, all accustomed to using the setup wizard, but I noticed that it is very rare in the applications on your Mac. Instead, you have an uncanny resemblance installation disks (DMG-files) and application installation is done by dragging and dropping them in the folder "Programs". Of course, you do not explain and at first I ran all the apps from the Downloads folder.
However, applications that are installed from the Mac App Store, do this automatically, without mount DMG and drag. Obviously, this method of distribution is preferable for Apple, but I have noticed that many developers still do not use it.
I still have not figured out how to manage windows without the functionality of Windows, which enables windows to stick to the sides of the screen, and deploy them on half the screen. The button "Open" in OS X does not work as we would like, and expands the application window up or down. There is a full-screen mode, which is activated by pressing a button with divorced arrows in the upper right corner screen, but when you use it, the application, though set to full screen, with him hiding other open window.
I also faced the problem of Boot Camp - it does not support Windows 8.1, and I could not fix it. Apple's, as you know, not in a hurry with updates to support new releases. In the end, I just installed Windows 8 and upgrade it to 8.1.
To be continued…
In the second part, Oeun talk about the difficulties faced on OS X applications when searching for their usual tasks.