My experience with a Mac.

For anyone opening this thread, the original post got deleted. The original post was:

Jarod wrote: I recently bought a mac to replace a computer that was starting to go downhill fast. I was sick of computer hoping every two to three years and wanted to buy a quality laptop. My first choice was a thinkpad t series, but I am deployed and there was none available locally. Wanting to make sure I could make my nightly skype with the family, I went ahead and plopped down the money for a mac. I used it for about a week, and never even got close to getting used to it. It was hard for me to work the volume controls with the mouse, it would never quite understand what I was trying to do when I would grab the volume controller and attempt to slide it. Next issue, no right click. Why should I have to hold the control button when I want to right click? That alone bugged the hell out of me. On windows and chrome it is a one hand operation. It is like they are too stubborn to admit they got it wrong, so they just keep on doing it like they have always done, no matter how inconvenient it is. I know, people will say you have your hand on the keyboard most of the time anyways, but I do not. Unless I am actively typing, I never have my left hand on the keyboard. It was so infuriating to try to do something that would take 30 seconds in windows and you don't even know how to start in a mac. I understand this is a problem with my familiarity level. My biggest issue is there was no main menu, it constantly changed depending on the program you were in, or were in last. You had to minimize the program and click on the homescreen to get the main menu to pop up on top. I really wanted to like it, honestly, but everything was so different. It is like apple is too stubborn to admit they got some things wrong, and now they are just different to be different. They also seemed to sacrifice too much in the name of sleekness. This $1200 laptop had two usb ports, and thunderbolt instead of HDMI. Two USB ports. It was like a timewarp to ten years ago, and what is with ignoring HDMI? Now instead of using one of the many HDMIs I have around the house for various devices, I have to go out and buy a new type of cable for the one device in my house that uses this proprietary format? Once again, it seems like they ignore industry standard for the sake of being different.

Below was the first reply, by me:
I tried my first mac a decade ago. I used the mouse from my windows machine so the right-click thing didn't bother me. The next revelation came 7 years later when a capacitor or two went bad on the motherboard. Yup, I turned the computer on when I bought it and didn't do anything other than use it for almost 7 years. Not one upgrade, not one update, I doubt I shut it down more than 7 times in those 7 years. Nothing else needed to be said as far as I was/am concerned.
I like things that work.

I use Windows 8, but the radio studio uses all MAC equipment. I can't figure it out for the life of me. One button? WTF is this?!

I miss my iBook, but I was a computer science student, and what I really liked was having essentially a Unix machine that also had a nice GUI and excellent stuff-just-works compatibility with peripherals and media.

I agree about the mouse, but mice are cheap in the grand scheme of things, and a mac will work just fine with whatever multi-button, scrolling, etc mouse you want.

Regarding the menus and interface, I don't think that's wrong, just different from Windows.

In the end, I had a lemon from Apple, it was a complete fiasco to deal with (it spent a huge chunk of my last two terms of my CS degree at Apple), and I left in a huff and got a Thinkpad and set it up Windows/Linux dual boot.

I still miss OS X. Of course, it's many iterations on from now, so I'm not too up to speed. But at the time it felt like the best of both worlds.

My current setup is a Linux desktop and another Win/Linux Thinkpad.

I use right click all the time on my Macbook with a Windows mouse. I also use it with a larger monitor, you can get a cheap cable or adapter plug to go from the mini display port to HDMI without any problems.

I also use a PC every day at work, but I don't have any issues going from one machine to the other.

What happened to the original post?

Somehow when trying to reply to drboost I deleted my original post. Anyway to get it back at the top of the thread?

Copied and pasted to below for everyone else:

I recently bought a mac to replace a computer that was starting to go downhill fast. I was sick of computer hoping every two to three years and wanted to buy a quality laptop. My first choice was a thinkpad t series, but I am deployed and there was none available locally. Wanting to make sure I could make my nightly skype with the family, I went ahead and plopped down the money for a mac. I used it for about a week, and never even got close to getting used to it.

It was hard for me to work the volume controls with the mouse, it would never quite understand what I was trying to do when I would grab the volume controller and attempt to slide it. Next issue, no right click. Why should I have to hold the control button when I want to right click? That alone bugged the hell out of me. On windows and chrome it is a one hand operation. It is like they are too stubborn to admit they got it wrong, so they just keep on doing it like they have always done, no matter how inconvenient it is. I know, people will say you have your hand on the keyboard most of the time anyways, but I do not. Unless I am actively typing, I never have my left hand on the keyboard.

It was so infuriating to try to do something that would take 30 seconds in windows and you don't even know how to start in a mac. I understand this is a problem with my familiarity level. My biggest issue is there was no main menu, it constantly changed depending on the program you were in, or were in last. You had to minimize the program and click on the homescreen to get the main menu to pop up on top. I really wanted to like it, honestly, but everything was so different. It is like apple is too stubborn to admit they got some things wrong, and now they are just different to be different. They also seemed to sacrifice too much in the name of sleekness. This $1200 laptop had two usb ports, and thunderbolt instead of HDMI. Two USB ports. It was like a timewarp to ten years ago, and what is with ignoring HDMI? Now instead of using one of the many HDMIs I have around the house for various devices, I have to go out and buy a new type of cable for the one device in my house that uses this proprietary format? Once again, it seems like they ignore industry standard for the sake of being different.

For something that most users like to call intuitive and easy to use I really did not get it. To me it was the exact opposite. Kind of like BMWs iDrive. They can say, “Look we eliminated 39 buttons from the dashboard and replaced them with one knob!” Simpler in looks, but not in executing tasks. Did I not give it enough time? In my head one week should have been long enough to get used to it enough to perform basic tasks. I understand that a lot of people like them, and I will admit their hardware seems to last, but apparently they are not for me.

In reply to Jarod:

Pretty much everything you don't like, you can chalk it up to familiarity level. I'd be just as frustrated trying to jump to a UNIX machine, or a Windows OS.

1) Left/right click - super easy. One finger on the trackpad - left click. Two fingers on the trackpad/mouse - Right click. Simple. Forget the control key

2)Minimize etc - The dock at the bottom will have all open programs highlighted so switching is simple. There are also keyboard shortcuts galore for switching between programs. I'm on the work computer so I can't clue you in right now. But there is a button at the top of your keyboard for "Expose." control+tab is the other shortcut I think.

I'm guessing you got a macbook air, so yes - limited expandability is going to be par for the course. There are also cheap thunderbolt - HDMI adapters you can buy.

In my case? No- I bought a Mac laptop some 6-7 years ago and have pretty much not bought a Windows machine since. Only reason I use one any more is because we have them at work. It did take some time really getting used to it, but I never found it to be that burdensome or frustrating. Things are set up a fair bit differently, but I'd have a lot of practice with different OS's and quickly figured things out.

I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by 'main menu'. If you mean something like the Start button in Windows or the bar normally at the bottom/top/side of a Windows desktop, at least in OS X the dock is usually visible at the bottom of the screen. I'd always used keyboard shortcuts (ALT-TAB switching for example) on the PC so the emphasis on them on the Mac was easy to pick up, especially since many of them are very similar. Some things were made easier by simple, free applications- Quicksilver has by far been the most useful: hit CTL-SPACE and it pops up a window where you can start typing the name of an application you want to run and it will give you the most commonly used or a full list if you want. When I was still running both Windows & Mac computers I hunted down the PC equivalent since I found it so useful.

The mouse did take some getting used to- my first was a laptop- but it became second nature fairly quickly. If you have a laptop and it's remotely new (and thus has a multi-touch touchpad) you can enable two-finger clicking (this is old, but should still work: http://www.macinstruct.com/node/66). If it's a desktop, you CAN hook up a normal multi-button mouse and right-click away.

For peripherals (USB & such), many Mac accessories these days are BlueTooth (Magic Mouse/Pad, Keyboard) and thus don't require a port. For a smaller laptop like the Air or small MacBook, you are going to have less ports. When I used my MacBook at my desk with lots of other stuff, I just had a USB Hub- just like I had with my desktop PCs before it. Thunderbolt I can't really speak much to- my old MacBook (currently have a several year-old iMac) required an adapter for any kind of external monitor, which while it was an additional expense DID mean that I could hook up pretty much any kind of monitor necessary to it (VGA/DVI/HDMI- even had a composite out for really old TVs). As far as transfer speeds go, Thunderbolt is supposed to be really good, and does allow lots of different peripherals- though they do tend to be solidly more expensive than their USB counterparts, or at least were the last time I looked.

It was a macbook pro 13 inch if that makes a difference. I understand there are adapters out there, it just got on my nerve that I would have buy something new to carry around if I wanted the capability.

Can a mod re post the original rant?

Big Mac?

I used to build my owns Windows machines. I even built a few overclocked hot rod rigs for gaming. Now I own almost all Macs. Maybe I'm just not hardcore anymore. One of our Mac Minis has been running 24/7 for five years. It gets a reboot every few weeks (maybe). It just works. Only problems I've had is our ancient Macbook has a flaky keyboard. No big deal, I just plug in a USB keyboard and go on with my life.

I do miss mucking about with the hardware of PCs. It was like building a project car, mix and match to what I needed. Reuse what I had, buy what I wanted to upgrade. Staying on the bleeding edge of gaming only got me two years or so on a machine before I needed to build a new one.

Jarod wrote: Can a mod re post the original rant?

Unfortunately as mods we don't have the ability to restore deleted items, even though we can delete them. I can't even view deleted items.

Datsun1500 wrote: Most people new to a Mac get frustrated, mostly because they overthink the steps to do something.

I had to over think using an Apple device...

Just to make my APPLE device do what I wanted it to do...

Why does Apple make this so difficult? Why do they have approved ways of using their devices.. Why the hell shouldn't I be able to chose how to use a device I purchased??

APPLE can lick my INSERT dirty BODY part HERE!!!!

I was frustrated by Apple, because of the things Apple wouldn't let me make my device do.... After a now legal, jailbreak.. I can do things Apple doesn't want me to be able to do with my Apple device...

To me, Apple telling me.. "you can't do that with this device" is Apple being a bag of dicks.. Seriously it really pissed me off.. It is like Bentley telling me, you can't enter one of our cars in a demolition derby.. I would tell Bentley "berkeley you, I own a car you built, I want to enter a demolition derby. You don't want me to... Tough E36 M3, I am entering a demolition derby with a car you built"!!!

This is relevant to my interests. Just yesterday my wife picked up our Thinkpad and threw it out the window. Literally. This after our annual crash-and-lose-everything on Vista. berkeley Mr. Gates, she shouted, and headed for the local Apple store. She brought home a 13 inch Macbook Pro. FWIW, they now have HDMI ports. She figured out the two finger click thing pretty quickly. I think she read the quick start instructions, though the family motto is "read no instructions."

Hopefully it will interact better with our two iPads and two iPhones. At least Windows is out of our house for good!

Basil Exposition wrote: Just yesterday my wife picked up our Thinkpad and threw it out the window. Literally.

Hopefully the window was open.

It's not just the inability to right click, the touchpad was horrible. It had a very hard time recognizing when I was trying to drag an object. Also it would bog down from loading a playlist into VLC. Or the feature that lets video files play on the thumbnail, how is that useful? I found it irritating when playing a video, and there are two audio tracks going, because the video is both playing on the thumbnail and in a media player. You think it would auto stop the thumbnail if it recognized the file was being played elsewhere.

I am actually thinking of switching over to Mac stuff.

I switched over ten years ago and haven't looked back. I do have multiple machines but my primary is an Imac.

My second is a Asus Epcee with XP that I use for travel and tuning.

Basil Exposition wrote: ...on Vista.

I found your problem.

I am a PC guy, but Vista is a festering pile of E36 M3.

I switched about five years ago but oddly enough I find myself spending more time back in Windows and I doubt I'll buy more Mac hardware. I can't be bothered to upgrade to the latest Mac OS either, which turned out to be a good thing.

I'll probably just keep the Mac(s) we have and go build another Windows box when the time comes.

Beer Baron wrote:

Basil Exposition wrote: ...on Vista.

I found your problem. I am a PC guy, but Vista is a festering pile of E36 M3.

No kidding. But when someone sells you a festering pile of E36 M3, do you go back to them, pay them more money and say "thank you sir, may I have another?" That's why we never "upgraded" it to Windows 7.

My wife bought a MacBook 6 years ago, and all it ever needed was more memory and a bigger HD.

Our HTPC MacMini hasn't given us any issues and it's on 24/7.

I'm getting ready to get myself a new laptop for some 2D and 3D design. A dual boot MacBook Pro (13", non retina) will be my purchase.

They take some getting used to, but I prefer them now. I use Windows 7 everyday at work and don't have any issue going back and forth.