Ditch and switch
- Article 42 of 53
- iCreate, September 2005
With the success of the iPod and low-cost Macs such as the Mac mini, there's never been a better time to ditch that old PC and switch to the Mac
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iMovie HD, as the name suggests, is a home-movie editing tool that works even with high definition cameras. Just plug your camcorder into your Mac and iMovie can control it directly and download your movies. Anyone can learn to use iMovie, just by playing around with it for a few minutes.
Once you’ve finished editing your movie in iMovie, you can send it to your friends, publish it on the web or make your own DVD with iDVD. It’s as easy to use as iMovie: just drag and drop your movies to the pre-set templates to create stylish menu screens.
Garageband is going to be the start of many a band’s success in years to come. Take any tunes, then mix them and cut them to create your own tunes. Plug your instrument into your Mac and use one of the many hundreds of musical instrument presets to create new tunes: maybe you’d like to use your Mac or your electric guitar as a piano. Maybe you’d like to use your keyboard as a guitar or an organ instead.
iLife comes free with every Mac. How many would it cost you to put all these programs together on Windows? A lot.
Now these are pretty big carrots. But you might have some lingering doubts. After all, you’ve already got a PC with a printer, scanner, camera and a dozen other things that won’t work with a Mac already. You won’t be able to buy software for a Mac anywhere – you couldn’t see any in Dixons or PC World – and the software you do have won’t work on a Mac either. There’s no Mac repairs place you know of, although there are plenty of PC repairs places locally. In other words, is it worth this leap in the dark?
Most of these problems are just myths. Just about any printer will work with a Mac straight away, as will most cameras and other peripherals. Check in the box they came in and you’ll almost always find a CD with Mac software on it, or a page in the manual saying you don’t need any software for it to work with the Mac.
As for software, don’t bother with PC World or Dixons. They may stock Macs but they usually know next to nothing about them. Requests for information (true story) about how to network a Mac and a PC will receive sage advice such as “you can’t. They use different processors. You’ll probably need a Windows NT server.”
John Lewis is a good high street store for Mac software, as are the new Apple stores opening around the country, but your best places to look for Mac software is online, at such places at Cancom (www.cancomuk.com), the Apple Store (www.apple.com/ukstore) and Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk). Look in the back of iCreate for other stores, where you’ll also find Mac repair stores: hopefully you’ll never need to use one.
Once you investigate, you’ll find that there’s a whole wealth of Mac software out there, including some of the best games and business packages. All the big boys are there: Microsoft Office, the entire Macromedia range, virtually the entire Adobe range, research tools like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Check your existing software as well: sometimes you’ll find that a CD will contain both a Mac and a Windows version of the program and you just never realised it.
If the cost of new software puts you off, remember that some companies will let you “crossgrade” for free or at minimal cost. More often than not, even if you’re not eligible for a free crossgrade, you’ll at least be eligible for the upgrade price, rather than the full cost of the product.
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