I’ve only used PCs, but I decided to bite the bullet and buy a Mac. I haven’t even cracked it open yet, but I was wondering the best way to really learn all the necessary things about it that I will need. The Mac store offers a $100 one-on-one training program, which I think is ridiculous. Alternatively, I suppose I could find several tutorials online. For those of you that have Macs (and are not especially tech-savvy), would either of these be recommended, or would you suggest just messing around with it? When I first bought my Motorola Atrix smartphone, I just messed around with it and was able to figure out a lot, but when I actually started using the tutorial that came with, I realized that was missing so much. Are Macs the same way?
The reason I’m even asking this is because I want to determine whether or not i should spend my last days of freedom reading Apple’s extensive “how-to” manual. Thanks.
I thought the point of Macs was that they’re soooooooo intuitive and your blind Amish grandmother would be emailing in 10 minutes.
(I have never found them intuitive at all. I spend a lot of time staring at the oh-so-elegantly blank screen wondering where the fuck they’ve hidden all the functionality.)
The trackpad gestures and whatnot will take some time to get used to, but once you’re taking advantage of them you’ll never want to go back to a PC. Just google things you want to find out, you don’t need to pay for that training. Macrumors.com has a pretty good forum too.
Oh, and open the Mac App Store and download Caffeine and BetterSnapTool.
it does take a while to get used to… but i recommend just playing with it for a couple days… once you do you will find you never ever want to go back.
But it might not hurt to watch/read some of the free online tutorials… just in case you are missing something. I had to teach my wife how to right click about 6 months after she bought it because she had never figured it out.
I have used Mac for the past 4 years, PC for the 4 years before that (heavy computer user for 8+ years). Both are fine. Macs are better built (design wise). PCs are more business oriented. Word, excel, and all other Microsoft apps work WAYYYY better on PCs.
Here is what I hate about my ASUS: 1) Screen sucks! I can’t stand glossy screens, and this one is cheap to boot; 2) finger print magnet; and 3) keyboard layout is shifted left due to random/common? column on the right.
Next machine I will buy will be a Lenovo with a matte screen and killer keyboard.
For me, a big thing are the trackpad gestures. Two finger scrolling, three finger swiping between full screen apps, mission control, exposé. Once you get used to navigating like that, going back to Windows seems so archaic. You can’t do any of that with a PC. Not to mention the bullshit antivirus programs you have to buy, scans to run, incessant pop-ups asking me if I’m sure that I want to do something. Macs cut all that out. IMO, anyone who thinks Macs are “trendy” or whatever don’t know what they can really do.
My Lenovo has a ton of trackpad-based control gestures. It’s standard on almost all laptops now.
I bought downloaded Avast for free. No viruses. Ever.
It takes longer to set up a Wi-Fi network on a Mac than it does to turn off pop-ups on a PC.
There is no reason other than personal preference for one or the other.
As for the OP, you should be able to figure it out fine by playing with it. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself wondering what the hell the big deal is and why you paid so much for the damn thing.
In ten years of owning laptops, I’ve never used my trackpad (unless my mouse dies and I’m completely out of batteries). There isn’t a laptop alive that has a trackpad that I DON’T hit with the heel of my hand as I type and make the cursor jump randomly around the screen. I turn the trackpads off and use an optical mouse on the flat surface to the right of the trackpad.
Apparently the bolded is beyond me. Where is the file explorer? Where is the control panel? Where is the goddamn list of installed programs? Nothing is obvious. Everything is sooooo streamlined that there are no labels anywhere and you have to just…know.
At least it only took them until like 2002 to put a 2nd button on the mouse.
Don’t waste that $100. Youtube is your friend-tons of free tutorials and walkthroughs. Just do some Googling. Also, it’s not rocket science. The hardest thing is probably just going to be getting used to new keyboard shortcuts.