Another Windows to Mac thread

I'm an IT technician, mostly working on PCs. But I do occasionally get a Mac job, one of which I mentioned in a previous thread here. But any time I do get to work on a Mac I get a weird feeling of "I really like this." As a result I want to get one to call my own.
For a long time I've wanted to throw Windows out the door but couldn't find any reasonable PC alternative. MacOS X seems to be the alternative I've been looking for, pity I'd have to get my Athlon 64 box out the door to switch.

Here's what I do with my PC:

Internet (downloading drivers for other customers' PCs especially)
E-mail
IM (MSN and ICQ)
Collect video clips (mainly RealVideo and Windows Media)
Listen to music

Can I do all this on a Mac or will I be missing something? If I know I can do what I want to do then I'd have no problem getting a Mac. But since I have a 250GB hard disk and DVD-RW in the PC I'm wondering if I should look at a Power Mac G4/G5 rather than the Mini due to the limited capacity....

What do you guys think?

SouperComputer

mac mini is great bang for your buck. G5 is a waste of money for what you plan doing.

Use firewire for your DVD burning and 1TB storage needs

L1011

Mini, theres no point spending a load of cash on a new or s/h G4/G5 desktop and finding you don't like it too much after all, don't use it as much, whatever

Theres actual official Real Player and Windows Media Player clients, a Microsoft MSN client (version 4, though), and a real ICQ client. But, as its pretty much UNIX, mplayer and vlc are ported, as is the amsn third-party MSN client, which is closer to v7 in features...

64nDh1

You say you've never gotten a spark from the Aqua interface, so maybe Macs just aren't for you, which happens.

You also wonder about a G5 - I think they are excellent. I got one last January, dual proc 2.5 GHz with 2 GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive. But this would be very expensive for someone who doesn't like Macs off the bat.

Have you considered alternatives? Star Dock with Object Dock - I'm not certain - does a theme for Windows so you can have an OS X-esque interface. It's a complete derivative of it. See here.

A Mac will have the following: the option of a 10/100/1000 Ethernet card. Proper out-of-the-box setup for for connecting to the internet. Support for just about all browsers that matter. There are ftp programs such as MacSFTP Carbon, Transmit and PureFTPd which will cover your uploading/downloading needs.

E-mail - I've had no problems with Mac's Mail program (it's just called 'Mail') on Tiger despite rumours to the contrary. It checks every minute. Has spam filtering. Disables images from websites referred to by e-mail documents by default. And handles a bunch of accounts cleanly. I see 3 lines in Mail, and in the dropdown for one I get my 6 e-mail accounts. Well designed and if you don't like it, Microsoft make Entourage for Mac and Mozilla make Thunderbird.

Macs ship with iChat. This is AIM, Rendezvous or Bonjour protocols only. But Adium is available for Mac with support for AIM, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Yahoo, Bonjour, Lotus Sametime, Novell Groupwise, Yahoo Japan and Zephyr. It doesn't handle swapping files very well, anything bigger than a typical jpg I get problems with it. But iChat does it very well, and there's MSN Messenger bundled with the Microsoft Office package for Mac, and lots of other chat clients which are like Adium - free to download and use from Sourceforge I think.

For Windows Media (WMV) there's Windows Media Player. Free and crap IMHO. Most video is covered by VLC - a cross platform player which supports network streaming too. A bit shaky on my system, but once you start a movie, if it plays it keeps playing. There are tons of movie players like MPlayer OS X too, and Quicktime, which is nagware and sucks donkey balls, but its there out of the box. Fullscreen mode is disabled on Quicktime unless you buy/upgrade to Quicktime Pro. There is no reason for doing this that I know of.

I'm certain there is a workaround for Real Media, but I can't view it because I don't want to. I'm opposed to .rm files because real player was such a mess on my PC and affected my startup items in XP. The filesizes tend to be much smaller though.

If you switch to iTunes I think you'll really like it if you have an iPod. Nice interface, online store if you want it. Support for ALBW files by default, mp3, and all the other formats. There are other programs which can use lossless codecs such as FLAC and Apple has its own Apple Lossless format if you don't mind larger filesizes. 192 Kbps mp3 works for me, and now I have about 3 weeks worth of mp3s on my hard drive in iTunes, nicely managed. iTunes keeps a sensible folder structure to music that is played in it, which can lead to mp3s being duplicated on your hard drive, but you get used to this and Spring cleaning it a few times gets rid of the duplication.

Macs come with an optional DVD-RW Super Drive, I've had no problems with it.

There are a lot of crossplatform programs to cover all the things you want, Adobe Creative Suite 2, Macromedia Studio MX and Flash Professional, video editing with Apple Motion, Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro. iPhotos and iDVD and iMovies make things very simple to burn family films - it's your job to get them into the computer though.

There are sensible applications like Handbrake which allows you to rip your DVDs to your hard drive at a target file size. Insert DVD, pick how big you want it, lets say 700 MB, rip. Hey presto you have a full .mp4 movie in about half an hour with almost DVD quality.

Macs have been the underdog for so long they try a lot harder with a lot more things. Macs fit easily onto Windows networks without hassle because they have to, and you can set it up that your Mac can reach your printer attached to your PC and use it out of the box (I've never done this, but Apple's site claims this to be the case anyway).

You would be as well to use an Antivirus program on Mac. There's Norton 10 and NetBarrierX for Tiger and Virex 7.5 for Panther. Viruses exist, and I presume the Java based trojans like Shinwow.java.W are crossplatform, so don't be complacent. Mac users can guilty of this, so if you get a Mac ignore people saying "You don't need AV" or worse "Norton will damage your hard drive". This is wrong. All computer users need to be careful. And using a Norton product for Panther on Tiger will ruin your hard drive, and vice versa. And Norton have made it clear that if you don't read the system requirements on the box, they don't care about you. After this, Norton got a reputation among some Mac users as making products which crippled hard drives. This is a half truth.

On Mac drives, the partitioning is much easier. I have 2 hard drives in a total of 7 partitions: Tiger, Music, Movies, Documents, Pictures, ScratchDisk, and Free Space. So, thats one for system, 4 for files sorted by type, one for virtual memory and temporary files for rendering applications, and the Free Space one is so if anything goes wrong with my Mac there is 10-15 GB where I can install another copy of Tiger, mount the drives with my files on them, and make sure they are okay if the system drive gets messed up. I don't think this is as easily done on Windows, but I think it should be. It just makes sense to me to order my drives like that.

My advice is to get two things: a copy of Partition Magic 8 from Norton, including Boot Magic, and a copy of Linux. If you just want to get away from Windows, you don't need to get new hardware - which is where the expense lies in Apple. You can find Linux distributions via Linux iso torrents - as we all know, this is a completely free and legal use of Torrents to download Open Source Software. Using a client like BitTorrent or Azureus you can get yourself an x86 Linux distribution. I use Gentoo and Slackware. Gentoo is a pain in the arse to set up but it's also the best Linux there is IMHO. Slackware is a breeze which has a reputation for being difficult and very UNIX like, which is crap. 2 CDs, verbose menus and you'd have it set up in an hour.

Using Partition Magic you can keep your Windows partitions, but make them smaller. Give yourself 10-20 GB at the end of the drive. Then use the Linux bootable CD that you can download from the link above. Install Linux on that free space and set it up. Be careful when setting up the boot partition. If you do it right, then when you turn on your PC it asks you if you want Windows or Linux. Some experience with Linux is preferable, depending on whether you use GRUB, LILO or yaBoot as your bootloader. But it can be done with simple editing and an IT technician shouldn't find this too stressful.

Hey presto, you can have a whole new system on the same hardware, and keep everything you already have.

It helps if you have the Windows reinstallation disk to hand though - which you should have got when you bought a new PC. Sometimes Windows and Linux don't play well together and that Windows CD can fix the Master Boot Record and some other things. The CD is easy to use, and it's quite difficult to make an irreversible error if you are careful at every step.

A problem with Linux is that you can't use a WinModem with it unless you buy the necessary drivers, but it'll work out of the box with an Ethernet card. So, I use a router attached by USB which is no good for Linux, but the same router connected by Ethernet works just fine. Again, an IT technician should know this already.

Hope that helps in some way.

L1011

MSN Messenger for the Mac is a free download, and also actually has working http proxy support - Adium and amsn don't...

Despite that last post, you can most certainly NOT use an antivirus programme. OS comes with an extremely good firewall by default, only majorly vunerable app for viruses is Microsoft Office anyway.

Theres no need for a 'work around' for Real, despite the last post - Real Networks have supported MacOS since System 7/PPC. They also support Linux/PPC, if you ever decide to drop OSX....

Handbrake is an excellent app. Even if it is stolen from BeOS (not that you'll see many OSX users admit that....)

64nDh1

I don't want Real Player, so I have to get other programs that can handle .rm if I want to view it. Hence the workaround.

I used OS X for a few months before splashing on Norton 10, and I was never infected. But far too many Mac users think there's no danger from viruses. It's only because of Apple's small market share that there are so few viruses but they do exist.

I presume they have to work in a different way for a different operating system, but I also presume that viruses in interpreted languages such as Java could become or already are cross platform problems.

Safari doesn't block all pop up windows, and while I've never had my homepage hijacked, or anything else untoward happen, I know it's not impossible.

I'd always plead the case for caution. It's far too late to look for a solution after you've lost data.

Never having used BeOS, I didn't know about the roots of Handbrake. I'll grant though that the software I use on Mac tends to be good quality ports from other systems optimized for OS X. I'm not certain many projects on Sourceforge were OS X from the ground up. That said, Apple's range is great. I have Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic, Pages, Keynote, iLife '05 and probably a few others that don't spring to mind offhand. I think Motion is the Photoshop of video editing and a true flagship product.

Concerning Linux on PPC64: Gentoo and Yellow Dog Linux are very immature on the platform. Do not expect sound card support. I used YDL4 and soon afterward experienced a corrupted file system, and would have lost the contents of my hard drive if I couldn't mount it from another OS X installation. As with setting up any dual booting systems, treat with extreme caution.

L1011

You're never going to get viruses for MacPPC now. Norton is a total waste of money, BTW.

Any other applications that 'can handle real media' are, guess what - just wrapping the RealPlayer codecs. You need to install it. This "Real is evil, I can't install it" is a dodgy windows hangover - Real have NEVER produced a client with spyware or adware for Linux/IRIX/Solaris/BeOS/OS2 or the Mac. Its clean, its safe. It works pretty well.

64nDh1

MacPPC? That's so passe. Get with it man, it's Rosetta all the way.

2 weeks to shipping of Pentium 4 based Tiger, and Leopard to be here by the end of next year?

I think I need to lie down.

//spent €4,000 on a G5 last January, sort of regrets it now it could be as good as dead in 2 years

64nDh1

64nDh1 wrote:

You say you've never gotten a spark from the Aqua interface, so maybe Macs just aren't for you, which happens.

I never mentioned any gripe about the Aqua interface, quite like it actually.

I don't think a Windows shell replacement would be enough to suit me, its still Windows under the hood - all the viruses, spyware, restricting what you can do for the sake of security, general "big headed" attitude from MS etc are all still there. It rarely affects my own PC but I have to work on it every day in other people's systems.

I've been looking at Apple since I feel that Linux is just too technical. Usually I'd love that sort of thing but I've seen a friend running Mandrake 10 and he seems to be in the terminal more often than not, usually doing something like recompiling drivers or some other stuff I haven't gathered. He seems to be maintaining it more often than using it. Also, I have an iPod and have no idea how I'd use it on anything other than Mac or Windows.

If I do go ahead with this I think I'll just pick up a Mac Mini with Bluetooth. That way I won't be wasting *too* much money if I'm not keen on it. I could probably use a USB 2.0 or Firewire caddy for the big hard disk, as has been mentioned already.

Thanks for the replies, by the look of things almost everything I want to do is possible. My demands aren't that huge, since when I get home from work I don't want to use a computer too much anyway, lol.

SouperComputer

OP: What you could also do is get a KVM and a PS2/USB adaptor. It use it with my "headless" g4 iBook.

On Norton...... It’s a waste of money no matter what platform you use it with! It's a half-baked, bloated, buggy resource hog! A classic example of successful over marketed tripe. TBH, id rather mount my entire Mac HD with sharepoints and scan it across a network with Nod32!

Of course virus' are possible, but the fact remains that in the BSD environment, its harder to get them to propagate and do major damage without user intervention.

Considering sensible browsing and software installation can prevent a large bulk of virus infections on MS based machines, the same method on Mac makes the chances of infection ridiculously small IMO.

The possibility of Apple moving to Intel does not mean that they will drop RISC CPU's. I’m not sure if they will jump all the way to x86 or more likely x64, but that remains to be seen.

I think the real reason for the switch is cost and also the problems of production. Of course, Intel has much more resources to produce what Apple need.

Wibbs

64nDh1 said

Norton got a reputation among some Mac users as making products which crippled hard drives. This is a half truth.

Not quite. While I agree with many of your points, I've worked and serviced Mac systems for over 7 years now and while norton had a slew of useful products for mac in the past, the transition to os x left them seriously wanting. I've had norton disk doctor screw up more than one drive on me and have heard of many more incidences. Norton antivirus was just useless. No good mac techies I know out there use norton products anymore. If you want a good suite of repair prevention software may I suggest netbarrier, virusbarrier and techtool pro will cover most if not all of your needs. Just make sure the version you get is compatible with tiger.

As for safari not blockin all pop up windows, use firefox it pretty much always does. The safari in tiger is much improved in that respect btw.

I would advise an anti virus product as a precaution but also to protect people you email running windows. The virus won't affect you but it'll make you very unpopular with your mates.

Fenster

Norton have some good products-their Enterprise Anti Virus comes to mine-but most of it is fairly crap.

On Windows, their Internet Securities 2004 can hamstring a system if any of its files are altered, inadvertently or otherwise, and outright cripple it if you try to remove it.

On Linux, their AV will only work with certain distros and only in a certain state. I've seen installations pooched as someone patched one program or another.

And so on...

seagizmo

If you really want AV software, check out out clam

I used Norton and it wrecked & crippled my Panther installation. It screwed the disk up so much that I had to do clean and install when moving to Tiger.

SG

Ok, I took the plunge and did it. I'm writing this on a 1.25GHz Mac Mini with 512MB RAM and the internal Bluetooth module. But I have a few teething problems I could do with some help on.

My keyboard layout is pretty messed up. Its very similar to a US keyboard - @ sign over 2 and tilde on the key alongside 1. I know this is the standard on a conventional Apple keyboard, but is there any way I can remap the keys so my keyboard isn't "wrong" anymore?

Feels really weird to use at the moment, lol.

SouperComputer

click on your apple menu and go to system preferences\keyboard

you can change to to UK or Ireland if you prefer!


congrats on the purchase!

That's the thing, I have it set to Irish already. The only real change it seems to make is that £ is now over 3 rather than #.

I have a Logitech USB keyboard so it follows the standard Windows layout, but it also has the Apple keys marked on it (such as the Option and Command keys).

SouperComputer

[devils' advocate] is it an irish keyboard or a UK one? [/devil's advocate]

It's fine - got it sorted.

The keyboard software installs its own layouts and you need to use those ones rather than the Apple layouts. For example I need to use "Logitech UK". Have no fadas but I'll probably live without that, lol.

deevey

oh yeah .. as an msn client try out mercury messenger .. has more features than msn for mac including video chat

Fenster

Karsini wrote:

It's fine - got it sorted.

The keyboard software installs its own layouts and you need to use those ones rather than the Apple layouts. For example I need to use "Logitech UK". Have no fadas but I'll probably live without that, lol.

I'd like to know how to change layouts like this for a laptop. The pseudo-US layout is annoying, as it hides the sha bang key, which is annoying for someone teaching himself bash scripts.

If anyone can give me pointers to this effect, it would be very much appreciated.