From PC to Mac
(This article was originally published on February 18, 2002)
Over the weekend I had ample chances to get used to my new Mac. Switching from PC to Mac looks like it will go smoothly for me and it makes me wonder why I didn’t do it earlier. Anyway, I decided to log my experiences converting from PC to Mac because I think more people should switch. So this past weekend I got know my iMac and wrote about the experience.
I was a PC user. A loyal one at that. I was content with my Windows 2000 machine for doing all the things I do. Making this website, listening to music, writing PHP and MySQL statements, and even making the occasional movie or Flash presentation.
I switched.
My new flat-screened iMac arrived on Thursday, February 14th. I placed my order in early January just after they were announced. With OSX, DVD burners, iPods, etc I knew I wanted a Mac.
In order to keep a record of my switch I decided to keep a log (see page 2) of my experience with my new Mac. Starting with its “birth” (you can see my first iMovie project on the right called “The Unpacking”, I discuss iMovie later in the log). Thanks to Jon for the use of his camera.
My general feelings, so far, is very positive. This iMac makes me want to create things, change things, read things. I had a blast making that video with iMovie. It took me only about an hour to make. I love the dock. All my needs right there. I love the apple key. I love hiding windows, closing them, making a new one, switching to one app and hiding the rest (option-apple click app in dock), and quitting apps with apple-q. Granted Windows can do many of those things with key combinations, I even use them, but it’s not the same.
I played with the bright, clear, smooth icons for an hour. I downloaded a bunch of new ones and customized all my icons. It’s so fun! My handheld syncs reliably. I put it in the cradle and hit sync and presto, it’s synced. The email program nicely shows a number in the dock when I get a new message. Sometimes, I just stare in wonder at my desktop, it is so sleek. Lastly, the keyboard switching rules! I can switch between the US keyboard and the Finnish keyboard with a simple option-apple-space bar.
Pointing out things that I prefer on Windows is a challenge. The most obvious one for me is when writing HTML, PHP, etc the “end” and “home” buttons do not work the same. On Windows I use those a lot to go the beginning of a line of text or the end. On the Mac I have been using the mouse to do that. Perhaps there is another way? The only other thing I can think of at this time is the Favorites menu in IE. I don’t like that I have to add the favorite and then organize it. On Windows I can add the favorite directly to the folder I want. Luckily, this problem I can still blame Microsoft instead of the Mac since it is their app. Lastly, I use the scroll wheel on my PC mouse when reading web pages. I miss that…sort of.
I’m spending a lot of time customizing my dock and favorites. I decide I don’t need iMovie and iTunes so readily available. So I make them favorites and remove them from the dock. In the dock now I have the finder, the email client (selected ‘ping’ as my alert sound), IE, Transmit, BBEdit, Adium, Palm Desktop, and the terminal launcher. Then my EdgeCurve folder. Note about Palm Destop: I exported my address book and then imported that file with the Apple Mail client. All my contacts email addresses are in there now.
I am amazed as I try print something. I just made a text file and turned on my printer and printed. How simple. I plugged it in and it works. I didn’t have any “driver conflicts” with “add/remove hardware” dialog boxes. I ask myself, how did it know what printer I have? Why didn’t it need the installation CD?
Same with my digital camera. Plug-in, import, via USB no less. Same thing as the printer. It just knew! (it even showed an icon of the actual camera!) On my Windows machine I have to import my photos via parallel cable because the USB ports don’t work. Each photo takes about a minute that way. On my Mac I imported the 30 photos in my camera in a matter of minutes. It took me a while to figure out how to rotate, label, and note my photos. But then again, I am not used to intuitive software so it took me a bit to figure out. But now, my roll imported and I even start making a photo album. Woo!
In the evening I had some help from Jon. He gave me a few lessons and answered a lot of my questions. It was helpful to have him. He later said that I was asking a lot of questions that “would be good to know in advance” but were not things that I was stumbling with. After he gave a few demonstrations he left and I played around a bit more. He even showed how to play voice activated chess. I’m flabbergasted! Neat visualizations in iTunes. Wow, I thought, these little speakers sound great!
I then burn a CD. I had some files from another CD and I copy them to my desktop. Then I place a blank CD in the drive and prepare it. Next I drag the files to the CD and then drag the CD to the trash (now a nuclear launch button, mwah ha ha) and it burns. Fast too. Overall, I’m amazed, and can’t wait to do something. I don’t want to sleep but I must.
Entry #2 - February 15th, 2002
I think OSX and I fit together. I already feel comfortable working in OSX after just one evening. I feel pretty amazed the switch is not more painful.
Today I test iMovie. I start a new project, The Unpacking. I had used iMovie before many months ago at work. So I remembered the idea but not the specifics. Anyway, I connected the camera, turned it on and there it was. I played advanced the tape until I was at the section I wanted and clicked “import”. Boom, soon all the clips were in iMovie thanks to Firewire. Then it takes me a while to remember the editing process. Soon enough I am editing away. Then I export my movie and place it on my iDisk. Then I make a page that embeds the movie and upload it to EdgeCurve. My movie is quite large at this point. Also, many of my FTP transfers are crashing, it must be my beta version of Transmit. Note to upgrade.
In the evening I started the FTP access. From my Windows machine I uploaded all my photos to my “Pictures” folder. I moved those along with several other files that I wanted on my Mac. Then, just to be daring, I burned my bridges and deleted them. And then I emptied the trash. No turning back.
Entry #3 - February 16th, 2002
Today I started up the web sharing. To start it one just needs to click “start” in the System Prefences “sharing” section. One click. There is no way I could do this so easily on Windows. I would have had to download and install webserver software and then fix my firewall somehow so the machine would be “secure”. After starting up the web sharing I wanted to tweak a few things in Apache. First of all I wanted to use SSI (Server side includes) to test my .shtml file. To do that I just uncommented out a few lines in the .conf file. This required I use the terminal. As someone who can get around Linux part of me enjoys this. It’s comforting knowing I can get to the foundation of the OS like that. To continue I needed PHP as well. Same thing, just remove some comment tags. I have PHP running on my Linux machine and compiling that was tricky. And I won’t even attempt it on Windows. But OSX made it very easy, in fact, it took about a minute. Quick and painless. Seems to be the theme of my experience.
Next for today I unite BBEdit and some sample code to embed my movie. I connect to my iDisk and place the movie files in my account. Then I upload the .shtml files to EdgeCurve and test it out. Slick. My movie is online. But it is still so large. I go back into iMovie and try export it again. This time I choose the “expert” settings and choose my own settings and re-export. I am able to get the file size down and have it still look pretty good.
Entry #4 - February 17th, 2002
As I write this I am importing my mp3 collection to iTunes. I’m using the “convert to mp3″ function. When I was making the movie “The Unpacking” I tried importing an mp3 that I FTPed from my Windows box. When I tried to import it to iMovie it wouldn’t let me. Not sure why. But then I selected that song, already an mp3, and used iTunes “convert to mp3″ function and after that process I was able to import to iMovie. The point is that I am now processing all my tunes for possible use in movies.
I’m writing this page using AppleWorks. Seems a solid word processor. I don’t use word processors that often but I wanted to give it a whirl. I hear MS Office for OSX is good. Perhaps I can try that someday but in the meantime, AppleWorks is just fine as it can open/save Word docs. I then coded my .shtml page with BBedit and uploaded it to EdgeCurve.com. Using BBedit I was able to bookmark EdgeCurve as an FTP site and save automatically to the server. So even though I have downloaded the new version of Transmit I don’t need to use it. How smooth is that? Lastly, I use a sticky note to remind myself to get my Mom a birthday card.
Entry #5 - February 19th, 2002
Thanks to Chip for this tip - My IE favorites problem is solved. It turns out you can just click (and hold) the @ symbol next to the URL string in the location bar and drag it to the specific favorite folder. Very slick.
Today I played around more with iMovie. I imported video for several projects. Also, I imported and converted the rest of my mp3’s. Now I am all set with music. Then I checked out some very useful AppleScripts for iPhoto. So far they seem very useful, such as the one that shows a photo’s location in the finder. After only these few days I am wishing I could use OSX at work now too rather than Win2K.
Entry #6 - February 18th, 2002
Today I learned a few things thanks to some of my readers. “Apple-right arrow” or “Command-right arrow” to use the correct key name will act like the Windows “End” key and same for “command-left arrow” and the Windows “home” key. Very nice, I can get used to that. Also, thanks to Mike and Matt for telling me about the scroll-wheel mouse. I might get one. But I have one cencern with that, will it look as cool? I like how everything matches now. Superficial, I know, but hey, you can’t deny it.
I also had my first technical problem. That happened emptying the trash. I tried to empty the trash but I got “The operation cannot be completed because one or more of the items cannot be found.” (Error code -35)
The directory in the trash is called “International”. I decide to try some of my Unix skills. So I move it out of the trash and go to the Terminal. In the Terminal I try “sudo rm -rf International”. But it says:
rm: International: Directory not empty
So I “ls -l” from the dir and it returns:
ls: Miss?e V???- - J. Karjalainen - Electric sauna - International.mp3: No such file or directory
ls: Tonttujen Jouluy??Juice Leskinen - SLAM - International.mp3: No such file or directory
I try rm the specific file (using tab to auto complete the filename) but it says:
“rm: Miss?e V???- - J. Karjalainen - Electric sauna - International.mp3: No such file or directory”
Then if I copy/paste the filename and try rm it gives: “rm: No match.”
So there are two files in the directory that can’t be removed for some reason. Anyone have any ideas how to try get rid of these files?
Entry #7 - February 20th, 2002
Today Matt with some tips on how to get the trash emtpied. Actually, it was more than some. It was a clear list of several instructions to choose from. It was so comprehensive that I have not had a chance to try them to see if it fixes my problem.
Other than that I tried the “share” feature of iPhoto. It’s great! I clicked a few buttons and before I realized it I had made something on my iDisk. This is web publishing my mother could do. Very slick.
Lastly, one minor difference between Windows and Mac, mouse speed. I guess I must be used to a very fast mouse on the PC because I have my mouse speed cranked on the Mac and I still wish it was faster. However, maybe this is intended, a way of saying “slow down and enjoy the ride”. That and I find myself relying on the apple command key more often. So not such a big deal.
Entry #8 - February 21st, 2002
First of all, thanks to everyone who has written to me over the past few days. It’s cool reading all your thoughts, opinions, and advice.
I made a new movie today. It’s a movie of my visit to the Apple Store in the Mall of America in Minnesota. I titled it appropriately, The Apple Store.
Lastly, I continue to re-label all of my music files with iTunes. I have a bunch of them and when I transferred them the tags didn’t stay. I am about halfway done with that. On thing I learned that speeds up this process is that in iTunes you can select many files at once and edit them all at the same time. That’s a big help.
Entry #9 - February 24th, 2002
This weekend I had visitors from out-of-town so I didn’t have too much chance to do anything on the Mac. The one thing I used the Mac for was for iTunes and its playing of background music. However, both of my two visitors did get to watch me demo the Mac and both decided they want one. The iMac is a tempting seductress of a computer.
Lastly, thanks again to Matt. He sent me a “Mouse Speed booster” application that is supposed to make my mouse faster. I haven’t tried it yet. Now, if I was on the PC and some stranger sent me an .exe file I would surely trash it right away. But everyone keeps telling me the Mac is different in that way.
Entry #10 - February 27th, 2002
For those of you who are checking out this log, it is still active, regardless of how it may look. I’ve been otherwise busy and haven’t had too much time to use the new iMac. But this weekend I have several projects I plan to tackle…all on my Mac. Stay tuned.
Entry #11 - February 28th, 2002
Today I had a chance to do some more of the tasks I wanted to do. One of them was installing MySQL. This went very well. I installed the binary version and followed the instructions and it worked. When I installed MySQL on my Linux machine I had to compile it with my specific webserver. Ugh. Anyway, again this shows that with OSX you can stay with simple tasks like email and iTunes or go under the hood an install command-line database servers. I’m very pleased.
I also tried to install AvantGo for my PDA. I had this installed on Windows and it worked but my luck wasn’t the same on my Mac. After I installed it I tried to hotsync and got errors. Not only that but the AvantGo client for Mac requires the Classic environment. Blech. Eventually I decided to just forget about it so I uninstalled AvantGo. I still could not hot sync so I tried restarting. Then for some reason it started up in OS 9.2.
Uh oh. I didn’t know this OS at all.
So I had to contact my friend and he explained where to choose the start-up disk. Before I rebooted though I decided to try Matt’s suggestion for my undeletable files problem (see my Feb. 18th entry). He said I should try boot into OS 9 and delete them. So while in OS 9 I tried it. You know what? It worked. I got rid of that pesky directory! Thanks Matt!
Lastly, I rebooted back to OSX and I am very happy.
Entry #12 - March 2nd, 2002
This weekend I used the Mac a lot. I am getting very productive with it now that I have used it for some time (a week?) and feel very comfortable.
I made a bunch of movies. Something like 4 new videos in iMovie. I did this marathon session in order to have enough content for a DVD. It is so cool to make your own DVDs. It was a smooth as just opening iDVD, create a custom theme, and add the media. I used on of my photos as a background and then imported all my movies (that were exported for iDVD from iMovie). Not much more to it than that.The final step is burning the DVD which took about 13 minutes. Apple made something so advanced so easy.
For now most of the new movies are DVD-only as they would be massive downloads. However, I did post one movie, it is the shortest of the batch. Introducing, Mr. Tomato.
Entry #13 - March 4th, 2002
Today was probably my most intense day of problems on the new Mac yet. I tried so hard to do what I was supposed to do but I could just not get it. I struggled for each little gain in my task. It seems like with each step I was shot down. I just could not get a foothold.
Yes, I was part of a team of allied commandos storming a Nazi bunker. But it just did not go very well, try as I might I ended up getting shot, blown up by a grenade, or set on fire by a German flamethrower. Online Wolfenstein is a lot of fun and quite a challenge.
Entry #14 - March 5th, 2002
My task this afternoon was to connect to my friend’s machine via AppleTalk to upload some files to his web server. I hit command-k and type in the address he gave me, next I am prompted for a password so I type it in. Boom, up pops the finder with the new server. Neat!
I upload my files and I’m done. It was almost so easy that it isn’t even worth writing about. The reason this is significant is that I can’t remember ever successfully connecting to a friend’s Windows machine over the internet to transfer files so easily. Sure I have done this via FTP but not ever using the OS’s own sharing system. This rules.
Entry #15 - March 10th, 2002
Today I did my taxes. I filed online at turbotax.com. All went fairly smooth. IE only crashed once.
Today I was also going to switch from Microsoft Money on my PC to Quicken on my Mac. I found out that I just do not like Quicken. I actually find MS Money more user friendly and straightforward. Its graphics are even better than Quicken. So I plan to continue using MS Money rather than Quicken. But that’s ok. Since I don’t have much money I only need to use the program like once a week.
Entry #16 - March 11th, 2002
Today I finished organizing all of my photos in iPhoto. I have 1400 photos. So far so good with the performance. I would like iPhoto to have more labels. Another row of labels to set would be very helpful. Also, it would be nice to be able to edit the photo’s information and labels after a search. That after switching to “search” from “assign” and back one could edit the photos from just that search rather than showing all the photos again. Make sense?
Also, I tried playing Chess. Ugh. How is it that on “easy” I can be checkmated so quickly? Either easy is very difficult or I suck at Chess. Although, I can’t say I’d be surprised if it were both. Anwyway, I will try again until I have victory!
Entry #17 - March 12th, 2002
It seems I have everything organized, configured, and setup the way I like. I feel very comfortable in OSX as well. So at this point I think I have moved from learning to mastering. I no longer need to transfer over anything from my other computer. I can begin to treat the new Mac as my normal system. That did not take long at all! Next I would like to try some more advanced media applications. Perhaps I will try that free version of Maya they are giving away? Stay tuned.
Entry #18 - March 19th, 2002
I’ve been using my Mac everyday for a while but for fairly standard things like email (and too many video games). Soon, however, I plan to begin production on another movie. The iMac has me hooked on movie-making.
Yesterday, Derek was kind enough to send me a note about the Mac. He also sent a very informative pdf file about OSX. Thanks Derek!
Entry #19 - March 25th, 2002
I have not added to this log for some time now. Everything is just going so smoothly. I am able to accomplish anything quickly. I am not running into any driver/compatibility problems.
One small task that went exceptionally well was adding titles to my DVD slideshows. The program iDVD does not have titles built in so I tried Photoshop on my friend’s computer. Then I uploaded those .PSD files to my system and was able to import them directly to my slideshows. Neat!
Lastly, I ordered a photo album from Apple. Let’s hope it turns out.
Entry #20 - April 12th, 2002
This is neat. I learned how to make icons for OSX. I used Iconographer to make a series of icons based on the movie “Dazed and Confused”.
Entry #21 - April 18th, 2002
I got my album a while back. I used many of the photos from my Pacific Northwest series. It is excellent! This type of thing makes excellent gifts for people. I will definately order more.
Entry #22 - Last Update
I’ve been asked several times why I haven’t updated in so long. The reason is that I am not really in transition any more. I am completely comfortable with my Mac and use it exclusively (except at work where I’m working on changing that too).
OSX is wonderful and I am able to do any and all multimedia projects. Not only that but as a programming environment it is second to none. I built from scratch my new site, EdgeCurve.com, using just OSX.
Lastly, thanks to Apple and everyone who has written to me over the past few months!
