PC vs Apple Mac

[fairy!]

What are the main differences between a PC & an Apple Mac?

I mean when you're using it, rather that the way it's built & what's inside etc!

x

[simms]

Everyone knows the Mac was reverse-engineered from captured alien technology in Area 51.......no, seriously: the mac was developed by and for visual designers doing creative tasks with photos, art, video and audio. The pc developed as a system for creating, sharing and storing informational files, and until relatively recently was rather slower and poorer at the purely creative stuff. New pc's and programs for pc's are more like macs nowadyas, and they have become much better at the creative stuff than before. Macs have always included all the extras which were traditionally add-ons for pc's, like cd reader / writers and video editing programs, and macs recognised any usb device automatically. Many of these features now exist on windows XP pc's so the differences are narrowing. Lastly, it is relatively easy to find out how to build your own pc, but mac technology is not widely shared, probably 'cos the aliens copyrighted it.......

[fairy!]

I''ve always used PCs, but am about to start a job where I'll be using Apple Macs... so what are the main differences I'll notice??

[OBonio]

Without going into the good old Mac vs Windows argument too much... they're both WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mice, Pointers) systems. Mac first, then MS stole the idea and claimed it for their own.

Not used a Mac properly for years, but I guess you should be able to use it as well as you can Windows. That's the whole idea of both. Easy to use, easy to do what you want.

[honkytonkman]

If you can work a Windows PC then you can work on a Mac with no problems. You'll still have MS Office etc, Photoshop, QuarkXpress, or whatever you're familiar with. It's just like driving a different car: the controls are essentially the same, just different buttons to press etc. Macs these days are also aimed at the home user, so most things are intuitive. After a few months using a Mac you may never want to use another Windows PC - which is what happened to me about 10 years ago.. :) Enjoy!