Thinking of entering Mac-world

[2SkodaFamily]

I've always been a Windows user, with the exception of some odd work-related stuff with Unix and QNX. I'm thinking of dipping my toes into the Mac world as I'm a bit disappointed with Windows 10.

 

The idea is that I would have a permanent computer at home for when I'm working at home. I don't like working off a laptop at home and I certainly don't want to be plugging and unplugging monitors etc every time I come and go.

 

The only thing that may put a spanner in the works is my work tasks are browser-based and written for Chrome. I really don't want to shell out hundreds on a Mac and then find that my work stuff doesn't run on the Mac properly.

 

Cheeky request - has anyone got an old but relatively recent iMac or Mac mini (or I suppose a Macbook, as I guess it's OS X I'm testing) that I could borrow or buy cheaply?

[mbames]

If your tasks are all browser based, then changing the host OS isn't really going to much, imho

 

What is the matter with Windows 10 which makes you feel disappointed?  It might be cheaper and easier to attempt to address those than buy an (expensive) mac.

[2SkodaFamily]

I just don't like the UI or the constant faffing with drivers etc. It feels to me like Windows 10 either isn't finished, or designed on a faulty premise.

[Lady Elanore]

Most of my pooters are still on Windows 7 I upgraded one laptop to Windows 10 out of interest and now have to click twice as much - or more - to accomplish the same things as in 7 :(

[Tom_vRS]

I bought a MacBook Air about 2 years ago and haven't looked back. I find it very intuitive and don't regret it one bit.

[roughrider10]

I moved to a 27" Mac just over 2 years ago, absolutely love it, have my iPad and iPhone 6+ which all work together faultlessly, but I also purchased a Lenovo 17" Laptop a while back, now upgraded to Windows 10, the laptop is purely for running my Microsoft Flight Sim, I have had every version of Windows, always suffered problems of some sort or another, where as with the Mac, faultless.

[Dean-]

Depends what you do..

I spent £1900 last year on the MacBook Pro and in my job being a techie it just wasn't fitted for me, I found the first thing I were doing were running VM fusion for Windows 10 to them do my work needed which is why I sold up.

VERY nice laptop though...

[djswivel]

I bought a macbook pro back in 2012. 

 

Couldn't get on with the OS at all and within about 3 months I had it bootcamped into Windows.

 

It's still going and it is a well built bit of kit, but it's also still running Windows (10 now, been upgraded).

[2SkodaFamily]

An entry level Mac Mini is £399 which compares reasonably against a Windows desktop. I love the the look of iMac but I'm instinctively nervous about all-in-one machines. I've seen too many machines fail in so many different ways to have all my eggs in one basket like that.

[gullyg]

If you know anyone who is a student Apple give decent discounts and, sort of a 3 year warranty.

As Dean says it depends on what you do and what you want to do. Some things Windows is better for as there's either no software or the software for OSX isn't great.

Personally I use both at home but I tend to use OSX for personal use and Windows for playing with stuff for work.

The issue for someone starting with Mac is they're expensive and hold their value much better than most other computers. If you can get down to the Apple Store you can play but it's unlikely they'll let you install software and you wouldn't want to do anything personal on them.

[mbames]

I just don't like the UI or the constant faffing with drivers etc. It feels to me like Windows 10 either isn't finished, or designed on a faulty premise.

 

Ok, if you hate the UI there isn't much which can be done (but it is pretty much the same as 7, and 8....  It might take some getting use to the mac style of desktop, so you might end up with a purchase and an UI you still hate.

 

Not sure why you have to faff around with drivers, I haven't on any of the machines I have running win 10 (PCS desktop, HP desktop, HP Laptop, Lenovo laptop, and a couple of tablets), generally from the RTM versions, or what ever I can get my hands on through MSDN.

[CWARD]

I have MacBook Air and Pro as well as running a Desktop PC (Windows 10) and the wife with a PC laptop (Windows 10).  The MacBooks are both dual boot with Windows 10 too. Having been a PC user since Windows 3.1 I have no issues with version 10 but each to their own. It's been rock solid stable with no crashes, feels snappier than El Captain on the MacBooks. If I have serious work to do then guaranteed I'll be on a PC to do it.

If you think moving to a Mac will mean no crashes you will disappointed as they are not immune and they receive their fair share of updates too. The are very nicely built but at the price you expect that anyway. 

I don't find any operating system better than the other but must say Microsoft latest offering makes the Apple operating system feel a bit dated now. You will probably find moving over from Windows to Mac frustrating at first but stick with it and learn the keyboard short cuts which make live so much easier.

[2SkodaFamily]

 

Not sure why you have to faff around with drivers, I haven't on any of the machines I have running win 10 (PCS desktop, HP desktop, HP Laptop, Lenovo laptop, and a couple of tablets), generally from the RTM versions, or what ever I can get my hands on through MSDN.

Getting my HP wireless printer, and my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse working on my HP Windows 10 laptop was a pain in the arse. Windows installed a basic driver automatically but I didn't get full functionality until I installed the manufacturers driver.

[Lady Elanore]

I've had a couple more days to play with windows 10 to see if I can get more comfortable with it. Nope! I hate it even more. It is designed for fat fingered screen smudgers!

 

 

Arghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

 

 

and breath :(

[2SkodaFamily]

Anyone local to East Yorkshire got a Mac I can borrow for a couple of days please?

[StevesTruck]

I know it's my perpetual answer. But give Linux Mint a try. It's free, Chrome works on it, and it's like the older versions of Windows in that it just sits there and works.

[2SkodaFamily]

I've got a laptop running Ubuntu which I do like, but anything you have to run command line to do anything doesn't belong in the 21st century I'm afraid. I'm guessing any other Linux derivatives are the same?

To clarify: when I refer to the command line, it seems that some permissions, system commands and other stuff still has to be done by command line.

Edited 8 February, 2016 by 2SkodaFamily

[StevesTruck]

Not really no, you can use Mint all day long as an office machine and never open a shell prompt. Just use Software Manager in the menu to choose software and install it, it's a bit like using the Play Store on Android.

[Lady Elanore]

Anyone local to East Yorkshire got a Mac I can borrow for a couple of days please?

I'd try a kagool until this rain passes.

[gadgetman]

I've had a couple more days to play with windows 10 to see if I can get more comfortable with it. Nope! I hate it even more. It is designed for fat fingered screen smudgers!

Arghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

and breath :(

It's actually very close to Windows 7 but takes bits of 8.1 should you have a touchscreen laptop or tablet.

There's a lot of the bits you can disable which gets it closer to Windows 7 interface if you're not on a touchscreen device.

As for drivers, my HP machine automatically downloaded the HP printer suite when it updated to 10 without any intervention at all.

In fact only the HP diagnostic app was disabled as not 10 compliant, but it's since updated itself - again without any intervention on my part.

Previous windows versions could run incorrect drivers quite well, but 8.1 & 10 seem to need it to be 100% for your hardware otherwise it fails during update to 10. Most driver issues when upgrading were always there, it's just previous windows managed to cope and get by.

Like my in laws touch pad on their laptop. They had a driver from the manufacturer but not for the hardware version they had. Worked fine in 7,windows 10 disabled the mouse pad until it had the exact driver for the hardware in the laptop.

[Lady Elanore]

Its the little things I miss. If I am on my lappy and want to change the power settings I click on the battery/power indicator and have the option to reduce consumption there and then. If I do it in W10 its a further few clicks away. I want to get to the colour profiles for various monitors and in W7 it's relatively easy, with windows 10 it's quickest (and annoying) to type stuff into the search box and see what might come up. I like W7 and hate W10 with a passion :(

 

 

I still have 2 laptops which are on W7 and desktop also on W7, they will never receive the W10 update, ever!

Edited 8 February, 2016 by Lady Elanore

[fabiamk2SE]

I bought a Macbook Pro a few months ago. I've never had one before and did do a thread about it at the time as i didnt know what to do! 

 

Confident that i made the right decision. It's absolutely brilliant. Everything is so easy and alot of it almost seems like the common sense way to do things. However that may be because i've had Iphones for years now. 

 

It just does everything so well. Its so well made too. 

 

I love it  

[Britbusdriver]

Take a look at the refurbished stuff on the Apple site. The had MacMinis (not a burger) for, iirc, £339 a while back. I'm in the same boat - there's also a lot of used stuff on eBay, but that's an expensive punt.

[2SkodaFamily]

Yes the refurbished from Apple are decent and still with a years warranty I think?

[swedishskoda]

I know it's my perpetual answer. But give Linux [Mint] a try. It's free, Chrome works on it, and it's like the older versions of Windows in that it just sits there and works.

 

Seconded. Again and again. Although one may encounter trouble when connecting to various hardware accessories, or even when trying to get bluetooth to work properly. The snag with Linux is that you become dependent on enthusiasts' development of necessary drivers, and they may be hard to find. I have an old Epson flatbed scanner - using it under Windows is piece of cake (when scanning 35 mm film strips it even separate the frames to indivudual image files) but under Linux it's a terror.

 

Basically it's a matter of "If you can't control it you don't own it". And you can't control Apple products (even MS is better in that respect). But of course theree's a learning curve, and if you don't have the time or the interest maybe it's not worth it.

 

IMHO, Apple's strength lies in hardware design (but not necessarily reliability). Their products look cool. But with my recently acquired Lenovo laptop (that cost a fraction of a macbook) with AbsoluteLinux (slackware distro) I feel almost as cool.

 

Control is the reason why I stick to slackware instead of any ubuntu variety (hence the brackets I added to the quote above), even if it means that I may have to wait a bit for the latest version of various applications/programs if I don't want to build packages from source. If you really want to be on the forefront Fedora might be the way to go, but in my experience there's a huge risk that your system will crash if you install all available updates from the official repo, making you feel like a MS user again...

Edited 11 February, 2016 by swedishskoda