Switching to a Mac – my experience

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So, like a month ago, my Windows computer died. Before that it gave me 2.5 years of grief. I got to the point where I hated Windows. I couldn’t wait to buy a Mac. I have drooled over every model I’ve seen. Could not wait until I had one in my own little grubby hands. Three weeks ago, the Mac arrived. I thought it would be a piece of cake to get everything set up. It wasn’t. Switching to a Mac has been far from easy. I feel like an alien in a world I know nothing about. It’s as if I’ve never seen a computer before in my life, and I’ve been almost afraid to touch anything because I might break it.

I say that because I have broken stuff – two SD cards so far. Word of warning, don’t format SD cards on a mac because you might find out later when you put said cards in your Nikon camera, they no longer work. Why? I’m not sure. Render me clueless. 

Now, I don’t consider myself a computer expert, but I’m far from a newbie. I’ve been messing around with computers since the 80s. I remember playing Atari 5200 on a Texas Instrument. Later we had a Tandy TRS-80, then the upgraded model, and so on. There has always been a computer in my house since I was a kid. I’ve even used Macs before, just not exclusively. 

We had one of these sitting on my Mom’s desk. You really couldn’t do much with it, unless you were a programmer. There was no Windows or ios, just DOS. I think it had a word game on it, like Scrabble, but not quite. You had to give DOS commands to get to it. I could never remember the stupid command, but I would sit there, and try to break into the system for literally HOURS. I was obsessed with computers. If I got the blinking cursor to move down to the next line, I was thrilled. Didn’t matter if I could get into the game or not. 

Owning a Mac is similar to that big ox of a machine, in a sense, minus the enthusiasm and excitement I had back then. Nowadays, I don’t like spending a lot of time figuring things out. I just want to get things done, so I can get the next thing done, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s slow going. It’s like beginning the learning process all over again, as if it’s 1980. The learning curve is steep. 

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I’ve found on a mac, there are incredible hoops to jump through to do simple tasks. Every little thing that I need to do, I’ve had to search the internet to find out how to do it, and there seems to be at least 18 steps involved each time. Simple things like, saving a photo, opening a photo, closing down the browser, rebooting the machine, deleting photos off an SD card..because you can’t simply select all the photos, and hit the delete key like you do on Windows. But, wait! How do you select a bunch of photos, anyhow? Why you draw a box around them with your magic mouse, of course, but you still can’t delete them. 

It took me 3 hours last week to open a photo in Photoshop. It was humiliating, and humbling. Greg was asking people he works with to help me out because I was so lost. I finally realized that iPhoto is not like Windows file viewer, and you can’t click on a photo, and have it open in Photoshop. You can only open photos in PS through Finder, if you associate the file extension. Like, duh, right? 

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This is week 3. I want to, but unfortunately I can’t say I love Mac at this point in time. I barely even like it. The million dollar question is..would I go back to Windows? Rock meet hard place. Believe me, I’ve asked myself this question several times as I’ve been to the point of boxing this thing up, and sending it back. However, when I thought of the alternative, it stopped me dead in my tracks.

The answer is, I would never go back to Windows 10 with all the key-logging/spying/tracking, updating, installing, and setting changes that goes on behind the scenes without the user’s knowledge or permission. Microsoft has become incredibly intrusive, and they keep pushing the envelope more with each os. It’s only going to get worse.

After dealing with the effed up mess called Vista, Windows 8, then 8.1, and finally 10, Windows is forever ruined in my mind. You can’t get it wrong that many times, and still expect people to love and trust your product. No, thanks. Take me back to XP or 7, and I’ll be there in a split second. Heck, I’d even go back to 3.1, but as the old saying goes, you can’t go back. There is no realistic alternative for me except Mac at this point. I basically have to accept it, hush up, sit down, and figure it out. 

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Maybe, and it is possible, I’m completely burnt out on computers, and I’ll never be satisfied with another one. They are all so flawed, in so many ways.

On the plus side, I have drunk the Apple flavored koolaid as far as my iPad and iPhone are concerned. Ahhh, and it’s lip smacking gooood. I LOVE them, and I find them both incredibly user friendly. I had no problem switching to an iPhone from Android. It was love at first sight, so it’s only a matter of time for me and the mac, right? A month from now, I’ll have fallen in love with it, and everything will be better. I just know it. It’s either that or I’ll have sold it on eBay by then, and replaced it with another Tandy. Only time will tell. 

ps: can I still buy cassette tapes, and how many would I need? hm..