Just made the change - Pc > Imac ( Gonna take some getting used to)

Oxford_Matt

Oxford_Matt

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Hi,

After nearly a year of thinking about it, I finally purchased my new iMac.

only problem is I have been PC for ever and a day.

Be interested in hearing how others Found the switch.

Cheers

Matt
 
Hi matt,

I was a heavy keyboard user in windows and found that mac is more mouse-centred. Using a keyboard launcher helped my quite a lot, and Launchbar is the ubiquitous "first app" that i install. It is a keyboard launcher utility that allows you to launch any app, search system, search web pages, search / open files, and loads more. Here's a review / summary. An alternative that i started with is Quicksilver, it is freeware, used to be quite buggy, but things have apparently improved there.

Other apps i find useful

And photography related, take a look at Sofortbild
 
Made the full switch just over 2 1/2 years ago, but had been running Mac and PC for sometime before that.

To be honest the change when running both PC and Mac it wasn't to much of a problem, in fact it wasn't a problem at all. The only thing it took me a while to get used to was the @ symbol was in a different place.

I'd also get a copy of Handbrake for video work plus a copy of Appdelet. OK you only really need to remove the application to stop it working but Appdelete clears out the unwanted additional pref files which simply keeps the system tidy
 
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Thanks for all the pointers guys.

Was up until 5am this morning, messing with it. (The IMac)

It's definitely a different beast. It's going to take forever to get used to and I'm sure I'm going to miss all my Window based program's.

Bit annoying I have to completely reformat my backup drive from NTFS to FAT32 as Mac won't write to the drive otherwise.

Is it true if file names have spaces of invalid characters it deletes them when copied back to Fat32??

Matt
 
Hi Matt,

not sure of the answer to your question regarding characters, but wouldn't you be better off formatting your drive in hfs format?
 
If you feel frustrated by the apple mouse, and the use of ctl+click for contextual drop downs, Macs also work with any USB mice! You don't have to use an apple mouse with a mac. Plug any usb mouse in and you will have your scroll wheel, right click etc etc. They work out the box too, usually no need to install software.

As a long term Mac user (mac at home, usually pc where i've worked) and using 3D software on my macs where multiple mouse buttons are essential, i began to use different mice with my macs. Now i mainly use a wacom pen (for everything), but i still need a multi button mouse for 3D apps.
 
I bought my first Macbook for college & I haven't looked back since! They're perfect for both creative work & personal purposes. Best wishes!
 
OrinB said:
If you feel frustrated by the apple mouse, and the use of ctl+click for contextual drop downs, Macs also work with any USB mice! You don't have to use an apple mouse with a mac. Plug any usb mouse in and you will have your scroll wheel, right click etc etc. They work out the box too, usually no need to install software.

As a long term Mac user (mac at home, usually pc where i've worked) and using 3D software on my macs where multiple mouse buttons are essential, i began to use different mice with my macs. Now i mainly use a wacom pen (for everything), but i still need a multi button mouse for 3D apps.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Now i have got used the mouse its excellent!! ;)
 
Hi Matt, I still think you'll be better off using the native mac format (hfs+). I was in the same boat as you 3 years ago, had an external drive i used with my pc and kept it in windows format in case i needed to read it from a windows pc, but found i never did as i could either copy files to usb or over network.

Here's a link to some details on HFS+ format, but the key feature i think is important is:-

Journaling is a technique that helps protect the integrity of the Mac OS Extended file systems on Mac OS X volumes. It both prevents a disk from getting into an inconsistent state and expedites disk repair if the server fails.

When you enable journaling on a disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the disk to a known-good state when the server restarts.

With journaling turned on, the file system logs transactions as they occur. If the server fails in the middle of an operation, the file system can "replay" the information in its log and complete the operation when the server restarts.

Although you may experience loss of user data that was buffered at the time of the failure, the file system is returned to a consistent state. In addition, restarting the computer is much faster. Always remember to back up your data as frequently as necessary.
Click to expand...

If you think you may still need to use this drive on a windows machine, create a fat partition of the smallest possible size and put a copy of macdrive on it.

Google "hfs+ vs ntfs" for more details.

Cheers!
 
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Thanks for all the advice Guys... All taken on board.

I have a NTFS for mac at the moment. But will probably change to Mac format HFS+ is it?
When I have fully changed over.

:)
 
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