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Switching to mac
- Thread starter Samtb
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Snap feature from Windows 7 was the only thing. But there's app(s) for that. Like BetterSnapTool.
But otherwise the features, options and programs would be other way around for me. There's a lot of things I would lose (and hate to lose) if I had to change back to Windows.
Office is available for Macs too. The newest Office pack is a beta version at the moment, but it will come out later this year.
I'm using Office for Mac 2011 on my late-2011 MBP running Yosemite. Works perfect. I still have a Windows 7 desktop that I setup as a house computer and use every so often, however I'm consistently on my Mac. If need be, I run Windows as a VM for applications that are only windows based. Otherwise, I don't think I'll be going hack to a Windows machine.
Microsoft certified, Life-long Windows user. You won't miss Office unless you do extremely complex macros in Excel. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are really great products and are fully Office compatible.
iWork is much better if you are doing basic to mid stuff. Actually, only Excel would be missable if you do complex work on it, otherwise not even then.
I installed Office 2016 beta on my Mac and it is great. The UI is more in line with the Mac UI and it works much better than previous versions. It's like suddenly Microsoft care about OS X users (or they were high).
Whatever you chose to use, it will be great. For me personally, I love Pages and Keynote because it is easier to do work than in Word and PowerPoint. I don't use Numbers a lot, but when I use it, it is simpler to use.
hi
- mac version of Office is different from the windows version of Office in many ways
- you will not be able to know if your document made with apple version Office looks exactly like you intended when the recipient is using a windows version of an Office app
- Mail attachments frequently come across to mac users as windmail.dat attachments unless the sender has done the attaching in a certain way
- as someone mentioned, if Excel is how you make your living, you need to stay with the microsoft version of Excel
- if you are an author or a grad student writing a thesis then stay with microsoft Word for its footnotes and index and other functions
- if all your friends use windows and you share info using USB, then you need to format your USB for windows not mac specialized format(s)
- your iWork documents need to be "exported" to microsoft versions and sent as microsoft versions. you can not just make a document in iWork and send as is for windows users to read it (as you can with excel documents using iWork even if you don't have the mac version of Office)
- if you have several services that require Microsoft Exchange for synching or whatever, you will find it more difficult to set up
- if you use SMB you may not be able to succeed in getting directories without asking a system Admin to set it up for you
- printing to windows networked environment is still difficult
the above are just some of the issues.
by the way, i am a big mac fan.
all of the issues above however do exist and are either important or not important depending on your work situation and where/how you use your mac, and the extent that your personal and professional network uses microsoft.
but if your question was "is it easier to use mac instead of windows", then for most of us the answer would be a definite yes!
- mac version of Office is different from the windows version of Office in many ways
- you will not be able to know if your document made with apple version Office looks exactly like you intended when the recipient is using a windows version of an Office app
- Mail attachments frequently come across to mac users as windmail.dat attachments unless the sender has done the attaching in a certain way
- as someone mentioned, if Excel is how you make your living, you need to stay with the microsoft version of Excel
- if you are an author or a grad student writing a thesis then stay with microsoft Word for its footnotes and index and other functions
- if all your friends use windows and you share info using USB, then you need to format your USB for windows not mac specialized format(s)
- your iWork documents need to be "exported" to microsoft versions and sent as microsoft versions. you can not just make a document in iWork and send as is for windows users to read it (as you can with excel documents using iWork even if you don't have the mac version of Office)
- if you have several services that require Microsoft Exchange for synching or whatever, you will find it more difficult to set up
- if you use SMB you may not be able to succeed in getting directories without asking a system Admin to set it up for you
- printing to windows networked environment is still difficult
the above are just some of the issues.
by the way, i am a big mac fan.
all of the issues above however do exist and are either important or not important depending on your work situation and where/how you use your mac, and the extent that your personal and professional network uses microsoft.
but if your question was "is it easier to use mac instead of windows", then for most of us the answer would be a definite yes!
Make you sure format USB drives (thumb and 2.5"/3.5" ones) as exFAT. OSX can only read NFTS drives. Of course you can also use FAT32, but then you have the limitation of max. 4 GB files.
I have 2 backup drives attached to my iMac. One is for Time Machine (Apple's automatic back-up tool, built-into iOS), which monitors for changed files automatically. This is (of course) HFS+ formatted. However, Time Machine will only backup internal drives (guess you can configure this).
The other drive is exFAT and I use Folder Sync Pro to back-up data from internal and external drives, specially Thunderbird profile, Firefox profile, photos and MP3s. I'm a bit "iffy" about losing data, so I want at least 2 copies of all data. This drive is for extra assurance, but also allows to hook up my data to a Windows PC/laptop.
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I code in excel and I use citations in word. I also use one drive for cloud storage due to its large free capacity.
Just install Office for Mac - you don't need the version inc Outlook, I connect to an Exchange server corporate environment using Airmail and Apple Calendar apps, everything works fine. We also use Lync, again the Mac version works fine.
Or you can also use OpenOffice, its doc exchange with Word and Excel is now very good.
You will however miss viruses, anti-viruses and all that crap, it isn't an issue on the OSX platform, just a few well-known trojans to watch out for, phishing sites etc are platform independant of course.
Only Windows to Mac issue I had was the file system. I really miss having folders always on top. There are apps to remedy it but doesn't alway work when file searching within apps. Otherwise, you'll never miss Windows.
Word for Mac works great. When the new Office for Mac gets released it now looks and works like the Windows version.
For the most part I agree. However if you share word documents with windows users thats where the problem is. I find that Pages doesn't format properly into a Word docs. But in fairness I haven't tried with the new Word beta.
What do you mean by folders on top? And how bad is the screen stain problem on MacBook pros?
screen stain problem? Never had it or heard of it.
In Windows when you go into explorer all folders and generally on top and the files (not inside of folders) below. No matter how you sort them the folders always remain on top. In OS X you choose how to sort but unless you sort by kind, folders are not on top. I use XtraFinder to help with that and there are other apps as well.
If folders not being on top is my only issue than I think I made the right choice dumping Windows.
Here is where you can get the preview for Office for Mac: https://products.office.com/en-us/mac/mac-preview
Word and Excel operate just like on Windows. Outlook was ok on Windows but not as good on Mac. Apple Mail works well for me.
If you don't share with Window users than Pages is very good. I use it to create brochures and save as JPEG or PDF.
This OS X finder looks similar to explorer to me. I thought you click on folders and there are files inside.
Go to your local Apple store and have a play with OS X.
I have. People say the file system is different to windows but I saw no difference.
Technically it is underneath the GUI, but the concepts of disks, files and folders that the users interact with are the same.
Looks the same but they behave differently.
Not a question of files inside of folders. It is when you have a lot of folders and files that are loose and not in folders.
I have a couple of legacy programs that I use everyday that will never be anything but windows. I use the totally Free Oracle Virtual Box to run them in a cage(I mean a window) on my MBP. They use hardly any energy and FireFox uses 10 times the energy it takes to run them in virtual. You don't have to give up any programs that are window based unless they are games.