How to Turn Your PC into a Mac

An anonymous reader writes "CNet is running a Mac fanboy's idea of a nightmare feature entitled 'Mock OS X: Five ways to make your PC more like a Mac'. While the idea of turning my PC into a Mac-like machine does get my juices flowing, I'm not sure the user experience would be exactly the same but I'm going to spend this afternoon trying it out anyway. "To borrow a metaphor from Spartacus, some people like oysters and some people like snails. Except what if there was a way to make your snail do some of the cool things oysters can do, like make pearls? And what if you could make your PC do some of the cool stuff that Macs do so well?"" Seems to me that this would be a lot easier if step one was install linux...

Comments

DIY?

[telchine]

I haven't RTFA, but by any chance does this involve giving the retailer twice what it's worth for the system and then using a screwdriver to prise off a mouse button or two?

Re:DIY?

[omeomi]

Am I the only one who's tired of the PC being cast as the boring office-machine while OSX is fun? Or, as the article puts it, "ancient HP WageSlave 486s in strip-lit spreadsheet farms across the world". Not that I give a crap about which OS is more fun...I'm just tired of hearing the same message repeated over and over again. Yeah, I get it, Apple wants me to think PCs are for work, and Macs are for fun.

Less is more. War is peace. 2+2=5.

Whatever.

I'm currently typing this on a Mac, but seriously, gaming has always been way better on the PC than on the Mac, and while OSX comes with better entry-level multimedia-creation tools, on the professional front, I can't think of a single OSX application that doesn't have a comparable Windows-based competitor. It's not like anybody serious about movie or music making would use iMovie or GarageBand, anyway.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time I see tripe like this on the firehose I'm going to throw a negative on it, instead of just ignoring it. Get stardock and window blinds? I mean seriously ...

A better idea...

[jamar0303]

Or, instead of just replicating the look, you can put some real work into it and get the real thing- OSx86. Of course, apparently it's illegal in some countries- at least it's not in mine.

Re:A better idea...

[sm62704]

Of course, apparently it's illegal in some countries- at least it's not in mine.

Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are are illegal in mine, but that never stopped me from smoking pot, making bets, or getting laid. In fact, my favorite hooker lost a bet and now owes me a joint and a blowjob.

If my politicians weren't for sale to the highest bidder I'd have a bit of respect for the law. If the government wants my respect they're going to have to be a bit more respectable. If the USA ever stops being a plutocracy I'll obey the law.

-mcgrew

Snails and oysters... not a moral choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Crassius: Do you eat oysters?
Antoninus: Yes.
C: Snails?
A: No.
C: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
A: No, master.
C: Of course not. Its all a matter of taste, isnt it?
A: Yes, master.
C: And taste is not the same as appetite and therefore not a question of morals, is it?
A: It could be argured so, master.
C: Um, thatll do. My robe, Antoninus. Ah, my taste includes both oysters and snails.

Or how sexual preferences can become a topic in a Mac / PC comparison...

Re:Snails and oysters... not a moral choice

[Hal_Porter]

Or how sexual preferences can become a topic in a Mac / PC comparison... Actually it comes up pretty frequently.

Re:Snails and oysters... not a moral choice

[TheRaven64]

Or how sexual preferences can become a topic in a Mac / PC comparison... Actually it comes up pretty frequently.

I found the hardest part of becoming a Mac user was telling my parents...

Re:Snails and oysters... not a moral choice

[ArsenneLupin]

Do as I do... when the conversation (again) moves to the "you're so old, and you still don't own a PC" subject, tell them "hmmm, there's a reason why I haven't bought a PC yet, and maybe someday I'll tell you".

At first they won't react and understand the obvious implications, but don't worry, this will kick off a thinking process ...

Then, a couple of months later, your father might probe "... hmm just let's discuss about your computing plans. Do you ever plan to buy a computer? Just don't buy the first computer that you might find on the shelf... yadadi yadada... if you plan to buy a PC or <hushy voice> a Mac?<hushy voice> carefully think about whether that box is worthwhile..."

And then you can just blurt out, "yes, indeed, I prefer Macs, but never dared to admit so..."

What about the other way around?

[garcia]

My father just bought my mother a 17" Macbook because he couldn't find a laptop he wanted to buy for her that didn't require you to buy Vista and then downgrade to XP later.

My mother despises MacOS and can't "figure anything out." Now while I don't care for MacOS myself I tried to explain some things over the phone to her so that she would at least be able to use it for the time being until my well-meaning father can figure out what to do to fix things for her. She pretty much was being unreasonable about the whole thing and said over and over, "I'm 57 years old, I don't want to learn something else."

My question for all of you is how, when I'm there at Christmas, do I make MacOS X more like Windows so that she's more comfortable with using the OS?

Re:What about the other way around?

[Thornburg]

Umm, use Boot Camp to install Windows XP? It even lets you dual-boot, you don't have to trash the Mac OS to do it.

Re:What about the other way around?

[rolfc]

I think you should find another mother! That way you would be more comfortable.

Re:What about the other way around?

[TobyRush]

My question for all of you is how, when I'm there at Christmas, do I make MacOS X more like Windows so that she's more comfortable with using the OS?

Install BootCamp with Windows XP.

However, if you're looking to keep her on MacOS because of the security or something else, then you'll need to figure out what specifically she's missing from Windows. Often, with casual users, it's just interface stuff that throws them for a loop, and that can be pretty easy to solve. Does she miss contextual menus (i.e., right-clicking in Windows?)? Get her a two-button mouse or show her the multi-touch trackpad capabilities (like two-fingered click = right-click). Does she miss the Start menu? Set up a folder in the dock with her favorite stuff.

Of course it may be that she just doesn't like using computers, and is using the MacOS/Windows thing as an excuse to avoid them...

Re:What about the other way around?

[Serious Callers Only]

If you want a Vista experience this applescript should do it - set it as a folder action on her Documents folder :


on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving addedItems
      repeat with anItem in addedItems
          tell application "Finder"
        display dialog "Are you sure you want to proceed?" buttons ["Allow", "Deny"] default button (random number (1)) + 1
          end tell
      end repeat
end adding folder items to

Re:What about the other way around?

[krunk7]

She pretty much was being unreasonable about the whole thing and said over and over, "I'm 57 years old, I don't want to learn something else."

I had to put up with tons of phone calls to support windows, clean of viruses, etc. my mother and father's windows computers. One of my main tasks when I came home to visit was "Look at the computer for a while", which means try and make it run like new.

I bought them a Mac about 2 years ago. At first, I got the same response. Endless whining about not wanting to learn something new. I simply told them that I was their computer "advisor and repairman", this was a lower maintenance, lower risk machine and if they chose to go back to windows they'd be on their own from here on out. Stick with mac and I'll be their free tech support bitch again.

Took a month or so, but now they'd never use windows again. In 2.5 years, I've received 4 phone calls. Two of them were a broke cable modem. The cable company kept telling her "it was a mac thing", but a surge had killed the modem. After insisting they replace the modem, everything worked. One of the calls was to ask me how to get from Hotmail to Gmail + Apple Mail.app. The third was to ask how to connect the internet, which used to be quite the support call with windows. Yes, I can do it quickly but trying to get a 55 year old woman who learned computers relatively recently to "Go to start, Right click Network Icon, blah blah" proved quite the trial often involving a couple of reboots and head scratching on why the hell it wouldn't come up. With her new Mac my only support advise was "Plug in the wire that looks like a huge phone plug on the end into the only place it'll go on the back of the computer".

My only point being, she comes to you for advice because she knows no better. If she's going to be stubborn, then return in kind. Just tell her you'll never help with computer issues again if she doesn't put minimal effort into learning her new one (I mean really, 99% of the effort is learning two new icons: Safari & Mail). Little does she know you won't really be doing any tech support whether she stays with mac or not. ;)

Re:What about the other way around?

[pikine]

I successfully converted my mom to use a Mac Mini this summer. One time she mistakenly hid the dock. She panicked and called me, but she didn't know what it's called. All she said was "the icons disappeared."

I ssh'd into her computer and ran OSXvnc server (now Vine server) tunneled over ssh. I noticed the problem and fixed it for her on the phone while she watched what I was doing. The most difficult part was to figure out what her IP address was in the first place.

She didn't have to learn any new icons. Both Skype and Firefox icons look the same. She uses Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, so she didn't have to learn anything new.

That's silly

[sm62704]

I didn't RTFA (I must not be new here) but people don't choose Macs because of any of the Apple's features. People choose Macs for stability and freedom from viruses and other shitware (the reasons we wipe Windows and install Linux) and because some high end graphics programs either aren't ported to Windows or are ported badly.

The best way to make your Windows more "like a Mac" is to install Linux for its stability and freedom from shitware. That said, if I ever buy another whole computer (which I haven't done since 1987, I just upgrade parts as needed) It will be a Mac.

I'm amused by the car commercial where they're touting its bluetooth, "powered by Microsoft". No way in hell I'd buy one, just because it's "(under)powered by Microsoft." ! I've been using Microsoft's OSes and programs for a quarter of a century, and they used to be the best quality out there. The quality has been declining for all that time, IMO right now Microsoft's OSes and programs are by far the very worst either on or off the market.

-mcgrew

Fiberglass lotus body

[WindBourne]

Does anybody remember those fake plastic/fiberglass car bodies that you could put on top of various chassis? IIRC, there was a ferrari body for a VW frame. This reminds me of exactly that. It has a similar look, but where it counts, it is still a disaster.

misses the point

[xirtam_work]

What makes Mac OS X special is not the glitz and glamour on the surface, it's what's underneath. The Cocoa framework for Objective C is head and shoulders above the MFC/Win32 programming approach. it's built on BSD and Mach and is now officially a Unix certified OS. It's built in a logical and elegant way. You can run Linux/Unix apps on it. X11 is included, although an optional install. OpenGl and Aqua make it beautiful to look at. There are literally hundreds of reasons why I prefer it, but won't go into them here.

Simply skinning XP with an' aqua' style skin and adding a dock does not make it anything like OS X. Any more than putting a Ferrari shell on top of a ford doesn't make it a Ferrari.

Re:#6 - duct tape the right mouse button

[mattgoldey]

Some jokes never get old. This isn't one of them.

Every Mac desktop now comes standard with a Mighty Mouse. It has two regular mouse buttons, plus the ability to squeeze the sides of the mouse for a 3rd button. It also has a mini trackball on top that allows the user to scroll in two directions and click it for a 4th button. Every button on the Mighty Mouse is fully configurable within Mac OS X.

In addition, even before multi-button mice were standard issue, it's not as if they were ever really needed in Mac OS. Right-clicking is just not all that common. Mac OS is just not designed around the right-click the way Windows is.

Even further... if you didn't want a Mighty Mouse, or if you have a Mac that didn't come with one, any standard USB mouse will work on a Mac, so you can have as many buttons and wheels as you want.

Why?

[DrXym]

There is nothing wrong with either XP's or Vista's look and feel. Why the hell would you want to make it look like OS X? It seems that if you absolutely love the look of OS X that the best way of obtaining it is to buy a Mac.

I've used most of these programs...

[Neitokun]

ObjectDock is garbage, Konfabulator sucks up system resources, and DeskSpaces looks no different than YDOM, which made my system thrash like no tomorrow. (Granted, I don't have a 3D card) I wonder how much StarDock paid to get top billing...

Re:honestly - where's the OSX86?

[nano2nd]

Hackintosh would have been the way to go with this rather than the turd polishing recommended in TFA.

"Looking" like is not "more like"

[foldingstock]

Unlike OSX, running all that crap on Vista or XP (stardock, "myexpose", etc) will significantly slow windows down. You can't bolt on a load of [poorly designed] third party apps and say its more like OSX.

Linux can run IE, that doesn't make it "more like windows."

Tried mac for a while now back with windows.

[greywire]

Yes, that's right. My previous job provided me with a macbook pro for the 6 months I was there. I had to give it back when I took a much better job that provided me with a windows (vista..) notebook.

I hadn't used a mac in many years. I used to be an Amiga guy. So I really wanted to be alternative pc guy again. I really wanted to be convinced to switch to mac. I wasn't. Maybe my brain has just turned to mush from the years of being mainstream pc-clone guy.

What I liked about mac: the hardware is simply a work of modern art. Its a fabulously engineered machine. If I could afford it, I might buy one just for that reason and run windows on it. Unfortunately I cannot. Macos is, obviously, at its core, a superior OS. Sure its based on UNIX which was invented what, a whole decade before windows? So for what it does, it does extremely well. I love the near instant ON stand by mode, even though it runs the battery down it can last days. Dashboard is kinda cool, but I rarely used it, same thing for expose. Installing apps is great, usually just copying a folder into applications. Nice. Parallels is genious, especially coherance mode. Why can't the windows and linux versions do that?

Fortunately for the mac, parallels is the only thing that made the mac bearable. Strangely, windows seemed to run better in parallels that it did directly on a pc (starting up faster, etc). Maybe that is just a testament to the apple hardware. But I simply couldn't do without some windows software I have grown used to, not to mention just having a much wider selection of things when I go looking for new software. I hate the finder, its worse than windows built in file manager, which also sucks, so I use directory opus (so I am making my pc more Amiga-like). This is huge for me.

What I like about windows: the task bar. Sorry but I just cannot get used to the all-iconic mac ways. The dock or whatever its called is just confusing to me. I hate it. I like the textual windows task bar. I like the window previews in vista. I like the start menu even though it requires constant management to keep it from becoming cluttered by every program installing stuff on it. I like the menus on the windows not at the top of the screen (I've always hated that on the mac). windows runs on cheap hardware.

Summary:

Mac pros: what it does do, it does better. Parallels. Easy application install. Standby that works. Smooth but otherwise useless bling. Beautiful hardware. More secure.

Mac cons: expen$ive, feels like a toy with limited options to protect me from myself, limited software selection

Windows pros: task bar, cheap, more software, doesn't limit your options, directory opus file manager

Windows cons: grossly inefficient design, buggy, ugly, standby is worthless, insecure, too long between major updates.

* note: vista is largely excluded for me. It's total F*cking crap and I am about to revert to xp. I admire the concept behind the new composited desktop (an Idea I thought of years ago, and apparently isn't that hard to implement since linux and mac both have it). In theory, readyboost is neat idea. Doesn't seem to help though. If I had the choice between only Vista and Macos, I might choose macos, but only because I can run XP in parallels on the mac.

yeah. you *can* put a lipstick on a pig.

[porky_pig_jr]

still you wouldn't want to kiss it.

Re:600 US$ Mac

[PopeRatzo]

You can get a Mac mini...

I use professional PCI audio hardware for my digital audio workstation, so a Mac Mini is out. I've used the firewire and USB hardware, like the M-Audio Fast Track Pro and the Mbox from digidesign, and I much prefer having the card in the case. I just can't seem to get the same responsiveness from the external gear, nor can I use nearly as many audio and midi tracks and effects. I've spent a few thousand dollars on my specialized audio hardware, and I'm not going to replace it all with firewire stuff just so I can run a Mac Mini which is so much less powerful than the machine I built for myself. Unfortunately, for me, it's either the Mac Pro or a PC. Since I've got a kid to put through school, I just can't justify the additional expense of the Mac Pro just because it's a little cooler than my XP Pro system. I mean, an Aston Martin DB9 is cooler than my Subaru, but I can't justify the additional cost for that either. I've sat in a DB9, and I can tell you for sure that the Aston Martin's interface is cooler than my Subaru's too.