Never had a Mac, will I enjoy using OS X?

[jesseinsf]

I have seen many videos of Windows 8.1 and used it briefly and have not liked the look of it at all. It looks way more complicated - but you are right in that the touch support is better. When I receive my machine I I will play about with Windows 8 for a while before deciding to downgrade or not. I appreciate your viewpoint shared, it's made me realise I should give Windows 8.1 a good try first.

Since you will be getting a touch screen, it will default to the new touch friendly Start Screen. If you don't like that then you can change it to go directly to the desktop and you can use desktop wallpaper as your Start Screen background. Plus you can add and delete Start Screen tiles and add them in to groups that you can name. Here is my start screen

[Prosidius]

Windows 8.1 ain't bad.  Granted, I don't use a touch PC but I never found it excruciating to use, even with vanilla Windows 8.  It's pretty easy to avoid metro if you don't want to use it.  Plus, Windows 8 + SSD = 5 second boot up times.  

[NightCrawler.]

In the end I ended up going with the Mac Air. Realized the super high resolution might of been more of a hindrance than anything on a small screen. Plus I got the Mac Air with 8GB of RAM rather than the 4GB in the Lenovo for a small difference in price. 

 

In the end i think the touch screen on the windows machine would have eventually gotten gimmicky IMO especially considering I have an Ipad Mini for a tablet. Plus as others have mentioned I can always boot into Windows with Boot Camp or use Parralels if I wish.

 

So far so good, my bluetooth mouse connected perfectly with no issue. I'm getting used to the screen - finding it a little big I must say. Keep in mind I was using an 11.6inch Netbook as my main computer for the last two years. But I can say I'm glad I have the extra screen space now. The screen is a bit too 4:3 for my liking but I hope I get used to it. 

 

I had to up the brightness as it was really dim I thought. Plus I changed the natural scroll to the traditional up/down scroll on Windows. The inverted scroll didn't feel right to me. 

 

So far I've only installed Google Chrome and all my bookmarks and extensions have been synced seamlessly. Now I just have to install Office and some more applications like VLC and Spotify and it should be good to go. 

 

 

 

 

It does feel a little strange so far i must say but I haven't used it for long. i'll play around with it more tomorrow. 

 

I'm pretty happy so far   :)

[perochan]

i use windows at work and mac at home so I am pretty with both worlds. :)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Hope you enjoy using your new machine. Best thing is to keep playing around with it for the next while and ask away if you're stuck. (Y)

 

The MBA's brightness isn't fantastically bright so you'll find it necessary to keep it at the higher brightness levels. I also can't get used to natural scrolling so it's also off for me. 

 

Looks like you also got a case for it - is that the Speck Smartshell Satin case?

 

(Also since you've opted to get the Mac, I'm moving this to the Mac section...)

 

[Thread moved]

[tsupersonic]

Congrats OP! Enjoy the best of both worlds. 

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Great choice! I have an Air and it's without doubt the best computer I've ever owned. It absolutely flies despite the low clock speed of the CPU. 

 

Be sure to post up if you have any Mac questions - sure we can help you out! 

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Great choice! I have an Air and it's without doubt the best computer I've ever owned. It absolutely flies despite the low clock speed of the CPU. 

 

Be sure to post up if you have any Mac questions - sure we can help you out! 

This. I've had a Macbook Air for over a year. Upgraded to a rMBP last week.

 

The MBA is a very capable little machine. It even runs Minecraft with ease if so you're inclined. And as for questions about OS X or Mac apps - ask away, someone will help you. :)

[Belazor]

[...] You can get that functionality on OSX however with HyperDock. [...]

 

Excellent app, and works fine on Yosemite as well. This is gonna be super handy for me, thanks!

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Excellent app, and works fine on Yosemite as well. This is gonna be super handy for me, thanks!

Great to here it works on Yosemite, been thinking about upgrading to the beta.

Just been looking at your sig, very small world it appears. I use DragonByte SEO on a forum i own, and have also purchased your activity / awards plugin with the view of implementing that when i get time  (Y)

[Belazor]

Great to here it works on Yosemite, been thinking about upgrading to the beta.

 

I upgraded to Yosemite on day 1 on my 2012 Mac Mini (development server, initially intended to be used for XCode/PHP dev, but it's way too slow for my needs) and I tend to try out customisations like these + the cDock app just now, as I'm about to pick up a 15" rMBP. Thus far, Yosemite has been solid for me, but then again passively running the AMP stack isn't exactly considered real-world usage :p

 

 

Just been looking at your sig, very small world it appears. I use DragonByte SEO on a forum i own, and have also purchased your activity / awards plugin with the view of implementing that when i get time   (Y)

 

Ha, nice :D Hopefully everything goes smoothly :)

[#Michael]

Excellent app, and works fine on Yosemite as well. This is gonna be super handy for me, thanks!

 

I forgot hyperdock even existed.  That was/is such a neat app

[NightCrawler.]

Hope you enjoy using your new machine. Best thing is to keep playing around with it for the next while and ask away if you're stuck. (Y)

 

The MBA's brightness isn't fantastically bright so you'll find it necessary to keep it at the higher brightness levels. I also can't get used to natural scrolling so it's also off for me. 

 

Looks like you also got a case for it - is that the Speck Smartshell Satin case?

 

(Also since you've opted to get the Mac, I'm moving this to the Mac section...)

 

[Thread moved]

 

You're definitely right about the brightness. What color profile do you use? I found the default one a bit bland. 

 

It's a blue Mosiso case. Does the job and makes the Macbook look personalised and far better IMO. 

[Denis W. Veteran]

You're definitely right about the brightness. What color profile do you use? I found the default one a bit bland. 

 

It's a blue Mosiso case. Does the job and makes the Macbook look personalised and far better IMO. 

 

I use the default Color LCD profile, but here it's a bit pointless for me to change colour profiles since I use f.lux. Whichever colour profile you choose won't affect the screen's brightness but colours can appear brighter if you manually calibrate it.

 

As an aside, try entering this command into Terminal to determine what screen you have (via this link):

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

On my MBA I get LTH116AT01A04 - indicates a Samsung display. A prefix of LP would be LG-Philips which apparently is worse than Samsung panels.

[Shadrack]

It'll work ok for you if you do general computing. If price isn't a factor, then no problem, go for it.

 

If you extensively use Excel, I would stick with the Windows version though.

 

Office for Mac came a long way in the 2011 version, but it still lags behind the Windows version.

 

Still, I love Office for Mac and it meets the vast majority of my needs. I use Mac at home and Windows at work, and there are nice software packages for each I've found. Software is a toss up.

 

One area that Apple does really well with across their product range is backups. Apple has really thought out good end-user backup mechanisms that IMO blow away the stock options in the competition.  Mac OS X comes with Time Machine and it is a no brain activity to setup and use. Just plug in an external drive and it takes care of the rest. My friend lost all of her stuff the other day due to a harddrive crash and when I found out she had a Mac and was not using Time Machine I about lost it.

[NightCrawler.]

I use the default Color LCD profile, but here it's a bit pointless for me to change colour profiles since I use f.lux. Whichever colour profile you choose won't affect the screen's brightness but colours can appear brighter if you manually calibrate it.

 

As an aside, try entering this command into Terminal to determine what screen you have (via this link):

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

On my MBA I get LTH116AT01A04 - indicates a Samsung display. A prefix of LP would be LG-Philips which apparently is worse than Samsung panels.

 

Looks like i have the inferior LG display  :pinch:

 

Gonna use this fix and see if it makes it any better: http://theultralinx.com/2013/03/macbook-air-hack-screen.html

[NightCrawler.]

Ah... damn it, command shift g is not working, and writing the folder location in search is not bringing it up >.<

 

Edit: Just went to it manually through Finder.\

 

EDIT: Found that colour profile to actually be worse than the Colour RGB profile. Guess I'll just have to deal with the washed out display.

[123456789A]

One area that Apple does really well with across their product range is backups. Apple has really thought out good end-user backup mechanisms that IMO blow away the stock options in the competition.  Mac OS X comes with Time Machine and it is a no brain activity to setup and use. Just plug in an external drive and it takes care of the rest. My friend lost all of her stuff the other day due to a harddrive crash and when I found out she had a Mac and was not using Time Machine I about lost it.

 

In Windows 8, if you plug in an external hard drive, it sets up a backup too. It just doesn't have a fancy name like Time Machine. It's just called File History.

 

Same principle though, you can go back through dates and restore previous versions of your files.

[UKer]

I switched earlier this year after deciding I could finally afford a Macbook.

 

Pros - it is very intuitive, to the point where I've not even had to ask for help once in forums. Everything does what you expect. I primarily use the default applications and they are very elegant and simple, and iCloud is really quite amazing if you have other Apple hardware.

 

Cons - it's expensive if you use Apple hardware, Office is not as polished as in Windows (although I've been using it for business without any limitations, and I've been constantly collaborating with Windows users with OneDrive and this has been flawless). The system doesn't work in the same way, and of course there is a bit of a learning curve.

 

Overall though, it has been very stable, fast and more compatible than alternatives such as Linux. Apps are expensive, but not much more than Windows and there are many open source applications that work fine.

 

They both work very well and the only reasons not to switch are if you are a gamer (I only play Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Diablo III and these have been fine). Also, if you are limited by budget, then in this case Windows wins hands down.

 

The entry level Macs are not very well specced, and I had to get the non-retina Macbook so I could max out the RAM for a reasonable price, and (in the future) buy a large SSD, the cost for a well specced retina is just phenomenal (and they can't be expanded as the RAM is soldered). The minimum I think is reasonable is 8GB RAM (I chose 16GB because I need to be able to edit large videos) and I need at least 512GB storage without carrying round an external drive, but I have much more demanding needs than an average user who just wants web browsing and Office.

[+Warwagon MVC]

OSX boots slow even on SSD compared to windows.

 

Actually I have a SSD on my Mid 2011 i7 8GB Macbook Pro and it boots Extremely fast. Faster than Windows.

[Tech085]

OSX boots slow even on SSD compared to windows.

I have a SSD on my MBA it boots fast too me.

[tsupersonic]

Actually I have a SSD on my Mid 2011 i7 8GB Macbook Pro and it boots Extremely fast. Faster than Windows.

I have a MBPr 13.3" 8/256 PCI-E SSD, and a desktop with 256 GB 840 Pro on SATA 3 (RAPID enabled) - the desktop is faster to Windows login screen on a cold boot than the MBP booting to the Mac login screen. 

[Sikh]

I have a MBPr 13.3" 8/256 PCI-E SSD, and a desktop with 256 GB 840 Pro on SATA 3 (RAPID enabled) - the desktop is faster to Windows login screen on a cold boot than the MBP booting to the Mac login screen.

Are you using windows 8? If so is hybrid shutdown on or off? Most likely on because I thought the same thing until I turned it off. Watching windows and mac boot side by side GUI and verbose was interesting. The mac booted faster everytime. I'm using a first gen rMBP 512ssd vs my desktop with a 840 pro 256 and 128. Also did a raid 0 of 256 m4s and that was the only thing faster.

[Gurkin]

I've used Macs since 1987. I have very little experience of Windows apart from a few occasions when I was asked to help with problems. As you would expect with an unfamiliar system, it had me screaming and wanting to smash the computer!

 

So I'm not surprised that a Windows user would feel exactly the same about OSX. Anything less would be a bonus.

 

I've read all the things that OSX "won't do" compared with Windows. Unfortunately, as I'm so unfamiliar with the latter that I don't understand most of the comments. All I can say is that, if you want to achieve something specific, explain what you want as an end result and a time-served Mac user should be able to tell you how to do it. Usually it's a matter of being so immersed in "the Windows way" that you are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.

 

For example, you have a "Finder" window open and you want to move a file to the trash. Clicking the "Delete" key does nothing. You know that you can use the mouse to drag the item to the trash but why isn't there a button? Well, there is, but you haven't enabled it.

 

Firstly, you can simply right-click on the filename and select "Move to Trash" from the drop-down that appears. Job done

 

Alternatively, place the mouse cursor on the top menu bar of the Finder window. Right-click (or [alt] click) and select "Customize Toolbar". Now, from the drop-down symbols display, drag the trash can "Delete" icon up to the menu bar of the window and release it. Click {Done}. (You won't need to do this ever again on this Mac. The trash icon will remain there in all Finder windows.)

 

Now, to delete a file, you click on it once, to select it, and click on the trash can "Delete" icon. You can select several files to trash at once if you wish. Note that they will remain in the Trash until you click on "Finder" (top, fixed, menu bar) and select "Empty Trash". Or, alternatively, you can right-click on the trash can in the "Dock" (Task Bar) and select "Empty Trash".

[UKer]

In the end I ended up going with the Mac Air. Realized the super high resolution might of been more of a hindrance than anything on a small screen. Plus I got the Mac Air with 8GB of RAM rather than the 4GB in the Lenovo for a small difference in price. 

 

In the end i think the touch screen on the windows machine would have eventually gotten gimmicky IMO especially considering I have an Ipad Mini for a tablet. Plus as others have mentioned I can always boot into Windows with Boot Camp or use Parralels if I wish.

 

So far so good, my bluetooth mouse connected perfectly with no issue. I'm getting used to the screen - finding it a little big I must say. Keep in mind I was using an 11.6inch Netbook as my main computer for the last two years. But I can say I'm glad I have the extra screen space now. The screen is a bit too 4:3 for my liking but I hope I get used to it. 

 

I had to up the brightness as it was really dim I thought. Plus I changed the natural scroll to the traditional up/down scroll on Windows. The inverted scroll didn't feel right to me. 

 

So far I've only installed Google Chrome and all my bookmarks and extensions have been synced seamlessly. Now I just have to install Office and some more applications like VLC and Spotify and it should be good to go. 

 

 

 

 

It does feel a little strange so far i must say but I haven't used it for long. i'll play around with it more tomorrow. 

 

I'm pretty happy so far   :)

 

Good choice with the RAM. You'll enjoy using it I'm sure, like I did, after a while and find it a very pleasant experience compared to Windows. When your mouse gives in a Magic Mouse is very nice too, it is extremely pleasant to use ;)

 

Enjoy!