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 ...

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?

[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?

[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: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.

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.

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

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.

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...