This page is offered as a service of Bristle Software, Inc. New tips are sent to an associated mailing list when they are posted here. Please send comments, corrections, any tips you'd like to contribute, or requests to be added to the mailing list, to tips@bristle.com.
Original Version: 8/27/2009
Last Updated: 8/27/2009
Moving to Mac from Windows or Linux is easy!
I made the move a couple months ago, and I love it. Everything just
works. All the time! This is how computers are supposed to work. As
a user, everything works the way I'd expect. And as a programmer, all
of my programs work the same, and all of the tools I need are available
for free, and work the same as on Windows and Linux.
Three weeks ago, I also moved my 70-year-old mother from Windows to
Mac. No problem. I had set her up years ago to use Firefox and
Thunderbird on Windows, so she now uses them on Mac. I moved her from
MS Office to OpenOffice.org easily. Her Excel spreadsheets and Word
docs all work fine. I downloaded the free Flip4Mac so she can view
Windows Media Player files in QuickTime. I was even able to go to the
Apple download site and find free versions of the games she likes:
Spider Solitaire, Bridge, etc.
So how expensive was it? She bought a Mac Mini with no monitor, no
mouse or keyboard, etc. Also bought a small display adapter cord so we
could plug in the 20-inch LCD monitor she'd been using on her Windows
PC. Works fine. Also plugged in her existing Windows USB wireless
keyboard and mouse. Works fine. Installed her existing USB
printer/scanner/copier. Printer works fine, but scanner doesn't. No
problem -- when she bought the Mac, she got a free-after-rebate
printer/scanner/copier anyhow, so we used that one instead. Total
cost: $620. (OK, actually we bought her the upgraded Mac Mini for $800
instead of $600, and the 3-year extended warranty for an additional
$150, but still the total was only $970.)
She's had no trouble so far. The basic Mac interface for managing
files (Finder) is close enough to Windows Explorer (and Linux KDE,
Gnome, etc.) that there's no learning curve. The built-in search
(Spotlight) is fast, intuitive, and well-integrated -- MUCH better than
Windows Search, more like Google Desktop. No need for Adobe Acrobat
reader -- "Preview" does it. "Activity Monitor" is like Windows "Task
Manager". Obvious things happen when you plug in USB drives and such.
"Time Machine" does automatic backups.
Many of the shortcut keys are even the same as Windows, except it's the
Mac "Command" key sometimes, instead of the Ctrl key or the Windows
"Alt" key (which are both also on the Mac keyboard). Plus there are
lots of extra shortcuts. For example:
| Cmd-Tab | Next window |
| Cmd-A | Select All |
| Shift-Arrow | Extend selection |
| Cmd-C | Copy |
| Cmd-V | Paste |
| Cmd-X | Cut |
| Cmd-F | Find |
| Cmd-G | Find Next |
| Cmd-Shift-G | Find Previous |
| Cmd-E | Find selected text |
| Cmd-Z | Undo |
| Cmd-Shift-Z | Redo |
| Cmd-S | Save |
| Cmd-P | |
| Cmd-N | New |
Connecting to Windows file shares on a LAN is automatic. I copied all of
her Thunderbird mail folders, address books and message filters
directly from Windows to Mac and Thunderbird picked them up
automatically.
If you're a Java programmer with Linux experience, you'll appreciate
the fact that when you open a Terminal window, the Mac OS X command
line is really BSD Unix, so all of your aliases, scripts, etc.
still work. Furthermore, Java works fine and comes pre-installed
(versions 1.3.1, 1.4.2, 1.5.0, and 1.6.0). You can download and run
Eclipse, Tomcat, MySQL, etc., w/no problem. Download the free Aquamacs
Emacs, which is compatible with, but better than, regular GNU Emacs on
Linux or Windows. All of my Java and MySQL code works identically on
Mac as on Windows and Linux, both regular apps and Tomcat-hosted Web
apps. No need to even re-compile, since it's Java. My 22 years worth
of Unix shell scripts all work fine.
My biggest point of pain has been re-writing 17 years worth of Windows
batch files into Unix shell scripts. Easy, since the scripting
languages are so much more expressive than batch files, so they've all
gotten shorter, with more features and better error handling, but it
takes time to do them all.
Other software:
--Fred
Original Version: 6/20/2010
Last Updated: 6/20/2010
Here is a list of some of the more useful shortcut keys that apply to the Mac desktop:
--Fred
©Copyright 2007-2009, Bristle Software, Inc. All rights reserved.