14 Days with a Mac March 17, 2008
Posted by jay in : Technology, Tips , trackbackNo one can blame me that I am anti-Apple. I own more Apple products than Microsoft. I have 2 ipods, an iPhone, a Mac Mini in our house’s living room, I have some AAPL shares in my portfolio and recently I put my hands on a MacBook Pro. I thought that after 15 years or so on a PC, the time has come to fully migrate.
I’ve installed plenty of utils (thank you versiontracker.com). I’ve learned by heart tens of shortcuts. I’ve even got used to looking for the [x] button on the top left corner. But, after two weeks on a Mac as my primary work machine I have to admit that I still find it very difficult to get used to the fact that some basic applications, such that I have been using every day, are missing or partially available on a Mac, and that there is no good alternative. In many cases, I feel 50% less productive than I used to be on a PC.
Here are a few examples — in case you have answers or suggestions to some of these issues, please leave them in the comments section:
1. Entourage is a terrible email client compared to Outlook. Plenty of basic features are missing (I don’t know where to begin…). It is also very slow and feels like Outlook Express v 2.0 to me.
2. Spotlight cannot index my Outlook PST files. From what I have been reading, the only way to overcome this issue is to import the PST files into Entourage. But then I would end up with a huge and slow inbox. Am I missing some hidden plug-in or am I expected to give up years of email archive?
3. MS Office in general, and PowerPoint in particular, for Mac is bad, really bad. On Powerpoint for example, If you need to edit/open/edit presentations made on PowerPoint you are in serious trouble. Fonts do no render properly, print is almost impossible and the overall experience is really slow. Yes, I have Keynote installed and it is amazing, but when you are part of a company that has a majority of PC users, I have no choice but using Office.
4. I need to have ability to run IE7 (or my favorite Maxthon). There are many sites that are not compatible with FF and Safari (at least Israeli ones). Also, my job requires me to look at everything we develop at Snap on all three browsers, especially the one with the largest market share. A side note: seems to me that Microsoft made a big mistake when it announced that it is not going to support IE for Mac OS any more.
5. My favorite desktop blogging client, MS Live Writer, does not have a Mac version. Anyone has suggestions for a really good alternative for Mac?
I know what some might say–just install Parallel and Windows on the Mac and use the PC apps that you like. But then I would work on Windows most of the day. Besides, what is the point. I could buy an apple sticker and stick it in the center of the cover of my IBM Thinkpad…
Comments»
Hi Jay,
I also miss Live Writer but Ecto or Qumana do the job ok. I have switched all my emails to Gmail so do not use either Outlook (which was catastrophic for me) or Entourage. For search i recommand you Quicksilver that indexes everything/anything and that is better than spotlight. it has plenty of plugins
If you miss you PC just run Parallels on your machine. Will be more stable and faster than your own pc
Why not replace the software you use with programs more adapted to Mac? Such as Mail.app and iWork? I’m very happy with both.
Jay,
You should have never switched to a Mac, and I say this as a Mac zealot.
Why do I say this? Look at your software stack - MS Entourage, MS Explorer, MS Powerpoint, MS Live Writer, MS Outlook. If you want to live and breathe the fullest of the MS eco-system, you should definitely remain in the MS-OS world. Period.
If you’re willing to open your mind, experiment, and look at your computing needs as a task based or output based activity, there are plenty of solutions native to the Mac, and I’m sure that one (or more) would suit you just fine. If old habits die too hard, if your muscle memory is too tied to a certain specific app to switch, don’t switch. Its just that simple.
Interesting, isn’t it, that all five of the issues that are you causing you to have a bad Mac experience are Microsoft products…
You’re not going to find replacements for those problems outside of MS (I assume you’re not using Apple’s excellent Mail app because you need non-IMAP Exchange access?), so why don’t you just run a copy of Windows XP or Vista through Parallels or VMware Fusion?
well, it seems to me you are not complaining about the Mac at all, but instead complaining about Microsoft’s terrible support for the Mac. Which is perfectly valid and true.
Theres very little Apple could possibly do to solve any of the problems you noted, even if they were motivated to. Especially since the web sites you say are broken in Safari AND Firefox are probably spitting out broken web pages in order to work with MSIE.
Running Parallels is not the same as sticking an Apple sticker on your thinkpad though. The idea would be to use and enjoy the Mac most of the time, and yet have the MS apps there when you do need them. Thats not possible with a dressed up ThinkPad…
Latz says “If you’re willing to open your mind, experiment, and look at your computing needs as a task based or output based activity, there are plenty of solutions native to the Mac,..”
My comment to this: As a teacher I have been using spreadsheet for more than 5 years, and the best program is Excel for PC. My models made in Excel include a lot of macros and macros function very bad in Excel for Mac, so bad that it is hopeless to use Excel for Mac. And why must my iMac 2.4Ghz use 10-12 seconds to open Excel in Mac-modus, while Excel for PC on the same machine (via Boot Camp) opens in 1-2 seconds??
there was a great quote from macworld a few years ago:
“mac users have a love/hate relationship with microsoft…where love is defined as “resigned tolerance” and hate is defined as the lava fuel rancor of a thousand burning suns”
my advice is this…you obviously need your suite of microsoft products, but you’ll never unleash the full power of your mac while staying on the microsoft reservation. run XP under parallels in cohesion mode for your core apps. in the meantime, do some investigating into the mac side of things. i bet you’ll find some apps that you never expected that can raise your productivity and give you some real choice, which is what switching is supposed to be about in the first place.
best of luck!
I also find it quite amusing that you state that the Mac version of Powerpoint is “bad, really bad.”. Interestingly enough, the exact opposite is true. Microsoft’s Windows does not render fonts correctly, as this has been a problem for years, and the general speed, feel and productivity of the Windows versio is years behind the Mac version. I have problems everytime I use the Windows version. I have to turn off many options, because the Windows one doesn’t have it. Sorry, but the Powerpoint Windows needs a fix to bring it up to the Mac version, and Windows has needed a font fix since, well the inception of Windows!
Good luck! I run a Microsoft-free machine and it’s wonderful!
Even Apple commercials agree if you want to run a spreadsheet, use a PC.
Apple computers are for enjoying your computing experience, not making spreadsheets, which is never a joy. I have never experienced joy inside a Microsoft program. In fact, I doubt there is any joy in even one of those millions of lines of windows code.
I’ll take a slightly less feature rich spreadsheet as my trade off for a computer that doesn’t suck.
Great feedback all–notes have been taken and implemented.
Installed Parallels, found some great utils that make the migration easy and increase my productivity.
But the most obvious thing so far - I have not rebooted my machine for 3 days (I used to do it 2-3 times with my PC) and was able to install and uninstall plenty of apps without thinking too much about the registry getting blown up, etc.
It is already paying off.
Jay,
I am reading your blog as I am in the midst of the same dilemma. I am willing to learn what is necessary to make the change, but I MUST have the microsoft apps to support my business.
When installing parallel, can you simply migrate all your windows apps and files directly into your mac? Was the migration easy? Do you have to reinstall the windows apps such that you have to locate all your software disks?
Thanks
Tony,
On the virtual machine I have only Windows XP, Office 2008, X1, Windows Live Writer and Maxthon (IE 7 on steroids). I did not install on the Parallels drive many of the Windows apps I used to. Instead I found Mac utils that could do the work. As you can tell, the only thing I could not find was a desktop blogging client for Mac that is as good as Live Writer.
Since I use Outlook I copied the old PST files from my old machine to the new one and I access them using Outlook and X1.
The rest of the data - documents, photos, videos, music is now on the Mac OS disk and I access it using software for Mac. I also have iWorks and I try to use it whenever I can but for Office documents I usually use Office 2008 via Parallels.
VersionTracker is a great source to find apps & utils, and the nice thing about Mac is that it is very easy to install, test and then completely uninstall software you don’t like without the risk of messing up the registry (in Win). For that, make sure you install a util like AppTrap which automatically deletes associated preference files when you drag an app to the trash bin.
I am very happy and do not regret the migration at all.