Switch to Mac ? How would you rate the benefits ?

I have long been contemplating switching to Mac (in fact, ever since OS X was released), but was deterred by the 30% price gap with PCs...

With the latest MacBook Pro, and the lack of added value from Windows Vista compared to XP, plus the promising but Not-Yet-There Linux distros (at least, I am not geek enough to make a full switch this way), I find myself on the edge of making the jump.

I wondered if some of you had followed the same path and what’s your take on switching ?
How would you rate the benefits ?

Mark Kaplan recently made the leap. Unless you’re doing video, get a new Mac Book and max out the RAM (2GB). They’re incredible machines and can drive external monitors if you need more real estate.

Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com) is almost worth switching alone. It’s one of those apps that has to be experienced to be appreciated, but it’s a lifesaver. Add in TextMate and SVNx and you’ve got a great little dev platform (of course with Safari and Firefox + WebDev extensions).

Now that Parallels makes booting a native-hardware speed XP instance while running inside OS X without rebooting a simple reality for those times you really need an XP app, there’s really little reason to not give it a shot. Heck, if you absolutely decide you don’t like OS X, just fire up boot camp and permanently boot XP. But I bet not only will you like it, but you’ll just fall in love with it.

:)

I can’t believe I’m about to write this as a longtime PC user...

I love my MacBook Pro! The hardware itself is spectacular... I don’t know how to put it to words. Its a nearly perfect design. Via OS X I can get things done faster than ever before with a plethora of unique applications designed with UI in mind. Best of all it boots in <30 seconds which makes it all the better. If you are fed up with PC quirks try out a Mac.

I’m not saying I will never fire up my PC again, but I’ve made the switch...

I’m actually waiting to switch to the newer Intel platform. From the PPC side ... macs were worth it but alas the inability to deal with (no matter how much I detest it) XP I still can see the obvious benefits of having a Wintel machine. However, the ability to have both worlds on one machine is sooo dammm tempting!

hehe, waiting for memro (64 byte ) to come out before making the leap from PPC to MacTel.

As for user interface. It really comes down to personality and the way you work. I am sure that some people just will find Windows that much easier to use. lolo, I find it hard to understand but ... well to each his own.

make the jump! I’m batting pretty well in regards to all of those that I’ve converted!

Isn’t memro quite a ways away?

I was in your shoes until a month or two ago when I got a 15" MacBook Pro (2GB RAM). I originally got it because I had 2 WinTel notebooks die, and had just resoldered the AC adapter jack onto the motherboard of one (only to have it break again)...

Anyway, after 3 days I was a die-hard Mac fanatic. I have a Athlon dual-core with 2GB RAM and 2x24" widescreen LCD Dell monitors, and I don’t even use it anymore. The MacBook is just so fast and stable. Only times it’s crashed (3 times total, I think) were when running WinXP in Parallels. Never, ever bogs down. I can go weeks without a restart, while I have to restart my XP box every day.

Only program I couldn’t live without that wasn’t mentioned already is Virtue, the most amazing virtual desktop manager ever. It just works, and it works fast and beautifully.

Other than that:
If you need to run Illustrator, don’t. It’s horrifically slow on the MacBook. It’s also really slow in a Parallels install of WinXP. (If you use Boot Camp, it’s nice and fast.)
Word is pretty slow too, but usable for light stuff.
There really isn’t a good replacement for Irfanview, but Graphic Converter is ok.
There’s nothing that really takes WinSCP’s place, but Interarchy is pretty solid (I don’t really like Transmit), and you can tie it in with TextMate to get some auto-upload on save going.
Dreamweaver is horribly slow as well.

And something that I never realized about the Mac OS: IMHO it’s actually geared much more for power users than XP is. It’s far more customizable. Example: In XP, you’re stuck with the same stupid "favorites" in every save dialog box (on the left side, you know... My Computer, My Documents, Desktop, Network, etc.). On the Mac, you can add and remove anything from that box whenever you want. So when I’m working on ProjectA, I add that folder to the "favorites sidebar" and I have immediate access to that location whenever I open or save a file.

So overall, my advice is this: The price difference is worth every penny and maybe more. I never would have thought so three months ago, but I’m so much more productive on the MacBook than I could possibly be on WinXP.

I hope that helps. I love my Mac!
-Brett

Quote from: rthrash at May 31, 2006, 09:02 PM

Unless you’re doing video, get a new Mac Book and max out the RAM (2GB). They’re incredible machines and can drive external monitors if you need more real estate.

You think 1x1GB is not enough ? Edit : OK, never mind, you got to have either to go 2x512Mb or 2x1Gb to benefit the dual channel architecture, never mind the question...

My thinking was, invest to get à 7200 rpm drive instead of going the 2Gb way, I have done that on my PC laptop and the speed increase is nice (plub IBM has made a great job not increasing power consumption). Hard drive is most often the weak link in a config... that’s why I had a 7200 rpm on my laptop and a 10 000 rpm Raptor on my desktop.

One last thing : is there easy access to memory and hard drive ? Let’s say I want to upgrade the memory myself, as a PC user my question would be : is there some incompatibility risk ?

Quote from: rthrash

Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com) is almost worth switching alone. It’s one of those apps that has to be experienced to be appreciated, but it’s a lifesaver. Add in TextMate and SVNx and you’ve got a great little dev platform (of course with Safari and Firefox + WebDev extensions).

Waow, I love the concept, thanks for the pointer, talk about productivity !

Quote from: rthrash

Now that Parallels makes booting a native-hardware speed XP instance while running inside OS X without rebooting a simple reality for those times you really need an XP app, there’s really little reason to not give it a shot. Heck, if you absolutely decide you don’t like OS X, just fire up boot camp and permanently boot XP. But I bet not only will you like it, but you’ll just fall in love with it.

I sure won’t boot XP, why should I do that ?
Except as a second boot system to run XP apps...

Newbie question : is OS X as virus free as Linux distros ?

Quote from: Mark at May 31, 2006, 09:37 PM

I can’t believe I’m about to write this as a longtime PC user... I love my MacBook Pro! The hardware itself is spectacular... I don’t know how to put it to words. Its a nearly perfect design. Via OS X I can get things done faster than ever before with a plethora of unique applications designed with UI in mind. Best of all it boots in <30 seconds which makes it all the better. If you are fed up with PC quirks try out a Mac. I’m not saying I will never fire up my PC again, but I’ve made the switch...

Thanks Mark for the testimony, from an ex-pc user that’s nice to know you’re happy with the switch !
Productivity is indeed in my mind

Quote from: Carsten at May 31, 2006, 10:12 PM

make the jump! I’m batting pretty well in regards to all of those that I’ve converted!

The credit card is the one who has to make the jump , my mind has been screaming to make this jump for a while in fact !

Quote from: The at May 31, 2006, 11:03 PM

I was in your shoes until a month or two ago when I got a 15" MacBook Pro (2GB RAM). I originally got it because I had 2 WinTel notebooks die, and had just resoldered the AC adapter jack onto the motherboard of one (only to have it break again)...

You got 2Gb RAM too ? Hmmmm....

I know the feeling about PC Laptop dying... mine is dying off slowly after one year of extensive (but careful) use... first to die was the burner, I can still read CDs and DVDs but not burn them Then the keyboard exhibited some signs of keys getting "tired", then the ventilator started making more and more noise...

My hope with Mac is not only OSX related, it’s also getting a much better build quality (is it ?)

Quote from: The

Anyway, after 3 days I was a die-hard Mac fanatic. I have a Athlon dual-core with 2GB RAM and 2x24" widescreen LCD Dell monitors, and I don’t even use it anymore. The MacBook is just so fast and stable. Only times it’s crashed (3 times total, I think) were when running WinXP in Parallels. Never, ever bogs down. I can go weeks without a restart, while I have to restart my XP box every day.

As stable as LInux then (but I would expect that, OS X being derived of *nix) !

Quote from: The

Only program I couldn’t live without that wasn’t mentioned already is Virtue, the most amazing virtual desktop manager ever. It just works, and it works fast and beautifully. Other than that: If you need to run Illustrator, don’t. It’s horrifically slow on the MacBook. It’s also really slow in a Parallels install of WinXP. (If you use Boot Camp, it’s nice and fast.) Word is pretty slow too, but usable for light stuff. There really isn’t a good replacement for Irfanview, but Graphic Converter is ok. There’s nothing that really takes WinSCP’s place, but Interarchy is pretty solid (I don’t really like Transmit), and you can tie it in with TextMate to get some auto-upload on save going. Dreamweaver is horribly slow as well.

Thanks Brett for getting into details about apps, that’s one concern especially after some reviews I have read stating that MacBook Pro is slow with all application requiring Rosetta, while Universal Applications were running faster as expected...

Quote from: The

And something that I never realized about the Mac OS: IMHO it’s actually geared much more for power users than XP is.

Now you’re startling me... I thought I’d have to give away part of the tweaking I have gotten used to do with Windows... that’s good news !

Quote from: The

It’s far more customizable. Example: In XP, you’re stuck with the same stupid "favorites" in every save dialog box (on the left side, you know... My Computer, My Documents, Desktop, Network, etc.). On the Mac, you can add and remove anything from that box whenever you want. So when I’m working on ProjectA, I add that folder to the "favorites sidebar" and I have immediate access to that location whenever I open or save a file.

Funny you mention this, since I have been more and more upset with this shortcoming of Windows ! A little thing, but a time saver indeed... good example !

I have tested Vista time and again and to me, it’s sugar coating and desperate (and unsuccessful) effort to close the gap with OS X...

Quote from: The

So overall, my advice is this: The price difference is worth every penny and maybe more. I never would have thought so three months ago, but I’m so much more productive on the MacBook than I could possibly be on WinXP. I hope that helps. I love my Mac!

Yeah it does help very much, but it won’t help my bank account

I have made several calculations on apple online store. The gap between a 15 inch 2,16GHz and 17 inch MacBook Pro is not that huge (200 € VAT) if you want a 7200rpm hard disk (the 17inch offers a 100 GB 7200 rpm hard drive at no additionnal cost instead of the 120Gb 5400 rpm drive...). Aside from the screen size difference, there is a dual layer 8x burner, +1 USB port and +1 Firewire 800 port...

I’m thinking to switch in septemeber whien my bank account will be ready

I target the iMac DuoCore 17p, and I notice that upgrading Hard Drive or Memory is very expensive on the Apple Store. There is a big difference with adding an external HD (or change it) and memory in the Apple Distributor net.

It also seems finding memory outside of apple might be an issue, it seems Crucial and OCW brands work with Macs. In France, those are hard to find... it means I have to go through apple to get those 2Gb RAM and also the 7200 rpm HDD (else I’ll loose warranty, it seems...)...

The pretty steep price of expanding is still bugging me, it means I have to go straight to the max config... I WANT to but when I see the price tag it makes me think again... I think a 15 inch, 2Gb, 7200rpm MacBook Pro is a more "reasonnable" choice than the 17 inches after all... the only thing I wonder is how the 128Mb VRAM gap on the ATI chip will affect things in the long run (yeah, to get 256Mb VRAM you gotta choose the 2,16GHz MacBookPro , with Mac OS X visual effects and all... I’d feel more comfortable with 256Mb VRAM if OS X get more power hungry...)

Quote from: davidm at Jun 01, 2006, 05:29 AM

It also seems finding memory outside of apple might be an issue, it seems Crucial and OCW brands work with Macs. In France, those are hard to find... it means I have to go through apple to get those 2Gb RAM and also the 7200 rpm HDD (else I’ll loose warranty, it seems...)...

Try to read "Science et Vie Micro MAC" or "Vous et votre mac", in the advertising there are many afordable solutions. I found 1Go memory for the same price of the 512Mo on the apple store. Normaly, you can add Memory (and may be change the harware) without loosing warranty