It’s a thousand little things that make the transition tough. And I’m not saying that each one of these isn’t a fine way of doing stuff; it’s just different from a PC, and takes time getting used to.
Each application doesn’t have it’s own menu bar in its own window; there’s one menu bar across the top, and it corresponds to whichever application has “focus.”
There’s no start menu; instead you use a program called which works sorta like Explorer. There’s a row of icons along the bottom for commonly used applications, called a “dock,” but I still have programs decide to just remove themselves from the dock when I close them, no matter how many times I click, “always show in dock;” there is no desktop icon in the dock to get to a blank icon.
A lot of apps don’t tell you something went wrong. They just don’t do anything. And they don’t tell you they’re not going to anything, or in the process of doing something. They just leave you wondering whether they’re going to get it done or not.
The keyboard is different, and you’ll have to retrain your hands for all the key-combination commands.
Some very primitive Microsoft Applications are useful precisely because they do nothing other than whatever very simple function you want for them. Apple no print screen; no MS Draw; no Notepad (you can download Text Wrangler).
iWork sucks. You’ll need to get MS Office, anyway. (To save money, you can get Open Office, but surprisingly it works better on Windows.) But even MS Office on Mac is different than MS Office on Windows.
There are some very handy utilities, but configuring your computer (desktop, screen resolution, etc.) is thoroughly different. (You have to pick System Preferences from the apple logo in the upper left corner.)
And I was totally surprised by the lack of software. You’re probably not into video games?
On the other hand, if you’re getting a laptop, you have to be real careful getting a PC, since quality and engineering varies so much from brand to brand, and has little to do with price. I got a Dell which would shut down when overheated, and they put the fan intakes on the bottom, where they were always blocked. I had to get a fan board to rest it on!
There is a functional equivalent to Notepad... it's called TextEdit... There is better than print screen... you just don't know how to do it. It's obvious you want the Mac to be JUST EXACTLY LIKE A WINDOWS PC.
The transition you talk of is actually far easier than you make it sound.
For starters, the Mac GUI has been ferociously consistent from version to version since... well, since I first laid hands on a Mac in 1986. The Mac doesn’t go through a gratuitous change in GUI every new software release that comes out. If there’s one thing that infuriates me about Windows, it is the new GUI on ever major release. I set all of the GUI’s, regardless of Windows version, back to the “classic Windows” UI on every release. I have no need of all the CPU and memory sucking effects of the newer Windows UI’s.
Second, you can remap the keyboard’s command, control, option, caps lock etc keys to where you’d like them if you wish. Simply configure it thus in the System Preferences. If you want to get deeper into hacking your keyboard, you re-map the entire keyboard if you want something like a Dvorak layout.
The truth is, the PC was the one who did something “different” with the keyboard. The PC keyboard didn’t follow the conventions set on IBM mainframe terminals or the conventions set on minicomputers and ASCII terminals at the time. The PC keyboard did stupid things like put the control off to the lower left of the keyboard. #1 gripe I have against the PeeCee keyboard was the relocation of the Control (CTRL) key. For an Emacs user, this key simply cannot be relocated away from the left of the “A” key. With the Mac, I can put the control key back where it belongs - to the left of the “A” key.
I never have the problem with Apps you describe. I’ve seen Apps fail or terminate, and I get a dialog box telling me that they’ve hoarked up a furball and would I like to look at the problem, send an error report or just ignore the situation?
As for applications: You can download OpenOffice or NeoOffice. Free. Works as well or better than MS Office in all aspects but the most complicated macros for Excel. OpenOffice or NeoOffice are free. There’s even AutoCAD on OS X again, after more than a decade, and the UI is the best of both the PeeCee version of AutoCAD and the Mac GUI. Very, very slick.
As for video games: Nope, never been into video games. When I touch a computer, it isn’t for entertainment. Never ran video games when I used a PeeCee. Never run them now. Don’t have a gaming console, never will. The last game I played on computers was “ADVENT” in high school on a PDP-11/03 under RT-11 on a DECwriter II terminal.
“To save money, you can get Open Office, but surprisingly it works better on Windows.”
NeoOffice is the way to go. The internal code is from OpenOffice, but the user interface has been ported to MacOS (Cocoa). It works well.
For a very nominal amount you can also go with iWorks, which is great for most uses.
I almost never use the dock. I keep it hidden below the bottom of the laptop screen.
The easiest way to start apps on the Mac is to type Cmd-Space, then start typing the app's name. Watch the Spotlight window in the upper right. Hit Enter when your app appears. Spotlight learns what you look for, so, after a few times looking up an app, the right one will appear after a keystroke or two or three, and you won't even need to look at the list.
Much easier than the dock or keeping the dock stocked with the right set of apps or searching through the Applications folder with Finder!
Each application doesn’t have it’s own menu bar in its own window; there’s one menu bar across the top, and it corresponds to whichever application has “focus.”
That saves screen real estate, promotes the use of motor memory (menu is always in the same place) and leverages Fitts' law, where stuff at the top of the screen is faster to click, even faster than other stuff that might be closer (like an individual app's menu).
there is no desktop icon in the dock to get to a blank icon.
If you meant like Windows' "show desktop," that's pretty much unnecessary once you get used to Expose. What I do miss is the right-click option to create a document of a certain type at that location. I'm sure an AppleScript or something could do it, but I do miss it by default on OS X.
Apple no print screen; no MS Draw; no Notepad (you can download Text Wrangler).
Print Screen on a Mac, saves resultant graphic as a file on the desktop:
Instead of Notepad, you have Text Edit, which is like Word Pad. And Paint? Does anybody use that for anything but pasting screen caps into to save?
And I was totally surprised by the lack of software.
I was surprised by the abundance of software. That is especially true now since you can now use the App Store to safely and securely install free and paid apps. Find an app, click, wait for download and automatic install, click to run. Brain-dead easy, and a lot safer and easier than searching various Internet sites. I quickly got my kids a ton of free kids games that way.