Switching Sides

• Article 16 of 16
• Macworld, October 2009
• View a PDF of the original article ~ 7.2MB

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Windows 7, the latest and maybe even the greatest version of the Windows operating system, is due to hit the stores in the UK in October. Microsoft says it will be faster, better and a real improvement on Windows Vista. Unlike the US version of Windows 7, the UK version is also going to be affordable, although the degree of affordability depends on exactly which version of Windows 7 you get, since it ranges from Windows 7 Home Premium (£65) to Windows 7 Ultimate (£160).

So it would seem to be a great time to buy a PC – because in a lot of cases, that’s probably what you’re going to need to do. Although Windows 7 performance tests suggest that it runs well on older hardware, to really get the most from it, you’re going to need a new PC.

But if you’re in a buying mood, why not look at a Mac, because coincidentally – or not – Apple has just released the latest version of its operating system for the Mac, Snow Leopard aka Mac OS X 10.6. And a Mac might just be what you really want and need instead of Windows 7.

On the face of it, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are very similar. They’re both ‘64-bit’ operating systems, which means they can use all the features of modern processors and work with more than 4GB of RAM. They look very similar and work very similarly: if you know how to point and click, double-click, or right-click in one operating system, you’ll know how to in the other; Windows has a task bar and a system tray, OS X has a Dock and a menubar; Windows has Windows search, the Mac has Spotlight; and so on. They can do more or less the same things. If you’re happy with Windows, you’ll be at least as happy on a Mac.

But the Mac’s big advantage is that it’s easier to use. Its applications do the same as Windows’ but with less fuss and more intuitively. Windows will give you many pop-ups telling you what it’s doing, but OS X just does it, with no requirement for you to do anything. Plug in a peripheral and it will just work. Connect to a network and the Mac will detect the necessary settings and join you to the network. Configuration is usually unnecessary. That means you’ll spend less time working with your computer and more time using your computer.

Apple are also better than sticking to standards than Microsoft, so OS X plays nicer with other systems than Windows. Safari, the Mac’s default browser that’s also available for Windows, is faster than Windows 7’s Internet Explorer 8, handles JavaScript far better and adheres to all the modern web standards encoded in the standard ‘Acid 3’ test, something IE8 can only dream of at the moment.

More importantly, in this day age, when there are currently over 100,000 viruses for Windows, there are none for OS X. Spyware is practically non-existent and Snow Leopard includes protection against the very few known Trojan horses for OS X. And there are no unpatched Safari exploits, something that can only be said about Internet Explorer for a few minutes at a time.

So moving to a Mac is likely to be a wise option. So how do you go about doing it?

Unlike buying a PC, choosing a new Mac is relatively easy. Go into PC World and you’ll be presenting with a near infinite range of desktops, laptops, and netbooks, all from myriad suppliers ranging from the well known like Sony, Dell and HP through to the more obscure but still worthy like Lenovo, Packard Bell and Acer. While some try to make their machines stylish – with varying success – the biggest differentiators will be the specs: how much RAM is there, how fast is the processor, how much hard drive space is there, which version of Windows or Linux it comes with and so on.

These won’t give you a full insight into the PC’s power, however. The devil’s always in the detail, so you’ll need to drill down through the specs to really get an idea of whether your dream machine is really a Porsche or a Porsche frame with a Robin Reliant’s motor. You’ll either need to brace yourself with reams of comparison tests from web sites or magazines or enter the frightening world of graphics cards, bus speeds and expansion slots.

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.

If you want to keep your PC, and you have a network at home – which you will do if you have so much as a wireless router from your internet service provider – you can turn on Windows file sharing on your PC and your Mac will be able to see any directories you share. Alternatively, you can turn on File sharing on your Mac in the Sharing System Preferences pane, and your PC should be able to see the Mac on the network. It’s not foolproof, however, and can require technical knowledge so isn’t recommended unless you’re prepared to put some time in.

If you want to run Windows applications on your Mac, even that is possible – if you install Windows. The Mac has something called Boot Camp hidden in its Utilities folder in the Applications folder, which allows you to split your Mac’s hard drive in two and install Windows on one half. You can then choose whether to start up your Mac in Windows or OS X by holding down the Alt key at start up and picking from a list. With Snow Leopard, you can also now view the OS X half of your hard drive in Windows so you can transfer files between the two.

The downside is that you’ll need your Windows installer disk – at least Windows XP SP2 – and a valid licence, and you’ll need to reinstall all your applications in the new Windows. You’ll still need to copy your files across as well.

So perhaps the easiest solution to your migration difficulties is Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac edition ( HYPERLINK "http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/stm/" http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/stm/). This costs £75 but it allows you to copy everything on your PC over to your Mac and then run Windows alongside all OS X and all your Mac applications. It comes with a set of tutorials for novice Mac users coming from the Windows world to explain how their new world works. You simply install a piece of software on your PC, install Parallels on your Mac and then connect the two computers together with a USB cable. Parallels will then copy over your PC’s entire disk and create a working version of Windows complete with all your files that you can run on your Mac. Parallels also installs some tools into this copy of Windows that integrates it with your Mac, so that you have access to your Start menu from the OS X Dock, can run Windows applications without the desktop, put all your system tray icons in the taskbar, and copy and paste between Windows and Mac applications. Best of all, it also allows you to drag and drop files between Windows and Mac, let Windows access your Mac’s files and folders, and lets you mount your Windows disk on the desktop so you can copy files from it.

Setting up your Mac once it arrives is very simple. You barely need to do anything at all, beyond connecting everything then turning it on and picking a wireless network if you’re using one. If you have peripherals that you used to use with your PC, you should be able to use most of them on your Mac as well. Anything that requires a parallel port will be a problem, but since your Mac will have both USB 2.0 ports and FireWire ports, you should be able to connect more or less anything to it. If your Mac has a FireWire 800 port, you can get a small, cheap adaptor that will allow you to connect an iLink/IEEE1394/FireWire 400 peripheral, such as a camcorder.

Connecting a peripheral and getting it working are two different things, however. These days, most peripheral manufacturers provide software for both Macs and Windows and often the fact the Apple uses industry standards means that no Mac-specific software is needed anyway. Macs also come with a large number of drivers installed as well. In other words,

In some cases, drivers will be needed all the same. Macs ship with huge numbers of print drivers which means most printers will work without any effort on your part: you just need to go to System Preferences>Print & Fax, click on the + symbol at the bottom of the printer list on the list and your Mac should automatically detect the printer and give you options for installation. If it doesn’t have built-in drivers, Snow Leopard will automatically go on the Internet and download them.

Standalone scanners are less well catered for, although Epson scanners work well with OS X’s Image Capture software. But with the move to all-in-one printer/scanners by printer manufacturers, there’s usually software for Macs as well as PCs available. In some cases, such as HP’s, the Mac software is actually better and easier to use than the PC software.

External hard drives, provided they haven’t been NTFS-formatted, should work perfectly with your Mac; if they have, you’ll need to reformat them using Disk Utility As well as not suffering from the same security problems as Windows, Macs also require less system maintenance. There’s no need for a disk defragger as your Mac defrags files on the fly. There’s no registry to corrupt, no need for a software uninstaller and the few bits of maintenance that need to be done, the Mac does itself at night.

in your Utilities folder to HFS+ or else you won’t be able to write any data to them. If you haven’t got an external hard drive, it’s actually well worth getting one to ensure you have a backup of all your data in case disaster strikes. At less than £80 for a 1TB hard drive, that should back up your Mac’s hard drive several times over. With Snow Leopard’s Time Machine feature, all you need to do is plug in an external drive and you’ll be able to use it for backing up without any configuration needed.

Virtually any digital camera you care to mention will work directly with the Mac’s iPhoto application, launching it as soon as it’s plugged in. Camcorders work similarly well with the iMovie application. And most MP3 players work with Macs, either through iTunes, which works just the same on a Mac as it does on Windows, or through the manufacturers’ software.

Mobile phones are a little trickier. Most mobile phones are only designed with PCs in mind, but Apple has tried to fill in the gaps with its iSync application in the Applications folder. This allows you to synchronise contact and calendar data between your Mac applications and your phone, and you’re more like to succeed with a Bluetooth connection to your phone, rather than a USB connection. If your mobile phone doesn’t work instantly, check the manufacturer’s web site to see if new Mac software has become available; also check the NovaMedia plugins for iSync ( HYPERLINK "http://www.novamedia.de/e_pages/e_produkte_mac_isync_plugins.html" http://www.novamedia.de/e_pages/e_produkte_mac_isync_plugins.html) to see if your mobile phone is one of the 200 additional models supported.

Next stop for both mobile phone users and PDA users is Mark/Space, whose Missing Sync software is now available for: Palm, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, Nokia, HTC Touch, Sony PSP and iPhone. This lets you synchronise various applications and data – which ones depend on your phone – with your Mac. Between iSync and Missing Sync, most mobiles from major phone manufacturers are covered.

Macs can do pretty much everything Windows can do, but usually better and more elegantly. The hardware is usually better than the PC equivalent at the same price, more environmentally friendly. And switching to a Mac has never been easier.

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