Dave Walker's blog. Dave is a freelance cartoonist who draws a weekly 'Guide to the Church' for the Church Times. (
I made the transfer from PC to Mac about a month ago. Here are my thoughts about it, numbered because the ordered list tag exists and I just don’t use it enough:
- I changed computers because I had worn out the keyboard letters on my other one out through my furious and continual typing. Also because I had filled its hard drive up with diagrams. And because it wouldn’t play Youtube videos properly owing to a minor but incurable error. And for other reasons I have long since forgotten about.
- The Mac is more shiny, has rounded edges and the keyboard is the best I have tried.
- It takes a bit of time to get used to a new way of doing things, but most of it you can work out using experimentation. You don’t need to go to the Apple shop for special seminars really.
- Most things on a Mac ‘just work’, but some things don’t, so you still need to do a bit of hunting around for drivers and those sort of things.
- It still crashes, but rarely. To be fair, I found Windows XP also crashes very rarely if you have enough memory. Unfortunately Firefox makes XP crash continually because it uses excessive resources, but it is still my favourite browser.
- It is so good not to need antivirus programmes. They are all troublesome. I’ve had to swear at the ones everyone else swears by.
- I love that thing on the Mac whereby you can press the buttons on the side of the mouse and make all your different open programmes appear and disappear (I do it repeatedly just for the joy of it).
- I suspect any new computer would have been a huge improvement on what I was using before, but I don’t think a new PC would be this good.
- I like using the Mac mouse, but sometimes it stops working. Getting anxious about this and then discovering various remedies is a bad 10 minute experience every new Mac use must go through. They should explain about this ’10 minutes of doom’ in the shop.
- I still haven’t got the hang of organising my files and finding things quickly (edit: without typing). The PC system for doing this seems easier to use, but it could just be me.
- People on Twitter are very helpful at offering instant advice for which I have been continually grateful.
- I still need to decide which programme to use for doing my diagrams. I’ve been spoilt on the PC by the superb but deeply unfashionable Microsoft Image Composer which offers 1) the ability to instantly change canvas sizes by dragging the sides in or out and (2) the ability to drag sprites/layers in and out of the work area. if I find something that can do those things I will be overjoyed.
- Unfortunately at the time of writing I still need Microsoft Internet Explorer for my work. Do not ask me why. It is a frustrating set of circumstances which cannot be circumvented by using Safari, Firefox, Opera etc etc etc. This means I still have my PC working in my office and the Mac working in the second bedroom and I wander between the two writing web addresses down on little bits of paper in a deeply ineffective manner. I may have to put IE on the Mac but it is oh so complex to do so.
- Overall I am very happy with the Mac and glad I made the change. It is a lot of money to buy one, but when using a computer all day for your job it is worth having good kit. Unfortunately I still need to use both computers at the moment, making my computing the least efficient it has ever been. This is a lamentable set of circumstances that exist because of my peculiar needs.
Share this on Facebook: 
If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy these (possibly)
related articles:
)
IE of course works fine too. I delayed the switch until this was possible as I had too much invested in Windows apps. I reckon I love my Mac even more as a result – I have the very best of both worlds.