PC to MAC--six months on

Last summer I started a series of blog entries that turned out to be my most commented upon posts. It was about my transition from PC to Mac. It's six months later—here's the report.

There were barriers to making the transition earlier. A big one was cost. Like just about everyone starting out in the profession, I was pretty much broke and living hand to mouth. The premium of a Mac was too much of a barrier. So I learned Windows. I never knew different. Anytime I had to work on a Mac, I was disoriented and frustrated. Why can't this thing behave like a computer should? Where's the right mouse button, for crying out loud?

I never understood this alleged superiority of Macs for photography. My Photoshop seemed to work just fine. And I couldn't stand the arrogance and the cult-like attitude of the Mac crowd which reached its apotheosis in the Mac-PC guy ads. Who could possibly like that smug, hipster poser dude? I identified with the dork.

If I were to look at myself now from a year ago, I would be shaking my head and mutttering, “They got him. He's joined the cult.”

The Macs I have now are the best computers I've ever owned. The moment I handled my Macbook Pro I realized that it was faster and more powerful than any desktop I ever owned, and the screen was equal to my high end CRT display and much easier on the eyes. A week later I ordered a Macpro to replace the desktop.

I had a Getty Images windfall that month, so I could afford this. I got a book, and started figuring out the OS. And I quickly realized, for what I do, the Mac is way better. Adobe applications are lightning fast. The file organization structure took some getting used to, but now when I use a PC I'm annoyed that I can see only one drive and the contents of one folder at a time in an Explorer box.

There are annoyances, and some were costly. My laserprinter (Canon 5550) didn't speak Mac, so I traded with Robin. Hers didn't play nice either, so I had to order a replacement printer.  My digital voice recorder was history. I'd go into a computer store or Office Depot and look at how many things only plug into a PC.

The OS is still not completely natural for me. It is still a problem for me to tell where I am.  On a PC, the active window is where you are. No confusion. The signal strength for which program is active is much weaker on a Mac. I have, more than once, been printing out DVD disks, and find that I've been printing out email messages instead on my disks.

Some programs, like Quicken for Mac, break up the elements of the program into a bunch of separate boxes, so you really have no idea where you are, and not a great chance of getting the right thing active without launching into someplace unexpected. In Photoshop the first thing I do is punch the F key to go to full screen mode, which gets to be a bother when you've got multiple files open. I've since gotten Parallels and Windows XP to run my old Quicken program, as well as my old Word 97 and Excel 97 programs. I tried the later versions of both, and hated them. These seem to run better and with less complaint in XP on the Mac.

Networking seemed to be much easier for me on PCs than Macs. Once you went through the arcane procedure to set up network shares, they were cast in concrete and always there. On Macs it's been a much more hit or miss affair, with several visits by expensive techs to set it up properly. And I can only go one direction in file transfers—I still can't dump files from the desktop to the laptop via the network. One day, for no apparent reason, the file transfer system broke down completely. I'd be a gigabyte into a transfer, and I'd get the “You don't have sufficient permissions” error.  The next day the problem was gone.

I can still crash both computers regularly. For a time, my Apple Mail program would fritz out, until I deleted a message in the Inbox that must have had some distasteful code. On the laptop I've been converting a batch of old videotapes to DVD through iMovie for my mother in law (John Ciardi lectures from 1982, when she brought him to the University of Northern Kentucky). After about every fifth tape the entire computer crashes with that faded out screen and that polite message about a catastrophic crash, in a tone that tries not to be unduly alarming, that you must restart the computer now please.

 

Then there was the whole mass storage debacle of trying to set up a RAID box, then a JOBOD box, and then anything that would use a sata cable. I stumped a lot of experts on that one.

I am still getting used to how Macs handle file organization. On PCs you have to be organized and know where you put things. It's something the computer asked of you all the time. “Where do you want this to go? Is that really where you want it to go? Really? You sure now?” Macs seem geared to a kind of intelligence that doesn't care where anything lives. It is still a mystery to me how file downloads over the web are handled. There's no dialog box asking me what to do with a file download. It just happens, and it goes wherever it goes, and sometimes something pops up and tells me what to do next, or it doesn't. I operate on a kind of faith that everything will turn out well in the end.

Nonetheless, whenever I have to fix something on Robin's machine, I mutter ever time, “I'm going to get you a Mac and make this easier.”

And every time Robin uses my laptop, she finds cause to yell, “I hate your computer! I don't know how to do anything!”

Comments

[Paul]

Doug, I found this post quite amusing. While on vacation, I had the occasion to use Mac. It was quite the experience. My friend just purchased one. For the entire first day of usage, I was totally lost and frustrated beyond belief. I was trying to figure out how to get his Mac connected to his PC and, all the while, trying to figure out, as you did, which land did those mysterious downloads inhabit. I never did figure that out! I did, however, figure out how to connect the two and get files from the PC over to the Mac.

Although I am not a big Microsoft fan, I think that I'll stick with the PC. I used his computer for about a week and didn't see any real advantage to converting. Perhaps, if I used it more, I'd see an advantage, but, all one has to do is go to any store and see what's available for the PC vs. the Mac.

It was an enjoyable read of, what I'm sure was, a frustrating time!

[Dave Kosiur]

I could tell you a lot about networking Macs -- I wrote 2 books on networking Macs way back when... but that's another story (and another life). As long as you turn on Personal File Sharing on both Macs in the Sharing Prefs, you can mount any drive from the other Mac and send or retrieve files. Once you mount the volume, you can create an alias, then all you have to do at later times is double-click the alias to mount the volume.

For quick-and-dirty file transfers, take a look at DropCopy (http://10base-t.com/premier.html). It's free and easily support sending files from one Mac to another.

More questions? Send me an email.

D

[Dave Kosiur]

OK, here's another tip --

You wrote: "It is still a mystery to me how file downloads over the web are handled. There's no dialog box asking me what to do with a file download."

You get to select the folder where you want downloads to go by setting the preferences in Safari. (Other browsers on the Mac, such as FIrefox, have a similar option that's set in their preferences.) In Safari's preferences, you can also set whether a downloaded file will be automatically expanded or not.

[Doug Plummer]

Dave,

Oh if only file transfers were as easy as you describe. I just did a test. All my settings are where you say they ought to be. Some files I can transfer just fine from my laptop to my desktop. Then I want to move one of those .mov files I've been working on to the desktop, and I get the "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items." Yet if I go the other direction and grab the same file from the desktop, there's no problem. There's no reason nor rhyme to it, it Just Happens that way.

[Dave Kosiur]

I'm not sure I was able to follow everything you wrote (in your reply to my post).

1) You copy a .mov file from your laptop to your desktop machine.

2) What's your next step? It sounds like you're trying to move other .mov files to your desktop, in a way different from #1?

3) And then the last step you described is to transfer a file from the desktop back (?) to your laptop? Or are we mixing "desktops" (as in the FInder) and "desktop machines"?

Send me more details and I'll see what I can suggest.

[Doug Plummer]

Yes, that wording was a little confusing. Here's the scenario.

There is a file on my laptop that I want to move to my desktop. If I log into the network from the desktop, I can move that file from the laptop with no problem. If I log into the network from the laptop, and try and move that same file from the laptop to the desktop, then I get the error.

[dave Kosiur]

These are both Macs? If so, what do you mean by "logging into the network"? If they're both Macs, you'd be logging into one or the other Mac as a server. Some Windows networks require logging into the network, but Macs don't -- they ask that you log onto a specific computer to use its services.

Off the top of my head, the one thing that might pose a problem is that you might not have equal user privileges on both computers. If you have different user accounts on the two machines, the laptop user's account may not have write privileges for the desktop machine. If you're trying to send your file to a specific folder on the desktop machine, you might try "Get Info" on the folder on the desktop machine to see what the privileges are set to. (If one of the two machines is a Windows machine, checking privileges is a bit more involved...)

Hope this helps.

[Doug Plummer]

Sorry, my brain still works in Windows mode when discussing my Macs. I'm new to this "country". I meant to say, yes, I'm logging into each computer from the other (they're both Macs) when I say I'm logging into the network. Since I cloned one machine to the other when I set them up, the user accounts should be identical. I've since deleted my mov files from the laptop so I can't check the permissions on those specific files, so it could be some super-small, obscure, hidden setting in the permissions that I don't know about. All I know is that sometimes it works and I have no problem, and sometimes it doesn't, and I haven't a clue why.

[Dennis Allshouse]

A couple of further notes: The menu bar will always tell you what program is in the foreground. The window menu of that app will let you change windows. If you haven't already, get a 2 button mouse, Macally makes a nice one. Then you will have right clicking. I wouldn't get an Apple Mighty Mouse: the scroll ball while way cool doesn't hold up under constant use. I'm on my second copy have trouble scrolling down. Best wishes!