Interesting article in WSJ last week. Some handy hints on making the switch – Opening a Window on the Mac. I can still remember the moment for me when I came over from the PC side. It was about 1994. I was using Windows 3.1 at work; was familiar and comfortable writing batch programs, used DOSSHELL. Computing had come a long way at that time. However, I didn’t know what I was missing. I had tried to purchase some typesetting some years prior from a company that used an Apple Leasa (sp?). It was a not-so-great experience.

That was still fresh in my mind when I went to work at my hometown’s newspaper. I can remember the first night. I got a 10-minute introduction to the mac plus that they were using and then left on my own to type up some stories. I decided that it would be a good idea to create a folder to keep the stories in. I managed to somehow get a folder on the desktop (what was this desktop, anyway?) and then proceeded to look for a command in the menu structure to name it something other than “untitled folder”. I rummaged through all the desk drawers until I found a manual. The manual was quite sparse as I remember. Where were all the hundreds or thousands of pages that described every command in minutiae? Frustrated, I turned back to the tiny 9″ hi-res screen and clicked on the folder name. It became highlighted!! I then typed the name of the issue and I was converted to a mac user at that instance. I never looked back.

Should you be tempted to make the switch, this article explains some of the differences between the 2 operating systems.

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