Customer Reviews

Mac OS X for Windows Users: A Switchers' Guide

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am a life long PC user who also has 3 Macs. I just purchase 2 of the hottest new Macs for my video edit suite and saw this book on the shelf and grabbed it without opening it. I actually thought it would contain some useful information about the OS X and help me get up to speed easier. Foolish me for judging a book by its cover. This author should be ashamed of himself. The only thing worse than the content is the writing. I do recommend this publisher however for anyone who cannot write and doesn't have much to say because clearly they don't care either.

Bottom line - I purchased the Mac! I don't need to be validated or praised as a "switcher." The book is full of Mac ads and commercials and who needs that. What I wanted was to know how the Mac and PC are the same and how to get the job done in OS X not an assemblage of why the PC is inferior.

BTW: I don't write reviews but this book is so bad I felt it was a must.

Had this book been titled 'My Switch to Mac, a Personal Odyssey', it would merit two or three stars. But it's titled 'Mac OS-X for Windows Users', and with such a title one expects much more than this book delivers

The author is lazy and sloppy at all turns. Other reviewers have mentioned the 'filler' material such as pro-Apple testimonials from 'Switchers', and the author's habit of saying 'this should work, although I didn't try it'. But also take note of the screenshots, which often include oddball icons that the author explains away as software he happens to have installed on his machine, but isn't relevant to the current discussion. It's as if he didn't want to spend the $1000 for a clean-install machine and start from ground zero, as a new user in his target audience would, so he took screenshots from his everyday box instead.

I've used Windows for many years and recently bought an iMac. This book provided little of value to me.

There's a good book still 'waiting to be written' on the subject. For instance, when I first tried my iMac, I was puzzled that when I killed a window, it didn't kill the app. There's still a black triangle in the dock indicating the process is still alive and eating up RAM. In Windows, you click the X, and the app is dead. So what do I do on the iMac? Baffled, I opened a terminal window, looked at 'top', and 'kill'ed all the junk by process-ID. But I thought 'this can't be the best way', and it isn't. Among other 'better' approaches, you can hold down the mouse button on the dock icon and a menu with Quit comes up. But this is exactly the sort of useful explanation the book lacks.

The Switchers' Guide is an unabashed endorsement of Mac over PC -- and rightly so, in my opinion. If you work in creative applications on a PC (as I do, I'm ashamed to say) you will feel woefully inadequate and be convinced that life has passed you by. Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration. However, David Coursey presents many compelling reasons for making the switch in this well written and entertaining book targeted to disgruntled Microsoft captives.

Interspersed throughout the book are interviews with individuals, many of whom were in the recent Mac switcher ads, who describe their various reasons for migrating to Macs (including some PC horror stories). The testimonials are quite convincing and, I believe a clever way for Mr. Coursey to shield himself from the heat which Microsoft would surely direct his way otherwise. They are real world experiences and probably completely biased, but present all the good reasons to make the switch.

Early chapters describe why people switch and how relatively easy it is to do. There is a brief description of the Mac GUI and corresponding hardware components such as USB and FireWire ports, modems, memory and the like. The author describes how to move files from one OS to the other and includes a rebate for Move2Mac, a program that does all the hard work. The chapter on the Mac desktop and its comparison with the Windows equivalent is particularly good. The Internet and email on the Mac are also covered extensively.

Later chapters deal primarily with software applications: iApps that come with the machine and other Windows-type programs that have Mac equivalents. There's even a description on how to run Windows and/or MS Office on a Mac, although why anyone would want to is beyond me. If there's a weakness in the book, it's here.

While we can run spreadsheet and word processing on the Mac, that's no real reason to switch. I'm led to believe it's with the creative applications that the Mac really shines, and there's little in Mac OS X for Windows Users: A Switchers' Guide that addresses how or why these programs work better on the Mac.

In my case, I got entrenched in the PC world of DOS with AutoCAD and, later, 3D Studio, for which there was no acceptable Mac alternative at the time. These can be highly creative programs that are still the software of choice for the architects that I know. In order to be on that wagon, I had to have a PC and went through all the machinations (no pun intended) from one version to the next of both software and operating system.

Along the way I added Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, AfterEffects, Painter, Dreamweaver and other PC programs. Now, in order to switch, I have to buy all these programs over again in Mac mode. Nowhere in the book is there an answer or discussion on this dilemma.

Nevertheless, for the price, this is a great book for those with only recent PC history or limited Adobe PC applications to evaluate what is really an easy choice. It sure convinced me and I may just spring for the Mac Photoshop software anyway.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

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Wynne Stevens
[local website]

I enjoy reading David's Anchor Desk articles and I recall the editorials which eventually led to the creation of this book. I think that readers will find that the testimonials and David's own experiences provide compelling reasons to make the switch to Mac OS X. However, as a "switcher's guide" this book falls short.

Besides being outdated, which can happen quickly with any computer book, it is a bit shallow and incomplete. For starters, David needs to consider a home network as a means of transferring data from a PC to a Mac and not just using third party software and cables or burning lots of CDs. A big concern for many people is how to transfer their data from Outlook to Entourage and if you do a Google search you can find information about how other people made this work. David would score big in a revised edition if he could try out some of these techniques and write about them as well.

There needs to be a better discussion about the differences between OS X and Windows XP. I am currently trying to learn OS X on an upgraded G3 and have been confused about installing applications and making them easily accessible to other user accounts, as some applications installed by one user were not in the applications folder for another user. In fact, a good switcher's guide would help me with the differences between multiple user profiles on XP and OS X.

I would like to see a revised edition of this book. David should search the newsgroups and other Mac websites and see what type of issues are commonly brought up by newbies. He should read the other reviews on Amazon.com and take to heart their opinions and suggestions. And he should remove what essentially is his own user manual for someone else's PC to Mac software.

Despite all of this, David's book has still managed to help me decide to switch to Mac with my next PC purchase. Well, David and Symatec also, whose System Works 2004 install has all but crippled my PC.

I purchased this prior to actually purchasing my iBook and it was helpful in arranging my files on my PC desktop for the transfer to the new notebook. Beyond that, though, the information is fairly basic.

If you have any experience with computers, the transfer is readily accomplished without the software program that is promoted quite heavily in the book (and which the author had a hand in).

Wow, what a phoned-in effort. This slim volume includes 25 pages of reprints of Apple "Switch" ads; 10 pages that paraphrase the user guide from Detto's Move2Mac software; and 27 pages of reprints from the author's Web site.

Worse, the author consistently backs off from providing anything more than skin-deep instructions. What other computer-book author would dare publish lines like these? "This is complex, so I will quote extensively from Apple's switching guide [on the Web]." Or this: "I have not tried this, but I don't see any obvious reason why this technique wouldn't work." Or this: "I haven't tried this myself, but I hear it's fairly slow."

Isn't it the author's job to try these things out before writing about them?

Or even this: "If my explanation has confused you, please accept my apologies and check out the help system already on your Mac."
Why did we buy a computer book, if it's just an exhortation to use the online help?

He concludes the book like this: "I am sorry for all the things I did not put in this book."

You'll be sorry, too.

The title of this book should be: Mac OS X: The Alter-Ego Experiences
This is an ego boosting book for mac users, especially for the switchers.

This book, if read as a guidebook, might only give preliminary information.
But I enjoy the book, not for its purpose as a switcher's guide. But more toward in learning the experiences of the author (and some switchers that are being interviewed) answering his problems/questions during the conversion period. Treat it as a light book for your leisure time, turn on the iPod then read this book, and smile.

A must have. Before I got my new 17" power book my freind gave me David Coursey book. I'm glad he did it, was great reading while I waited and waited for my new mac. I found the book to be great, up until I had to become interactive with the computer I didn't have yet. it was clear and very easy to read and of course the switch storys are great entertainment. After I got my new system is where the real help came in. I've only had to call APL-Care three times, without the this book I would have had a lot more hold time I'm sure. I used Move2Mac (as recommended) to move my data, which did a great job on most of it, I would recommend it also. I had to move my address book the hard way but found it not that tough, again with following the books step-by-step guide it was very simple for me. The book is well worth the money, it saved me a great deal of time.

This book is a must read for anyone who has switched recently from the PC to
the Mac or is simply thinking about switching. If for nothing more, one
needs to read the introductory chapter.

I recently switched from a perfectly good Thinkpad T22, after it went through yet another hardware
failure, and went a bought a Powerbook G4 Titanium. Of course, after I did,
I felt a tremendous sense of guilt. Did I really need this and what about
all those apps that I have built on the PC which just aren't that portable
to the Mac.

David's book put my mind at ease and I realized I bought the Mac as I just
wanted a machine that works and works well. As with David, the Thinkpad
won't be going anywhere too fast, as there are still things I can only do in
that environment. But now, as the XP computer needs yet another new restart
for yet another XP patch, or simply because something has caused it to become
unstable, I easily continue to work away on the Mac.

David goes into excellent elaboration on just what the benefits are of using
a Mac but he gets at some of the pitfalls and problems you'll run into
(something Apple in their advertising won't point out) and suggests sound
solutions to get around these problems.

If for no other reason if you read this book you will have a better sense of what
is and is not possible and certainly feel much relieved in your decision to
make the switch.

In the end, I tend to agree wholeheartedly with David that initially you
cannot retire your PC overnight and depending on the work you do, you might
not ever be able to retire it but, you just might if you can stand the
slowness of something like Virtual PC.

Yet, as he clearly outlines and I have found, working on the Mac allows you
just to concentrate on what you're doing rather than fighting fearlessly
with your PC only to forget what it was you were trying to do.

Excellent book and a must read for a switcher.

If MAC is truly so much superior to the PC, then teach me how to use if and it will be self evident that it is a superior system. Don't spend a third of the book reprinting commercials from the apple website. I want to know how to use the MAC. I don't need to read stories about how the MAC saved Christmas.

I was expecting a bit more substance, such as how to take full advantage of the Apple proprietary programs and to have a better understanding of how to exploit the MAC interface. Contrary to the advertising downloading files and organizing them using the MAC is not as intuitive as apple claims.

Strangely enough, MAC OSX reminds me a lot of the interface for DOS 5.0.

In order for me to embrace the advantages of MAC, I need to know how to use it, not be converted. This is a computer, not a religion.

There are a lot of better MAC OSX books out there. I recommend MAC OSX, the missing manual. It actually goes in depth and explains how to use the apple proprietary programs.

This book is a waste of time and money. It is only slightly more useful than the manual that came with the computer.