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- Aug 31, 2010
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- Your Mac's Specs
- 2010 27" iMac: CPU - Intel i5, 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, running Snow Leopard 10.6.4
I thought I would post my own thoughts and experiences dealing with switching from a Windows to a Mac.
There were many things I did "beforehand" preparing for the arrival of our new iMac. Things like:
1) finding what software I had for Windows that was was also available for Mac, and downloading it to my jump drive
2) watching the MANY tutorials on Apple.com and YouTube about Snow Leopard, its features, its core functionality, etc.
3) (going back to software apps) Finding good alternatives for Mac with apps that are only available for Windows (that you may have had for W)
These are three very important steps that I think will really help prepare you for your first Mac.
HOWEVER, I have also learned by some "mistakes" that I made. These were things that I was not aware of, and didn't realize until the Mac was here and I started playing around with it. I want to tell you this stuff so that these are things that if you haven't bought your Mac yet, you will consider. (not trying to persuade you "away" from it, obviously, but just making you aware of it.)
The first thing, is if you have, let's say, a 1TB external HD. (my 1TB drive was actually an internal SATA that I stuck into an external case, as it was partitioned with all my images/photos, Audio, Documents, Backup, Videos, etc….it was partitioned about 6 ways.) MY INITIAL THOUGHT:
"Simple. Put it in an external case, connect via USB to the iMac, and Shazam(!), you have all your data on the Mac."
WRONG!
If this disk was formatted in Windows/NTFS and partitioned MORE THAN four ways in Windows (as was mine) Snow Leopard will only see FOUR of the X-number of partitions. (six in my scenario). Also, the data being read by the Mac on that drive was then considered "Read-only", and you could not edit. This was a bit of a headache for half of a day. The iMacs mostly come stock now with the 1TB drive, but as we all know, 1TB by today's standards, is "adequate". Especially if you are a very active photographer, or you watch/rip movies to your hard drive, etc., it's ALWAYS good to have an external drive for more storage, if NOT for a simple backup of your internal drive.
The POINT, is that you will need to dump everything on that external drive to ANOTHER drive, format the drive you want to use with the Mac, and format it ON THE MAC one of three ways:
FAT-32 (or "MS-DOS" as it's labeled in SL's "Disk Utility")
Mac OS Extended
Mac Extended.
There are upsides and downsides with these formats.
By formatting in FAT-32, this will allow you to use an external hard drive BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN Windows and Mac. The DOWNSIDE however, is that you can NOT have anything larger than 4GB's in size. I learned this the hard way, after trying to transfer an entire partition SEVERAL times, it quitting on me, and me thinking "something is wrong"…then I read up on the FAT-32 option, and learned all this.
If you have no files like that, and don't plan on having any files larger than 4GB's in size, then this is the option for you, as you can plug the drive in to both Macs and Windows machines.
Both Mac OS Extended and regular "Extended" are proprietary to Mac (as NTFS is to Windows) and by doing this, it will ultimately handle ANY file size……….but don't plan on connecting it to a Windows machine, unless the boys up in Redmond have designed a "***?" screen…..
That's pretty much the "basics" of hard drive formatting, if you have stuff on your Windows machine that you want to bring over to the Mac via an external, just be aware of those tiny little things that may "get'ya". Very easy to work around and deal with, just takes a little time, that's all.
Having said all that - if you have no sensitive data, or anything that you want to transfer to your new Mac, or can fit it all on a USB thumb drive or DVD, you don't have to worry about this at all.
VIDEO FILES (insert Dragnet theme here)
One thing that I was also not aware of is that Quicktime (for you Windows users 'Quicktime' is the "Media Player" of Snow Leopard) does not play certain video file types right off the bat. Two very commonly used web-video formats are .WMV and .MPG. If you're someone like me who has saved many comical/funny videos from E-Mails, and/or DL'd from the web, and let's say you have a substantial collection, they are most likely in one of these two formats. Well…Quicktime will not play .WMV's nor .MPG's straight "outta the box".
There is a small app. for the Mac called "Flip4Mac", that essentially works like a plugin for Quicktime, that will allow playback of .WMV files. As to .MPG files….good luck. Apple has released a component for Quicktime that will "supposedly" play MPG files, but I have purchased it and tried to play them, and it WILL play "most" MPG files, but certain ones with certain audio encoding, will play with no audio. Just be mindful of that.
MAC MAIL
The "Mail" app in SL works, exactly as you'd expect an E-Mail client to work. However, for those of you that are used to MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail (in Vista and 7), Thunderbird, etc…..things work a little "different" here. Setting up folders is a bit different, as is message filtering/ruling, but it can all be done - it's just a bit different than what you may be used to at the moment. I love it...!
OVERALL….the entire experience thus far has been amazing. I have to say that as much as I used to think "Apple is nothing but hype and yadda yadda yadda"…my tune has DEFINITELY changed. As I get more into photography, I not only wanted more horsepower and raw speed for things like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, but the display (Apple displays are already calibrated) is simply better than any other computer display you will see elsewhere.
Also, things are just simply…"simple". Right in front of you, and no BS. Fast, simplistic, and productive….the way a computer SHOULD be.
I hope this helps anyone who is about to make the switch, or has just recently done so, and I tried to lend my experiences as a tool so that from one "newb" to another, you may learn a few things without having to find out the hard way as I did with some of these things.
Cheers,
Riz
PS - I know there is already a post very much like this at the top of the page, but I figured I would add a few little things based on my experience. My apologies if this all sounds redundant to anyone...
There were many things I did "beforehand" preparing for the arrival of our new iMac. Things like:
1) finding what software I had for Windows that was was also available for Mac, and downloading it to my jump drive
2) watching the MANY tutorials on Apple.com and YouTube about Snow Leopard, its features, its core functionality, etc.
3) (going back to software apps) Finding good alternatives for Mac with apps that are only available for Windows (that you may have had for W)
These are three very important steps that I think will really help prepare you for your first Mac.
HOWEVER, I have also learned by some "mistakes" that I made. These were things that I was not aware of, and didn't realize until the Mac was here and I started playing around with it. I want to tell you this stuff so that these are things that if you haven't bought your Mac yet, you will consider. (not trying to persuade you "away" from it, obviously, but just making you aware of it.)
The first thing, is if you have, let's say, a 1TB external HD. (my 1TB drive was actually an internal SATA that I stuck into an external case, as it was partitioned with all my images/photos, Audio, Documents, Backup, Videos, etc….it was partitioned about 6 ways.) MY INITIAL THOUGHT:
"Simple. Put it in an external case, connect via USB to the iMac, and Shazam(!), you have all your data on the Mac."
WRONG!
If this disk was formatted in Windows/NTFS and partitioned MORE THAN four ways in Windows (as was mine) Snow Leopard will only see FOUR of the X-number of partitions. (six in my scenario). Also, the data being read by the Mac on that drive was then considered "Read-only", and you could not edit. This was a bit of a headache for half of a day. The iMacs mostly come stock now with the 1TB drive, but as we all know, 1TB by today's standards, is "adequate". Especially if you are a very active photographer, or you watch/rip movies to your hard drive, etc., it's ALWAYS good to have an external drive for more storage, if NOT for a simple backup of your internal drive.
The POINT, is that you will need to dump everything on that external drive to ANOTHER drive, format the drive you want to use with the Mac, and format it ON THE MAC one of three ways:
FAT-32 (or "MS-DOS" as it's labeled in SL's "Disk Utility")
Mac OS Extended
Mac Extended.
There are upsides and downsides with these formats.
By formatting in FAT-32, this will allow you to use an external hard drive BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN Windows and Mac. The DOWNSIDE however, is that you can NOT have anything larger than 4GB's in size. I learned this the hard way, after trying to transfer an entire partition SEVERAL times, it quitting on me, and me thinking "something is wrong"…then I read up on the FAT-32 option, and learned all this.
If you have no files like that, and don't plan on having any files larger than 4GB's in size, then this is the option for you, as you can plug the drive in to both Macs and Windows machines.
Both Mac OS Extended and regular "Extended" are proprietary to Mac (as NTFS is to Windows) and by doing this, it will ultimately handle ANY file size……….but don't plan on connecting it to a Windows machine, unless the boys up in Redmond have designed a "***?" screen…..
That's pretty much the "basics" of hard drive formatting, if you have stuff on your Windows machine that you want to bring over to the Mac via an external, just be aware of those tiny little things that may "get'ya". Very easy to work around and deal with, just takes a little time, that's all.
Having said all that - if you have no sensitive data, or anything that you want to transfer to your new Mac, or can fit it all on a USB thumb drive or DVD, you don't have to worry about this at all.
VIDEO FILES (insert Dragnet theme here)
One thing that I was also not aware of is that Quicktime (for you Windows users 'Quicktime' is the "Media Player" of Snow Leopard) does not play certain video file types right off the bat. Two very commonly used web-video formats are .WMV and .MPG. If you're someone like me who has saved many comical/funny videos from E-Mails, and/or DL'd from the web, and let's say you have a substantial collection, they are most likely in one of these two formats. Well…Quicktime will not play .WMV's nor .MPG's straight "outta the box".
There is a small app. for the Mac called "Flip4Mac", that essentially works like a plugin for Quicktime, that will allow playback of .WMV files. As to .MPG files….good luck. Apple has released a component for Quicktime that will "supposedly" play MPG files, but I have purchased it and tried to play them, and it WILL play "most" MPG files, but certain ones with certain audio encoding, will play with no audio. Just be mindful of that.
MAC MAIL
The "Mail" app in SL works, exactly as you'd expect an E-Mail client to work. However, for those of you that are used to MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail (in Vista and 7), Thunderbird, etc…..things work a little "different" here. Setting up folders is a bit different, as is message filtering/ruling, but it can all be done - it's just a bit different than what you may be used to at the moment. I love it...!
OVERALL….the entire experience thus far has been amazing. I have to say that as much as I used to think "Apple is nothing but hype and yadda yadda yadda"…my tune has DEFINITELY changed. As I get more into photography, I not only wanted more horsepower and raw speed for things like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, but the display (Apple displays are already calibrated) is simply better than any other computer display you will see elsewhere.
Also, things are just simply…"simple". Right in front of you, and no BS. Fast, simplistic, and productive….the way a computer SHOULD be.
I hope this helps anyone who is about to make the switch, or has just recently done so, and I tried to lend my experiences as a tool so that from one "newb" to another, you may learn a few things without having to find out the hard way as I did with some of these things.
Cheers,
Riz
PS - I know there is already a post very much like this at the top of the page, but I figured I would add a few little things based on my experience. My apologies if this all sounds redundant to anyone...
