Cameron Banga, a longtime Windows user, documents his switch to a Mac with an interesting article, “Ten things I wish I had known before I switched to OS X.”
Banga explains, “As I entered the wonderful world of Mac, I was alone and afraid. I basically jumped head into the computer with no knowledge of OS X. Fast forward six months and I am in love with my machine. It has been a great experience up to this point.”
Banga’s Top Ten:
1. When you install an application, you might not have actually installed an application
2. When on a MacBook Pro, two fingers on the trackpad plus a click can equal a right click
3. Embrace iLife
4. Use the built in search
5. You will no longer dread turning off your computer
6. With BootCamp or Parallels, you can boot into Windows – except, you really won’t need to
7. Don’t bother with games, even 2 year old games
8. iTunes automatically makes copies of songs when you add them to your song library
9. Exposé is your friend – you will become ten times more productive after you start using this feature
10. Don’t second guess your decision – after a month on the system, you will have no regrets (and might even start converting your friends
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Mac users from day one, these articles are always very interesting to us. We’ve only used Windows after first using the Mac:
• initially at various jobs where clueless employers saddled us with unreliable Windows time-wasters (usually, we got Macs eventually, as you might imagine)
• now just to keep up with what Microsoft is doing currently (applying lipstick to Windows XP).
It’s no surprise that Mac users generally dislike having to use Windows, but Windows users are amazed when they try Mac OS X for the first time.
So, anyway, these new-to-Mac articles from people who’ve been stuck with Windows for years and years are always eye-opening. Apple should be reading these articles and applying their lessons where possible.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
A guide for switching from Microsoft Windows to Apple Macintosh – January 02, 2007
PC Magazine: Top 5 questions asked by Windows PC to Mac switchers – December 26, 2006
15-year Windows vet tries Apple Mac: ‘My God! This is amazing!’ – December 04, 2006
Mossberg offers advice on switching from Windows to Mac – October 05, 2006
Embrace and Extinguish in action: TechIQ’s ‘The VAR Guy’ dumps Windows, switches to Mac OS X – September 25, 2006
My switch from Windows XP to Apple Mac OS X – August 30, 2006
The Age: Switch to Apple Mac; just say no to Microsoft Windows – August 15, 2006
NY Times covers the basics of switching from Windows PC to Apple Mac – August 10, 2006
Liberal blogger on switch from Windows to Mac: I’m sold – August 03, 2006
Top Ten Reasons I’m Glad I’m a Mac Switcher – June 20, 2006
Switching To The Mac: A Guide For Windows Users – June 15, 2006
Sydney Morning Herald Tech columnist dumps Microsoft Windows, switches to Apple Mac – June 13, 2006
Moving Microsoft Internet Explorer Favorites to Apple Safari Bookmarks when you switch – June 08, 2006
Apple Boot Camp’s ‘Windows Insecurity Blanket’ helps buyers decide to switch to Macs – May 19, 2006
PC Magazine: Top ten questions and answers about switching to Apple Macintosh – May 18, 2006
Macs that run Windows will calm potential switchers’ irrational fears – April 06, 2006
Apple’s Mac market share rises over 24-percent year-over-year – September 21, 2006
Apple Mac’s 2007 market share climb will dumbfound almost everyone, create mayhem in PC market – September 08, 2006
Apple gaining traction as Mac market share increases – July 31, 2006
Apple market share myths deconstructed – July 22, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
‘Fantastic quarter’ helps Apple double share of U.S. retail notebook market to 12% – July 19, 2006
BusinessWeek: big market-share gains coming for Apple’s Macintosh – June 15, 2006
Analyst: Apple Mac market share primed to explode; iPod Halo Effect to become increasingly important – June 13, 2006
Analysts: Apple Mac market share to surge by end of 2006 – June 07, 2006
Analysts expect Apple’s new MacBook to drive market share gains in near future – May 17, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
What a wanker. I thought He was going to say something interesting.
I can’t say I understand this:
1. When you install an application, you might not have actually installed an application
What part of dragging it into your Application’s folder as the directions to most installers tell you to do isn’t installing an application? I use both platforms and I just don’t understand how people can get confused. Sigh.
1. Like Firefox.
2. Yes.
3. Or at least iPhoto.
4. What was the app that just let me search for file names?
5. No, I just never turn off my computer.
6. Testing in Internet Explorer/Win.
7. Your personal choice.
8. And this is different from Windows how?
9. I hate Expose.
10. I’ve been using Macs smugly since 1990 thank you.
How can anyone hate Expose?
Exposé, hotcorned, is very slick.
@greg: most wankers call other people wankers, so you might be right!
I don’t hate Expose but I don’t use it.
I find some of this guy’s ideas a bit strange like sometimes when you install an app it doesn’t install. But what this does is it points out the mentality of many folks. It can be very hard to understand another person if you don’t understand their frame of reference. I often get asked technical computer type questions that don’t make any sense to me. I have to query the ‘asker’ to find out what the hell are they talking about! We all have different frames of reference, and Windoze people are in a different world than us lifer Mac users.
Tommy Boy,
8. iTunes has that option disabled for Windows, by default.
9. Which aspect of Expose do you hate? How it’s invoked. You can change that to your liking.
I don’t use Exposé, either. Because I began with System 6, I deserted the dock (now tiny, hidden and positioned on the left side of the screen) and installed Classic Menu that gave me back the old Apple menu, and ASM (Apple Switcher Menu), that allows me to switch applications from a button at the top right of the menu bar, as God intended.
I keep forgetting about F9, F10 and F11 (the last of which belongs on a camera lens, not a computer), and Cmd-tab.
And I won’t buy a TV until color is perfected. But my car has electric start.
that man is a moron. he thinks its windows fault that he loads up 3 chat protocols. he thinks it makes his argument more effective. well the same ignorance is easily applied to macs. macs are user friendly, but only if you actively learn while using it. this guy probably thinks pressing the red button quits an app, and probably does every single thing from spotlight. MDN, why did you even bother posting this? a better question, why am i such a whore to this site and macs in general?
That default copy-to-hard-drive-from-disk-image application installation, combined with the circumstance that the disk image itself frequently needs to first be un-archived prior to being accessable, confused me too when it first became prevalent. Although effective, it initially kept leaving me with the impression that there was one too-many steps occuring.
Wow. Issues.
What I meant was .. although the author defines it as an installation misunderstanding on his part .. it would probably have been more appropriate to be characterizing it primarily as a misunderstanding about disk images.
The dock is eye candy. My launcher is in the menu like Old Fart, and I switch apps by clicking on windows or by cmd_Tabbing before I’d consider clicking the dock. I’d hide the dock if it appeared on demand quicker, but I guess the minimal animation is eye candy too, hence deemed necessary by the powers to be.
MDN take: “…..at various jobs where clueless employers saddled us with unreliable Windows time-wasters (usually, we got Macs eventually, as you might imagine)…”
Or where an employer, like mine, did their utmost (inlcuding locking me out of the email system for two years) to prise me off a Mac and saddle me with an unreliable Windows time-waster.
They failed, as you might imagine.
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I came at my decision very differently. At age 28 (6 years ago) I decided it was time to finally buy a computer – a decision that I forstalled for YEARS because I hated using “them”. “Them”, of course, being Winblows-based PC’s and not Macs. I had never used a Mac before, and at that time I had told everyone I knew that I had bad “computer karma” because I could never get the damn thing to do what I wanted. Then, a friend of mine (thanks Art!) suggested I try out his Mac. After using it for a half hour, I was amazed at how easily I figured everything out and how it “just worked”.
The rest is cuboidal history.
MDN MW = since. Appropriate again MDN!
Well here I’d add (and change the title, of course):
11. There are not viruses for Macintosh.
But seeing that this was not considered by the author, the shadow of the doubt begins to make act of presence…..
I have only one thing Windows users should know before switching to Apple’s Mac OS X:
1. Don’t. What’s the point? You can’t run Zune Marketplace on a Mac.
End of story.
Your potential. Our passion.
The Expose Feature dont have to be F9 or F10 key. It can be manually configured to be any key like F5 or F6 in Mac OS X Tiger. Bye
Hahaha…..Good one, Zune Tang!!
Now get ready for the welcome (“to the social” Mac community) you’re getting.
Shields on!!
Why did he say not to go near games? Bootcamp can do this well can it not? That is the only thing (if I had an Intel Mac) I would use the Windows side for- Games.
12. maintenance is really easy on a Mac:
step 1: occassionally leave your Mac on overnight (turn off sleep) for the computer to run automated daily, weekly, monthly scripts
step 2: there is no step 2
I’m thinking that maybe he is confusing “installing an app” with “running an app in a disc image.”
install Boot camp, run windows.
Play with Zune and marketplace.
Get bored, reboot into OSX
use iPod, never go back.
Sell Zune.
See ZT you can run Zune on your Mac.
“2. When on a MacBook Pro, two fingers on the trackpad plus a click can equal a right click”
I HATE this feature. It is ergonomically awkward. Just tap the touch pad with two fingers.
my $0.02