Two months ago, I switched to a MacBook Pro. Am I feeling the Mac love yet?
Sorta.
The transition from PC to Mac is not easy. Everything seems backward, nothing is automatic, you must think about everything. So, let me walk you through some of the changes.
Why Change?
I switched to a Mac because, my old PC was eight years old. Ancient. Prehistoric. The processor—which was once young and strong—was antiquated. I was running WindowsXP, like half the computers in the world today, but Microsoft recently announced that with the new Windows 8 operating system coming out this fall, they will no longer support XP.
Worse, I am doing more and more video and my PC kept hanging up. The old processor wasn’t designed to handle 1080HD video. See my YouTube page (youtube.com/DarcyPattison) for some of my recent videos. I’m planning more for this fall.
Once I decided to get a new computer, it was up in the air: Mac or PC.
PCs were cheaper. But I was definitely in the iPhone halo; I love my iPhone and wondered what Macs would be like. I went to our local Apple store and blatantly told the salesman, “I am a PC person; convince me.”
Wow, that salesman was great.
Basically, what I expected is that Macs would handle video and photos in a cleaner way than PC. That’s the main reason I changed.
Making the Switch
One immediate purchase was Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion version. It is, indeed, the missing manual and should be required reading when making this switch. It explained the difference in keyboards: I still stumble over Mac’s missing “Delete” key (reverse delete), but I’m dealing with it. It explained where files are kept and the structure of the files. It explained and explained until I started to understand and could function again.
Technology Binge
I downloaded programs and generally went on a technology binge: I bought a Wacom pen tablet ( to do videoscribing and play with digital art, a Bose headset for computer work and travel, and a Samson Meteor microphone to do webinars, tape audio for video and for podcasting.
Painted on my new Wacom pen tablet.
I am using MicrosoftWord for Mac, Aperture photo organization program, Thunderbird for Email, Firefox for browsing, FinalCutPro for video editing, Audacity and GarageBand for audio editing. I am playing with my new pen tablet and may eventually download Corel’s Picture 12 drawing program. Everything works fine, few hang ups, and those Add a Comment