An all-Apple family celebrates second anniversary of living completely Microsoft-free

“Back in April, I proudly declared my second anniversary of living completely Microsoft-free,” Ed Brill blogs for his eponymous site. “Beyond Microsoft-free, though, the point of that blog entry was how much Apple technology had entered my life in the last few years.”

[Ed Brill is Director, Messaging and Collaboration, IBM Lotus software. – MacDailyNews Ed.]

“Earlier this month, IBM started a conversion of our corporate mobile device program, in line with what had been disclosed externally a few months ago,” Brill writes. “For the first time, I had the opportunity to have an iPhone and have IBM manage the billing. It meant buying my own phone, but the opportunity to move not just in a Microsoft-free direction, but an all-Apple direction, was too good to pass up.”

“The switch was so simple, I almost didn’t realize it had happened,” Brill explains. “When I first powered up the iPhone on Friday afternoon, and clicked through the setup options, an error suddenly popped up on my old [BlackBerry] phone, that the SIM was no longer provisioned. A few minutes later, I logged onto a Lotus Mobile Connect gateway on ibm.com, and Notes Traveler and LMC were being provisioned on the device. The app store app already knew what apps I had on my iPad, so installing IBM Sametime and IBM Connections were both single-tap actions. My contacts synced from Notes through Traveler. In short, save some recent images shot with the camera on my old phone, I didn’t have to do anything to transition from one device to another, and I’m up and running on the 8th piece of Apple gear in production use in my household. It.Just.Works.”

Read more in the full article here.

35 Comments

    1. Me too.
      I’ve never owned a PC – only Macs – and before Macs a Timex-Sinclair 1000 (which I still have) and a Commodore 64 🙂
      The first Mac I actually owned (rather than only used) is a Mac Plus. I say “is” because I still have it and it still works.

      1. 23rd year of Mac ownership here and have never owned a PC (though I’ve had to use them in the past – ugh).

        Now, I do my best to avoid everything associated with Gaagle.

        1. Cold fingers I guess.
          “The Apple Macintosh IIci was an improvement on the Macintosh IIcx. Sharing the same compact case design with three expansion slots, the IIci improved upon the IIcx’s 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips. The IIci came with either a 40 or an 80 megabyte hard disk.”

  1. It jus works…till it doesn’t. I’ve been using Apple products since 1987 when I got my first Apple II. All computers suck, Apple just sucks less than anything else out there. There is room for improvement. We should all be careful not to “drink the koolaid. For those of us that have been with Apple for years she can be a harsh mistress. I can’t imagine how many hundreds of dollars of mice I’ve thrown away with each new mac. The trauma I’ve had with Chip migrations, and the fact that Apple supports most software for about 3 – 5 years and then they cut you off HARD. I Love Apple but lets hold them accountable to deliver the dream.

    1. I got my first Mac work horse in ’84. Used it for 7 years in my consulting business.

      Bought my second Mac in ’91. Use it for 8 years.

      Bought my third Mac in ’99. Used it for 7 years.

      My current Mac was bought in ’06 and it is still working, upgraded to Lion and should last 3 or 4 more years.

      All my Macs still work. Only the first, Fat Mac, is not used daily by someone in the family.

      I think only the chip migrators seem to have problems. When I migrate to a new chip, I give away the old chip, with the computer it came in and the programs that the new chip kills.

      How hard is that?

  2. Sure you may have issues with your older Macs, iPhones and such. But just like your car getting long in the tooth so do computers. My family upgrades to new Macs every three or so years. Technology just does not stand still. I would rather upgrade to trouble free Apple products every few years then to deal with MS products daily. We have had the iPhones since day one and unless Apple stops making them we will not go back to any other hand held phone/computer.

    I’m sold on Apple and I’m not drinking the punch as some would say. I’m helping mix the punch because Apple products just work, un-like MS and droids that make you work to get what you want.

  3. 21 years now here although I’ve used the Office all that time – mainly Excel and I still do use Excel to appease the Windows users I connect with. That’s really it now: Excel… and the SkyDrive’s free 25GB storage. And Skype since MS owns that now… But other than these things I’m completely MS-free. As for Google, it’s search only.

  4. Congrats.

    My entire family has been Microsoft free since the first iWork came out and we got rid of Office.

    Now we’re google free (as possible) as well. Just waiting for Apple maps and Apple search!

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