Migrating from Windows to Mac

If you have decided to migrate from Windows to Mac, you will find that there are a few confusing differences. I note the ones that I can think of, below:

1. There are ALTERNATIVE packages to microsoft office installed, namely Apple Pages, Apple Numbers, and Apple Keynote. These replace Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and if you use them you can use the "save as" command to create a word, excel or powerpoint document. This means you do not need to actually buy MS Office, these work just fine.

2. I recommend AVG antivirus be installed. This is mostly so that if you accidentally go onto a bad website with bad software on it, or a fake website, e.g. a "phishing" site, which is trying to trick you into giving your banking credentials, it will warn you. There are almost no viruses or malware for the machine. HOWEVER, there is ONE piece of malware which pretends to be good software, available, and it calls itself MacKeeper. Do NOT install it. AVG complains a lot on Windows asking to be purchased. It is less whiny on the Mac.

3. To scroll up and down, you can use the scrollbars, like in Windows, or, you can use two finger-stroke on the trackpad on the laptop. Tapping with your fingertip on the trackpad works as a click.

3. To check battery level, look on the screen in the top-right, there is a small battery icon that shows battery level, as well as bluetooth and wifi status. You can also press the small round button at the front-left side of the casing, it shows battery level.

4. The battery charger cable is magnetic, it comes off if you trip over the cable. This is to prevent you dragging your laptop off a table and smashing it on the floor.

5. Older Mac laptops might run too hot. The CPU (processor) is in the centre-back-bottom of the laptop. There is an app called "SMC FAN CONTROL" that you can install that lets you manually turn the CPU fan onto top speed.

6. The "recycle bin" that you see on Windows is called "Trash" on Apple machines. It is in the BOTTOM RIGHT corner of the screen. It works the same.

7. The "Start" menu that you see in Windows is called the "Apple" menu. It is in the TOP LEFT corner of the screen. It contains slightly different things. Although it contains system preferences (control panels), it also contains things like Force Quit, Shutdown, Restart, etc. By default it does NOT contain your list of applications (apps), it will show "Recent Items" which include apps and documents.

7b. The taskbar that runs across the bottom of your screen on Windows is split into TWO parts on Mac: the menubar  (across the top), and the Dock (usually across the bottom of the screen). The Dock shows running applications; the menubar shows everything else. Your apps are shown in the DOCK.

8. Closing a window (screen) of an app does not always close the app. To make sure the app has really closed, you can go to the FILE menu and choose QUIT. However, the Mac has good "memory management" meaning it should not get slow, even if you open all the apps on the machine. So you don't really need to quit an app unless an app is misbehaving. If an app gets stuck for more than a minute (you will see a spinning rainbow wheel icon), then you need to use FORCE QUIT. Force quit is under the apple menu, OR, you can type command-alt-esc on the keyboard (all three keys held down together). This is the same as windows taskmanager.

9. The power-on/power-off button is on the keyboard in the TOP RIGHT. To turn on the machine, press and hold down for one second. To force it to turn off, press and hold down for three seconds. Normally however you just tap the button once and choose the screen option that comes up saying "shut down". To make the machine sleep, simply close the lid. If you are planning to sleep it overnight, note that it DOES use battery when it is asleep and will be only able to sleep overnight if you have at least 20-30% battery still. Otherwise it will run out of power overnight. Newer laptops use less power and can survive on 10%.

10. Here is a list of useful apps (applications):  https://johnsmactips.blogspot.com/2021/03/recommended-apps.html

11. You can find apps that are guaranteed free of viruses etc., on the Apple App store. When you boot the computer up, you will see the app store in the bottom-left corner of the screen near the blue face icon. If someone has customised their Mac layout it might not be there, in which case you can use the search function (see 14 below).

12. There's an icon of a rocket on a grey background at the bottom of the screen in the bottom-left. It opens a list of apps, like on iPhone or Android. If someone has customised their Mac layout it might not be there, in which case you can use the search function (see 14 below).

13. The app called FINDER, which is the blue face icon in the bottom-left, is for managing files. It is the same as the yellow folder icon on Windows. It lets you search for files, make new folders, and add, remove or erase disks. The main difference between an iOS device (iPhone, iPad) and a Mac, is that by default, this app is not shown on an iOS device, where it is called "Files" rather than "Finder".

14. To search for something, choose the magnifying glass that you see in the TOP RIGHT corner of the screen. If a FINDER window is open, you can click in the search field and search there as well. It will search inside the folder that you have open at the time, or the entire computer, depending on how you customised the machine. It has a plus sign under the search criteria. You can use that plus sign to add more criteria to search by. For example, if you normally are searching for a file by name, you can also search it by content, and by file type. So you might for example search for "Shakespeare" and "PDF" and then it will find all PDFs that are named Shakespeare or which mention Shakespeare inside them.

15. Sometimes the machine will ask you for a password and username in order to do something. You can generally safely respond to that. Especially when you are installing an app, it will ask for your username and password. That is to prevent you from accidentally installing viruses. Unlike Windows, where you simply click to confirm. You can change your password in APPLE Menu -> System Preferences -> Users and Groups -> click on your username -> click on Change Password

16. To connect to your wifi, look for the wifi icon in the top right corner of the screen near the date and time. This is similar to windows, where it is in the bottom right corner, rather than the top-right.

17. There are four "modifier" keys in the bottom row, next to the space bar. 

• FN is to get the function keys at the top of the keyboard to work as function keys. Otherwise they work as controller keys for environmental things like screen brightness, audio volume, keyboard lighting, etc. Please press each function key at the top to see what it does. 
• The CONTROL key in the bottom row is almost never used; it is in case you run a Windows emulator and want to use the normal windows control key. 
• The alt/option key is to get special characters, like œ ∑ ® † etc. You hold down alt/option and press a key on the keyboard, and you will see special characters. 
• The COMMAND or APPLE key is to issue commands to the computer. E.g. command-Q is to quit, command-W is to close a window, command-C is to copy, command-V is to paste, etc. 

18. Apps do not default open to full-screen. That is because you can drag and drop text and images between apps, so it makes sense to be able to have both or more apps open onscreen at the same time. To minimise (make an app shrink into the Dock (row of icons) at the bottom of the screen, press the YELLOW button in the top-left. To make the window maximise (fill the screen like on Windows), press the GREEN button. To close the window press the RED button.

19. Disk Management

When you insert a disk it usually appears on-screen in the top-left corner of the screen below the "Macintosh HD" icon. Usually on Windows these do not appear, you usually have to go into "My Computer" to see them. 

External disks usually appear as yellow. If you can't find them or they do not appear when inserted, click Finder -> Go and in the text field, type /Volumes and press enter. 

If you have a Windows-NT formatted drive, it will, by default, only allow you to copy files off it, not onto it. You need to re-erase it as MSDOS format or HFS/APFS format. To do that, you use disk utility (search for it). If you do not want to erase the disk, you can install an app called Tuxera NTFS which lets you make changes to NTFS disks. 

To find out what format a disk is, right-click its icon and hit Command-I on the keyboard (command is the key with the weird basket icon, I being i as in "information"). The window that opens will tell you what format the disk is in (MSDOS, NTFS, FAT32, APFS, HFS, etc.). All of those are Windows formats except HFS and APFS, which are the older and newer Apple formats, respectively.

20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67keaaWOKzE shows you more.