"You're not just going to wake up one day as a girl"

[RavenMoon]

Wow this thread is so off the tracks. When did this turn into the Mac vs PC thread? 

Yes, sorry about that! I am a geek, and proud of it!

[Heather]

Yes, sorry about that!

I just thought it was funny that's all nothing to be sorry about.

[RavenMoon]

I just thought it was funny that's all nothing to be sorry about.

It is funny, as are people's misconceptions about Macs.

[sam79]

People must express their inner geek, it comes out of nowhere.

Just saying, but the geekiest boy and girl I know are both TG...

[Heather]

It is funny, as are people's misconceptions about Macs.

Hey I have no misconceptions about Macs I want one I just don't have Mac money. 

[Gina_Z]

Someday I'll wake up as a girl with a Mac and a PC. I use Audition on my PC along with other DAW software. I love it. I hate how iPhoto doesn't let you see the folder that photos are in. It would be so nice to just copy and paste from that invisible folder. Same with iTunes. It's like Apple wants to control what I am doing. I hate 'synching'.  On the other hand, Apple can be very user friendly and intuitive. Photoshop is great on my Mac. My audio software on my PC is great. Mac's 'Pages' stinks so I got MSWord for Mac 2011. Nice. Both PC and Mac have deficiencies. Both can be great tools. It will be gradual but looking forward to waking up as a girl.

[RavenMoon]

Hey I have no misconceptions about Macs I want one I just don't have Mac money. 

I buy used reconditioned Macs.

[Violet Bloom]

  I'm going to try to sum up and tie this tangent back into the thread.  I have used all the major computing platforms and know them inside-out in excruciating detail.  Every one has it's own benefits and weaknesses.    I will always use whatever is the best tool for the particular job.  But in terms of making this relevant to transition I would say that I'm not planning on following all 'the rules' that society will define me by.  Girls "aren't supposed to be interested or versed in computing" but I will happily be a girl who is tech-savvy.  Everyone should remember that the most important thing in transition is to confidently be yourself, whatever that may entail.  The future will offer way more openness to what defines gender and we should all use that to our advantage.  Personality goes a long way towards whether anyone really cares if your looks pass to a gleaming polish.

  In short, don't be afraid to be a PC in a Mac world.

[RavenMoon]

Someday I'll wake up as a girl with a Mac and a PC. I use Audition on my PC along with other DAW software. I love it. I hate how iPhoto doesn't let you see the folder that photos are in. It would be so nice to just copy and paste from that invisible folder. Same with iTunes. It's like Apple wants to control what I am doing. I hate 'synching'.  On the other hand, Apple can be very user friendly and intuitive. Photoshop is great on my Mac. My audio software on my PC is great. Mac's 'Pages' stinks so I got MSWord for Mac 2011. Nice. Both PC and Mac have deficiencies. Both can be great tools. It will be gradual but looking forward to waking up as a girl.

You don't need to see the folder iPhoto uses. You can export photos right from it. If you really want to see the file, right click on the image and choose "show in Finder".

iTunes absolutely shows the songs in nested folders. Normally it's in the iTunes folder in your home folder. My music is on a 2TB external drive that is also shared wirelessly with my son's MacBook so we don't have to have two libraries.  I put the iTunes music folder in my Sidebar. And once again right click on the song and choose Show in Finder.

But why do you need to see the files anyway? Windows users seem to like to go to a folder, look for the song and play it. iTunes just shows all your music in a nice organized fashion. If I could search through my CD collection like I can in iTunes I'd be happy!

As far as synching, I have an iPod Classic that has about 20,000 songs on it as well as my iPhone. I love how I can add a note or a contact on either my Mac or phone and it's there on the other one.

[A]

Oooookay. I shouldn't have started this. I hate fights. You took the time to write all this though, so I'll take the time to reply.

Clearly you haven't used Macs very much.
Never by choice, but a couple hundred hours for sure at school.
Everything on Windows requires four more steps to do. To illustrate this, look at the instructions for cross platform software. The Windows installation will have many more steps than the Mac, which often involves dragging the app to the app folder.
I actually appreciate the computer telling me what it's doing and asking me how to do it. I really hate the Mac's simplistic "if you don't ask you'll never know, and even then you probably won't know either"
You delete them the same way. Things aren't hard to find on a Mac because there are not zillions of archaic named files scattered in the system folder like you have on Windows. Deleting an application generally involves moving it to the trash. There are no plethora of files it installed, and no register to mess with.
To be honest, to someone even a little used to Windows, those are not complicated or archaic at all. They make perfect sense to a Windows user, contrary to the Mac which works in an incredibly visual but implicit way which just doesn't work with you when your brain functions like mine. Also, you never have to mess with the register unless 1. you went out of your way to do something really messy by manually editing the registry to begin with, or 2. you're trying to customize your PC in a special way that a Mac doesn't even allow to begin with.

Plus, I have never had a virus on my Mac since a fairly harmless one in the mid 90s. I don't even run any anti virus software. Windows on the other hand is a very insecure platform, and there are way too much malware out there.
Yeah, our teacher instructed us on that myth. It IS true that you don't catch a lot of virus on Macs. But the only reason for that is that Mac OS works very differently from Windows, and Windows is insanely more used, globally, than Mac OS. Thus, for someone seeking to do harm or gain profit by distributing malicious software, to code up Windows software. If Macs became more popular than PCs, for sure you'll need an antivirus software just as much as you do on a PC. Just leave the bad people some time to learn to do it for Macs and distribute their stuff.

I don't know a single graphic designer than uses a PC. Not in the NYC area anyway. Like I said, go work for Sony Music and see the look on their faces when you tell them you want to use a PC. They will say no. They don't have any, except maybe in the accounting department. Same with any of the major graphics firms. I've worked for AJ Bart, RR Donnelly, etc. You might find some Windows file servers, and that's about it.
I dunno about any of those things. I just know that of the few companies that I know, there's usually either a mix of Macs and PCs or only PCs. When you start a business nowadays, and you realize that you can put Adobe CS for designing on a PC as well, AND the PC will also give you much better tools to actually code up the website, AND that Macs cost a leg and an arm, usually PCs make a lot of sense. That would mostly only apply to younger people who didn't get used to working mostly with a Mac though. Of course a 50-year-old who started their career back when Windows wasn't worth crap for anything artistic is gonna be used to Macs and want them. And probably, they'll also be under the misconception that Windows isn't good for graphical work, still.

Heck, even Microsoft uses them. I'm sure you heard the whole thing about the Windows 95 logo being designed on a Mac in Macromedia Freehand?
I'll admit that in 1995 (and that does fit in "ages ago" especially if we're talking about computers), Windows was probably profoundly inadequate for artistic work.
Why didn't they use a PC? And the startup sounds done by Brain Eno were recorded on his Mac. Then they got Robert Fripp to do some sounds, probably recorded on a PC, but Robert uses a Mac. He said he would rather have made sounds for Apple, but they didn't ask. The new Metro touch interface was designed on Macs. See a pattern here?
That's a matter of people, to begin with. Wikipedia says he was born in 1946. That makes his career having started not only when Windows was inadequate, but back when PCs weren't even able to do anything artistic decently, right? Besides, I did admit that even now, it is true that professional sound work is still better on Macs. (From what I've heard/read... I only had one class on sound work and only do any very occasionally.)

Then you have music production. PCs? So they can blue screen on you?
Never happened to me TBH. In the beginning I wasn't sure if the BSOD wasn't a myth and looked it up, actually.
99% of all the music you listen to was recorded or edited or mastered using Macs. Because they are bullet proof,
Okay, my school's computers don't represent the Macs around the world, but I certainly wouldn't call them bulletproof. It was common knowledge, during my Illustrator class, that you needed to save OFTEN because all of a sudden, for no known reason, Illustrator CS5 would, pretty often, give you the Mac's loading "beach ball" for a long time then crash, making you lose your work. On Windows, it's only happened to me once, on my previous computer, which was pretty under-specced and running Windows Vista, a version not exactly known for being awesome and two years older than Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
have less latency issues,
Not sure what you mean by that
and far less driver issues and conflicts
One of my teachers (who is actually pro-Mac all the way) told us that the reason for that was most people used their Macs with only Apple pieces. If you put in more third-party peripherals, he said, you're gonna run in problems too. And actually, a well-built PC doesn't have that sort of issue. It only does when the parts picked aren't completely compatible in every way. Which, well, is impossible to happen when the Apple empire chooses what goes in the computer.
. Creative types want to just turn the thing on and use it.
That's not true of everyone. Some (and not just me, as I'm a bad example, being good at both creative stuff and programming) really like to be asked stuff and getting to choose stuff.
Using a computer should be like using a toaster. It's an appliance.
Maybe that applies more to older people? People in my class, raised with computers, mostly don't seem to expect that kind of simplicity from a computer. There are some, yes, but most, even some of the most artistic ones in my class, are really good at handling computers and to them "simplifying the experience" is basically useless if not pure crippling of it.

Hmmmmm. The search engine in OS 9 was great.
Uh, I know no such ancient thing, sorry.
On the other hand Spotlight, the search engine in OS X blows chunks.
Well, you can say with pride that a Windows user praised Spotlight compared to Windows' search, even though you think Spotlight is bad compared to the old search system.
The actual database is good, but the front end sucks. So I use a third party replacement. It was better a few OS versions back. I can do a search for a file I know I have using the exact file name, and it often finds nothing. The third party front end finds it in seconds. I've complained to Apple about this on many occasions.
Hmm... Yeah, Windows' search has many shortcomings, but it always finds a file from its name. Odd.

OK, you select the folder, change the permissions, and then you go down to the little gear icon on the bottom, and select: "Apply to enclosed items..." That copies the permissions to the items in the folder. It works 99% of the time.
I don't remember why, but we couldn't do that. I think maybe it shot an error message. I really can,t remember. But I do remember looking up the option, trying it, and saying "why give me an option if it's not gonna work?"... something like that.

Sometimes it's a server issue. Macs use the standard SMB protocol. If however, the file server is a foreign file system, like NTFS, then it's read only, and you need something like Tuxera NTFS to make them read/write. You can also use something like BatChmod. Or use the terminal.
Apparently, it's because of the software they use for logins and such. But don't ask my school's IT team to do that sorta "complicated" stuff, haha. By the way, did you know that from version Lion onwards, Mac OS is able to read and write to and from NTFS natively? Nice eh?

If you don't want multiple Get Info windows to open, hold down the Option key and get Info becomes Show Inpector, which works on multiple files at once.
How the heck was I supposed to know that? Press alt and mysteriously the menu options change? It's not written anywhere. Grmbl. Thanks though. I'll be sure to try it next time I get an error.
See, you just have to learn to use Macs better.   There are lots of less commonly used features for power users.

Snow Leopard is pretty old now.
Yeah well... Half our PCs are Windows XP, and badly configured at that. Feel my pain. I wouldn't say I actually prefer the Macs to those old Windows XP PCs, but... they get closer. x.x
I'm on 10.8.5 Mountain Lion, and it's about to be superseded by 10.9 Mavericks which should be out in a few weeks. As soon as my music software is qualified, I'll be updating the OS, which is generally a painless process.
That's one thing I didn't think about that I've always liked about Mac OS. Smaller updates, and updates that are easier and painless to install. Windows is copying that now. It started with Windows 8, for which they provided an upgrade system that apparently made the process a lot easier, and they're really getting into it with Windows 8.1 that's coming out this month, with new versions being truly only easy to install updates.
My son is still running Lion on his mac Book pro. He doesn't update much of anything. I think my ex still has Lion on her MacMini. Or maybe Snow Leopard. I'll have to look next time I'm over there. But she just upgraded her RAM to 8GB, so I think she's ready for a newer OS.

I don't know why you would say "forced" when it's the proper platform to use in the real world.
Lol. Sorry but that's a strong word. For one, yes I'm forced, and even if it is for my good, I am still forced because I don't wanna do it. And THE proper platform to use in the real world? Nah, not really. It's one of the usable, proper platforms. And also, I'm not a pure graphic designer. I'm half designer, half Web programmer. And programming on a Mac... No, graphic design on a Mac is uncomfortable but very doable, but programming on a Mac is BEYOND uncomfortable.
Stopped being so stubborn. Change is a good thing.
I'd like to turn that right back at you actually. Macs have been used in the graphic design sector for a long, long time. Now, PCs are able to keep up. And PCs are cheaper. If the PC can do the exact same thing, you're more familiar with the PC and it's cheaper, (still speaking purely about graphic design), I don't see any point in using a Mac if you don't have to.
I use Audition too. It's mostly a stereo editor. It's not very good at multitracking, and I'm not really sure why they put that in there.
You're the boss. I don't really know much about the advanced sound stuff., heh.
I guess for post sound editing where you want to mix tracks. But you can't really do music production on it. And I'm only using it because my favorite audio editor, TC Works SparkXL, was discontinued and never updated for Intel processors. So I couldn't use it anymore after Lion, because Apple dropped support for non Intel software. I kind of like Audition, until I really need to do edits. Then it sucks. There are lots of things you can't do easily on it, as you can on other pro editors. I just got Sony Sound Forge Pro, and I think I might switch to that. But I don't use stereo editors as much as the DAW multitrack application.

It looks exactly the the same on a Mac or Windows
Nope! Similar but different. Look more closely - I swear. Besides, even if they were completely the same, there are still annoyances about Mac OS that I have trouble dealing with. It's nothing huge, but the three buttons at the top left of the window on a Mac... they're just so tiny. I always miss them and click the wrong spot. Yeah, zero dexterity, that's me. (Also, on the topic of left and right... I don't care which one it is (although now that I'm used to it like that of course I have a preference for top-right) but couldn't they agree on one side and have every OS use the same? It just confuses everyone switching OS's that way. D:)
, so I think you are just more comfortable on Windows.
That is true though. As I,ve been saying, 75 % of the problem with Mac OS is that it's not what I was used to. People fight and are completely sure that THEIR OS is better, but actually, I may prefer Windows, but I argue that they are probably equal. The only objective argument I can invoke to claim PCs' superiority is price and hardware customization capabilities, and even then.
Most modern software looks the same when you are in the applications' interface. ProTools looks like ProTools. Cubase looks like Cubase. Photoshop looks like Photoshop.

The thing is Macs are more reliable. I've been sys op at several printing firms and we never had issues with the bunch of Macs we had, but the Windows machines were always pitching a fit.
Seriously, all a matter of being used to stuff, and what you use mainly. Apart from viruses, I've never had any reason to think a Mac is more reliable. Actually, with my issues with Adobe software crashing on it, I could say they're less reliable in my experience. But I can also see that it's only my experience. At our school, the tech people are always having trouble making stuff work with Macs. The main reason is that most of the computers are Windows, and to begin with it was actually only Windows, so they chose Windows-ish network software. I'm guessing a company adding Windows PCs to its mostly Mac-and-designed-for-Macs network will experience problems as well.

Macs come with excellent programing software, Xcode. You can write cross platform software too.
Oh uhm I don't do software. I'm not that kind of programmer. I just do Web programming. For that it's pretty much Smultron (which is "meh" at best) or Dreamweaver. But I don't use Dreamweaver all that often on my PC, because I just don't like too many details about it (and to begin with it's a relatively big program with tons of features while I pretty much only need the code thing and good syntaxic colouring). There probably ARE decent solutions, but... all computers at school are under Deep Freeze, so you do with what's on the computer. And apparently the best text editor they could find us (not saying they searched all that well) was Smultron.

And no matter the software, I get a problem... that's not directly Mac OS, though, it's the French translation of it. Or the implementation of the keyboard layout. I didn't investigate. The shortcut to change tabs (or windows) on Macs is Cmd+~, which is supposed to be the button next to "1". But on the Canadian Multilingual Standard, "~" is not there. Therefore, Cmd+the key it's supposed to be and Cmd+the key that makes ~ and adding any combination of shift, Ctrl or Alt, you get no tab switching. Very very inconvenient when you do Web programming.

I started on PCs with Windows 3.1. At work I was on Macs using System 7.1. It was clear that Macs were heads and shoulder past Windows back then. And in fact, that windowing code was licensed to MS by Apple when MS wrote the first version of Word for Macs.
Really? I thought Windows had copied the window feature and Apple tried to sue them for it and failed. But I wasn't even able to walk back then, so I'm gonna trust you on that.

Windows 95 looked a little better, but it was still clunky to use, and was just a shell on top of DOS. NT/2000 was better, but still ugly. The latest versions of Windows are a lot nicer, but no where  as elegant in use.
I think that's precisely where the "I'm used to it" factor comes in. To me a Mac is absolutely and completely clunky to use.
Several members of one of the bands I'm in use PCs. Since I worked in the computer field, I'm the person they call. While we are jumping through hoops to do some simple networking thing, I like to point out that I don't have to do that. lol

When I got married my father-in-law started calling every week with a problem with his PC. He couldn't get his printer to work unless he reinstalled the printer drivers every time he wanted to print. Then there was another issues. He had an HP, so he got a new Dell. Similar issues.
Oh yeah, there's that. Windows is and will probably always be a lot less "foolproof"/"computer-newbie-friendly" compared to Mac OSX. That's just not what they're aiming for. Thank god, if you ask me.
Then his daughter told him to get rid of the PC and get a Mac. So he bought a G5 iMac. Of course everything seemed backwards to him, and he called me every couple of days asking how to do simple tasks. And then one day the phone calls stopped. He got it, and never has an issue now. The last call I got from him was how to transfer all the files from his iMac to his new Mac Book pro. I told him, plug in a Firewire cable and it's automatic. Makes a clone on the new Mac. Now he's happy as a clam, and never has a single issue with his Mac. I wish that was true of the PC using friends I have.

My friend's brand new Lenovo can't copy all his files from his old Dell without buying software from MS. They wouldn't even help him over the phone. And of course he was talking to someone in India. They told him to call Dell. They told him to call MS...
LOL, that. Yeah. It's a huge problem I hope will get settled. The volleyball game of responsibility between Microsoft and manufacturers. It's a huge annoyance. Though normally unless it's for an issue with activating Windows itself or something like that, you never need Microsoft. I'm glad I don't because honestly, calling Microsoft for a computer problem is never pleasant. On that aspect, I'm 100 % with you that they need to improve.

I've spent so many hours with these friends, and they are smart people, that I'll need to start charging them. lol

Dumb reason. You can use any mouse you want. I used a Microsoft two button mouse for many years. Then I use some nice wireless Logitech Laser Mice. Now I use a wireless trackpad. But I hardly use the mouse when working.
Yeah well I'm talking about my own experience with Macs, which is, at school, the "pure Apple experience"
I use the keyboard, or if I'm doing artwork, my Wacom tablet. And you know the current Mac mice have two buttons, you just can't see them.
I know they do. But unless you telegraph your move (for example by lifting the other finger) the detection of which button you pressed often fails. And I just don't like to be lifting my fingers. Once the hand is on the mouse, I put my two fingers on the two buttons and unless I need my fingers elsewhere they don't move, no matter what I press. Yeah, call me weird; most people seem to be lifting their fingers a lot. Now I don't know about the very latest Mac mice, but those we have at school are like that.

I've had to use a number of platforms at jobs... Macs, Windows, SGI IRIX, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, etc. Notice that they are all UNix bvased except Windows.

I have a friend that uses Linux. He's always trying to get me to switch. All the things he said that are good about it, well the same things apply to OS X. My Mac never crashes. Except for system software installs I never reboot it. Applications never crash. The last one that went South on me was a prerelease version of Safari (I'm a Apple developers member), but thats to be expected.
That's true of most people trying to get anyone to switch to anything, actually. People keep telling me Macs don't crash, but they crash more than Windows to me. Pretty sure any advantage I can state about Windows can be contradicted in the same way. Truth is, nowadays, your OS matters less and less with each passing year.

So I say to my friend, "what happens if I want to run Photoshop, or Illustrator, or InDesign, or QuarkXPress, or MS Office, or ProTools, or Cubase?" I use these programs almost daily. He says... wait for it... "Oh, well if you need to run that kind of software... boot into Windows"  LOLOLOLOL
Heh, Linux users like their OS and are willing to make efforts for it. Their thing.

So I had to point out I didn't need to do that. I have a Unix based OS that runs all the commercial software I need. If there are any instances of software that is not out for Macs, and I haven't run into much, I run it in Windows in VMWare Fusion. I don't play games on my Mac, except Tetrus. We have an XBox here, a Playstation, several Nintendo boxes. The kids play with all that.

Yep there are lots of versions of Linux. I've been using them since they first came out. I had MKLinux on my old Powermac 6100 in the 90s. I had RedHat for PowerPC CPUs on my old PowerComputing Mac clone. I also ran Be OS on that. That was a very nice operating system. Now I run, Haiku, which is an open source version of Be OS. It's much nicer than Linux or Windows.

It's good to know your way around on different operating systems. It's like driving two different cars. I might like one better, but I know how to drive the other one too. Microsoft is slowly losing its dominance in the marketplace. Just Apple's iPhone division is bigger than all of MS! And the iPhones and iPads run a stripped down version of OS X.
Actually, apparently, iPhones are in trouble recently. Also, I'm told the newest version of iOS differs a lot from what they've seen before. For all I know it looks better, heh. I've never liked the visual style that Apple generally favours in interfaces a lot. Never used it though.
I like to tell the story that in 2000 I was commuting daily from NJ to NYC. On the train I would see maybe one Apple laptop, as I walked from car to car looking for a seat. Now I see mostly Apple laptops, and an occasional PC laptop.
Yeah, for laptops, Macbook Pros are becoming super popular. Understandable, considering they have more physical quality than many (though not all) of their concurrents, and sturdy laptops are good when dropped. And they have a more advanced touchpad than most laptops too. Even Windows users like them. They'll of course use Windows on it, be it in parallel with Mac OS or only Windows, eh.
So that's like at least 10 I see every day on one train, and I didn't even walk the entire length. I've sat next to people programing software, connected to their job using VPN, editing music, video, writing, you name it.

Long story short, main reason I dislike Macs is that they're too simplified, too "controlling", too... Mac. A lot of what makes up the "Mac philosophy" is precisely what I dislike. Sometimes, people say Macs are user-friendly and intuitive... I believe them. Because to (almost?) all of my other classmates, Photoshop is intuitive, easy to use and it's by far their first choice for doing design. Me? I just don't understand it, I find every command is made to be precisely the opposite of what I would logically expect, and I really don't enjoy using it. I love Illustrator though. Which most of my classmates aren't fond of and actually struggle to use. So probably, whatever is supposed to be intuitive and user-friendly in Mac OS is designed precisely against what my unusual thinking patterns expect or think.

Phew. I hate to argue.

[Gina_Z]

I agree with Violet. Success in life is a confidence game. I have not successfully transitioned but I think that philosophy will come into play. I think it might help to project, Hey this is me. I'm happy as I am. If you don't like me, that's OK. My happiness does not depend on your acceptance. I'm an individualist.

[A]

START A NEW POST FOR THIS STUFF.

That's just too much to be so far off topic.  Start a dedicated post, and ask a Mod to move all this computer stuff that is off topic to it.

Nah, I think I'm just gonna drop it. I've got my share of OS fights for the centuries to come.

[vlmitchell]

I use both. At the same time. On the same machine. It's just software, peeps and both have their strengths and weaknesses. I'm a computer scientist and also have a associate's in Graphic design. I've done it all and there's no aspect of computing I haven't at least dug into enough to be more competent than anyone outside a seasoned professional (art, video, music, programming). There are annoying parts about every piece of software but, overall, I just want to get work done.

OS wars are akin to Car Brand wars are akin to Shoe Make wars are all alike in their adherence to intransigent ridiculousness as their modus operandi.