Hi Everyone!
I'm new to Mac, using my new Macbook Pro which was bought as a replacement for my aging Windows notebook. I decided to join the forum because I noticed that of all the new to Mac websites I'd been using, your wiki is the most useful to me and the one I now go to first when I have a question about my new Mac.
I have always wanted to own a Mac, but I was so entrenched with Windows software that I always hesitated. Now that Macs can be dual-booted with Windows removed that hesitation and when replacement time came I thought that now would be a good time to enter the Apple universe. Oddly enough, I've been enjoying my new Mac so much that I've been resisting the idea of putting Windows on it. I feel like if I were to do that I would really be cheating myself of the opportunity to delve into the Mac world and it would lengthen my learning curve with this machine.
I've been very impressed with everything so far. The out-of-the-box experience was really cool and I was able to be functional right away. Obviously there are a lot of differences between the platforms and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't frustrating at times. It is, since things I used to be able to do automatically I now have to think about. Slowly I'm starting to get the hang of things and there's plenty of help around when I need it.
It may sound strange, but the hardest thing to get used to (at least for me) is how well integrated all the Mac applications are. I'm not used to this level of integration and I'm finding out that the way I think I need to do something is a lot harder than it really is. A good example of this is drag-and-drop. In Windows you usually have to cut and paste things between applications because you are using stuff from different vendors and it's not always well supported depending on what you are doing. I'm just getting used to the fact that I can drag-and-drop all kinds of things between apps in my Mac without any problem at all.
I think this story will sum up my experience pretty well. One of the first things I did when I got my Mac was to download Firefox since I am familiar with it and use it on all my Windows boxes. I got it up and running and then I went off to explore all the new goodies that come with a Mac. When I got back to Firefox, I tried to use the three finger swipe to go back a page. Nothing happened. I had already gotten so used to this trackpad feature that right then I opened up Safari and have been using it for the most part ever since (maybe Firefox does support it in some way but I didn't feel like investigating it since I knew that I already had an installed browser that knew what my three fingered swipe meant).
Anyway... excuse my long winded first post. Thank you all for the great work and information that is provided by MacRumors. I look forward to learning from you.
