Windows to Mac OS migration tips/cheat sheet

Question

So you've been using Windows for a lifetime. But now, you are curious to make a little jump into the Apple world. And you wonder... Do my beloved keyboard shortcuts will work on Mac?

What would you recommend for Mac immigration?

If you once migrated from PC to Mac, include your first temporal frustrations and things like that.

Answer 1

A good place to look is Apple's Find Out How tutorials, and their Switch 101 page. There should be enough info there to get you started. As for your beloved keyboard shortcuts, there probably are equivalents for almost all of them, plus some you've never used. You can see a list of system-wide shortcuts in System Preferences:

Also, shortcuts for each application are listed in the menus (the Menu Bar is another thing to get used to):

The symbols used next to each key denote the modifier keys:

• ⇧ is the Shift key
• ⌘ is the Command key (sometimes called the Apple key), the equivalent of Control in Windows
• ⌥ is the Option key, the (very) rough equivalent of Alt in Windows
• ⌃ is the Control key.

Another hint: if you hold down modifier keys while looking through menus, you'll sometimes see more options show up. For example, I can see that ⌘W is Close Tab in Safari, but if I hold the option key, it changes to ⌥⌘W, Close Other Tabs.

I have another major tip as well. When you're trying to get programs to interact with each other, or move data around, simple drag & drop will work in probably more places than you expect it. (If you want to drag text around to move it, keep in mind you'll have to hold the mouse down for a fraction of a second before you move it.)

If you have any specific questions, of course you can ask those too.

Answer 2

Alright... Here it goes:

• MS Office --> MS Office X or OpenOffice
• IM Client --> Adium or iChat (with Chax of course)
• Web Browser --> FireFox, Safari, Opera, or Camino (Depending on your needs)
• All Purpose Programmer's Text Editor --> TextMate or BBEdit (Both very good)
• Media Player --> VLC or QuickTime (with Perian of course)

Plus, some mac specific software:

• Quicksilver, Kind of hard to explain
• Growl, a notifier

Running Windoz only software:

• Virtualization with VMWare, Parallels (I hear Parallels 4 is not as good as VMWare 2), or VirtualBox
• Darwine or CrossOver (well worth the cost)
• Bootcamp, requires a reboot (Reboot? A mac? Never!)

I'm making this a wiki for others to add onto

Answer 3

MacOS is extremely keyboard friendly. I almost never have to take my hands off of it. Unfortunately, the shortcuts don't translate directly from Windows, but you will adjust.

For instance, copy is apple+c instead of ctrl+c even though you have a ctrl key.

Answer 4

In addition to using Cmd+Tab/Cmd+Shift+Tab to switch applications, you can use Cmd+tilde/Cmd+Shift+tildeto switch windows in the current application. Unfortunately, if one of the windows of the current application is minimized, this skips those windows. I haven't found a way to get to a minimized window with the keyboard yet.

Answer 5

I have two main tips:

Zoom != Maximise
Don't try to maximise everything. For almost all applications, the Mac way of working is for almost all applications, to have lots of overlapping windows that don't fill the screen.

Close != Quit
On Windows, closing the window is pretty much equal to quitting the application. On Mac OS X, document-based applications remain open after closing all the windows. Once you're used to this you'll appreciate it: you can close all your open documents and then create a new one without quitting the application.

Answer 6

For most shortcuts swapping Ctrl for Cmd (Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, etc)

Here's a couple of mappings:

• Close application - Alt+F4 -> Cmd+Q
• Application switch - Alt+Tab -> Cmd+Tab

And there's a ton more, but sadly, I don't myself utilize too many keyboard shortcuts other than the really normal once, which I do though thoroughly abuse.

Answer 7

If you know a keyboard shortcut for the Windows version of an application but not the Mac version, try substituting Ctrl for Cmd.

Also, make use of Exposé and Spaces - two amazing programs built into Mac OS X.