I've been familiarising myself with MacOS and various mac packages over the last few weeks (since taking possession of my first Mac just before Xmas). Having only briefly used macs whilst at college in the early 90's and spent the last 15 years using PCs (almost exclusively running Mr Gates' products), I can now see what all my mac using colleagues have been on about all this time.
It is absolutely brilliant! Yes, all Apple products look fantastic, except maybe those red and black iPods, but it just works so very well. As I've said, I'm new to Macs, but it's just all so intuitive, I have had no difficulties with it at all. Might have to admit my colleagues were right all along.
Ok, so it's weird not having all features in same software, especially the same keyboard short cuts (though they are very similar), and there are still a few packages that won't run on macs. But they ought to once I set my mac up with win xp - I know it seems daft, but it might save me lugging two laptops about with me.
Having been so impressed by the stability and speed of MacOS and every bit of software I've run so far, I'm a bit worried about the possibility that I might hobble my shiny new Mac, by letting Mr Gates' demons in.
I have downloaded Bootcamp (to see what's involved - and it seems pretty straight forward), and I will be requisitioning a copy of windows xp from work as soon as I found out who to ask. Has anyone else tried going down this route? If so any tales of woe before I go ahead?
My optimistic side sees this as the best solution - one machine running the two operating systems, the best of both worlds. My other side (not so much pessimistic as realistic) expects there to be problems.
Watch this space (which will hopefully be updated on a Mac).
not surprised you're enjoying it! The wonderful thing about the Intel Macs is that you can run more than one OS on it - I haven't tried bootcamp, but would be fascinated to hear how it goes! Please keep blogging about your experiences.
Why bother loading Bootcamp? Are there only certain applications that you need to use which will only run under a product produced by Mr Gates.
Can I answer that Drew? The simple answer is 'yes'. Tragically for Mac users, there are more apps that run on MS Windows than on OSX. Drew, if I were you I'd give Parallels a look rather than bootcamp - that way you don't have to reboot your machine each time you want to switch OS?
A few science resources - especially anything that involves plugging in in interfaces etc - really do need to run on a pc. The main impetus is to stop me having to lug two machines about.
I wouldn't be involved in this project if I wasn't enthusiastic about using IT in my teaching, but it needs to be simple and accessible. Juggling between two platforms is a necessary evil if you want to have the most suitable application for any given job, but it's simply inconvenient to have them on different machines. It's just logistics in the end.
I've heard of Parallels from a colleague, but wouldn't know where to start trying to requisition it through Argyll & Bute/LTS/School as its still not a done deal on the XP licence - requisition has been requested through school. Bootcamp is simpler as it's free.
Watch this space.