Moving from PC to Mac (and a few opinions)

Friday, 18 December 2009 16:24

Written by Simon Olsen

I've now had the iMac at work and a Mac Book Pro to and from work for about 3 months now, maybe more. Before that I was running a desktop PC with 2GB RAM and 2.45GHz. I hadn't used a Mac since I was at Uni.

I decided that this change was an excellent idea. I did not need a "Hello, I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC" ad to help me come to this decision. While they are funny and clever, those ads, in my opinion, don't actually explain why Macs are better than PCs. They just point out flaws and misconceptions. Clever, but nasty marketing using cheap shots to sell their products. Not informative.

I do my best not to fall for that bull-shit.

Now I used to believe that spending all that extra money on a Mac was a waste. You were just paying for cleverly marketed, colourful computers. I could buy just as powerful a PC for less money. I still believe so, but there is a little asterisk and disclaimer with that statement now. So, *.

Before I get into that, I'll explain what factors drove us to the decision to make the move across the platform divide.

Factor 1: I'm a designer. I design, and have designed, many things: web, graphics, print, web, Flash, multimedia, DVDs, web, posters, sculptures, smart arse answers... web. The list goes on.

As my workplace moved (and still moves) with the changing face that is campaigning on- and off-line, I found myself doing a lot more video and multimedia. I also found myself crossing back and forth between more apps.

As I designed, I learned, and as I learned, I used more tools, and i used more tools, I found bigger tools. All the while my poor little PC was being filled with apps, filters, plug-ins, add-ons, and extras. It also had to handle my constant back and forth between all of these. Illustrator to Photoshop, to Flash, to After Effects, to some weird little movie encoder.

As time went on, the time waiting to travel between these application destinations got longer and longer.

So whether or not it was a Mac or PC, it was definitely time to upgrade to something faster and with more room.

It was also time for Design Premium CS3 to become Master Collection CS4 (I giggle with fiendish glee thinking about CS4). Another reason to upgrade.

Factor 2: I got to spend some time with a Mac Book of a co-worker's. The basic video stuff this thing produced was excellent! And it would rip the 1080p AVCHD right out of the camera into iMovie in minutes and you'd be off and editing in real-time. For my PC, I had to use a Panasonic app that came with the camera, rip the movie to MPEG over a 25 min period. The MPEG was only compatible for editing with Roxio, which crashed all the time, so I had to convert it again, which could take an hour, with major loss of quality (not including the loss of quality converting to MPEG). Then I could finally start doing some editing, which I could never watch the original footage until I had rendered a test... this is getting boring, I know, but you see my point: really bloody tedious and time consuming.

While Windows Movie Maker, in my opinion (it's my blog, I can have as many opinions as I want!), is just as good as iMovie for basic video editing done quickly, a major flaw is the lack of support for AVCHD, which would cover pretty much any hard-disk video camera. All that converting... urgh!

This was compared to the following happening on the Mac, as perceived by me.

Step 1: rip video off camera
Step 2: edit
Step 3: insert YouTube login details
Step 4: watch video and send URL to friends

Elapsed time, not including editing: 35 mins approximately.

If I was to really get into video, professionally and privately, it was a no brainer; Mac was kicking PC's BIOS in this department!

Factor 3: Despite our office staying XP and Exchange 2003, there was one computer, a laptop, I was using with Vista installed on it.

Observe the following formula.

Vista + Exchange 2003 + Adobe Design Premium CS3 + piss-ant Intel Core chip = does-not-compute-or-run-at-a-speed-that-you-can-seriously-consider-doing-any-work-that-features-a-deadline.

So yes, despite knowing at the time that Windows 7 was eventually coming, I got jilted by Vista. Anyone else out there, much? [Leave bad Vista experience in the comments below.]

Factor 4: "Hey, let's change platforms. Just to be random. Could be fun!"

So now a shiny 24" iMac sits on my desk at work, and frequently over my shoulder is the strap of a laptop case containing a Mac Book Pro, both with Adobe Master Collection CS4 installed (yes, still giggling fiendishly).

I am very happy with the change over, but one thing needs to be said.

Timing is a bitch! Not only did Windows 7 get released to the public not long after we got the Macs, the new 27" iMac got released. One could have possibly stopped me going cross-platform, the other could have given me 3 extra inches.

Yes, you're already deciding which would be the best joke to insert here, you dirty little...

So after all this, what can I offer you in way of advice. Observe the following:

* Here's my asterisk. Remember the saying, Horses for courses? If you're going to do some high-end rendering, colour-keying, and various other tricky things with video, or you need to move fairly seamlessly between InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, it's worth the cash you'll fork out for that glowing little piece for fruit on the top or back. If you're just going to be sending emails, checking Facebook and writing up the odd Word or Excel doc, save your cash and get a PC. Shit, get a Netbook! Even easier to carry around and even cheaper! It'll work more than fine! Additionally, when something goes wrong with it, you'll find 100 friends to help you fix it compared to the 1 who'll kind of know what to do with a Mac that's gone burko.

Use a PC like a PC and a Mac like a Mac. It's very easy to try and work a Mac like a PC if you've just made the change over, but you just run into a lot of brick walls. It's not a PC. It's similar, like a spoon is to a fork. But they both have their uses which are slightly different.

Yes. You can upgrade Adobe Creative Suite across platforms. I have done it, twice. Both times, I spent a lot of time on the phone to a call centre in India confirming serial keys to people who didn't quite understand my mid-north-coast-of-NSW accent, but the main thing is I did it.

No, I will not upgrade your Adobe CS across platforms for you. It wasn't fun. Go f$%# yourself.

If you use computers in a web and design capacity you will immediately need to know the following.

Instead of Notepad, use TextMate
Instead of WinSCP, use Cyberduck
Instead of Roxio/Windows Movie Maker, use iMovie
Instead of burning programs like Roxio and Nero, right click the selected file/s and/or the CD/DVD you've inserted. Snow Leopard doesn't have or need a burning program
Instead of one of the hundreds of good DVD ripping programs on PC, use Handbrake
Instead of the one of the ten good screen capture programs on PC, use iShowU HD
Instead of Office 2007, use Mac Office 2008, get disappointed with Entourage and the interfaces of the other Mac Office apps after you've spent almost a year getting your head around the Office 2007 interface and had finally realised it was actually faster, better and easier to use than that featured in Office 2003 and below, then proceed to eagerly await the release of Mac Office 2010 which will do away with Entourage and use Outlook finally

Remember that there are still billions of PC users that still view things in 1024 x 768 monitors when testing your websites.

Also be mindful that their colour is not as rich, so when using CMYK, black that is 100% K and 100% M may look like a reddish black to you converted to HEX, but will look shit-house to them.

Remember to watch my video tutorial on transferring your iTunes from one computer to another if you own an iPod or iPhone. I may be blowing my own trumpet and having another opinion, but using Home Sharing is still the best way to do it.

Get ready for a fun time connecting your Mac to an Exchange server! Sorry, I haven't installed a web-safe sarcasm font into this website yet, so just to be clear, that last observation is, indeed, sarcastic.

Seriously, Snow Leopard may say it's better integrated with Exchange than Leopard, but no one I know administers an Exchange 2007 domain. We are communicating with our Windows 2003 Servers, but I'm sure there are a few things missing.

Keep an old PC tower handy, have it attached to your network and use Mac Remote Desktop to connect to it. I know there are emulators you can install on a Mac that let you assign HDD space and RAM to it so you can run your Mac like a PC, but please refer to my first point. You're better off (yes, yet another opinions) having RDC on a Mac to hook into the PC tower, logging in and testing websites on that PC in multiple PC browsers, mainly IE8 for those who unfortunately haven't been intro'd to Firefox.

Finally, STAY CROSS PLATFORM! Please don't become a "I used to have a PC, now I own a Mac and I'm sooooooo happy. I'll NEVER go back!" person. Aside from these people annoying me as much as the cheap-shot marketing of Apple mentioned before, being skilled across the platforms surely would have its advantages. You never know where you'll be, or what you'll be double clicking with.

Another massive blog, so I'll leave it at that. I'm sure I will bring up differences between the platforms in future blogs. For now, let me know your experiences going across to Mac or PC, or question you may have if you're thinking of doing it.

And if you bring that "Macs look pretty" or "My friend has one, so I want one" shit in here, expect a sarcastic/nasty/this-is-not-the-Dolly-magazine-website response from myself and hopefully others.