Moving from Windows to Mac
Switching operating systems from Windows to macOS can be a hassle for users accustomed to the former OS. While the new Apple device can cause mixed feelings of awe and frustration, there are some things that each OS are undeniably better at. Being rivals since their inception, it is logical that they stick to their own tried and tested methods, but they sometimes do ‘get inspired’ by the other and improve their respective systems.
The UNIX-based Apple’s macOS (named after their revolutionary Macintosh) for desktop computing is less used than Microsoft’s Windows, which has a huge audience base. It is the go-to OS for most creative professionals and developers. The OS is limited to Apple’s products, with seamless integration between macOS, iOS, WatchOS, etc. also called the ‘Apple ecosystem’. Windows, however, has a huge base in the gamer population and, given its compatibility with a wider range of hardware, is more popular and approachable. Added to that, with its customisation options and easy 3rd party app adoption, it becomes a great choice for simple users who are looking for a casual computing experience.
Watch: 41 Simple Tasks on Windows vs. MacOS (YouTube)
Regardless of who you are, this blog is about the challenges you might face in your new Apple device.
I am writing this blog on a MacBook Pro 2021 running macOS Ventura (v13.5.2). Before this, I have worked extensively on Windows (from Windows 98 to the latest Windows 11), with a little bit of tinkering in Linux distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and BackTrack (now Kali Linux). I am assuming you have completed setting up your machine and logging in. I am also assuming that you know about the basics of using a computer and tweaking its settings. This won’t be a 101 of macOS, just how it is different from Windows and how you can reduce that gap. Let’s proceed…
The Hardware
Given the price tag, it’s not unexpected, but the Apple devices are quite well-built and have amazing hardware. My device has one of the best screens I have ever seen in my life and speakers to blow away a room full of people. The keyboard is smooth and satisfying, and the touchpad (and its gestures) is quite great.
Input Devices
The Apple keyboard is mostly similar to its Windows counterpart but has some major differences: there are no Control, Alt, Delete or Windows keys.
We can find extra keys in the form of Command, Option, Control and Function keys. The Command (Cmd/⌘/) and Option (Alt/⌥) keys are the Apple equivalents of the Ctrl and Alt keys on Windows. The rarely used Control (Ctrl/⌃) key is there to modify the shortcut behaviour of Command or Option keys and combinations of the three are used as shortcuts in most apps. The Function (fn/🌐) key needs to be pressed to make the F1–12 keys work — it can also be used in combination with the keys above to establish further shortcuts.
The Escape/⎋, Tab/⇥, Shift/⇧, Caps Lock/⇪ and Return/↩ (Enter/
) keys work the same. A huge difference is the working of the Delete/⌫ key in Mac — which is the same as the Backspace/⟵ key in Windows. It provides left-side deletion with respect to the cursor. However, to delete to the right of the cursor, the default binding is Function+Delete (Note: Apple full-sized keyboards do have a dedicated right-side Delete⌦, placed similarly to ‘Del’ on Windows full-sized layouts). The Home and End behaviour can be replicated by using Cmd+Left Arrow (⌘ + ←) and Cmd+Right Arrow (⌘ + →) respectively. Similarly, Page Up and Page Down can be done by fn + ↑ and fn + ↓. To move to the top/bottom of a scrollable page, use Cmd⌘ + ↑ (or fn + ←) and Cmd⌘ + ↓ (or fn + →). There is no Print Screen (PrtScr) button, however, we can take screenshots similar to the Win+PrtScr or Win+Shift+S (snipping tool) shortcuts — check this link. Most of these mappings can be altered using Settings app → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts…
Once the basics are down, the Windows user shouldn’t have much problem learning the Mac keyboard.
Read More: Mac Keyboard Shortcuts (Apple), 70 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts (Medium)
If you feel too attached to older controls, these keys can be remapped in the Settings (e.g. you can map Control ⌃ to Command ⌘ and it is now the same in both look and feel as your Windows Control or Ctrl). However, I would advise against this.
Another extremely annoying feature I found was the lack of key repetition on long-press. By default, if you press long on a key, it will show accented characters (like pressing ‘a’ gives you á,ȧ,ḁ, etc.). If you want to go back to Windows default, you can use settings to disable accented character insertion and go back to character repetition (what it should have been by default). To customise further, you can use this site to test out the repetition speed you want and copy and paste these commands into your Terminal. After that, restart and you should be good to go. Here are my settings:
# disables accented character insertion
# (also available in Settings)
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
# changes key repeat speed
defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 12
defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 2The trackpad behaviour is quite customisable and can be made similar to that in a Windows laptop. I do use the tap/click for single click and 2-finger tap/click for double click but you can customise it to use the lower right corner of the trackpad for right click.
Note: By default, only click is enabled and not tap.
However, Apple’s trackpad is HUGE and I would recommend getting accustomed to the 2-finger tap/click functionality (otherwise you need to travel a lot to reach the lower left/right corners). Clicking harder will trigger a ‘force click’ which might open up more options or functionalities on some apps.
Apple mice do lack support for the middle click — a functionality widely used on Windows devices (triple tap on laptops and scroll wheel click on a mouse). This can be rectified by using the open-source MiddleClick app. Make sure to run it at login (you can alter settings to do this — similar to Windows StartUp apps) so that the functionality allows you to open/close tabs, paste in the terminal and do much more with a middle click feature. By default, it uses the 3-finger tap to emulate one.
There shouldn’t be many other differences between a high-end laptop and a MacBook in terms of their hardware capabilities. Let’s jump into the UI and apps now…
The Software
Apple designs and manufactures Mac devices. Apple also designs and develops the macOS. This results in a highly optimised hardware-software integration with a fluidic and secure experience for all users. Many users praise it for its user-friendly behaviour. However, it’s my personal belief that the first OS you get your hands on and use is easy to pick up — it’s the switch where most people mess up and go crazy.
Windows has evolved a lot and the users have their fair share of advantages that make the Mac a bit foreign to them when they first arrive on this platform. Here are some of the major differences you will notice and how to overcome them.
Wallpaper and Lockscreen
While you cannot change the starting screen of your Mac (you should be putting your Mac to sleep and not shutting down too often), you can change the wallpaper and lock screen, similar to Windows. By default, the lock screen has the same wallpaper as your desktop (which you can set in Settings → Wallpaper) but you can change it by adding your custom wallpaper to the following path: /Library/Caches/Desktop Pictures and changing the lockscreen.png file present in the user folder inside.
Installing and Uninstalling
While Windows uses MSI or executable installers, Mac works similarly to Linux in the form of packages, that come in .dmg, .pkg or .zip formats. ZIP works similar to that on Windows — simply unzip and use. For the others, there may be some instructions or terms and conditions and then we simply drag and drop the app to our Applications folder and delete the installation files.
We can also use package managers like Homebrew or the App Store to install applications or services. Some good-to-have apps would be AppCleaner for complete and clean uninstallation of apps and Latest, which is a software update checker. App Store apps can be easily removed from Launchpad (by long press — similar to iOS) or the Store itself. Use the Bin wisely in these cases.
Note: We will discuss Launchpad later…
Dock, Menu Bar and LaunchPad
The first thing a person might notice is the lack of a proper Start Menu and Taskbar — two essentials of a Windows environment that are used by beginners and experienced folks alike. While Windows 11 has tried to make the Taskbar look and feel more and more like Ubuntu or Mac over the years, its user base is in love with the functionality it has provided since the 90s. The taskbar keeps track of all open windows and has the Windows key in one corner, which can be used to open apps, search and whatnot.
The Mac does things differently with the Dock — something that can be found in Linux distros like Ubuntu. It keeps track of open windows and denotes them using a dot. A user can pin programs to the Dock for quick access similar to how we use Start Menu or Desktop shortcuts in Windows. The Dock also holds recently opened apps without pinning them. Unlike Windows, programs, documents, etc. can be deleted by moving them to the Bin present at the end of the Dock. Open programs are denoted by a white dot under them by default and bounce during any alerts (which can be altered in settings).
If you feel all this is too little, you can go back to how Windows used to do things by installing apps like uBar, which gives back that functionality by completely reskinning the dock to feel and act like the Windows Start Menu/Taskbar. There are other alternatives for getting some of the features back, but nothing comes close to this (premium) software.
Apple’s Menu Bar runs constantly on the top, providing a lot of functionality. One of these is the Control Centre, found on the right side of the taskbar, which is to Mac what the system tray is to Windows. It provides quick access to commonly used settings or utilities, important apps, battery and connection information and the date/time details. There is also a Help section in the menus with a Search option in case you forget which setting falls under which Menu. Clicking on the application name itself will give you some options you can play around with (including Quit).
The desktop on Mac, like Linux, is supposed to be kept clean and uncluttered.
Optional: You can use the Hot Corners feature to set up ‘Show Desktop’ similar to the optional right corner feature on the Windows taskbar. By default, it is set to open a new note (Watch this video for proper usage of the Notes app).
Note: In the next macOS (Sonoma), clicking outside on the desktop will automatically show the desktop, so this feature might not be needed anymore.
There is also a Notification Centre which also has widgets. It can be accessed by clicking on the time on the top-right or by sliding from the right edge of the trackpad with 2 fingers. The notifications can be cleared and worked upon and the widgets can be edited as per your wish.
Note: Sonoma will also bring widgets on the desktop, similar to the beloved Windows 7 feature.
There is also the Launchpad that can be used to open apps, and organise them into folders — basically everything you can do in the Start Menu in Windows 8 and above or in a smartphone’s home screen. It is the closest thing to a Start Menu you can get in macOS. However, it is difficult to organise and does not provide any proper sorting capabilities. This brings us to one of the most important tools in a Mac — the Spotlight.
Spotlight: Search on Steroids
The Spotlight is a very powerful tool on Mac used to search across your Mac — as well as anything on the Web. Most Mac users will not even use the Dock or Launchpad and depend on the famous Cmd⌘+Space shortcut to launch the Spotlight. You can pair it with Siri (after setting it up if you haven’t during Setup) to make it even more powerful and also control where it searches. Knowing how to use Spotlight properly will make your life with Mac easier. You can also look for Spotlight upgrades like Alfred or Raycast after you’ve figured out your way around Spotlight.
Read More: How to Use Spotlight Better (Intego)
Closing Programs
Now that you can open any program using shortcuts or Spotlight, how do you close them? In Windows, you can easily close any running application by clicking the Close ‘X’ (usually red) on the top right corner of any window. On Mac, it is not that simple. While on Windows, we have options for (left to right) Minimise, Resize/Maximise and Close/Exit, on Mac we have similar options on the top left corner of a window below its menu bar: Close Window (Red), Minimise (Yellow) and Zoom (Green). Their functionalities, however, are a bit different.
Let’s start with Zoom. On holding or hovering above Zoom, you will get 3 options — (1) Enter Fullscreen (which is the default if you click on it) and Tile Window to the (2) left and (3) right of the screen. This is a great feature that will help you arrange and manage open windows. The fn+F shortcut is used to enter/quit fullscreen, which is F11 (or Alt+Enter) in Windows. Minimise simply minimises the program window. The close button, however, closes the window but not the instance of the running application.
For example, if you press Close on Chrome, it will close all tabs. But Chrome is still running in the background (and you can see that the white dot is present in the Dock). The command to close a window is Cmd⌘+W and to close all windows for that app, use Cmd⌘+Alt⌥+W. To force quit an application it is Cmd⌘+Q. You can also find the Quit option in the app’s menu.
If you have multiple apps running, you can also use Cmd⌘+Tab and then use the Quit shortcut to quit each application by cycling through them. Another way would be to right-click (or 2-finger tap/click) the app icon in Dock and choose Quit. The only app you can never truly close is Finder, which is always active.
Instead of Task Manager to kill unresponsive apps on Mac, you have Force Quit in the Apple Menu. It will open up a similar list of running applications and works similarly. The shortcut is Cmd⌘+Alt⌥+Escape⎋, similar to Ctrl+Alt+Del or the modern Ctrl+Shift+Escape on Windows.
Why is closing programs so complicated? One reason can be that Mac focuses a lot on optimising performance, causing users to rarely completely close (or even shut down their Mac) open applications. The only time you might need to restart/shut down and not sleep (hibernate) is when you get some unexpected or sluggish behaviour. If you truly feel uncomfortable with this behaviour, you can use an add-on like RedQuits to make the Close(X)/Red button act similar to Windows.
Watch: Why Does Closing Windows on a Mac not Quit the Application? (YouTube), RedQuits and alternatives (YouTube)
Multitasking
Windows is great for multitasking — it helps you manage multiple apps, windows and tabs, separate them properly and it also relies on a lot of shortcuts to make things easy. Mac is still not as capable as Windows for dealing with the same.
The Cmd⌘+Tab key can be used similar to Alt+Tab in Windows to see all open apps. However, it only shows the open icons and not previews or multiple windows/tabs like it does on the latest Windows. Most prefer to use something like the AltTab app or the Witch add-on to get back this functionality, but you can use Stage Manager and Mission Control for the same (the shortcut for mission control is a 3-finger swipe up). They are great for handling multiple desktops, apps and windows of the same app. App Exposé can be used to view and manage multiple windows of the same app. Find these in your settings and enable/disable them as per your requirement.
Note: AltTab can be a great replacement for both Mission Control and App Exposé
Watch: How to use Stage Manager (YouTube), Mac Basics: Mission Control (YouTube)
We can use a third-party app for window snapping on hitting borders like Rectangle (free) or Magnet (paid). You can also use the Zoom (Green) on the top-left to achieve the same.
Read More: Windows Management Tools for Mac (The Mac Observer)
Finder: File Explorer
If you have ever noticed in the Task Manager on Windows, File Explorer or ‘explorer.exe’ is always running. If you try to end/restart it, you will see the taskbar disappear along with all open windows of it. In Mac, it is the same. Finder is the in-built file explorer and is always on. Go to the View menu of Finder and enable/disable Preview, Tab Bar, Path Bar and Status Bar as per your liking. You can pin folders to the Side Bar, similar to Quick Access in Windows. Collapse the Tags in the Side Bar (or go to Settings and remove all Tags). if you don’t plan on using them. You can change the view of the current folder using the view options. Now, take a deep breath. There is no Cmd⌘+X for cutting and then pasting anywhere else. macOS was developed as a drag-and-drop focused OS and you are expected to drag from your source to the destination folder. This is one setting you would absolutely need to change coming from Windows and Command X is here to save the day. Simply install from the App Store, provide the necessary permissions and set it to start at login and you can use Finder as your File Explorer. Use Cmd⌘+Delete to send a file to Bin or you can also drag and drop. An alternative would be to use the XtraFinder add-on.
You can use double click or Cmd⌘+O to open any file or hold Space to get a preview of it (if you don’t have the Preview panel turned on).
Preview can almost open any file in Finder — text files and some other files might open in the built-in Text Editor by default unless it is set to something else. You can achieve this by using ‘Get Info’ on the file by right click menu or Cmd⌘+I shortcut and using the ‘Open with’ setting. The right-click context menu can also show alternate options by holding the Alt/⌥ key (similar to Shift+Right Click in Windows).
By default, the Search bar searches your whole computer — you can alter this to suit your needs.
I personally feel Finder will be enough if you manage to set the right settings. You can switch to other managers like ForkLift or Commander One afterwards if you feel it lacks something or just isn’t for you.
Clipboard Management
Windows now has an in-built clipboard manager, which saves clipboard history (content you have copied since the last startup). However, Mac still does not support that. Using Copy+Paste you can only get the last thing you copied. However, you can use clipboard managers like Maccy to enable such a feature.
Read More: Best Clipboard Managers for Mac (TechPP)
iCloud
The iCloud cloud-based service is what OneDrive is to Microsoft or Drive is to Google. It enables storage of data and sync across your Apple ecosystem. It supports end-to-end encryption for most services.
Terminal (Optional)
Ever since Windows introduced WSL and its own terminal (which is the default terminal on Windows 11), techies have been quite happy. From Command Prompt to PowerShell to Windows Terminal, they have undergone a massive evolutionary change. It supports any and all CLIs (ranging from Windows’ own to Git Bash to Linux subsystems) present on your system.
The in-built Terminal app might leave you disappointed. However, you can spice things up and use alternate emulators. Watch this video and check out its instruction blog to use the iTerm2 terminal, which is basically an emulator that runs the Zsh (or Bash) terminal on Mac.
Read More: Touch ID instead of Password in Terminal (StackOverflow)
Browser (Optional)
The default browser on Windows is Microsoft’s Edge, which is not that popular compared to ones like Google’s Chrome or Mozilla’s open-source Firefox.
Note: Apart from Firefox, most modern browsers are Chromium-based.
Apple’s built-in browser is Safari, which is optimised for Mac and iOS and is performance-wise the best browser you could be using on your Mac. It might sound hypocritical coming from me, a Chrome user (mostly because most of my data is synced across devices on it — but you can easily import and use that in Safari). Safari has evolved into a great browser since its inception and has an extension store like Chrome, albeit with much fewer options. Its privacy and security features are also great for your device and it drains battery life slower than the RAM-hungry Chromium rivals.
Read More: Best Browser for Mac (MacWorld)
Password Manager (Optional)
Apple provides iCloud integration and the Keychain Access app to remember passwords for apps, servers and websites and handle login.
Read more: Manage passwords using keychains (Apple)
You could, alternatively, bring in the same password manager that you used in Windows (if it is available on Mac). I personally use the open-source Bitwarden (desktop and Chrome extension). You can go through my previous blog to understand all about password management and best practices.
TinkerTool (Optional)
This application gives access to hidden features in macOS that are not accessible except by direct manipulation of system files. However, most of these settings can be done in Terminal with commands. If you feel comfortable with a GUI over CLI interface, feel free to download and use this tool for customisation. It is completely safe and there is an option to go to pre-TinkerTool state if things go downside.
Conclusion
While it might seem like a daunting task to shift to a different operating system like macOS or Linux from Windows, customisation tools and other third-party applications help us make the learning curve less steep and manageable. I hope this article has helped you understand the differences in Mac vis-à-vis Windows and what to do to close that gap.
