A Mac Baker’s Dozen:

13 Things I Wish I’d known before I bought my Mac

Adrian Nixon January 2014

1. It is a lovely piece of kit. !

In January 2013 my Vaio Laptop died. I took this opportunity to move from a PC to a Mac. I bought a Mac Book Pro with a retina screen. It boots up (and shuts down) in seconds. The battery lasts for 7 hours. I still think it’s a lovely piece of kit, now in 2014.

If you can use a PC you’ll find Mac OS easy. The Mac is nicely designed and built.

Works well with iPhone and iPad, but…

2. …I had to transfer my files manually

I ended up copying all my files to a 1Tb flash drive. Then pasting some to my mac hard drive.

Read on to find out why I had a spare drive…

My first problem was to transfer my files. !

Fortunately Apple has a Migration Assistant.

Unfortunately, It doesn’t transfer all files. !

If you use it, check its results carefully.

3. …It cannot be upgraded !

I use my Mac for all my work. It filled rapidly with my files. So I bought a new hard drive for a Mac book pro. Sadly it wouldn’t fit.

Actually, I couldn’t even open the back. It is sealed with non-standard screws.

So I asked the Apple shop for help. They were very nice.

And nicely told me I should have paid more attention when buying it.

A Mac book pro can be upgraded. But not if it has a retina screen.

Yes, it is my fault for not checking - Boo.

4. There are Apps - and Apps

Same logo, completely different things. I’d expected Mac OS and IOS to be integrated.

Silly me.

Apps on a Mac

Apps on iPhone

and iPad

5. There is no Delete key

OK, hardly life changing. Though I did spend ages trying to sort this.

You have to press the ‘fn’ and ‘backspace’ keys to delete. !

There is no print screen button either. Press ‘cmd’ and ‘shift’ and ‘4’ keys

6. Yes, you can right click

Works like a charm. I wish MS Office did…

For some reason people think this is not possible on a Mac !Press with two fingers on the trackpad to right click. !Right click works with the the rather swish apple mouse, it is lovely.

7. There is Microsoft Office for Mac

So, how has it been with MS-Office-for-Mac?…

Apple has its own version of MS office; Pages, Numbers & Keynote. !These equivalents are stylish, I like them. !This presentation was created using Keynote. !However my clients in the corporate world all use MS office. So I must too.

8. There is no MS Access for Mac

Could there be more MS-Office-for-Mac woes?…

Some of you will not care about this. !

If you have to work with Access databases there is no Apple equivalent !

9. I had to stop using MS Outlook

In the end I dumped MS Outlook for Mac. And now use Apple mail, contacts and calendar.

These all work fine across my various devices. (Still looking for a better email provider)

OK, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It was annoying to find out that my email provider didn't have the right version of MS Exchange to support Outlook for Mac, grrrr.

10. Word for Mac is not the same

Word for Mac works for every day uses. I still have to use Word on a PC to create Pdf files

The Mac version (Word 2011) has flaws that the PC version does not have e.g.: • Very difficult to create automatic table of contents • Creating Pdf documents expands the file size

when graphics are present.

11. Excel for Mac seems ok

I’m probably not using excel as deeply as the others

Excel is the only bit of Office-for-Mac that I’ve not had problems with.

12. I can’t rely on Powerpoint for Mac

This is so serious I had to partition my Mac. I now have Windows 8 with another copy of office for PC

All important presentations run in PC mode.

Deep problems here. Especially using hyperlinked presentations. They work fine when testing. Then grind to a halt when I present live. This has happened so many times. Apple and Microsoft cannot solve this reliably.

13. What is the source of these woes?

Who benefits? Apple tried hard to resolve my problems.

Their customer service is great but could not help me. In the end I spent more money on Microsoft products.

You decide…

All things Apple work well on a Mac. MS products have problems on Mac OS. I had to buy: • Copy of Windows 8 • Extra copy of MS Office for PC • Ouch.