Time for a Change
After years of grinding my teeth over the time and effort required to keep several Windows machines up and running, I’ve begun to feel that I’m unofficially working for Microsoft. It has seemed that as soon as I get one box settled down and stable, another one starts acting up, and I’m wiping and rewriting the OS, or digging through online resources trying to figure out how to fix whatever’s ailing me. Gradually it’s dawned on me that the fascination I once had for knowing how it all works has been replaced by a wish for something easier, more reliable and less time-consuming.
So, finally, I bought a Mac.
The transition will take time – there are several machines to gradually phase out. And perhaps I’ll find out that after all is said and done Windows is where I ought to be. But, while it’s only been a couple of days, my early impression is – I don’t think so.
Here are my first impressions of the MacBook Pro (2.0 ghz version) – sent to a friend just a little while ago (edited slightly – this is a wholesome blog):
1. This is the sweetest piece of hardware I’ve ever used. The fit and finish is exceptional. All in all, the feel is quite remarkable. The keyboard is like butter.
2. The OS is wickedly fast. My windows laptop is only 9 months old and this blows it away. That said, Firefox is still wobbly on OSX. I’d use Safari, but I am too tied to a few FF extensions.
3. Wireless is good, but only as good as my windows laptop. I’d heard that the reception on this was a big improvement. If true, that says more about the powerbook than anything else.
4. Battery life is approx 3:30.
5. The extra thin-ness is very cool. It matters.
6. On this box, the transitions – between apps, to the finder, in and out of the dashboard, etc. – are almost slippery smooth.
7. Plaxo sync to contacts and Foldershare sync of my docs to my windows box is amazing. Someone has to deal with Calendar, though.
8. Apple Mail is a joy to use on this box. Very simple, elegant, clean. I’m forgetting Outlook already :). But I do need to figure out proper archiving of emails. I have 5 years worth +, to about 5 gigs of email that I need to have handy and searchable.
9. Spotlight is as fast as X1 in Windows. I’m very impressed.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be collecting tips on apps, etc. so if you have thoughts don’t hesitate to email me or leave a comment. I’m guessing there’s a wiki somewhere that is a switcher’s heaven.
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Welcome to the world of “it just works”, without having to be an MS beta tester.
My office thunderbird with 250 MB of data is permanently compacting folders Even fastmail’s pro account or gmail is too small for that amount of data. How do you manage 5 GB of email?
Rob,
Welcome to the land of it just works. I am a Mac user since back in the day and a happy owner of a new MacBook Pro 1.83Ghz. Love it. Buttery? You bet.
Have you tried PhotoBooth with the built-in iSight camera? It has proven to be a great way to entertain friends sitting around the table while we take bizarre distorted photos of one another. I also use it to get photos of people I meet into Address Book, which display in Mail when I’m corresponding with them. (I’m terrible with name/face connections sometimes.)
I will assume that you are already familiar with the whole PPC/Intel Rosetta/Universal binary transition going on right now. You may run into a hiccup or two until everythings transitioned to Universal Binary.
Firefox – Download the Mozilla Deer Park alpha release for a Universal Binary version. Very stable and fast, it has replaced Safari for me. Extensions work fine. Apparently the official release will be coming out very soon.
Flash Player – Beware of downloading an “update” for Flash Player at the moment if you are prompted while browsing. The public download isn’t Universal, which causes problems in certain browsers, including Safari. The preinstalled version of Flash player should work. In case you need an update, there is a special Macintel preview version available here.
Real Player & plugin – Also not Universal yet. To get streaming Real player in a browser, you need to use the PPC version of Firefox under Rosetta.
Mail – Set up your Smart Mailboxes and familiarize yourself with the Inbox search capabilities, which are fantastic. You will never manually move an email message again. Swear. I assume that it can handle a large archive after importing, but I don’t have that issue.
I CAN’T STAND OUTLOOK now, when I have to use it in a client’s office. I seriously can’t believe that 90% of the world works with that thing day in day out.
Favourite apps:
Ecto – For blog posting.
NewsFire – Preferred RSS reader.
SpamSieve – Bayesian spam filter.
OmniOutliner – Organizing thoughts, taking notes.
Mark lists some great tools and advice. My list of must use applications:
TextMate
Quicksilver
Adium
NetNewsWire
ShowDesktop – not sure if this is Universal Binary (yet)
Other have been tracking cool Mac OS X applications
Brad Choate offers up an inventory of Mac software appsCool OSX Apps has a continuing list of interesting Mac softare
As an outsider, the first ones that I’d be most interested in are:
- Yojimbo
- QuickSilver (Merlin @ 43Folders has blogged much about its use)
- OmniOutliner, including the Kinkless GTD system
Have fun.
I guess I should have posted my favorites as well;
GraphicConverter – a shareware app, make that indispensable graphic tool
OmniGraffle Professional – a good Visio replacement (it will import and export Visio XML)
CyberDuck – a good FTP tool
and I’ll second NetNewsWire as that is how I read you ;-)
Hi Rob,
Like you, I’ve been worried about archiving e-mails. I chose FastMailBase – http://www.manybases.com/files_eng/fastmailbase.htm , which I’ve found to work very well – but then I’ve a lot less stuff to archive! It wasn’t particularly fast to import the initial bunch, but it is easy to then keep on top of things. The other main option appears to be MailSteward – http://www.mailsteward.com/ , which seems very actively developed. I looked at both, but my choice might not suit you! MailSteward does have cost on its side, and is speedy to import the files – but I preferred the way of handling attachments and MIME messages that FastMailBase has.
Karen
Mail Steward, thousands of Mails can be archived. So far so good, we can now prune out old emails clogging up the works.
Mac OS X Mail, especially in Exchange environ, chokes with 10′s of thousands of mail, by keeping it under 1000 or so, it works much better.
That said, Mail in Leopard 10.5 could use some serious help, like better Exchange support and handling / archiving 10′s of thousands of emails. I hope this is in the works in Leopard 10.5.
Mac OS X Mail seems to really have an issue especially in Legacy, older Exchange 5.5 environments.
There are issues and I have only been able to get my 80 plus Macs to work properly as an IMAP client, not as Exchange.
Exchange 2003 is coming so I hope:
- I can connect as a Exchange mail account and get better more robust performance
- One must put the the actual Exchange IP address into OS X Mail or nada happens, 10.x.x.x, especially in a non Active Directory env. or WINS, the Macs get no name resolution
- With Exchange 2003 and AD 2003 I am assuming I can input the mail server name and Domain, AD will then resolve the mail server name properly (assuming the user /Mac is Bound in AD. We shall see.
- I (have) instance where Mac OS X Mail users who are connecting to a certain Exchange 5.5 server as IMAP are working for months. (Something happens on that NT4 / Exchange 5.5 server and now these Mac OS X Mail users (as IMAP client) can not connect. (IMAP is enabled but something is funky), of course the WIN IT guys do not want to fess up).
Once the users Exchange Mail accounts are moved to another server, (different), wa la and I input that IP into Mac Mail, wa la they connect again.
I am thinking these are all issues with Exchange 5.5 on NT4, (an absolute disaster and mangler of Mail, especially on OS 10.4x
Here’s to hoping accounts with 10′s of thousands of emails using OS X Mail on Exchange / AD 2003, is a much, much better experience, because, my Mac Mail users are hanging by a thread with this spit and bailing wire 5.5 / NT4.
Rob,
I am also trying to switch over to only using my MacBook Pro as the primary machine. So far, I seem to have been very successfully, except for Exchange e-mail. Outlook is much superior to Entourage for this purpose. It handles text-wrapping better, the “View by Conversation” feature is nicer, and cached mode provides much better performance. Plus, of course, support for archiving to PST is there. I am trying to adopt to Entourage, but will probably end up using Outlook in Parallels (currently, I am accessing Outlook through Remote Desktop). Other than that, I am very happy with general wireless connectivity, web browsing, instant messaging, command line, MS Office, iSight, etc. I keep discovering neat features on the Apple, and really enjoy them!
One quick note on Firefox: Version 1.5.0.2 was recently released as a Universal Binary, and runs much faster and consumes a lot less CPU than 1.5.0.1. I would strongly recommend trying it out. Deer Park is in Alpha, but still a ways from being released.
The reason mac OS is a “just works” OS is because it still functions in the stone age of computing. Try putting it in the real world of enterprise class computing and see how far you get. I admit Apple is trying to catch up but at the rate they are moving we could never live to see it happen.
Donnie