So what all can I do with a Mac?

I'm planning to buy a Mac Mini with OS 10 Tiger on it just as soon as I get the money and I was just wondering what all I can do with my new Mac. I have only had 2 macs before, one was my first computer and it had OS 7 and I never used it, and my second Mac was a beige G3 with OS 10.2 and I didn't use it much either because it was so slow. So my Mac Mini will be the first Mac that I will be able to do anything with. I also plan to get a 600mhz 12" iBook if I can find someone to trade my Gateway SOLO 3450 with.

You can do anything you would do with a Windows computer. Your question is very, very, very vague.

For more help, you may want to post what you're looking to do with it.

Ask us something more specific so that we can better help you.

Right now I use my computer mainly for web surfing and instant messenger, and I do a little image and video editing every now and then, I listen to music ALL THE TIME, watch videos sometimes. I know I can do all that with a Mac, but what else can I do that I might not be able to do on Windows.

Mainly I'm switching to Mac because I'm pissed at Windows right now, and the spyware is really getting on my nerves.

djlee12 said:

Ask us something more specific so that we can better help you.

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I don't know what exactly to ask since I've never really used a Mac for my main computer.

Well, for sure you will like the fact that there is no Spyware and no virus's at the moment anyway, OSX is very stable and multitasks very nicely, To me smoother than XP, Expose' makes finding open apps way easier than XP (Anand of Anandtech backs that one up). There are features in Tiger that are not in XP, although some similar features might be in Longhorn whenever that ever makes it out to the market.

Like Schewb said, OSX will do pretty much everything a windows system will do, but to me at least, it does it better and smoother with less bother than any Windows system I have ever used and I have used them all since 3.0. XP is a fine OS, but for ease of use, stabilty, freedom from Virus's and Spyware, OSX is hard to beat. Throw in the new features in Tiger and it's a winner. I think you will like it a lot.

When you get your Mini and have any questions, be sure to post them and we will do our best to answer.

I agree with all of that.

To sum it up, with a mac, everything just works. Always. And the way it should.

I switched to a Mac Mini from Windows and Linux as my primary home based computer in February, and have found that I can:

Send and recieve email
Browse the internet with about 5 different browsers (I currently use firefox)
Listen to music, both my own library and internet radio with iTunes
Watch video on DVD, streaming, and quicktime
Compose audio with garageband or Audacity
Play Unreal Tournament 2004
Sync with my Palm PDA
Type this response to you
Chat with my friends
Edit my digital photographs with Photoshop
Edit my scanned photographs with Photoshop
Print my digital and scanned photographs
Burn music CDs to listen to in my car
Burn mp3 CDs to listen to in someone elses car
Move data around my home network, exchanging data with my wife's Windows computer
Scan documents to a PDF that I don't want to keep around (requires optional scanner)
Access my employers network with a ssh session
Access my old Linux box with a ssh session and/or X11 server
Balance my checkbook
Book a flight to Cancun
Read my electronic subscription to MacWorld
Keep and refer to recipes for tasty meals

And make thousands of Julienne fries!

So pretty much anything you do with any other computer, but with a level of stability (not so important with the current Windows XP), resistance to viruses and spyware (very important as opposed to any version of Windows), and a graphical user interface which is very well thought out and as intuitive as any that I have encountered in my 20 years working with computers. Being able to edit a file with vi and tar up a directory into a tar archive helps as well (UNIX geek alert!)

Here is my view of this since switching over in late feb...to sum it up you can do the MAINSTREAM things on mac..however you cannot do all that you can on windows. Here are a few things i've noticed.

Can't do

1.Most AVIs especially those incoded with the intel indeo codec (no osx support at all) as well as some .wmv files although most play fine.
2.Most AV IMing (iChat/AIM may or may not work however yahoo seems to work for this.
3.Some oddball apps that are windows only or some multimedia CD's.
4.Having to deal with outdated and or stripped down programs on the mac while the windows versions of these programs have alot more features.

Did i miss anything?

Thanks for all the info. I also have an iBook now, because I found a friend who had one who was willing to trade with me + a little cash so I can buy a new battery and a airport card.

91RS said:

I'm planning to buy a Mac Mini with OS 10 Tiger on it just as soon as I get the money and I was just wondering what all I can do with my new Mac.

Click to expand...

That's sort of like asking "where can I drive with my car."

91RS said:

I'm planning to buy a Mac Mini with OS 10 Tiger on it just as soon as I get the money and I was just wondering what all I can do with my new Mac. I have only had 2 macs before, one was my first computer and it had OS 7 and I never used it, and my second Mac was a beige G3 with OS 10.2 and I didn't use it much either because it was so slow. So my Mac Mini will be the first Mac that I will be able to do anything with. I also plan to get a 600mhz 12" iBook if I can find someone to trade my Gateway SOLO 3450 with.

Click to expand...

Let me approach this from the other angle - what can you do with a Mac out of the box that you can't do with windows (without downloading 3rd party softwre)?

1 - OS X comes with a complete C/C++ development environment out of the box. Compare to Visual C/C++ (~$300). It also includes a java development environment.

2 - Perl, various shells, applescript all included. ie, you can automate or do scripting out of the box. AppleScript is quite powerful and can pretty much automate doing anything with any program that the program can do.

3 - Various server daemons are part of OS X out of the box, including an FTP daemon.

4 - Out of the box it includes iLife, which means iTunes, iDVD (a top notch DVD burner), GarageBand (music), iMovie, iChat.

5 - It includes appleworks, which has standard office like apps including a spreadsheet, word processor, database. Compare to MicroSoft Works.

6 - Most of the new Macs also have airport extreme (802.11g 54Mbps) wireless cards in them.

With purchased software, the tables are evened out a bit, but here are some things you can play / do with a Mac :

Games : World of Warcraft, Quake 3, Doom 3, UT 2004, Starcraft/Warcraft, a somewhat behind the times version of EverQuest. There really are very few major games from the last few years that aren't on Macs. PCs definitely have an edge here in number of games available though.

Productivity : Old standards like MS Office and PhotoShop of course. Some things you cannot get on PCs like Shake and Motion. Macs have a big edge in multimedia apps, but lose out on database apps. The rest are pretty much even (spreadsheets, word processors etc).

Another big advantage to Macs derives from its unix core. Virtually anything out there for Linux, ie Open Source stuff, is also out there for Mac. Things like gimp, iirc, *****X, even X11 servers. In fact, I have Oracle 9i installed on my iBook.


-Lonerider