“Last month, I initiated a three-month trial of the Macintosh as a total replacement for my primary Windows machine,” Scot Finnie writes for Computerworld.
“If I decide to go back to Windows when this Mac trial is over, returning to my ThinkPad T60 Core Duo may be a very difficult move. I’ve settled into the MacBook Pro 17 and Mac OS X 10.4.8 as if I was born to them. If the Mac OS doesn’t mesmerize me to the point that I lose all interest in Windows, this piece of hardware might just do that all on its own,” Finnie writes.
Finnie asks, “Why can’t Dell, Hewlett-Packard or even Lenovo build notebook hardware this good?”
MacDailyNews Take: Because they can’t run Mac OS X and most Apple software. And because they’re mostly trying to nickel and dime each other to death, so there’s apparently no money left for thoughtful design and attention to detail.
Finnie continues, “I mentioned some pain in moving to the Mac platform. That pain has a definite identity: It’s my 14-year-old Eudora e-mail for Windows installation. You see, I had 1,500 Eudora mailboxes, over 500 mail-filtering rules and my only address book. While I took this opportunity to do a little housecleaning, I still had more than 2GB of personal data that I had no intention of parting with. And therein lay my biggest trial in migrating to the Mac. So what’s the big deal? Eudora was written first for the Mac. Surely Qualcomm includes importers that allow you to migrate Eudora from Windows to Mac, right? That would be a no. All Qualcomm offers is a pair of poorly written, 12-year-old knowledge base articles whose instructions don’t work at all.”
MacDailyNews Note: So, to be clear, the “pain” was caused by Qualcomm, not Apple.
Finnie details his fixes for migrating his Eudora email to his MacBook Pro and continues, “When it was all done, and my main Mac became my primary machine for Lotus Notes and Eudora e-mail, with the corporate virtual private network running fine and everything else I need to get my job done in place or planned for, that’s when this test formally began. Let me sum up the experience so far this way: The transition was a little rocky, but once over that hump, my Mac experience has been superb.”
“One of the surprising things to me as a recent Mac convert is how much software is available for the Mac. There is a rich community of Mac freeware, shareware and trialware. It’s been a lot of fun to dig around and find programs that work for me. The quality of this third-party code is generally better than the quality of comparable Windows freeware and shareware, too,” Finnie writes.
“There are some business apps, such as AutoCAD, Visio, Project, Outlook (Microsoft’s Entourage is very different from Outlook) that don’t have mainstream counterparts for Mac OS X. Some enterprise apps, both commercial and in-house, don’t run on the Mac. Some Web-based enterprise apps won’t run without Internet Explorer, which no longer exists on the Mac. For those people, though, the Parallels virtualization tool may well be the bridge that connects the Mac to Windows,” Finnie writes. “But I have managed to make the change surprisingly easily. With a little perseverance, many other business people could too.”
Much more in the full article here.
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A Windows expert opts for a Mac life – November 06, 2006
Embrace and Extinguish in action: TechIQ’s ‘The VAR Guy’ dumps Windows, switches to Mac OS X – September 25, 2006
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Sydney Morning Herald Tech columnist dumps Microsoft Windows, switches to Apple Mac – June 13, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Bye-Bye Bill: another columnist dumps Windows for Apple Macintosh – January 20, 2005
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IBM Fellow dumps Microsoft Windows XP, switches to Apple’s Mac OS X – September 02, 2004
Another PC user/columnist switches. WAKE UP AMERICA! Apple is the shit! Steve Jobs is poised to do the unthinkable: bite off a heavy chunk of marketshare from Mi¢ro$oft Window$, which other companies have been unable to do. Sure it has taken Apple a while to do this (ever since Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer stole Steve Job’s plan), but Jobs will get the last laugh.
Welcome to the mac world. Instant bliss on tap – brace yourself
He needs to use emailchemy. $20 and it can move email rom any one client to another. I used it to move my family members to mac from outlook express.
It is a wonderful experience switching from PC to Mac. It was awesome to be able to surf the web while burning a cd and not have the burning program lock up! Multitasking is soooo much better in the mac world! I’m never going back to windows!
AutoCAD? Oh, puhleeeeeeeeeazze. That over-priced, bloated kludge?
If you want excellent, well-designed, user friendly industry compliant CAD software for the Mac, look at VectorWorks or ArchiCAD
Or if you want something inexpensive and easy to learn for simple drawing and CAD projects, DoodleCAD is great.
…tipping point is close… standing on edge of diving board, arms pinwheeling…
I’m just in the process of switching a client’s office from 50 Dells to 50 Macs, consisting of 20 Mac mini’s, 15 iMac’s, 10 Mac Pro’s and 5 MacBook Pro’s for the Directors.
Technology is changing. I’m 28, I know a sh*t load about Macs and what they can achieve, and know enough about Windows to know it’s awful. I go to a company, show them the power of OS X and present them the FACTS about OS X. No viruses. Ultra stable. Fast. Versatile. Fast. Intuitive. Fast.
Tipping point is closer than everybody thinks, IMO.
MW: days, as in Micro$oft’s days as a monopoly are numbered.
The tipping point has already happened. The snowball is now the size of a small boulder.
And when it turns into a full force avalanche, the companies that stuck by the Mac through the hard times will reap the rewards. The ones jumping back in now after deserting the Mac will have a lot of work to do (H&R Block’s Tax Cut) to regain trust and rebuild their brand. The ones who are still on the sidelines (AutoDesk) are going to see their leadership position eaten away by competitors who will grab the biggest slice of the fastest growing segment of the PC market, which are Macs.
Just look at what Parallels is doing to the competition (Microsoft, VM Ware)
Visio has no Mac counterpart? Has no one told this guy about Omnigraffle?
Preach it brother Jim.
I have brought Macs (in quantity) to every company I’ve worked for, for over 22 years now. I’ve only worked for one company, in that time, who’s IT dept. wasn’t dogmatically Windows. When I came to the company I work for now, they had 1 (one) personally owned Mac that was being used for graphics work. When I migrated from working on the road to working in house, I put in a work order (accompanied by properly researched claims), for 4 Mac editing workstations with Final Cut Studio suites and Adobe CS, all based on dual processor G5s (this was before the move to Intel was even a rumor). Two years later the company has 13+ workstations all based on the Mac, including one Quadcore Intel Mac. Another gentleman and myself setup the first XSAN in our organization (4TB), and we will be expanding that to 8TB over the next 12 month. The XSAN is rock solid.
Outside of the accounting dept., Windows is on its way out of our organization, and it won’t be fast enough.
As I told the Chief Engineer here when I arrived, “Stop fantasizing about providing a better desktop experience for your company and start implementing it.” (Obviously I spent some time developing a relationship with him before I made the comment.)
Its been a tough and very rewarding experience. I’m not an IT pro, but I highly recommend it for all organizations and their respective IT personel. LET WINDOWS GO…
Ever since my own father, a retired tropical forestry consultant, switched only a few weeks ago to a MacBook Core 2 Duo, 2Ghz it has been bliss.
The sheer bliss to just help him set up the stuff he used to do on Windows and have them actually work.
Gone is having to fight the OS just to do what he wanted and then be faced with a crash.
My stepmom, who uses the same MacBook, loves it and tells me how much easier it is to operate as well as being able to sit anywhere in the house and connect as I have wi-fi access via a Netgear router.
Now just before environmentalists respond, my father’s occupation above did not only ential cutting down trees, but to grow more in the place left by their removal and he was a pioneer in forestry management. His efforts paved the way for sustainability and hopefully still resonates beyond his working life.
Macs are made for people. Dell couldn’t care less about ‘quality of experience’.. they serve the business community.
PS. I’m a Mac user.
MS Project? Anyone looking for a counterpart, check out Merlin. Kicks MSProjects sorry arse.
http://www.merlin2.net/
General Question:
He mentions that there are some Web-based enterprise apps that only work with Explorer. I have to use one of those, but as I have a G5 Imac, Boot Camp and Parralles is not an option.
Is there a Windows emulator for Safari? Or Firefox i.e something that ‘fools’ the app into thinking you are running explorer?
If you need to use Windows on a PPC Mac, try Guest PC.
http://www.lismoresystems.com
It works well for me.
Hey grognard – download the User Agent Switcher (Google it) for Firefox which fools the web server into thinking you’re running IE or whatever.
Thanks @grognard and Nige for your suggestions.
Reality bites that I even have to go through this exercise, but there you go. Is my organizatoin wating for Vista? Hah they have just started an implementation plan for XP! We are still on Windows 2000, Sigh.
Pick one word, why not use the MDN title, “Journalist has serious pain switching to Mac”
“There is no HTML editor like HomeSite available for the Mac. I’ve spent some time looking on the Mac side recently and become royally discouraged.”
“There is still a question, however, whether all Windows business people will be able to do what I’ve done. There are some business apps, such as AutoCAD, Visio, Project, Outlook (Microsoft’s Entourage is very different from Outlook) that don’t have mainstream counterparts for Mac OS X. “
“With a little perseverance, many other business people could too.”
“I’ve also got Parallels on the job,” “I’m using Microsoft’s free Remote Desktop Client 1.0.3”
Serious Pain, Lack of applications, Perseverance. Those are all words that warm a switcher’s heart.
Where do I sign up?