Switching from a PC to a Mac was a horrible mistake :(

Question

I am being far more UNproductive than I should be on a Mac. Too many problems on a Mac.
I just switched to a Mac from a PC. Lots and lots of problems. I am power user and I think I really made a horrible mistake. I have wasted so much work time this past week, I feel like suing Apple for promoting an ease-of-use product that falls on its face, wastes my time, and wastes my money. Everything from obvious software and hardware security foibles to now I have NO permissions to delete things on my computer are happening on this Macbook.
Apple -- you seem just as simple and behind-the-times as when I used you last many years ago.
My main problem now (oh, I have many...) is that my permissions are now changed on my ENTIRE Macbook. AHHHHHHHH. How do I delete something on my desktop? It now says I have no permissions to delete a txt file on my desktop. Why? How/ What the heck did I do?
I really made a horrible mistake and now I can't suggest that anyone in my company switch. We're sticking to PCs, though I will try to stay with this Mac for at least one more week before relegating it to a big plastic paperweight my techies use for testing.
This is all very very very frustrating. Very frustrating.

Answer 1

AppleAppleApple-3 wrote:
Ok, you guys are right. I had to go to the store because my computer was in a loop and they said I needed to find another Mac to backup my data first. As I am in Asia, there are very few Macs around (I can't think of any friends that have one and I went out on a limb in my company to buy one first).
So the guy at the Mac store was NOT able to backup everything because there were permission errors on my Mac. So I did lose some fairly important data -- about 1.8GB of it . Yes, I realize I could have reinstalled it myself, but it cost me US$30 to have him do it and I wanted to ensure he was "liable" if anything went wrong. He installed the Chinese version though because he was more familiar with it and said afterwards we could change back to English. In fact afterwards we did change back to English, but only on about 98% of the menus... when I just arrived home I realized that there was still some Chinese artifacts and so I wanted to delete them to ensure a TOTALLY clean English-language install (he also said we could not do an Archive and Install because of the permissions problems, so I too, for the second time, just reinstalled my computer at home and wiped EVERYTHING away).
Sheeeeez......
So the first software I installed after just reinstalling was Firefox, powered it up, and came to this forum... now I am downloading all the updates and growing numb over the thought of losing so much valuable data.
I really do like the design of the Mac, I like its general feel and ease of use.... but it is like grinding two ungreased gears together these past 2 weeks to get printers working at the office, to get the iSight camera light to turn off, and to realize to my horror that Mac hasn't changed so much in the last 10+ years since I last used her (or is it a him?).
This Mac borders more on a "consumer product" than a "computer", if you know what I mean... o maybe I like fidgeting with things too much?
You can tinker with MacOS X, but you must remember that once you do, you must know what you're doing. On Windows, since there's barely any permissioning system, it's easier to change things (which is also why there's so many security problems). If you also want to really tinker with MacOS X, you must also be prepared by knowing UNIX. UNIX is what MacOS X is built on (well, to be fair for the techies, yes, it's fused with a Mach kernel). So next time if you want to tinker with the system, you must be prepared. I modified how my Mac works, edited a few buttons, but I had to first back things up.