From Windows to Mac--anyone done this?

I worked 25 years doing 10 hour days in the PC world. Changed careers...tried a Mac at home and will NEVER buy another PC. Our Mac is a year old now, with heavy usage...never a blip, skip or hangup. It's been a joy to use.

Went to a MacBook Pro and love it. I also have a Galaxy S6 and transfer files easily. There will be a learning curve but well worth it if you make sure you have the right apps and programs. Word for Mac is flawless, emails, files, Adobe, all work so much better, easier and faster.

I have been a Windows user since 3.1. Last year my wife insisted she wanted a Macbook, so we got one. The thing drives me nuts, mainly because nothing is where I am used to it being, and nothing is intuitive for me. I spent 30min searching how to do a simple task, one that takes me 30sec in Windows, but on the Mac was located somewhere completely counter intuitive for me. I think the only way I would truly get used to Mac would be full immersion, and then it would take me a while to "unlearn" Windows. I don't have time to do that, so I don't. I have an iPhone, but IOS using touchscreen as input is not remotely the same experience as Mac OS. As an aside, my wife had to do a project using Prezi last year, OMG I HATE that program with a passion! She had no clue what to do with it, and it took me 2 days to do what would have taken an afternoon in Powerpoint!

Thanks, all! Now, to choose the right Mac laptop.

I believe the Apple Store will transfer files from your PC to a new Mac. They did it for me.

mockturtle wrote:
Will I still be able to get my email on my Android phone?

Yes. If you are using Gmail you can get Gmail though your browser on the Mac and everything still continues to sync on your phone and tablet (if you have one).

I don't use Android, but I would think it would work. Install Bootcamp (included with Mac OS) and just let it know you want to install Windows. It will walk you through the steps. There is a ton of guidance on the internet as well if you just Google it. I have seen "tips sheets" for transitioning from Windows to Mac. Again, just Google it.

Hmmm. Sounds doable. Will I still be able to get my email on my Android phone? How do you create a partition to use Quicken for Windows? Most importantly: Is there a manual with tips for making the switch?

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.