Pros and Cons of Switching From Windows To Mac

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Pros and Cons of Switching From Windows To Mac

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Saturday October 21, 2006 @05:56AM from the not-just-another-fan-boi dept.

It's been a couple of years since Apple ran their Switcher ads — but folks are still making the switch. Rockgod writes to point us to his list of pros and cons after he switched from Windows to Mac recently. From the article: "It took me a long time to be convinced that Windows 3.1 was a better program launcher than X-Tree Gold, but it happened eventually. Since then, I have been a sucker for every upgrade — 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... I bought the cheapest Mac available, a Mac Mini with a single-core Intel chip and the minimum of RAM — 512 MB. It cost me AU$949. Since plugging it in, I have barely used my $3000 Windows desktop... All this time later, I have almost exclusively switched to the Mac."

25 of 629 comments (clear)

stay tuned, I'm waiting for my new mini by yagualterego · 2006-10-21 05:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

First, it isn't 10 Pros, and 10 Cons, it's 10 Pros and Cons (which I guess is technically what the article "says").
I recently ordered and am expecting a Nov 29 ship date (why?) for a new Mac Mini, the very first Mac I'll have ever owned. I'd never hesitated in the past to recommend to friends and family an Apple over a Windows box, and those who chose Mac virtually never came back with support issues.
As the blogger states, he's never looked back - my reasons for getting a Mac are more for being able to test my software on all platforms. I will review my experiences in my journal when the box gets here and I've burned it in for a few laps. I'm looking forward to it.
For the record, though the author loves his machine, I'd guess anyone considering today a Mac should look at a heftier configuration. (I'm getting the dual-core, super drive, 2G memory, 160G drive configuration.) I guessing I'll be happy with this box.
Lack of Mac Games is not a "Con" by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-21 06:00 · Score: 5, Funny

You'll just be able to buy more of those $300 jeans with all the money you will save not buying games.
Re:$3,000[!] by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-21 06:07 · Score: 5, Funny

It's Australian dollars, not real money.
a step above any Linux distro ? by rs232 · 2006-10-21 06:10 · Score: 5, Informative

"The GUI: It didn't take me long to get used to it. It is super smooth, even on the cheap Mac Mini .. It makes Windows XP look very late-nineties."

"It's Unix!: You've got a very, very nice GUI but under the hood is good ole' Unix"

"It is only when you open the Terminal and get to a shell that you see all the ancient Unix directory structures, combined with Apple's more hip and happening directory names like Applications, System, etc"

"Notice I didn't say anything about viruses, trojans, spy-ware? I haven't been infected in three months on the Apple .. I don't run as an administrator. This simple action protects you from about 99% of malicious software. It is a simple fact."

"unless you are a rabid freedom-fighter it is a step above any Linux distribution out there. KDE and GNOME are still a long way away from achieving the polish that Apple has delivered with Mac OS X"

--
davecb5620@gmail.com
1. Re:a step above any Linux distro ? by PatrickThomson · 2006-10-21 06:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I disagree. Polish is the art of making less seem more. It's a time-intensive process and isn't really one geeks do very well - it's that indefinable quality that makes good closed-source software feel good. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to gnome and KDE, and they're impressive efforts, but they've not had hundreds of focus groups full of arts students and old ladies.
  
  --
  I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
2. Re:a step above any Linux distro ? by nine-times · 2006-10-21 06:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Let's see, OSX's interface is...
  simple..............check
  uncluttered.......check
  low color...........most interface elements are black/white/grey, so check
  high contrast.....if not enough so, you can increase the contrast, I suppose, so check
  has a terminal...check
  
  So you're an OSX fan, then?
3. Re:a step above any Linux distro ? by no_pets · 2006-10-21 07:02 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  No shit. When I read the part about dragging text from the browser to the desktop in OS X and it actually created the file for you I was thinking of my mom (i.e. an old lady). Mom has never been able to grasp the concept of cut-and-paste despite my many attempts to teach her. A few times she seemed to be able to do it then would forget. I even gave her a keyboard (Logitech) that indicated "copy" and "paste" on the "c" and "v" keys to no avail. Kudos to Apple for having productive focus groups that must have included old ladies because a room full of *nix geeks would never have come up with that. Instead, it would have probably become an arguement over the lusers that couldn't freakin' cut and paste like everyone else. :-)
  
  --
  "A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
4. Re:a step above any Linux distro ? by metamatic · 2006-10-21 09:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Gnome.
  
  Now, if only it put the file where you actually dragged the text to, instead of in a completely different place that you can't see so you think it didn't do anything.
  
  Which kinda reinforces the original point. Even when Gnome does get the functionality right, the implementation is wrong.
  
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5. Re:a step above any Linux distro ? by overunderunderdone · 2006-10-21 09:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Polish is not "eye candy". Eye candy is merely flashiness. Polish is everything being intentionally designed, fully thought out, finished. Something can have a lot of eye candy but still be very rough & incomplete. Something can be polished yet very visually simple (though certainly designed). "Eye candy" is often a way to compensate for, or distract from, a lack of polish.
  
  A few good examples of what people mean by polish are in TFA under #8 "Lots of other nice little things". Not a single one of them is "eye candy" they are not even related to visual design at all... but they are exactly what people mean when they say that Mac OS X is polished.
Mac OS X vs. Ubuntu by transporter_ii · 2006-10-21 06:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

Probably more relevent to the /. crowd would be this article from someone that switched to Ubuntu from OS X and then went back to OS X:

http://digg.com/apple/Mac_OS_X_vs_Ubuntu

Let me say that if I could go into a store right now and buy a reasonably priced copy of OX X that would run on a plain PC, I would be running OS X at the moment (Yes, I understand that running on *any* hardware would make OS X less stable, but I would be willing to take the risk...and huge amounts of people would rather pay more for Apple's hardware and stability, and I wish Apple could see that and make us both happy).

But since that isn't going to happen, I'm really considering going to Ubuntu because I think MS is just going insane with Vista.

As the above mention, he doesn't think Ubuntu is too far behind OS X.

I would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this?

Transporter_ii

--
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
1. Re:Mac OS X vs. Ubuntu by Inoshiro · 2006-10-21 08:57 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  You must be joking.
  
  "* Terminal application is somewhat lacking. It has basic features but cannot be customized very much. If you do a lot of work on the command line you'll probably want a third-party terminal application to get your real work done."
  
  The defaults are stupid, but once you get it setup with white text on a black background and a reasonable font, it's pretty equivalent to Konsole for me. Konsole has the terminals in a nice tabbed bar that are nameable, while the Mac version just has different floaty windows, but the two operations I do (new terminal window and next/prev terminal window) are identical in behaviour.
  
  "* The wireless setup is not straightforward, and if you're not used to it can be a bit confusing."
  
  You just be joking. MacOS wireless is the easiest wireless I've ever setup. Even doing complex LEAP/PEAP stuff is yonks easier than on Windows. And don't talk to me about Linux wireless -- that's just a fucking joke.
  
  "* If you want an office suite, you have to pay quite a bit extra to get it. MS Office for Mac is something like $379 or so. If you're a student you might get it for less."
  
  Or you could get iWork for 49$. It's got what you're most likely needing (advanced page layout and presentation software) unless you're sitting down to do serious spreadsheet work, which would require Excel. Apple's supposed to be adding a spreadsheet application at some point. I expect it to be as well thought out and designed as Keynote and Pages, and will happily upgrade.
  
  "* Takes a bit more hands-on tweaking to get it working exactly the way you want, but is much more flexible and customizable than OS X."
  
  You know, a large number of people don't change the defaults. I'm unconvinced it's that much of a big deal for people to make some small adjustments in how they work, especially when it allows you to be a lot more productive overall.
  
  "* The office type applications are finally getting to the point where a business user or student can be productive with them. "
  
  I'm going to talk about Keynote v3 here. I arrived at a presentation I was giving with my notes ready, but found I'd be standing on a platform far away from my laptop. Solution? I quickly customized the presenter display so that my laptop would show my presenter notes in 48pt font, and then pulled out my Apple remote which I could use to control slide next/previous while giving my talk. How awesome is that? It just works -- that's Apple.
  
  I've yet to see anything that approaches their iWork suite in terms of being useful for me. Pages is a lot like LaTeX, except that it's easy to make your pages not be printed in Times New Roman (I've written 4 papers in TeX, and still don't know how to make it sans serif). In Pages, I just change the styles in the styles drawer, which are applied to the paragraphs/etc/tagged with that style. You can easily import/export from things like MS Word or PDF, and generally have full control of your document easily -- despite it being a GUI! Plus, I've yet to fight with it like I remember fighting with MSWord autoformatting when I learned to use word processors a decade ago.
  
  iWork is not old -- the first iteration was released in 2005. Why is Linux office software stuck copying MS ideas when Apple so quickly put out a different suite and had it work so well?
  
  --
  --
  Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Not that much of a sucker by nacturation · 2006-10-21 06:13 · Score: 5, Funny

Since then, I have been a sucker for every upgrade -- 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP...

He at least had the good sense to skip Windows ME.

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For looks by shirizaki · 2006-10-21 06:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm buying my Mom an iMac, for the sole reason it's SEXY. It's slim, compact, and doesn't make alot of noise. Better tha the dell portable desktop they just made. Macs are like computing with a built in safety net. You can almost never break it. The only people I know that hate windows are the poor souls that manage to still run AOL, download weather bug, and install every piece of software that wants to install itself. I run windows XP, with firewall and firefox, and I watch what I download. My virus infection rate? 0. People need to LEARN how to surf, instead of just going out there all willynilly.

--
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
1. Re:For looks by the_humeister · 2006-10-21 06:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I'm buying my Mom an iMac, for the sole reason it's SEXY.
  
  Your dad isn't doing it for her?
OS X Satisfaction Chart by Y-Crate · 2006-10-21 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny

One of my fellow goons created this to illustrate the mentality of someone going through the Windows > OS X switch, and I thought it was relevant to this discussion, as it perfectly illustrates the joy and agony of moving from one platform to another:

The OS X Satisfaction Chart
Unpopular on slashdot by maxrate · 2006-10-21 06:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

I use on a daily basis: Mac OS/X Tiger, Ubuntu, Fedora Core and Windows XP Pro. I consider myself an advanced user and a very good sysadmin on many platforms. I still prefer Windows.... - why? I'm not sure myself! (No I do not work for Microsoft). I've been trying to switch to OS/X as a primary OS admitting that it's driven mostly because of peer pressure - it's just not happening for me. I don't feel that compelled to switch - I don't see a good reason and I'm being opening minded about it, I feel like it's much more trouble than it's worth. Is there anyone else that feels the same way? I feel alone!
Mouse Acceleration Solution by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-21 06:29 · Score: 5, Informative

To solve the Apple's mouse acceleration problem, install a utility called SteerMouse or better yet, buy a third party mouse like Microsoft and Logitech and use their driver. Then your mouse acceleration will be just like Windows. Switchers are always complaining about this and rightly so, it's a pain if you aren't used to it.
Re:Upgradability? by phillymjs · 2006-10-21 06:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

We don't do component upgrades often because they are less necessary in the Mac world. For the last five years we have enjoyed an OS where version n+1 runs (or at least "feels") faster than version n did on the same hardware. The only thing that really needs to be added internally to most Macs is RAM. For more HD space, that's what those nice FireWire and USB 2 connections are for. And when it comes to video-- let's be honest, what really drives video card upgrades on the Windows side of the fence? The latest flavor-of-the-month GPU-hungry game, that's what. Like it or not, this is still not much of an issue on the Mac side. When a (consumer-level) Mac user really wants better video performance, their existing machine is probably a couple years old... They'll likely just buy a new Mac and throw the old one up on eBay to offset the cost. Since migrating your stuff to a new machine is a completely automated and (IME) painless process, and since Macs retain their resale value much better, it's a quite palatable option.

~Philly
Re:$3,000[!] by ianmh · 2006-10-21 06:35 · Score: 5, Funny

How is that a problem? Some people do not want to build their own machine, how much is your time worth? Some do not know how. Others just have a lot of money, and some just need their computer to look like a giant alien head.

--
www.ianhoar.com My blog about geeking out.
Uses for "I never looked back!" by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-21 06:45 · Score: 5, Funny

"I just backed over a family of four in my SUV, and I never looked back!"

"I was miraculously born with no neck, and I never looked back!"

and so on...
Re:well... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-21 06:45 · Score: 5, Funny

Your sexual preference could come into question

That's right. Once you stop using Windows, people won't think you're so gay.
Re:well... by dynamo · 2006-10-21 06:59 · Score: 5, Funny

Sexual preference?

Look, man, I love my mac.. but even I won't take it THAT far.
Besides, they don't have a port for that yet.
Re:well... by BlueCodeWarrior · 2006-10-21 07:29 · Score: 5, Funny

Well...
Re: never looked back by fahrbot-bot · 2006-10-21 10:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Never trust the opinion of someone who "never looked back". When did the phrase "I never looked back" become a way to endorse a product?
Worked for Lot. Too bad about his wife...

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
bytesex by OrangeTide · 2006-10-21 12:47 · Score: 5, Funny

Most guys here prefer having sex with their computers over women anyways. quad GPU, raid0, dual core rigs. how can women compete really.

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“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire