I moved from PC to Mac -- and I am a big giant computer geek with massively ingrained protocols amassed over 15+ years of PC use -- and I couldn't be happier. I had to rebuild my sis-in-laws dell notebook OS the other day, and all I could think during the 8+ hours to get the system going and the drivers installed and the 6-10 trips through windows update to get the OS locked down was how glad I was for switching.

Some resources:

• http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/
• http://www.macosxhints.com/
• http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-os-x/
• http://www.tuaw.com/

A few transition tips:

• Under windows, I launch all my files from the taskbar. Until youget fluent with Quicksilver, you'll want to have something that mimics the taskbar. Just drag your applications folder to the dock; you can then right click or control click on it to see a hierarchical apps menu:
  • http://western-skies.blogspot.com/2006/07/tip-managing-applications-on-os-x.html
• Instructions / one-time-fixer-script to make home/end go to start/end of line: http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2006/keyfixer/. You can follow the DIY instructions to also fix control-arrow to move left/right by words. The support for home/end is not universal -- it will fail in a few annoying places.
  
• You can use tab to move among buttons in a dialog box -- look for the little blue halo around the button -- but you have to use spacebar (not return) to trigger that button. (You may need assistive access turned on, see below.)
  
• I use gtalk, which is not mac'ed yet. So instead I run google notifier http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html and adium http://www.adiumx.com for IM.
• I stay away from the "uber-haxxor your system to run 1% better in border cases apps," but FileBuddy http://www.skytag.com/filebuddy/ gives you good fine-grained access to your file system, including letting you mark files (in)visible from the finder. (See also SetFile below.)
• Put quick access to the character palette in your menubar:http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/glyphspalette/
• Last.fm client for itunes (means you don't have to run the crappy last.fm app): http://www.last.fm/group/iScrobbler
• Parallels 3.0 lets you run your legacy Win apps. The next BootCamp is sposda be almost as good.

A few great apps:

• Quicksilver is like the greatest thing evar. Install now. At some later point go through some tutorials
• Growl for system notifications
• VLC for video playback is good, enough that I don't miss Zoom Player
• Azureus or Transmission for BitTorrent
• TVShows to Torrent-Subscribe to a TV show
• Chicken of the VNC / Remote Desktop Connection (from MS) for VNC/Windows Terminal remote control. Enable Apple Remote desktop, set up DynDNS, and poke a hole through all your router/firewalls for TCP ports 5800&5900. If you're not comfortable leaving remote access on permanently, see http://lists.apple.com/archives/Macos-x-server/2005/Sep/msg01405.html but note that you have to restart to get a conxn.
• DynDNS widget (hit F12 then "get more widgets") for DynDNS
• Cyberduck for graphical FTP
• Cog is like a winamp for mac if you need "just play this one damn mp3 I don't need the awesome power of teh iTunes"
• Corripio can help with cover-arting your music, but is a work in progress
• Mozy for remote backup
• FlickrExport

Here are a few things that windows does better than mac:

• VERY IMPORTANT: when you copy a directory over another directory,it does not "match and overwrite moved files, leaving unmatched files alone" as do windows and unix. It overwrites, irreversibly, the target directory.
  • Specifically, this means that if you are copying/moving adirectory, and the copy fails halfway through, you CANNOT just drag the directory over again. You have to move the CONTENTS of the old into the new, then delete the old container.
• NTFS and NFS shares are NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME on the mac. Sharesdon't appear seamlessly in the filesystem, and can cause problems if they are unavailable (because, say, the remote machine is off). Sharity helps a lot with the mounting, but there are architectural issues I hope to hell are fixed in 10.5 leopard. Sharepoints makes sharing OUT your system fairly easy.

If you're the triple-threat Unix type,

• follow instructions to install X.11, developer tools, and THENfink. I'd go to the fink homepage and do what they tell you. Do this even if you don't program; the dev tools have many useful utilities.
• Enable SSH in the Sharing sys prefs panel.
• more resources
  • http://www.astro.cornell.edu/staff/loredo/unix2mac/
  • http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• You may run into some keyboard / clipboard issues. Make sure"Enable Keyboard Shortcuts" is checked on X11.app's preferences: it enables cmd-C to copy AND clipboard autopaste. Also install the fink autocutsel package. Missing meta-X in emacs is a problem; I remapped to alt-control-X but I haven't retrained yet. You can also use X config to make the command key your meta key, but you'll have to do so on your other unices as well.
• Consider moving your home dir: http://www.bombich.com/mactips/homedir.html (but CAREFULLY)
• To make invisible:
  • $ setfile -a V syncflip.txt
  • To make visible:
  • $ setfile -a v syncflip.txt
• to show/hide invisible files in the finder:
  • $ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
  • $ killall finder
• mdls is metadata ls.