About to buy a Mac but...

Napoleon Plural

I'm about to fork out for an Apple Mac but can't get round the whole Betamax/VHS* dilemma of a PC vs Mac, Dell v Apple and am no expert, despite logging onto this site so often.

I like Microsoft Word and Photoshop - but these don't come on an Apple Mac, right? So can I pay to install them on a Mac?

I know they have a substitute on a Mac but I don't care for them much. I'm used in many ways to a Dell, but for some reason don't fancy buying one unless someone wants to talk me into it.

It's the having to make a decision and then being stuck with it that grates with me. Any advice?

* Ask yer Grandad....

Higgins

Macs come with their own „photoshop“ app, pictures which imo is far better and easier to use.

I‘ve switched to Macs around 15 years ago and have never looked back.

If you are going for a Macbook, make sure rhat you get one of the new models with the good keyboards

caractacus potts

Photoshop isn't microsoft, its Adobe, and very expensive.
Perhaps you're thinking of Photos, which is the microsoft app that automatically opens image files on my computer?

Photoshop I would guess should run better on a mac. All my friends who are professional graphic artists use macs.

When I briefly used a mac at my office, the graphics programs seemed to run better (specifically Illustrator rather than Photoshop, but they're both Adobe products), more fonts, more colours, easier to predict what something would look like before I sent it to the printer.
But the rest of the network was microsoft or UNIX, and all the microsoft users in my office were complaining about my files, and IT refused to support the macs, so eventually I surrendered and went back to using a PC like everybody else.

If you're just using your computer at home, what your coworkers want shouldn't be an issue, and I always found folks who are less tech-savvy prefer the apple products as they're more intuitive.

emtiem

Napoleon Plural wrote:

I'm about to fork out for an Apple Mac but can't get round the whole Betamax/VHS* dilemma of a PC vs Mac, Dell v Apple and am no expert, despite logging onto this site so often.

I like Microsoft Word and Photoshop - but these don't come on an Apple Mac, right? So can I pay to install them on a Mac?

Yes, both are available for Mac (many folks would say that Photoshop is a Mac application primarily), and just like on PC you have to pay additionally for both.

There is even an online free version of Word which works through your browser. I often use the online version of Excel and it works pretty much the same as the desktop version as far as I can tell.

Macs do come with their own alternative to Word which is called 'Pages' and I believe is free (I don't recall paying for it anyway). You may even prefer it. I use Keynote occasionally which is the Powerpoint alternative and it is superior in some ways and will open and save PPTX files as far as I can remember (I don't really use office software very often).

emtiem

Higgins wrote:

Macs come with their own „photoshop“ app, pictures which imo is far better and easier to use.

'Pictures'? If you're thinking of 'Photos' that doesn't really do the same thing as Photoshop, which is professional image editing software.

Higgins

Yes, meant Pictures.

Pretty sure, NP has no need for a professional image editing software, so Pictures should work for him.
I know the app as iPhotos still

Number24

When I saw the headline I thought you meant a hamburger )

emtiem

Higgins wrote:

Yes, meant Pictures.

Pretty sure, NP has no need for a professional image editing software, so Pictures should work for him.
I know the app as iPhotos still

Is it called Pictures on your machine? Maybe that's a foreign language thing, it's called 'Photos' on English Macs.