Switchng from Windows to Mac

[PaulieWalnuts]

New MS Office.

You dont need the MS office, with Mac OS you get TextEdit application which reads and writes MS Word text file formats. Also with Mac you get iWork package, Mac version of other office applications eg. Exel = Numbers, Power Point = Keynote etc etc...
Other way Open source application Open Office can be efficient replacement for MS office too.

'
I pretty heavily use Office products and am not familiar with iWork. Maybe I'll give it a try before picking up Office.

[Ginosphotos]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

[elvinstar]

The best thing is no more virus issues!!

Don't believe the hype!! That's not true and hasn't been for some time. (link)

[Beppe Grillo]

Don't believe the hype!! That's not true and hasn't been for some time. (link)

Since 1984 you can count about 40 viruses on Mac - and most of them are not viruses but not very aggressive trojans.

According to Symantec, in 2008 viruses on Windows were 1,122,311

I agree with you: Don't believe the hype!!

[Mantis]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

Can you elaborate as to why? I just purchased the newest Spyder system for my IMac, ran it and it looks fine. BUT...the Imac color profile did too.  It was poppier than the Spyder profile.  And do you select Imac or SRGB or Adobe as the color space? I also didn't see an option within the Apple software to select color temp (6500 @ 2.2) so that bothered me.  It's one of the reasons I got the Spyder.

[Beppe Grillo]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

[luissantos84]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

never had any of those but I keep on hearing that Apple (iMac) kicks ass in terms of colors, contrast, calibration, this and that, weird that you consider them the worst you have tried

[nailiaschwarz]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

never had any of those but I keep on hearing that Apple (iMac) kicks ass in terms of colors, contrast, calibration, this and that, weird that you consider them the worst you have tried

Maybe he tried them some time ago ? The current (2013 model) 27" iMac Monitors are pretty good (not the Thunderbolt Display!), they greatly reduced the reflections, and with a little color calibration they have very good color rendition. I would always recommend them, the next better thing will be a SpectraView, Eizo CG Series or similar.

[nailiaschwarz]

If you get yourself an iMac, I recommend to use this software:

http://www.basiccolor.de/basiccolor-display-5-en/

It works with almost all Sensors (Spyder, i1) and will give you full auto calibration of color temperature, brightness and gamma on an iMac, and it works with all Professional (Hardware calibration) Monitors too.

[Beppe Grillo]

I switched to Mac 4 years ago and I wish I could have done it before. I bought several iMac 27" with the best possible features and Ram for my studio and couldn't be happier. I lost several PCs due to viruses in the past. There are many advantages that will become obvious the more you use Apple products. Other than the fact they work fast and better, the greatest advantage is that you don't ever need to calibrate the monitors. When I used PCs, I used to calibrate all my monitors once a week and the colors never worked to my satisfaction. Using Macs, you never have to worry about that.

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

never had any of those but I keep on hearing that Apple (iMac) kicks ass in terms of colors, contrast, calibration, this and that, weird that you consider them the worst you have tried

How can a shiny monitor (almost a mirror when you have dark of black images) be good for color correction? 
The iMac monitor is over contrasted and over saturated, this leads you to contrast and saturate your images less than what they should be to get a good result for print.
The iMac monitor is not a monitor for a professional photographer or a professional color corrector.
Even with a good calibration you will always have a bad��� mirror

You cannot compare the iMac monitor with a $ 500 Dell Ultrasharp.
And of course you cannot compare it with a $3000 Eizo

[nailiaschwarz]

As I said, the current imac monitors are MUCH less shiny.

If you eliminate light sources in your back, you have no problems.

If used right, and calibrated, they will produce very good color. So yes, they can be used for professional work. Maybe just not by you

[EmberMike]

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

I agree. I had 2 iMacs and hated both of those screens. I could never get them calibrated right. When I upgraded my system a couple of years ago I went with a Mac Pro so I could pick my own display.

Your mouse will miss a button.

I can't believe this tired old 1-button mouse complaint is still around. When was this ever an issue? USB multi-button mice have been around forever. Not out of the box with Macs in the past but when did anyone ever stick with the boxed mouse anyway? Even in my Windows days I would switch to a good Logitech mouse or something other than the junk the Windows PCs came with.

[Beppe Grillo]

As I said, the current imac monitors are MUCH less shiny.

If you eliminate light sources in your back, you have no problems.

If used right, and calibrated, they will produce very good color. So yes, they can be used for professional work. Maybe just not by you

Good
I have not had the occasion to use seriously the new iMacs, so in fact I cannot say nothing about it.
I was telling about previous series, as you have understood.
The fact is that when you begin to work on a monitor of the level of the Eizo (or Barco� RIP) it is difficult to turn back.

[nailiaschwarz]

The Apple monitors are through the worst that I have used.
If you want a good monitor use an Eizo, some good Dell Ultrasharp, or equivalent

I agree. I had 2 iMacs and hated both of those screens. When I upgraded my system a couple of years ago I went with w Mac Pro so I could pick my own display.

Mike, the new iMac displays are much better. The old ones were really just mirrors with additional display function The new ones are a big improvement - still not ideal, and I prefer external matte monitors too.

[nailiaschwarz]

As I said, the current imac monitors are MUCH less shiny.

If you eliminate light sources in your back, you have no problems.

If used right, and calibrated, they will produce very good color. So yes, they can be used for professional work. Maybe just not by you

Good
I have not had the occasion to use seriously the new iMacs, so in fact I cannot say nothing about it.
I was telling about previous series, as you have understood.
The fact is that when you begin to work on a monitor of the level of the Eizo (or Barco� RIP) it is difficult to turn back.

I know what you mean I just exchanged my old iMac with the 'mirror screen' this year - I have an NEC SpectraView too, and the new iMac Monitor is really close to it it terms of color rendition. I do my own prints on a iPF6100 with my own color profiles, and get great results.

[PaulieWalnuts]

Update to the original post. Thanks for all the help. I picked up a refurbished Macbook Pro to see how things go.

Overall it's been great so far. Macbook Pro is built great. Nice quality. Track-pad is fantastic. And so far after a month everything just works. No crashing. No errors. No frustration. All software has installed without problems. Printer connected and worked like magic. On Windows this was a trip to the printer website to download and install the driver software and deal with whatever problems came up. Makes me wonder why I didn't pick up a Mac to try years ago.

The negative stuff that I've found has been pretty minor.

I did end up buying Paragon. Not sure why Mac can read NTFS drives fine but not write to them without third party software. I found that Mac has built in ability to write to NTFS but it's disabled and requires a hack to enable but it's "not supported" by Apple. Odd.

I bought MS Office for Mac. I actually like the interface better but it's a version behind Windows.  There seems to be a lot of missing features compared to Windows. And the PST file import didn't import nicely in the Mac version. Folders are messed up, Calendar and reminders are off, etc. I hate to say it but this doesn't surprise me because as a Microsoft product user for a long time I've just come to accept that this kind of stuff is normal.

I ended up buying the $10 p/m Creative Cloud subscription for Photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom is cross-platform but Photoshop CS5 isn't. I found out that Adobe allows platform transfers but only on current Photoshop versions which is CS6. So I would have needed to drop $200 to upgrade to CS6 which is already an old version. Not a big fan of the cloud stuff but not much of an alternative.

Other than that I'm just getting used to finding keyboard functions I'm used to using in Windows.

Just ordered an Ipad and AppleTV.

[wordplanet]

You'll be very happy that you made the switch.

When I switched to a Mac several years ago, I contacted Adobe and they let me get the Mac version of the Creative Suite at the update price, rather than having to purchase it new. That was way back when CS 3 was the newest version, but I guess now with creative cloud they'd no longer give you that option? I do believe you can have CC on two computers and that could be one Mac and one PC if that works for you while you make the transition.
 
Edit:

Guess I misread your last post - at $10/month CC seems like a better deal than the upgrade to the older CS6, so glad that worked out for you. If you're staying with your old PC as well as the Mac, you should be able to put CC on both.

[Beppe Grillo]

Congratulation PaulieWalnuts!

You made a good investment!

I bought an iBook in 2004.
After 10 years this old computer still work perfectly and continuously.
It is slow for Photoshop and Lightroom, but still very good for mail, web, office, etc.
It never gaves me the minimal problem, it is always on (24/7/30/12) never crashed (in 10 years I have had only one Kernel Panic)�

All my other Macs still start, from the first one that I bought in 1984�
The only problem I have had wit a Mac was a defective graphic card on an MacBook Pro 2008.

Be happy and welcome in the Mac family!

[Uncle Pete]

80% of the computers in the world run Windows or some Microsoft system, under 8% run some Mac OS. If you were targeting computers with a virus, which platform would you attack? End of argument.

It's not immunity it's lack of interest. "600,000 Macs, most of them in the United States and Canada, were infected by Flashback" That's not immunity.

Update: http://blogs.computerworld.com/malware-and-vulnerabilities/21810/does-latest-mac-malware-attack-show-windows-8-more-secure-mac-os-x

"All this is why the latest Mac security hole should surprise no one except the Mac lovers who refuse to admit the truth -- Mac OS X, like every other operating system, is vulnerable to attack. And there are plenty of security researchers who think it's less secure than Windows."

I thought the iMac display was stunning and crisp and clean when I used one. The computer was fast and I loved it. I have somewhere around ten functioning, in use, Windows OS computers right now and I'm not dumping them all because I like the display on the Mac better.

Reason #2 I don't have the urge to spend a couple or few thousand dollars to make everything I own obsolete and start buying all new software on top of that.

The best thing is no more virus issues!!

Don't believe the hype!! That's not true and hasn't been for some time. (link)

[bunhill]

If you were targeting computers with a virus, which platform would you attack?

Android.

[Lodimup]

The grass is definitely greener but not that much greener . Still, you won't regret switching. The only thing to watch out for is upgrading. You'll be spending a lot of $$ getting newer machine since you cannot upgrade most components in a mac.

My mid 2011 27" 2.7GHz i5 is still going strong.

[nailiaschwarz]

The grass is definitely greener but not that much greener . Still, you won't regret switching. The only thing to watch out for is upgrading. You'll be spending a lot of $$ getting newer machine since you cannot upgrade most components in a mac.

My mid 2011 27" 2.7GHz i5 is still going strong.

Unlike with old PCs, you still get good money for used Apples. I upgrade every 3 years, and get about 50% of the original price when I sell 'old' iMac/MacBook Pros. 

[Beppe Grillo]

80% of the computers in the world run Windows or some Microsoft system, under 8% run some Mac OS. If you were targeting computers with a virus, which platform would you attack? End of argument.

It's not immunity it's lack of interest. "600,000 Macs, most of them in the United States and Canada, were infected by Flashback" That's not immunity.

Update: http://blogs.computerworld.com/malware-and-vulnerabilities/21810/does-latest-mac-malware-attack-show-windows-8-more-secure-mac-os-x

"All this is why the latest Mac security hole should surprise no one except the Mac lovers who refuse to admit the truth -- Mac OS X, like every other operating system, is vulnerable to attack. And there are plenty of security researchers who think it's less secure than Windows."

I thought the iMac display was stunning and crisp and clean when I used one. The computer was fast and I loved it. I have somewhere around ten functioning, in use, Windows OS computers right now and I'm not dumping them all because I like the display on the Mac better.

Reason #2 I don't have the urge to spend a couple or few thousand dollars to make everything I own obsolete and start buying all new software on top of that.

The best thing is no more virus issues!!

Don't believe the hype!! That's not true and hasn't been for some time. (link)

Java for Mac is not an Apple product, it is an Oracle one�

Java is useless for 99.9% of the users.
You have just to disable it unless you are part of the 0.1% needing it.

[stocked]

I switched from Mac to Windows around 2000 and I'm happy since when ;-)
But I do like my iPad 

[Uncle Pete]

AH for me that's good. I'm running free Windows computers that people dumped (some for being possessed and crap) Lots of spare parts. BUT, you are 100% correct. Macs hold value better and for a longer time. Latest that I think I've finished is a 2006 Sony Vaio. Removed Windows 7, installed XP. Pentium 4 dual 3GHz processor. 2GB memory (the max) I'd love to have the original install disks because of the dual layer DVD and some of the included video editing software.

Also I need to confess, if I had the money, I'd have a nice big iMac sitting on the desk for editing photos, video and audio and everything else. The old PCs can handle surfing the web and storage, just fine.

But free is good too. 

Unlike with old PCs, you still get good money for used Apples. I upgrade every 3 years, and get about 50% of the original price when I sell 'old' iMac/MacBook Pros.