I recently moved to Florida and decided to buy my mother a computer who has never used one before so that we could communicate better than just by phone. I just recently had to deal with several friends machines deeply impacted with spyware and malware (once you are plagued by these problems anything is better) so I thought about about it, did some research and went ahead and bought her a iMac.

I had no experience and so I first a a Mac guy sit down with me for about 2 hours showing me some really cool stuff with iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iChat, etc. Everything just worked seemlessly together. I got excited and went right back out and bought another one for myself. Since then I have also bought some for my friends so that we can all iChat now that I have moved.

I remember several big pushes in the military. We switched our mainframes over to HP Unix, we pushed for Novell Netware ( I even got certified), the push for Windows NT, etc. Now there is beginning to be a big push for iPhones and Macs.

I have only been using my Mac for about 6 months now and I enjoy the heck out of it. The best way to switch to Mac is to have a digital camera ready with some photos, a camcorder ready with some footage, some music CDs, a couple burnable DVDs and CDRs, and then have a true Mac guy sit down with you and tell you what to do. Not show you, but make you do it. In 2 or 3 hours you will be hooked.

I loved it so much that money was no longer an issue and let me tell you why. I had a beefed up PC for video editing and it was a nightmare after nightmare trying to get things done. I put about $3200 into that machine by the time I was done and was able to get it to work. I like it okay now but prefer the Mac out of the box so much more that I gave away most of that expensive hardware and software to friends. I gave away Adobe Premiere Pro 2, Adobe DVD Encore 1.5, Matrox RT.100 card, ATI 9700, ATI 8500DV, 120 FPS 4 input video capturing card, and a few other things. In the end I am mostly happy with even just using iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD because the ending result is really good and actually cheaper. But right now I am getting my first experiences with Final Cut Studio and so far I really like it.

I am not a big Mac guy. I am new to it. I prefer Mac over the PC but if someone asks me what is the best platform they should buy, I still ask “What do you want to use it for?” and their answer will be what I base my opinion on. I have a digital camera, a digital camcorder, I like having backups of all my important data, I like being able to make home movies into DVDs with nice quality ending result that are cheap and easy, I like the fact that if I do a high CPU usage process like a video render that it can borrow processor time from other Macs to complete the process faster, etc. etc.

For me, Mac just works for the things I love to do and it does it so much better. For once in the history of computing, proprietary stands out in front. Those willing to accept change, will be those still on their “A Game”.

I had to disagree with this one. Mac gets upgrade on an average two years, while Windows get upgrade on an average of 5 years… Yes both Mac and Windows do get updates whenever they are available, but Mac updates are much less and faster while Windows Updates are a lot and longer in updating.

6. Windows is the Operating System for the masses, sure you can switch to Mac OSX, but why do you think Apple created Boot Camp? So you could use Windows. Obviously Apple knows that Windows isn’t going away, nor do they think they will be over taking the Windows Operating System (any time soon). If you are buying a Mac for School, remember that much of the software and technical support provided by colleges is geared towards Windows, so even if you buy a mac, you might end up having to pay for a copy of Windows to use via Boot Camp.

It is true. I have to admit that I have to depend on Windows at times because not all things would work on Mac, so the boot camp is a great idea when you need Windows for a short time. I can use Mac most of the time while I can use Windows via the boot camp whenever needed.

8. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is the premier office suite as of today, businesses use it, students use it, and just every day people use it. While there is a version of it for Mac OSX it does not stack up against the Windows version.

That is crap. Mac do have a several open source Office suite and they can read MsOffice files, but it may not perfect but it can be done. I use OpenOffice.org, and it works great… perhaps, a bit of adjustment work.

10. Mac OSX isn’t the only operating system with widgets. Vista has the sidebar which has a number of functional and useful gadgets.

Hello! Mac was the first who created widgets. Vista borrow that idea.

12. Firefox loads and runs much faster on a PC it seems than on Mac OSX. However, this seems to apply for most applications that are cross-platform.

I don’t think it does make any difference, really. I use Windows at work and at home on my laptop and I use Mac at home. I notice that my Firefox works better and faster on Mac than Windows. Maybe it is because at our work, we have a strong firewall causing its slowness, but at home, I think it works faster than Windows Vista’s Firefox on my laptop.

25. Exchange servers for Email. In a business environment Exchange is the way to go – hands down. It is leaps and bounds ahead of Leopard’s SquirrelMail. Plus you have Outlook Web Access which is just phenomenal.

Well, that is the next patch that Apple is working on for the new version, Snow Leopard. Right now it works with new iPhone 3G. That is the beginning.

27. Ctrl + Alt + Del – easy to find and press on a keyboard. In Mac OSX the Force Quit key combination is just strange. If I was not familiar with a Mac keyboard I would have no clue what to press.

Learn it! You will find it very easy to use on Mac.

28. Add/Remove Programs – simple, easy to use, point and click uninstall process. I’m aware that on a Mac most applications can be removed by just deleting them from the applications folder. However, some put files in the Library which are not removed if you delete them that why. Is it just me or is it weird you need to download a 3rd party application such as AppDelete or AppZapper to make sure you completely remove software from your Mac?

Whoo hoo for you. Actually I find it opposite. Mac does a very easy way to add or remove… What Mac will do, just drag that application and drop in the Trash. And Empty it. It is gone. In Add and Remove app, I have to wait for a bit for the list to show up, and I have to click remove and then more clicks ahead, then wait for a bit, letting Windows do the dirty work. That is like maybe 3 to 5 minutes, while you just drag and drop in Trash, it takes less than one minute.

31. Microsoft Keyboards and Mice are excellent in my opinion so why not use them to their full potential? If you use Windows you can activate all of the features of the keyboard and mouse. On Mac OSX you cannot due to the software not working on the OSX platform.

Well, I had no problem. I use Microsoft keyboard and mouse for my Mac and it works fine. I dont see a problem really.

39. Call me crazy here, but in order to have access to Back to My Mac, you need to buy .Mac? Isn’t Remote Desktop free on Windows?

I can access my Mac anywhere remotely and it is free. It is called http://www.logmein.com. It is easy.

I hope I am not here to bash your entry. I am a computer geek and I know Windows for a long time. I am not very happy with Windows lately, it gets worse, and worse. It is not very stable. I always had problems with Windows for many reasons. After I get Mac, I had no PROBLEM with that for the last two years. No crashes so far, that I know of. Yes, it is because Mac is built based on Unix. That is why Unix is very stable. If I had to choose which Windows version, I would say either 98 or XP. Vista sucks. Very disappointed in it. I have it on my laptop right now. I hope Microsoft will come to the senses that they need a lot of work on Windows… and hope that their next version will get better. In the conclusion, I would not consider to switch from Mac to PC. I think I will stay with Mac for a long time, for sure.

Oh, one more thing, they just find a way to get Mac OSX work on PCs now. So basically, you could build a PC from scratch and install Mac OSX. :-) Is that wonderful?