After booting up for the first time it stood out to me that there wasn’t a longwinded setup process, nor was there any pre-installed junk on the machine. No advertising links on the desktop, no “free” Norton antivirus and best of all no drivers to install.
By default, the Mac is pretty secure. But with the help of a couple of built-in options, you can make it even more so. Topher Kessler explains.
The machine was ready to go out of the box, which is a nice change from setting up a Windows PC. The applications that are bundled with Mavericks are pretty fantastic, Mail and Calendar work great. Messages integration with iMessage is perfect — especially if you have an iPhone — as is the Notes application and Reminders, which all work well together. For the last year I’ve been using Windows 8, which is a great OS but the bundled ‘modern’ applications aren’t anywhere near as well-rounded comparatively and really require a touchscreen to make them useful, so having beautiful built-in apps is a nice change. Unified notifications and the Notification Center are well-built pieces of functionality that leave me wondering why Microsoft still hasn’t added anything similar to Windows yet. I’m bad at clearing alerts from it, but at least I can catch what I’ve missed easily rather than going hunting for it.
Spotlight search is extremely powerful and gives you access to everything on the computer in a second. It’s lightning fast and the indexing engine behind it is extremely fast, whereas I’ve found Windows’ search to be slow and generally disappointing (especially when searching large folders of documents).
On the productivity front, it’s liberating to be free of Microsoft Office altogether. I’ve never been particularly fond of the slow, bloated feel of the desktop applications and barely use many of the more advanced features.
The OS X mail application works with my Microsoft Exchange email, Pages can open any Word documents I’m sent and Numbers is perfectly fine with Excel spreadsheets. Occasionally there’s a snag converting a document but it’s nothing Google Drive can’t fix. Spaces are literally changing the way I work on my laptop, too. They’re great for helping separate projects from each other or work apps from personal apps. I keep one open with Mail, Twitter and other social networks and others for work and just switch between them as required.
Being able to separate work applications from personal ones is powerful for helping focus on the task at hand. I’m extremely impressed with power management more than anything else. Apple says that the 15″ Retina MacBook will last around eight hours on battery and have found that Apple’s estimates are pretty accurate; I can get just over 8 hours when using Safari instead of Chrome for browsing the web and avoiding heavy energy draining applications. Mavericks makes this easy by pointing out which applications are using ‘significant energy’ in the battery menu. I’ve never had a Windows laptop that’s managed to get such extreme battery life out of a single charge.
It’s changed the way I work; I no longer need to carry a laptop charger to the cafe when I do remote work. One of the biggest concerns I had with switching to Mac was that the broad collection of games I’ve gathered wouldn’t work. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how many exist for Mac, especially with Steam’s recent push to get app developers to write for both Windows and Mac.
A good half of my collection has an official Mac version of their game, but for the other half I’ve taken to running them in a virtual machine, which works surprisingly well. In my very unscientific tests, I was able to install Civilization V in a virtual machine and play at full graphics quality without any issues with frame rate, which was impressive. I’d guess other games such as first person shooters wouldn’t work quite so well, but there’s always Apple’s own to help with that. It’s often said that Apple devices ‘just work’; something I’m finding to be true with OS X. AirPlay is especially powerful and works perfectly if you have other Apple devices (like an Apple TV) for quickly duplicating the screen with the TV for watching a movie. Other simple touches in OS X, such as having a centralised contacts directory that other applications can access makes using other applications seamless. The bad There are some oddities that are painful at first.
I struggled to figure out how to rename a folder (after becoming accustomed to using F2 in Windows to do it) and only discovered how after pressing the enter key to open a folder resulted in it being renamed. There’s also the jumbled keyboard keys — ⌘ instead of CTRL, for example — screwing up 20 years of shortcuts that two decades of muscle memory will struggle to forget. The other thing that I found confusing is the way that applications are installed. On Windows, everyone is accustomed to using a setup wizard but I’ve found it’s rare to encounter those on Mac. Instead, you have this odd metaphor where you mount a fake drive (DMG files) and then drag the app to the applications folder. Of course, this isn’t actually explained to you and at first I was just running everything out of my downloads folder.
That said, applications that are installed using the Mac App Store simply install themselves without requiring any drag-ad-drop or DMG mounting. Obviously this is Apple’s preferred method of distribution but I’ve found many application developers aren’t using it yet. I’m still yet to figure out how to manage windows properly without Windows’ “snap” functionality which allows you to drag an application to the side of the screen and it will automatically take up half of the screen. The OS X “maximize” button doesn’t seem to actually work properly and infuriatingly tends to just stretch an app up and down.
There is a full screen button, indicated by two arrows on the upper right of a window, which essentially maximizes the window but hides all others behind a type of ‘stage’ view. I also ran into trouble with Boot Camp since it doesn’t support Windows 8.1 yet and was unable to install it. Apple is notoriously slow at updating to support new releases. In the end, I got it working by installing Windows 8 then upgrading to 8.1. Read on for the best Mac apps I’ve discovered so far Applications Having become accustomed to Windows’ options, this was perhaps the hardest part of switching across. I didn’t know every great app off the top of my head anymore, nor is there a solution like to install all of the basics I required.
Now that I’ve settled in and found a few, I have come to the conclusion that the quality of applications on Mac compared to those on Windows is much higher in general, especially in the UI/UX department. Developers seem to put more time and thought into how users will use them and the community surrounding many of them is extremely supportive, often willing to pay a good price for a quality application. I’m only using a handful of apps so far, but here’s the ones I’ve fallen in love with: Airmail I’ve fruitlessly searched for a good quality email application for years on Windows but have never found it. Outlook is terrible and the alternatives such as Thunderbird really aren’t that great. Is the first email application that I actually love using, especially since it’s got full Exchange ActiveSync support on top of proper Gmail integration. It works great and is a steal at just or for.
➤ Twitter for Mac After religiously using for years on Windows, it was time to find something new. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Twitter’s official application for Mac; it’s really good. Not only is it good, it’s also free on the! ➤ Bartender It’s a bit strange that Apple doesn’t really offer a sanctioned way to hide applications from the menu bar, I quickly found it cluttered with icons I didn’t want to be seeing all day long. Thankfully, there’s Bartender which allows you to hide icons in a submenu or remove them altogether which helps manage clutter. But then requires a $15US one time purchase.
➤ It doesn’t have ton of features but it’s extremely useful for local web development. Anvil helps manage multiple development sites on your local machine by creating local ‘.dev’ websites you can access. Rather than mess around with config files, Anvil does the work for you.
➤ Sublime Text 3 When it comes to writing code or simply editing text, the consensus seems to be that Sublime Text is the best tool for everything and I’d agree with that statement. It’s simple but extremely powerful. Sublime Text 3 has a free, unlimited evaluation but you’ll be nagged occasionally unless you. ➤ Brackets I’ve been using Brackets on Windows ever since the first publicly-released builds, and since it’s built in CSS + HTML, it’s a truly cross platform app. Brackets is an up and coming code editor for building any sort of web application. It’s supported by Adobe and I couldn’t recommend it enough, especially since it’s. ➤ Transmit On its homepage, developer Panic calls Transmit the “ultimate” FTP application and I couldn’t agree more.
It’s extremely powerful and does so much more than just FTP, with S3 and other cloud storage supported too. It’s the best FTP app I’ve ever used, I didn’t even hesitate to buy it. Transmit has a free trial but a ➤ Cloudup I find sharing files with others a little painful, but Cloudup is the perfect solution for that. If you want to quickly share a photo, video, application or anything else, Cloudup is the best tool bar none. Because it’s based on NodeJS, it’s lightning fast and you can actually send a link to your file before it’s even finished uploading. Even better, with OS X’s awesome built in screenshot tool (⌘ + Shift + 4) it automatically uploads screenshots as you make them and copies the URL onto your clipboard. Recently acquired by, Cloudup is invitation-only until it launches, but we’re giving away invites to the first 500 readers who.
If you miss out, is a similar tool that’s also free. ➤ Parallels 9 If you’re a Windows refugee like me, you’ll want to buy Parallels’ virtualization software to run any applications or games that aren’t available on Mac. The VM runs in its own “space” when in full screen mode but you can also choose to run Windows apps on the Mac desktop natively using Coherence mode, which I love. I chose Parallels over for better graphics performance and more frequent updates. And is well worth the money. ➤ Going forward There’s lots of other modifications I’m learning about right now for OS X such as, so keep an eye out for future posts on my journey from PC to Mac. Now that I’ve switched, I don’t think I could ever go back.
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Hi everybody! I've just re-converted back to a PC after having had a macbook for the last few years. The only thing I'm missing from my Macbook is a way to view all open windows/running programs spread across the screen and pick the one I want to come to the front (see attachment).
Pressing the button, or in my case clicking the middle mouse button, darkened the background and spread every window out in a zoomed out way so you could pick whick one you want to come to the front. Clicking on that window brought it to the front, re-brightened the background and all other windows went back to their original location, order and size. It was awesome and I want it back! Is there a way to do this in Windows 7?!
Preferably I'd still like to bind this to a mouse button if possible? Also, I don't mind if this will require reliable/tested third party software. Thanks so much!
Keyboard Logitech wireless K800 Mouse Logitech MX Master PSU Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W Case Thermaltake Core P3 Cooling Corsair Hydro H115i Hard Drives 250GB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 256GB OCZ Vector 6TB WD Black WD6001FZWX Internet Speed 300 Mb/s Download and 30 Mb/s Upload Antivirus Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium Browser Google Chrome Other Info Logitech Z625 speaker system. Creative F200 webcam. Lite-On iHBS212 12x BD Writer. Samsung CLX-3175FW Printer. Linksys EA9500 Router. Arris SB6190 Cable Modem. APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL.
Keyboard Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 (USB) Mouse Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 for Business (USB) PSU XFX Pro Series 850W Semi-Modular Case Gigabyte IF233 Cooling 1 x 120mm Front Inlet 1 x 120mm Rear Exhaust Hard Drives OCZ Agility 3 SSD 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0) Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2 Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0 WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0 Internet Speed NetGear DG834Gv3 ADSL Modem/Router (Ethernet) 4.0 Mb/s (O2) Antivirus Avast! 8.0.1497 Browser IE 11 Other Info Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 SATA Bluray Lexmark S305 Printer/Scanner/Copier (USB) WEI Score: 8.1/8.1/8.5/8.5/8.25 Asus Eee PC 1011PX Netbook (Windows 7 x86 Starter). Keyboard Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 (USB) Mouse Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 for Business (USB) PSU XFX Pro Series 850W Semi-Modular Case Gigabyte IF233 Cooling 1 x 120mm Front Inlet 1 x 120mm Rear Exhaust Hard Drives OCZ Agility 3 SSD 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0) Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2 Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0 WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0 Internet Speed NetGear DG834Gv3 ADSL Modem/Router (Ethernet) 4.0 Mb/s (O2) Antivirus Avast! 8.0.1497 Browser IE 11 Other Info Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 SATA Bluray Lexmark S305 Printer/Scanner/Copier (USB) WEI Score: 8.1/8.1/8.5/8.5/8.25 Asus Eee PC 1011PX Netbook (Windows 7 x86 Starter). In mouse properties for my mouse there was no option to change button assignments, I was using a Saitek GM 1600 which has no official drivers or software and shows up as a generic mouse. However I noticed you're using a MS Intellipoint mouse which I remembered having one from an old PC.
Dug it out and d/led the software off MS's site and now I get exactly the same options screen as you showed, Dwarf. Thanks for the help Dwarf and Brink. Shame I can't use my new mouse but at least I'mn set up now! Keyboard Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 (USB) Mouse Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 for Business (USB) PSU XFX Pro Series 850W Semi-Modular Case Gigabyte IF233 Cooling 1 x 120mm Front Inlet 1 x 120mm Rear Exhaust Hard Drives OCZ Agility 3 SSD 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0) Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2 Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0 WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0 Internet Speed NetGear DG834Gv3 ADSL Modem/Router (Ethernet) 4.0 Mb/s (O2) Antivirus Avast! 8.0.1497 Browser IE 11 Other Info Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 SATA Bluray Lexmark S305 Printer/Scanner/Copier (USB) WEI Score: 8.1/8.1/8.5/8.5/8.25 Asus Eee PC 1011PX Netbook (Windows 7 x86 Starter).
Keyboard Logitech wireless K800 Mouse Logitech MX Master PSU Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W Case Thermaltake Core P3 Cooling Corsair Hydro H115i Hard Drives 250GB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 256GB OCZ Vector 6TB WD Black WD6001FZWX Internet Speed 300 Mb/s Download and 30 Mb/s Upload Antivirus Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium Browser Google Chrome Other Info Logitech Z625 speaker system. Creative F200 webcam. Lite-On iHBS212 12x BD Writer. Samsung CLX-3175FW Printer. Linksys EA9500 Router.
Everybody Helps: I Am A Mac Alson
Arris SB6190 Cable Modem. APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL. Similar help and support threads Thread Forum I recently bought a second internal dvd drive, physically installed it, plugged it into the last remaining SATA port on the mother board. When I inserted a data dvd, autoplay popped up giving me one option - to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer. When I clicked that option nothing.
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