Switching Sides
- Article 16 of 16
- Macworld, October 2009
With Snow Leopard on the loose it seems like a good time for PC users to make the leap to the Mac. We've got the know-how to help you make that switch
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Move over to the Apple world and things become a whole lot easier. While you can buy Macs from high-street stores such as PC World and John Lewis, the natural habitat of the Mac buyer is online, either through Apple’s own store or through one of the many online Mac dealers, such as Cancom, Micro Anvika or Jigsaw.
Macs aren’t really differentiated by specs: they’re differentiated by usage. There are six different kinds of Macs, each aimed at a different kind of user. The simplest and smallest is the Mac mini. This is the cheapest of all the Macs at just £499 and is designed with the PC switcher in mind. Rather than being an all-in-one system, you can use your existing monitor and USB keyboard and mouse from your PC with it. In fact, at 6.5 inches square, it’s small enough to sit on top of a desktop PC where you can share the keyboard, monitor and mouse using something called a KVM box, which can cost about £10. It’s also the world’s most energy efficient desktop computer, using just 13W of power when it’s idle.
The next desktop up is for anyone with normal requirements, including game playing, who wants a desktop Mac, doesn’t have a monitor and wants something more powerful than a Mac mini. The iMac looks pretty much like a standard 20” or 24” monitor, but the Mac, including its speakers and DVD drive, is actually inside the monitor screen. The keyboard – and of course the mouse – are separate.
MacBooks are for anyone who wants a laptop. Starting at £749, they have everything you’d find in an iMac but in a portable white polycarbonate shell with a 13” widescreen display. Since accidents can always happen, the MacBook’s hard drive is jog-safe, so if the MacBook falls on the floor for some reason, the hard drive’s head will lock so it doesn’t damage the disks inside. The MacBook also uses the patented Magsafe power adaptor: if you trip over the flex, the connection to the MacBook will come out, rather than forcing it to fall to the floor.
One step up from the MacBook is the MacBook Pro, a one-piece aluminium design extravaganza that even includes a light-sensitive backlit keyboard that determines how bright it should be according to the environment. It has more powerful graphics than the MacBook, as well as a seven-hour battery life, and an incredible back-lit display. It also comes in display sizes ranging from 13” to 17”. If you want a high-end machine that’s also a laptop, the MacBook Pro is the Mac for you.
The MacBook Air is more for the road warrior, who’s tired of lugging a heavyweight laptop around. It weighs just 1.36kg, has a 13” display and is less than an inch thick. Although not as powerful as the MacBook Pro, it’s even more beautiful and should appeal to those who want the most beautiful aesthetic in their laptop, and are prepared to pay a price to match – £1,149.
Last of all is the Mac Pro. This is the top-end Mac designed for people who need serious computing people. Built like a conventional PC tower, but made from aluminium, this is the one Mac that needs a spec to explain its appeal. Coming with up to two quad-core Xeon processors, up to 32GB of RAM, up to 4TB of internal storage, three full-length PCI Express expansion slots and a double-wide, 16-lane PCI Express 2.0 graphics card. Starting at £1,899, the Mac Pro can quickly become even more expensive, but for the professional, it’s money well spent on the most powerful, cost-effective graphics workstation in the world.
Each of the Macs is configurable, so while they have a base spec, if you buy through the Apple store, you can get bigger hard drives, more memory, faster processors and other improved features, depending on the Mac you’ve chosen. You can also swap your USB keyboard or mouse for their Bluetooth alternatives.
While sometimes the price of Macs might seem high, usually, a comparison of like with like reveals that the Mac costs more or less the same price as its PC equivalent. As well as having faster processors than is usual – at the very least an Intel Core 2 Duo – all Mac laptops and iMacs come with built-in webcams. They also all have gigabit Ethernet networking, decent graphics cards, dual-layer, multi-standard DVD-writers, a built-in microphone and, with the exception of the Mac Pro, wireless-n networking cards. Wireless-n is the latest wireless networking spec and is still waiting final approval, but offers almost gigabit Ethernet speeds – and isn’t something you’ll get in the average PC. Most Macs also come with a FireWire 800 port, the high-speed peripheral standard that’s about twice as fast as USB 2.0, although the MacBook comes with a FireWire 400 port. They also all come with Bluetooth 2.1, the latest version of the wireless peripheral connection standard.
Once you’ve picked your Mac, moving everything from your PC to the Mac is the next step. If all you want to do is move some files, there are many easy ways to do it. If you can take your PC to an Apple Store, Apple can transfer the files for you. If you have a flash drive, an external hard drive or anything formatted for a PC that you can put your files on, a Mac can read it perfectly easily, provided it’s not encrypted and the Mac has a suitable connection. When you connect the drive to the Mac, you’ll find it should simply appear on your desktop. Double-click it and you’ll see all your files. Just like on a PC, you can use right-clicks to copy and paste the files, or you can simply drag and drop them to a suitable location on your Mac.
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