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Thread: Gulp: Moving from PC to Mac or using both

  1. #1
    Lifetime Member Jay Gould's Avatar
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    Default Gulp: Moving from PC to Mac or using both

    I have always been a PC guy; currently using and loving a Dell 17" laptop.

    However, it is too heavy to continuously carry - at least for me - and I am considering purchasing the Mac Book Air 13".

    It was given a fair review by Kah Kit Yoong (http://www.magichourunplugged.com/2011/02/02/macbook-air-hands-on-review/); if interested you might want to look at his galleries - absolutely amazing images.

    A few issues arise for me:

    Ease of learning the Mac platform

    Transferring my Lightroom catalog back and forth from a Mac to a PC

    Opening/reopening CR2, Dng, Psd, and Tiff images on both platforms

    Opening/reopening documents and outlook in both platforms

    Perhaps this is the beginning of a move permanently from PC to Mac

    Your thoughts greatly appreciated.
    Last edited by Jay Gould; 03-03-2011 at 03:27 AM.
    Cheers, Jay

    My Digital Art - "Nature Interpreted" - can now be view at http://www.luvntravlnphotography.com

    "Nature Interpreted" - Photography begins with your mind and eyes, and ends with an image representing your vision and your reality of the captured scene; photography exceeds the camera sensor's limitations. Capturing and Processing landscapes and seascapes allows me to express my vision and reality of Nature.

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    - Ease of learning the Mac platform
    A non-issue if you're comfortable with Win XP or Win 7. The basic operation is similar enough that you'll learn the tiny differences quickly enough.

    - Transferring my Lightroom catalog back and forth from a Mac to a PC
    I think this will work fine. I'll check tomorrow at work, I don't have an LR installer at home. LR is one of the very few Adobe products with a multi-platform installer.

    - Opening/reopening CR2, Dng, Psd, and Tiff images on both platforms
    Will work fine with Adobe apps, should work fine with all apps. There is nothing Mac or Win specific in the files. File transfer problems tended to happen in the pre-Intel-Mac days because of buggy apps - pretty unlikely now with everything on Intel. It wasn't an O/S issue, but one of processor differences.

    - Opening/reopening documents and outlook in both platforms
    Like above. I have no problems and use both regularly at work. I use Entourage on Mac and Outlook on Win. I'm mostly a Mac person, Entourage is just for the MS Exchange company calendaring, all my emil is Apple Mail on Mac.

    - Perhaps this is the beginning of a move permanently from PC to Mac
    I think you'll love it! You can also install and run Windows on any Mac in a virtual machine, or even natively, if you have Win-only apps or decide to go back to Win.

    Alan

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    Jay, Alan,

    First, I do not use a mac everyday. My wife has a mac desktop and windows pc. I use windows, linux, unix and help my wife on the mac as needed, and use it occasionally.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alan Lillich View Post
    - Ease of learning the Mac platform
    A non-issue if you're comfortable with Win XP or Win 7. The basic operation is similar enough that you'll learn the tiny differences quickly enough.
    This, I believe, is personal taste. The mac interface is very different from windows or linux, and to me is not intuitive (probably because of my experience). Ubuntu linux (10.x) has incorporated the best ideas from both windows and mac in my opinion (both windows and mac have pluses and minuses in my opinion). So how easy it is to get used to the mac interface will depend on the user. It can be a fair learning curve.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alan Lillich View Post
    - Opening/reopening CR2, Dng, Psd, and Tiff images on both platforms
    Will work fine with Adobe apps, should work fine with all apps. There is nothing Mac or Win specific in the files. File transfer problems tended to happen in the pre-Intel-Mac days because of buggy apps - pretty unlikely now with everything on Intel. It wasn't an O/S issue, but one of processor differences.
    Before intel there were byte-swap issues between different machines. That is not an issue now with macs and pcs both on intel cpus.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alan Lillich View Post
    - Opening/reopening documents and outlook in both platforms
    Like above. I have no problems and use both regularly at work. I use Entourage on Mac and Outlook on Win. I'm mostly a Mac person, Entourage is just for the MS Exchange company calendaring, all my emil is Apple Mail on Mac.
    This, to me remains a BIG problem. My wife constantly has problems with documents, including pdfs. I exchange documents with colleagues every week, moving between mac, pc and linux. It is unusual for there NOT to be compatibility problems, especially graphics and fine detail of formatting in a document. Just today someone was giving a power point presentation (made on a mac and presented with a PC) and some graphics did not show. At professional meetings now (the better organized meetings), pcs and macs are both used to avoid the compatibility issues, so people with presentations made on one machine can present using the same type of machine. I believe a large part of this problem is constantly changing formats to keep people locked into one system--and it works. No excuse in this day and age.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alan Lillich View Post
    - Perhaps this is the beginning of a move permanently from PC to Mac
    I think you'll love it! You can also install and run Windows on any Mac in a virtual machine, or even natively, if you have Win-only apps or decide to go back to Win.
    The windows virtual machine is a solution. Sad we need to do that.

    I'm not trying to start a mac-pc war, just trying to illustrate real-world issues, which do exist.

    Roger

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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Clark View Post
    This, to me remains a BIG problem. My wife constantly has problems with documents, including pdfs. I exchange documents with colleagues every week, moving between mac, pc and linux. It is unusual for there NOT to be compatibility problems, especially graphics and fine detail of formatting in a document. Just today someone was giving a power point presentation (made on a mac and presented with a PC) and some graphics did not show. At professional meetings now (the better organized meetings), pcs and macs are both used to avoid the compatibility issues, so people with presentations made on one machine can present using the same type of machine. I believe a large part of this problem is constantly changing formats to keep people locked into one system--and it works. No excuse in this day and age.
    Not to say at all that Roger's experiences aren't real, but for me this kind of problem is often a machine switch and not an O/S switch. That is, you can go from Mac to Mac or Win to Win and have problems like this. Typical errors are fonts installed on one machine and not another, and not embedded in the document, or differing versions of apps. I've gotten in the habit of sharing documents and presentations as PDF as much as possible, and making sure all fonts and images are embedded.

    Alan

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    Consider also the Sony Z series. 13 inch slim profile. Windows 7. A lot of horse power in a light weight package.

  6. #6
    Wendy Griffiths
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Clark View Post
    Jay, Alan,


    This, to me remains a BIG problem. My wife constantly has problems with documents, including pdfs. I exchange documents with colleagues every week, moving between mac, pc and linux. It is unusual for there NOT to be compatibility problems, especially graphics and fine detail of formatting in a document. Just today someone was giving a power point presentation (made on a mac and presented with a PC) and some graphics did not show. At professional meetings now (the better organized meetings), pcs and macs are both used to avoid the compatibility issues, so people with presentations made on one machine can present using the same type of machine. I believe a large part of this problem is constantly changing formats to keep people locked into one system--and it works. No excuse in this day and age.


    Roger
    Not sure why your wife would have so many problems...perhaps choice of software. OK it requires you to purchase software but MS Office for Mac allows you to save in PC format and it would be rare for something to go belly-up (Macros are one exception). PDF's are a piece of cake - that is a universal format I thought.

    If you can learn to operate a new lens or body then you can learn to use a Mac.

    Take the plunge..do it cos you know you want to.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Wendy Griffiths View Post
    Not sure why your wife would have so many problems...perhaps choice of software. OK it requires you to purchase software but MS Office for Mac allows you to save in PC format and it would be rare for something to go belly-up (Macros are one exception). PDF's are a piece of cake - that is a universal format I thought.

    If you can learn to operate a new lens or body then you can learn to use a Mac.

    Take the plunge..do it cos you know you want to.
    Like I said, it is not just with my wife's mac, it is with multiple colleagues. I publish dozens of documents each year, and make dozens more presentations that involves exchanging documents during the editing process. The documents sometimes have equations, and almost always have figures, and usually a simple font, like times roman or arial. It is rare in my experience for something to work perfectly in the mac-pc exchange. Hardly a week goes by where this compatibility issue does not raise its head. And I am talking about everyone using MS Word for documents, excell spreadsheets and power point presentations. Even a simple text document with times roman fonts will have formatting changed, changed enough that it becomes a pain to go into and fix.

    I've also had compatibility problems with pdfs, again simple text document with times roman fonts and the problem is formatting.

    This week was no exception: mac-pc compatibility was an issue just yesterday.

    Roger

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    I use both Mac and Windows. At home Mac only and I've never spent a cent of my personal money on the PC side. At work I have Mac and Windows side-by-side because I am forced to have Windows, and the contrast is often stark.

    You will be fine Jay. Millions of people have switched over the past few years which has resulted in the healthy market share Apple currently enjoys. The interface issue is really whatever you are used to but once you learn how to use the Mac there will be no problems. There are a huge number of similarities between the two mainly because Microsoft freely pilfered all the ideas from the Mac OS over the years (I don't use smiley faces, but consider one inserted here!). Under the hood of the Mac OS is a flavour of UNIX so we are just talking about the graphic user interface, not the operating system. Technologies built in to the Mac OS like Time Machine, Exposé, and Spotlight are worth the price of admission, and the new OS (Lion) will have some more.

    Re. file compatibility, I don't have problems going between the two systems. Ironically I've developed a reputation in the office for being able to open Windows files with my Mac, which could not be opened by Windows! I still see this a fair bit with pdfs which will not open in Windows even though they were generated on that platform, but will open on the Mac. Bottom line, I see more problems with compatibility between software/OS versions on the Windows side as I do going between Mac and Windows.

  9. #9
    E.J. Peiker
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    See the video PC to Mac - The Basics:
    http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#switcher

  10. #10
    Cody Covey
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Chardine View Post
    Re. file compatibility, I don't have problems going between the two systems. Ironically I've developed a reputation in the office for being able to open Windows files with my Mac, which could not be opened by Windows! I still see this a fair bit with pdfs which will not open in Windows even though they were generated on that platform, but will open on the Mac. Bottom line, I see more problems with compatibility between software/OS versions on the Windows side as I do going between Mac and Windows.
    7% market share isn't exactly anything to be that happy about...And secondly you are the first person I have ever heard of that has had better compatibility on a Mac. Apple being the most closed OS currently on the market. I would never go to a Mac but that is mostly because the Mac does nothing better than windows that I would use it for but a lot of things worse.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cody Covey View Post
    7% market share isn't exactly anything to be that happy about...And secondly you are the first person I have ever heard of that has had better compatibility on a Mac. Apple being the most closed OS currently on the market. I would never go to a Mac but that is mostly because the Mac does nothing better than windows that I would use it for but a lot of things worse.
    Please be careful. We do not want a OS war. I would say, the two OS's are just different. So whether one sees one as worse is probably more a function of one's historical experience with a given OS.

    Roger

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    Lifetime Member Jay Gould's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by E.J. Peiker View Post
    See the video PC to Mac - The Basics:
    http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#switcher

    EJ: thanks for the link; even Jackie felt it was a doable project.

    Now to consider the software.
    Cheers, Jay

    My Digital Art - "Nature Interpreted" - can now be view at http://www.luvntravlnphotography.com

    "Nature Interpreted" - Photography begins with your mind and eyes, and ends with an image representing your vision and your reality of the captured scene; photography exceeds the camera sensor's limitations. Capturing and Processing landscapes and seascapes allows me to express my vision and reality of Nature.

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    BPN Viewer Charles Glatzer's Avatar
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    Jay,

    To quote NIKE "JUST DO IT"

    You won't look back.

    Chas

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