Moving into a Mac: how to make switching from Windows as painless as possible
Just before Christmas I took the plunge — I swapped 30-something years of Windows devotion for a Mac. The magnificent MacBook Pro 16in, to be precise.
I’ve worked on Macs previously and reviewed them periodically over the years, so it wasn’t a complete leap into the unknown. But it was a leap nonetheless, and so I gave myself the quiet period over Christmas to familarise myself with macOS, transfer my data and get all my software and hardware up and running, free from the immediate pressure of work deadlines.
I’m not quite there yet. I’m still to sort out my photo collection, which is stored on an external drive, because I’m dithering over sticking with another external drive or switching to a NAS. My already battered credit card is hoping for the former; I’m pining for the latter.
Still, the transition has been pretty smooth, and so if you’re thinking of hopping from Windows to Mac, here’s what I’ve found, in the hope that some of this will be useful for you too.
macOS is neither as brilliant nor as alien as you feared
My big fear about switching was losing the 30 years of muscle memory I’ve acquired in Windows. If something is broken in Windows, I normally know how to fix…
