Any Windows user switched to Mac only?

I have a Mac Mini. I like it as something different, but I wouldn't say it was any better or worse than Windows or Linux. The only thing I was forced to give up was Photoshop, but the Gimp works well enough as a replacement as I only touch up with it.

 

Why'd you have to give up Photoshop on Mac?

@Jarhead Tell me more about the application experience.

I remember 4 or 5 years ago I bought a MBP and here is my experience:

1) I turned it on, very nice packaging neatly done.

2) Entered my Apple ID....... logged in......

3) that's it! I'm like what? there is nothing that I need to configure, update, install, NADA, I loved that it's ready for action immediately unlike Windows 10.

Now THAT was what bothered me, there was nothing for me to really tinker with other than watch movies, or browse the web. I felt like I'm in a different world........that is not bad, just different to what I'm used to but now that I have many things on my table I certainly would appreciate the ease of use and not having to ever deal with Windows and it's stupid updates again

4) As I remember from my past experience I was able to find alternatives to almost every app that I use except for a video player which plays movies @ 60 FPS like SVP. but now SVP supports Mac I believe so that shouldn't be an issue......

 

The experience should be ditto like your iphone X and other Apple products. Simple to setup and easy to use. No settings or bloatware to uninstall/change.

 

Before you go and buy a Macbook, I highly encourage you to go and try the keyboard in person because I personally could not stomach the garbage key travel of the "new" mb/mbp.

 

For me, the tinkering wasn’t much of an issue. The operating system has a terminal very similar to the Linux terminal, so that was an environment I was already familiar and comfortable with. And of course anything related to Apple (first-party software, integration with my iPhone, etc) worked very well.

For me, the major turn-off was how it handled third party stuff as I’d mentioned before. One of the programs that I had tried, which I thought would be simple to use in macOS, was Steam (I have a lot of visual novels, 2D games, and older games which the MBP hardware can handle). Downloaded the macOS installer from Steam’s website (because it’s not in the App Store), installed it, and it seemed to work just fine. However, for some odd reason I had to have had the .dmg mounted before it would open. Same story for another piece of software I tried: Katawa Shoujo (also has a macOS installer). While it’s not a difficult thing to do, having to mount images for the software I want to use before using it would be a major hassle for me when I want to run more than a few third-party applications at once. Given that almost all the software I use is third party (be it in macOS, Windows, or Linux), this was a bit of an issue.

That said, it was pretty nice as a travel laptop given its weight for the screen size (compared to my Elitebook). This served to be pretty useful when I was spending a few weeks in the hospital (family member was going through cancer treatments). Due to the software annoyances, I mainly only ever used it as an internet browsing machine, but I could have just as easily done that with my phone and saved even more weight.

Honestly I don’t want to keep around a laptop that mainly functions as a ~$1,300 website browser, especially since I’m not particularly attached to any macOS-only software. I’m heavily pragmatic when it comes to materialistic things, and I couldn’t justify carrying around a MBP when used in that manner and for that cost of entry. While I do lose out on some of the portability and battery life when I used the refund money to get the Inspiron 7577, I could at least forego lugging my gaming desktop several hundred miles to play games every time I went to my family’s house, which was a major plus for me with regards to that purchase. At any rate, I could always just set up a macOS virtual machine for the next time I want to try out the environment again for the low price of whatever the OS disc is selling for these days.

 

Unless this is a bug that cropped up recently, I was always able to install Steam on MacOS by downloading the .dmg, dragging the file to applications folder, and going from there. No need to re-mount anything.

 

Well that's not very encouraging for me after reading your user experience. You see, I have a big in my personality, I'd either go for the best or I won't go at all. So if I were to buy a MacBook Pro it will be the best and most expensive one costing north of 4000 USD and I definitely cannot justify that price for an internet browsing machine as you called which was pretty much my experience when I tried MacOS 4 years ago. It was a cool ipad with a keyboard.

What I am interested in learning though are the Mac apps. I heard that Final Cut Pro is good and I always wondered, why is it when you watch a movie and see a laptop in that movie, 90% of the time it's a Mac? am I missing something here? or is this just an ad for Apple and they provide the movie makers with these laptops....

 

That could have possibly been the issue. I had merely just double-clicked on the installer and followed the prompts; I don’t recall ever dragging anything anywhere.

Would have figured that something like that would be automatic, like how Windows will dump the program files to C:\Program Files or how Linux distros handle such things (it will run anywhere you put it on the system).

 

That was definitely your problem. Double clicking an application from inside the .dmg just runs it. You have to drag/drop it to the folder in order to not need the container mounted. At least that's how it works for most programs. Some do contain an installer within the .dmg that you can double click and use like in Windows.

 

More like your car IMO.
Macs are pricey and built to last (like they write in their website). When you're a Pro in the Cinema Industry and don't know much about tweaking OS and other tech things, Macs simply de-clutters all that you want w/o worrying about tweaking OS, so they earn 10x the amount and spend 2x on a Mac. I have seen developers who earn a lot invest on a Mac for less cumbersome IDE configuration and easy setup.
See for example, iTunes on Mac simply works better and faster than Windows counter-parts and doesn't feel bloated at all!
FCP X on mac = Adobe SW on Windows because MS compilers generalise optimal code paths for all paths rather than Apple sticking to Intel Compiler or use Gcc for O2 or Full Optimisation.