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 did this a few months ago after using Windows computers since Windows 2, and PC-DOS before that. Windows was the desktop machine at work, it was what the family wanted at home after we got over the Apple/Atari/Commodore thing, before the IBM-PC came out.
I'm fine with the change. I made it because I had to deal with one too many malignant Windows updates wiping out the whole OS, then wiping out the drive itself trying to do self-recovery. I made the change because OS-X is just a user-interface sitting atop a stable Unix system, and I accept Unix as mature and stable. In an earlier career had ten years experience running a lab full of mixed technical workstations, most of the time running at nine different flavors of windowed Unix, both AT&T and BSD brands, including Apple's early A-UX and three kinds of Unix running on PC or PS-2 boxes. I'm comfortable with what OS-X is, because it is Unix, conforming to Unix standards.
Applications can be an issue. A lot of Windows applications have no versions but for OS-X, though I think Microsoft still does Office for Mac. Most of the things that people do on Windows PCs are adequately handled by compatible applications (Photos, Pages, Numbers, Keynote) that come free with OS-X. I can say free, because anyone who wants OS-X can download it and use it without paying Apple a license fee.
You do have to check for critical applications, though. Mine are mostly from Adobe: Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements, the Creative Suite. Lightroom, in particular, is more stable on OS-X than it is on Windows 7. Epson has OS-X software and drivers for my scanner, Epson and Brother take care of their printers on OS-X.
The only application for which I really want a Windows machine is my Flight Simulator. I moved that from the second gaming PC that died to a fast Windows laptop. This program is already problematic on Windows now, as the version I use was really designed to work with Windows 2000 and XP, and it struggles with what has changed in Windows 7, with respect to system administration and software management. It will likely not install at all on Windows 10, tempting me to rebuild that gaming machine or build a new one while Win 7 Pro licenses are still available.
I could put Win 7 Pro on my iMac, but I'm not bothering with that because the Win 7 laptop is adequate.
I handled data transfers by getting a large network-attached drive that handles network clients running OS-X, Windows XP and beyond, iOS, and Android. I haven't tried Linux clients, different packages emulate different networking implementations. Anyway, network-attached means that the drive/server is file-system neutral, it deals with whole files rather than tracks, blocks, journals, cataloging systems et al. I ran all my Windows backups onto the network drive, I can access them equally well from any of the clients. All the clients can write files, all can read what the other writes.
Whether or not you can do something useful with the files, that varies. Some files are quite application specific. Others might be tied to a platform but can be dealt with. Digital video work is one example. I did my video work on windows using Movie Maker, back when it came with XP. Movie Maker uses Microsoft proprietary file formats and codecs. Some Mac/Linux world apps handle these, some don't, the codecs are certainly not native to the editing tools normally used for video on the Mac. WMVs can always be played and re-encoded to something else, but that can be a lot of extra work. I haven't tackled that one yet, but I know where to get the tools for the job.
If you don't want that cross-platform compatibility, you simply network the PC and Mac together and pull the files across one time, or if you've written them to USB drives, OS-X can mount and read FAT32 and NTFS disks written by windows. It can reformat them as Mac drives, if you want to continue using them for carrying data around.
I'm not sure what your Android phone looks like to a Mac, since I'm doing the network thing. I don't know what it looks like to a PC, for that matter, what you do to sync it. One of the things driving me to the Mac was that my phone and tablet were iOS, and where applications share information (contacts, notes, calendars, mail, messaging) they all share (and re-sync constantly) through iCloud. I've not extended that to music and photos because it is not necessary for me to have those synced across everything.
If you really like the Android world, consider a Chromebook and make Google your cloud? You can actually do that with a Mac as well, about the same as doing it from Windows. It is not natural to the native productivity apps, so what you do instead is use the Google apps. And if you are going to use the Google apps, a Chrome PC is adequate.
I'm fine with the change. I made it because I had to deal with one too many malignant Windows updates wiping out the whole OS, then wiping out the drive itself trying to do self-recovery. I made the change because OS-X is just a user-interface sitting atop a stable Unix system, and I accept Unix as mature and stable. In an earlier career had ten years experience running a lab full of mixed technical workstations, most of the time running at nine different flavors of windowed Unix, both AT&T and BSD brands, including Apple's early A-UX and three kinds of Unix running on PC or PS-2 boxes. I'm comfortable with what OS-X is, because it is Unix, conforming to Unix standards.
Applications can be an issue. A lot of Windows applications have no versions but for OS-X, though I think Microsoft still does Office for Mac. Most of the things that people do on Windows PCs are adequately handled by compatible applications (Photos, Pages, Numbers, Keynote) that come free with OS-X. I can say free, because anyone who wants OS-X can download it and use it without paying Apple a license fee.
You do have to check for critical applications, though. Mine are mostly from Adobe: Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements, the Creative Suite. Lightroom, in particular, is more stable on OS-X than it is on Windows 7. Epson has OS-X software and drivers for my scanner, Epson and Brother take care of their printers on OS-X.
The only application for which I really want a Windows machine is my Flight Simulator. I moved that from the second gaming PC that died to a fast Windows laptop. This program is already problematic on Windows now, as the version I use was really designed to work with Windows 2000 and XP, and it struggles with what has changed in Windows 7, with respect to system administration and software management. It will likely not install at all on Windows 10, tempting me to rebuild that gaming machine or build a new one while Win 7 Pro licenses are still available.
I could put Win 7 Pro on my iMac, but I'm not bothering with that because the Win 7 laptop is adequate.
I handled data transfers by getting a large network-attached drive that handles network clients running OS-X, Windows XP and beyond, iOS, and Android. I haven't tried Linux clients, different packages emulate different networking implementations. Anyway, network-attached means that the drive/server is file-system neutral, it deals with whole files rather than tracks, blocks, journals, cataloging systems et al. I ran all my Windows backups onto the network drive, I can access them equally well from any of the clients. All the clients can write files, all can read what the other writes.
Whether or not you can do something useful with the files, that varies. Some files are quite application specific. Others might be tied to a platform but can be dealt with. Digital video work is one example. I did my video work on windows using Movie Maker, back when it came with XP. Movie Maker uses Microsoft proprietary file formats and codecs. Some Mac/Linux world apps handle these, some don't, the codecs are certainly not native to the editing tools normally used for video on the Mac. WMVs can always be played and re-encoded to something else, but that can be a lot of extra work. I haven't tackled that one yet, but I know where to get the tools for the job.
If you don't want that cross-platform compatibility, you simply network the PC and Mac together and pull the files across one time, or if you've written them to USB drives, OS-X can mount and read FAT32 and NTFS disks written by windows. It can reformat them as Mac drives, if you want to continue using them for carrying data around.
I'm not sure what your Android phone looks like to a Mac, since I'm doing the network thing. I don't know what it looks like to a PC, for that matter, what you do to sync it. One of the things driving me to the Mac was that my phone and tablet were iOS, and where applications share information (contacts, notes, calendars, mail, messaging) they all share (and re-sync constantly) through iCloud. I've not extended that to music and photos because it is not necessary for me to have those synced across everything.
If you really like the Android world, consider a Chromebook and make Google your cloud? You can actually do that with a Mac as well, about the same as doing it from Windows. It is not natural to the native productivity apps, so what you do instead is use the Google apps. And if you are going to use the Google apps, a Chrome PC is adequate.
