I didn’t even know you had Apple forums here. Go figure. Had I known, I’d be documenting my experiences from the start.
35 Years Windows Wizard ™. Prompted to buy my first Mac because of Adobe lightroom AI and how poorly my 7 year old PC was running things like Denoise. And to learn where things are in the Apple World.
Amazed how much better File Explorer is than Finder. Will never miss editing the Registry 🙂 A dozen utilities I use often to daily on PC not needed for the Mac.
Was difficult to decide which to buy. Apple so overcharges for SSD and RAM. So I wanted the sweet spot and not to replace for at least 5 years. RAM hardest decision and I hope I chose well. Macbook M4 Pro 24GB 1TB 14″.
I’ll try to fill in my experiences and read more here, but for now, these things I use constantly on PC (ok, maybe not constantly) have no equivalent on Mac . And I have searched more than you can imagine and tried everything before coming to that conclusion:
- Faststone Capture
No Screen Capture for Mac has all the great annotation tools such at all the shapes, shadows, magnifying glass and a decent text blur. Some have some. None have all. And Cleanshot X is a joke for $30!!!Speaking of which, I have maybe 4 paid utilities for PC and reasonably priced. MOST Mac are subscription or paid and OVERPRICED. I was greatly surprised!
- Belarc advisor
Now, before you say but System Information – no. Belarc shows registered license keys, what drivers need updating and MUCH more information. - Crystal Disk Info
OK, Mac does not believe in SMART. But still…. - Dead Pixel Test
Sure, esoteric, but I use day one on any digital camera I buy to accurately and easily discover dead and hot pixels. That alone is reason to always keep a PC around. And I had maybe hoped to make a clean break, but a PC will always be around it seems. - ANY free flash memory recovery tool
I had Sandisk, Lexar, Recuva, etc. Nothing free for Mac
So that is the result of a month so far. I first set to learn the OS and some things I found buggy and/or non intuitive. Gimme a minute for that.
Then, listed all programs and utilities form the PC and set to install those with decent equivalents. Have not yet done the big ones like Office, Adobe LRc and Photoshop, Have done Firefox.
Automator is buggy and non-intuitive. To select files that match something to delete I have to select the files I do not want to delete. Truth. Went through days of that one. If you really are interested I’ll post details. Then scheduling an Automator task is in the CALENDAR?? So now my calendar shows all the daily tasks I run in the background to keep things tidy? I will miss Synctoy and Task Scheduler. Much easier to use!
OK, enough for now.
