From Windows to Mac--anyone done this?
I'm considering replacing my current Windows computer with a Mac. How big a hassle would it likely be with files, programs, etc.? Would it be totally incompatible with my Android phone?
Forum Discussion
I've used both Windows and Mac for decades, although I am mostly Mac. I've had many friends make the switch, and what I've seen is that while everyone doing so has a learning curve -- Macs do many things differently -- most folks have little trouble. The few I've seen find such a transition most difficult have been folks who are extremely well versed in Windows. Serious power users of one platform making the transition to the others have the added difficulty of un-learning things. For example, on one of the Mac forums, there was a switcher who was going berserk because he couldn't find the bios to make a particular change. Since Macs don't USE or HAVE a bios, of course he couldn't find it. The change he wanted to make was easily made in a preference file, just not in bios, and he was struggling.
You will find that text files, image files, etc. will pretty much be 100% compatible. Some documents will suffer some formatting issues, Word files, for example, because of differences in the way the two systems render text, but such differences will usually be minor. There are, of course, some programs that have no analog between the two OSes, and will be "interesting" to transfer. For example, there is no Mac version of Microsoft Publisher, nor is there a Windows version of Apple's Pages. Thus there is no way to work with Publisher files on a Mac, or Pages files on a Windows PC. That being said, Apple software usually has a way to make Windows readable files, from non-Windows readable documents, and often is capable of reading/translating Windows files.
Publisher files, however, are an exception to this.
You will find that text files, image files, etc. will pretty much be 100% compatible. Some documents will suffer some formatting issues, Word files, for example, because of differences in the way the two systems render text, but such differences will usually be minor. There are, of course, some programs that have no analog between the two OSes, and will be "interesting" to transfer. For example, there is no Mac version of Microsoft Publisher, nor is there a Windows version of Apple's Pages. Thus there is no way to work with Publisher files on a Mac, or Pages files on a Windows PC. That being said, Apple software usually has a way to make Windows readable files, from non-Windows readable documents, and often is capable of reading/translating Windows files.
Publisher files, however, are an exception to this.
