A Windows expert opts for a Mac life, Part 2
Scot Finnie
December 06, 2006 (Computerworld)
Last month, I initiated a
three-month trial of the Macintosh as a total replacement for my primary Windows machine. That computer is asked to pull double duty as a work and personal machine. It's also the only computer I run e-mail on. And it's the one machine (other than backup) that contains all my data files. In other words, it's got to work flawlessly.
I've had serious pain switching to the Mac (we'll get to that in a moment), but I've also had great success and no second thoughts about my experiment.
Supreme notebook: The MacBook Pro 17 Core 2 Duo
Although I already had two 15-in. Core Duo MacBook Pros, I needed a bigger, more powerful model as my primary machine. Enter a brand-new, 2.33-GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro 17 with a 160GB hard drive and glossy screen. I love this new 17-in. MacBook Pro. The screen is glorious. The performance is top-notch. It became my primary computer about 10 seconds after it first booted.
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.
My only complaint is that the spacebar squeaks whenever I press it. Whoop-de-doo. I'll head to the nearest Genius Bar and see if I can get Apple Computer to replace it free of charge.
Why can't Dell, Hewlett-Packard or even Lenovo build notebook hardware this good?
Update on RAM for MacBook Pro 15
In the first installment of this series, I
relayed my experiences with a spontaneous reboot problem concerning the Apple MacBook Pro 15 my company gave me. I wrote about pulling the add-on 1GB single in-line memory module (SIMM) and how, after a few days, I had not experienced another spontaneous reboot.
As it happens, that 1GB SIMM continues to lead an unlucky life. My IT department checked it in, and then it was misplaced -- permanently. So even though we had an return merchandise authorization on it, we weren't able to send it back to Edge, the company that sold it to us last spring.
Instead, we wound up purchasing a new
Kingston Technology SIMM from
PC Connection. I've had a lot of good experience with Kingston memory. I can also recommend a low-cost vendor for Mac RAM SIMMs -- a company in Salem, N.H., called
Data Memory Systems (DMS) charges quite a bit less for its memory. I bought memory from DMS for the MacBook Pro 15 that I own, and I've had zero trouble with that memory or that machine.
Anyway, the Kingston RAM did the trick. I haven't had a spontaneous reboot since the moment I pulled the RAM SIMM, the second day I had the machine. It's been about six weeks. Apple computers are picky about RAM. Don't buy expensive Apple RAM, but it pays not to try to go cheaply on RAM for a Mac. Get a solid recommendation, or just get the good stuff.
The last leg of my Mac migration: Eudora
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. I called Qualcomm tech support and got a know-it-all who didn't know squat. She insisted that the solution was offered from a Web site called
eMailman.com and that Qualcomm didn't offer any other tools or instructions.
There are literally scores of interesting products listed on the eMailman.com site. I'm sure many of them are great. But when it comes to converting Eudora mailboxes, there are few solutions. I wasted a lot of time researching them all only to discover that none offers an ideal solution. (I'm defining ideal here as being able to open my mail and read it after the migration.)
Through a lot of trial and error, and based on tips posted in forums and elsewhere, I discovered that if I followed a specific set of steps using Bare Bones Software's free
TextWrangler text editor, I could correct the two main problems with this conversion: Mac end-of-line conversion and the text identity of Eudora's files. Everything in Eudora is a text file, but unfortunately, the Mac just wouldn't seem to recognize that fact, even when I manually set the Macintosh four-letter type and creator codes.
The only thing that worked was to open each mailbox (and in fact, all the Eudora data or settings files) in TextWrangler, convert the line ending to Mac format and then use TextWrangler to save the file. I came up with some shortcuts along the way, but in the end, after several days of trying other methods (including dabbling with AppleScript and other batch processes) I wound up opening up more than 1,200 mailbox files and putting each through a nine-click process to save it in the proper format for the Mac. I haven't done anything that mindless since the last time I tried to do mail merge using WordStar running on CP/M in the early '80s.
With the mailboxes done, I set about resurrecting my Eudora rules. The translation of the mailboxes had done a forced renaming of about 50% of my mailboxes, and that messed up the rules. So that wound up being another 5-hour job. All told, I spent four full-time days while on "vacation" making the transition. Let me just say that anyone who doubts my sincerity in giving the Mac a fair shake doesn't know what he's talking about!
I'll spare you the rest of the details, but if anyone else is facing the exact same switch,
write me, and I'll pass along the process in more detail. Or, better yet, wait for the new Mozilla/Eudora team to create the open-source version of Eudora code-named
Penelope.
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.
Selecting Mac software
The applications I use the most are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, AOL instant messaging, Notes, Eudora, Spamnix for Eudora, and Firefox. On the Mac, I use iChat instead of AIM, but other than that, I'm using the Mac versions of all these programs. And they're all pretty great.
I've also got Parallels on the job, and TextWrangler is my text editor. I purchased iPartition for dynamic partitioning. I'm using Microsoft's free Remote Desktop Client 1.0.3 (although I'm searching for a Windows-to-Mac host solution).
Computerworld's Mac editor, Ken Mingis, recommended SuperDuper, a Mac backup system, and I like that a lot. Of course, I grabbed StuffIt Expander first thing.
I'm not completely set on a list of second- and third-tier software products. I'm close to deciding on an FTP client now. It's come down to Yummy FTP and CuteFTP Pro for the Mac. Each has advantages the other lacks. It would help if I could find any useful way at all to convert my Windows FTP bookmarks to any Mac FTP client. Even CuteFTP doesn't have a way to go from its Windows to Mac clients and bring your bookmarks with you.
Mac software info and downloads:
•
Microsoft Office 2004
•
Eudora
•
Spamnix for Eudora
•
Mozilla Firefox
•
Parallels Desktop
•
Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler
•
Coriolis Systems' iPartition
•
Microsoft Remote Desktop Client
•
Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper
•
StuffIt Expander
•
Yummy Software's Yummy FTP
•
GlobalScape's CuteFTP Mac Pro
Interestingly, the other software I still need to choose is largely Web development-oriented. Here are some of the tools I need to find. The Windows products I use are in parentheses.
• HTML editor (HomeSite)
• RSS FeedReader (FeedDemon)
• Screen-capture utility (SnagIt)
• RSS Feed Creation tool (ListGarden)
Of all the applications I have left to pick, the one I dread the most is the HTML editor. I adore HomeSite, even with all the stupid things that Allaire, Macromedia and now Adobe Systems have done to it over the years. 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.
If you have software recommendations for me, or want to comment on any aspect of this story, please
drop me a line.
Real people, real jobs
Some Macintosh folks took umbrage to a sentence in the
conclusion to the first story in this series. I wrote:
I expect to wrap up with a final assessment [on] whether the Mac is a viable alternative for real people with real jobs.
This story was referenced on Digg.com and by numerous blogs around the Internet, including the Apple Blog, Cnet's Blogma, and the MacUser blog. In most cases, commenters to these blogs took the opportunity to read that one sentence and get spitting mad that I was apparently dissing the Mac. Reading it out of context, I can understand their ire. But it really wasn't meant that way.
I'll repeat here part of what I wrote in response to Derik DeLong's MacUser blog post,
"Another Windows guy looks at a Mac":
Of course real people with real jobs use Macs! And have done so since the beginning (1984). I was one of them in the '80s. As a writer, I chastise myself for using hyperbole -- when, clearly, the Mac side of my audience didn't get it. The sentiment I was conveying was actually a gentle chiding of Windows users, some of whom may tend to think that there's no software on the Mac. If you read the whole story, and connect the dots, I think you'll see there's a connection to other things written in the story that support what I'm saying. I agree, the hyperbole was too subtle though.
In fact, 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.
But this wasn't always the case. In the mid-1990s, I went back to the Mac after about four years with Windows. I was forced to go back by a job. This was not a good time in the history of the Mac or Apple. Steve Jobs was in between stints at Apple, the Mac community was drying up, and almost nothing about the Mac was interoperable with Windows. Even common file formats weren't fully compatible.
So a lot of more experienced Windows users tried Macs long ago, and gave up on them. Those people may be pleasantly surprised 10 years later by how well the Mac integrates with Windows and the business world today -- and that improvement is a continuing trend. Apple has made a lot of good moves over the past few years.
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. 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.
But I have managed to make the change surprisingly easily. With a little perseverance, many other business people could too.
This article is an advance excerpt from the next issue of "Scot's Newsletter" and is published by permission. Scot Finnie is Computerworld
's online editorial director.