A New Apple Guy
Well, last week I made the leap into the great unknown. After using flavours of Windows since version 1.0 – I decided I’d had enough. So from Birmingham Airport (UK) I bought MacBook Pro 13″ with copy of Microsoft Office for Mac. Don’t worry, I haven’t completely lost it – and won’t be becoming a MacBore or LinuxBore. But I wanted to report my experiences and tips and tricks along my journey of coming to grips with the new environment.
Why the change of all those years of being a “Window Guy”. Well, I have this idea that our relationship with technology/ISVs is like a marriage. When you first get married your in the flush of your first love – and sure there are bad things about the new person in your life, but you overlook and forgive those. Then as the years roll-by those bad things seem to become more and more noticeable. The way they do the dishes or slurp their tea start to grate. So it is with technology. When you first get your new toy you love the thing, but as the days/weeks/months/years/decades(?) roll-by the technology begins to really annoy you. That’s how things ended up with me Microsoft Windows on a PC. I got to the point that whenever I saw “Not responding” when Explorer opened or when I changed an IP address – that I want to put my fist through the monitor. So in truth my decision change was as much an emotional one, as a technical one. My relationship with Microsoft had reach ‘irretrievable breakdown’ – we weren’t really talking to one another in the end. Now we are firmly in the divorce courts of technology, with the lawyers fighting over the spoils. I’m sure that in 15 years time I will be saying the same about Apple….
So what have my experience been so far? Well, I’ve tried my best to do everything in the last week using the Mac. In truth in the first couple of days I spent most of my time copying files, setting up email accounts, importing bookmarks, setting up my iPOD with iTunes (which is much, much better on the Mac!). I wanted to avoid running Windows applications as much as possible. Although I have downloaded and installed VMware Fusion 3 to run Windows XP. To be honest it was more because I wanted to see what its like – than really needing to. Most of what I need to can be done with the Mac, and I have RDP for Mac, VMware View4 for Safari set-up – so when I do need to get to my remote lab environment I can. I did download the full Citrix ICA Client ‘Program Neighborhood’ (yeah, I know they call it something else now) but in truth that’s mainly for legacy reasons – from here on in I’m going to use VMware View 4 and virtual desktop. My plan is try and get the native PCoIP client running under VMware Fusion – so I can have a PCoIP experience from my Mac. The web-based client support for Mac doesn’t support VMware Fusion.
So, so far so good – what have been the downsides – and challenges yet to overcome?
- Keyboard Strokes - The Mac Keyboard is different but similar to a Window Keyboard. And the instinctive urge to press some conjunction keys is still there – even though there isn’t a 1-2-1 mapping. I’m using the mouse and menus more than I would normally… must print out a page of the keystokes and print it above my desk until the become second nature. This is part made more complicated by my View4, RDP and Citrix sessions having their own keyboard shortcuts – its possible to get in a bit of muddle
- Right-Click Trackpad – a lot of people complain about a lack of right-click environment – to be honest I don’t know why Apple don’t just enable this by default. You have to go into System Preferences, Trackpad and tick of an option called Secondary Click, and ask it to be in the ‘Bottom Right-hand corner’ – and then away you go
- Screen Capture – Apple’s ‘Preview’ comes with its own tools for grabbing parts of the screen. In Windows I used snagit – which is much better – under Fusion. I’m kinda of reluctant to go out and buy a dedicated screen capture utility – but I can see in the long run – I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and purchase – some screen capture/video thing for the Apple…
- Entourage – Is part of MacOrifice. It’s fine as an email client – but I don’t rate as much as Microsoft Outlook. For start I can’t check my hotmail with it, and it doesn’t appear to have RSS Feed support like Microsoft Outlook 2007 did. I quite like all my **** being in one place. I need to do some research on this – so I might be able to find a plug-in for both hotmail/RSS feeds – so I have one place to go. There real problem with Entourage – is despite it being a Microsoft mail client – there is NO import facility for the Outlook PST format. To be honest this was the biggest pain the arse I’ve had so far. The work around is to install Mozilla Thunderbird on the old Windows PC – then use it to import the mail/settings/address book. Once imported (it did take a long time with my 9,000 items!!!) You can then open the mail store in Thunderbird to get to the mail. Each folder in outlook becomes a separate mail file – and you can rename the inbox files to have a inbox.mbox extension – drop them on a removal hard-drive and import them into Entourage.
- UPDATE: I did manage to get my hotmail in Entourage even though MS say you need an extra special hotmail account to do it. I think I’ve had my hotmail account so long it was upgraded to Plus (or some such status) – which meant it worked with Entourage after all. Problem solved…
- iPAQ and Windows Mobile - The Mac has no support for Windows Mobile and Synchronization. That was going to be first step to getting my address book. Nothing doing. You have buy special software to get Windows Mobile enable PDAs to sync with Mac. As is my iPAQ is nearly 4years old. It was one of the first phones to have touch-sensitive screen, wifi, bluetooth and satnav. Anyway, its on its last legs – and I’ve secretly be harbouring a desire for an iPhone. My provider, VodaFone get the 3G enable version of the iPhone in the new year which is weeks away. So I plan to switch away. I also plan to get the TomTom cradle for the iPhone. It’s pricey, but boosts the GPS signal and comes with all the usual hands-free, mute music for turn-by-turn instructions and phone calls.
- Pricey Accessories – Before I bought the MacBook Pro I took a look at some of the accessories – and more importantly their prices. You know, look I’m prepared to pay the mark-up for the MacBook Pro. It’s a quality product blah, blah, blah. But I mean £50 for a fucking mighty mouse – who is hell Apple kidding? £20 quid for DisplayPort to VGA adapter? The piss-de-le-resistence is of course, the £1K+ LED 30” inch cinema display – a must have item for all “creative professional” (my arse!) look I know LED will be great, but I’m sticking with my old HP SVGA flatpanel and VGA connector for the time being. I almost bought the wireless keyboard and mighty-rip-off mouse on the apple store when I was in Norway the other week. Unfortunately, every time I selected a patrotic “British” keyboard, the basket updated it to a German keyboard. Are they trying to tell me something here…?
RSS
iTunes
November 27th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Hi Mike, glad to hear you finally made the leap! After more than 6 years of using a Mac as my primary compute platform (I switched well before Apple made the leap to Intel), the only thing I miss on a regular basis is…(drum roll please)…Microsoft Visio. I was never a huge fan of Outlook anyway, so using multiple applications (Mail.app for mail, iCal for scheduling, NetNewsWire for RSS, Unison for Usenet/NNTP) is fine by me. (I’m more of a fan of apps that do just one thing and do it really, really well.) But Visio…that I still miss.
Anyway, best of luck in getting used to your new Mac. Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions or need any advice.
November 27th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Screen scapture: shift-command-4 – easy easy and no software required.
If you wish to capture video – I can’t recommend ScreenFlow enough. Costs money (sorry), but it is excellent.
November 27th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
@Scott
I’m assuming you’ve checked out OmniGraffle as a Visio replacement?
@Mike
10.6 offers video screen recording within Quicktime Player X (File>New Screen Recording…)
November 27th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Just wanted to post as I’ve met you a few times at the Charlotte User Summit plus have your SRM book (paid for it b/4 it was free
and also read your blog regularly….so do appreciate what you do.
So….first a post to respond to your blog post directly and then I’ll put in another one with my generic list of Mac software I refer technical people to moving over to Mac…
* Key Commands – yeah, just gotta get used to the Command/Apple key….is your best friend and soon will become second nature.
* Right-click trackpad – in the Trackpad preference, enable the checkbox for “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button”. After a while, it will become second nature. While you’re at it, enable “Use two fingers to scroll”…that especially becomes totally addicting (I now prefer it over any scroll mouse).
* Screen Capture – Command Shift 3 (whole screen), Command Shift 4 (crosshairs to select a specific area of the screen and show you the width/height in pixels), and Command Shift 4 + Space after that (to click on a window (even one behind another window) and take a picture of just that window) are your best friends….more robust than what’s built into Windows.
* For more than that, I’d recommend Snapz Pro — from a Mac shareware company that’s been around just about forever.
** http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
* Entourage – unless you need Exchange server access, I’d seriously look into Mail (and iCal/Address Book for that matter). And even if you do need Exchange server access, Mail works quite well with Exchnage. To me the biggest benefit by far is Mail’s ultra-fast searching (based off Spotlight). After using Entourage for many years, I flipped over to Mail…..now I really just have two folders per email account — Inbox (for stuff I need to do something with) and Filed (for everything else for that account). Whenever I need to find something (like what I’d use folders and auto-filing rules for usually) I just search…..flexible enough and very fast.
* Mail Migration – if you’re not already done with this, just sign up for a GMail account and enable IMAP. Then setup the IMAP account in Outlook, copy all your messages up to the server, setup the IMAP account in Entourage/Mail/whatever and copy the messages down.
* Windows Mobile — you’re right….no native support. Missing Sync is what you want here.
** http://www.markspace.com/products/windowsmobile/mac/windows-mobile-sync-software.html
November 27th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
And….here’s my general software list I offer to people switching over…. (no commercial ties to any of what’s below or above)
~~~~~~~~~
-Netnewswire – free – excellent RSS reader/weblog publisher
-Adium – free – better than iChat in lots of ways with the sole exception of video/audio chat
-TextWrangler – free – excellent text editor….set it as your default. Smultron is also free but I prefer TextWrangler
-Transmission – excellent – BitTorrent client for your legit BitTorrent stuff
-Mail – free – the builtin OS X Mail client is really quite good…now with Exchang support
-Transmit – shareware (but worth it) – probably the best file transfer client on Mac (SCP, SFTP, FTP, S3) – CyberDuck now has some of this and is free but Transmit is frankly better
-iWork 08 – paid but 30 day trial – better for most purposes than MS Office and faster/lighter too (maybe not for corporate use with macros and whatnot)
-SmartReporter – free – nice SMART status monitor
-Menumeters – free – good little app for bandwidth, cpu, disk and memory monitoring
-Memory – max to 4 GB or 6 GB if you can
-Perian – free – lets you place lots of video codecs inside QuickTime
-Flip4Mac – free – lets you play M$ specific codecs inside quicktime
-Unplugged – free – handy power notifications
-Camino – free – nice native Mac browser based on Mozilla engine (my default browser….I use Safari next and then Firefox).
-Growl – free – good systemwide notifications (Adium integrates with it very nicely)
-QuickSilver – free – a must-have for application launching and much much more (even if you don’t explore this much now, make sure to come back to it….is a major productivity booster)
-MenuCalendarClock iCal – free (if disable extra features) – turn off the builtin menu clock and use this for a nice calendar dropdown
-Shimo – free – dunno if you use Cisco VPN but if you do this is excellent
-VMware Fusion – paid with free demo (but can get for $40 if you look) – Windows OS + apps….need I say more? (more stable than Parallels and more polished than VirtualBox)
-Tinkertool – free – lets you tinker with lots of hidden settings (that you’d have to adjust using the Terminal otherwise)
-Handbrake + MetaX – free – lets you rip and label your DVD’s nicely for playback on your computer or iPod
-SmartSleep (if using a laptop) – lets you toggle the sleep modes (worth doing so you can wake from sleep immediately unless the battery is low)
-ie4osx – http://www.kronenberg.org/ies4osx/ nice way to run IE 6 on your machine (Intel only) for sites that require it (how I run PE most of the time)-
-msgfiler – nice way to file messages in mail using the keyboard
-Dockstar – gives multiple mail notification badges
That’s the stuff I use every day…..there’s a lot more out there though.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:11 am
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November 28th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Hi Mike,
cmd-shift-3, captures all screen.
cmd-shift-4, you can select capture.
I use Mail for email. Microsoft Entourange sucks!. Outlook is much better that Mac version.
First days is so diferent, but, time ago you never want to return Windows.
Regards!
November 28th, 2009 at 8:28 am
If you’re on snow leopard you can capture video using Quicktime Player, it’s a bit basic but get the job done.
November 28th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Right click equivalent is a simple two-fingers-down click on your touchpad. No sweat.
November 29th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
We another one. I have been on my pro for 3 weeks now and still going great. Using it on the bus now with 3G card. Stick with it. Remember how long it took you to learn all the PC tweaks. I find mine runs multiple apps much better and the sleep mode is fantastic.
Rodos
November 29th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
@Zack,
Yes, I use OmniGraffle Pro as a Visio replacement. It has the ability to read Visio VSD files and can even convert Windows Metafile (WMF) images into something that the Mac can understand. Unfortunately, it’s not a full Visio replacement. It’s close, but not quite.
Thanks for the suggestion though!
November 30th, 2009 at 2:17 am
I like Andrew Miller’s list and use much of what he recommends. Other pointers I have found useful:
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/best_of/mac_a-list.htm
You might disagree with him every now and then and perhaps find him a tad irascible or even a bit of a curmudgeon. But I think that is part of his appeal and definitely find this list helpful as a switcher from Solaris and Windows to the Mac. I have no association whatsover with this site other than that I read it.
I have also found Paragon NTFS (about $20) indispensible for swapping large files (vm images primarily) with my Windows-bound friends. I’ve tried macfuse but found it slow and occasionally unstable. I’ve been using it for nearly a year now (v6.5) and no crashes I’ve been able to link to it.
For Visio 2007 I’ve just started playing with Crossover Mac and it looks promising. But it is too soon to tell. If that works, I might also try Crossover Mac for the Windows version of MindManager. The native Mac version of MindManager loses far too much functionality to be worth full price.
When iTunes seems to be missing something, check out Senuti to fill the gap.
For running virtual machines off of an external drive, you will quickly get hooked on 7200 rpm drives running of FireWire 800. Here’s the best portable enclosure (the Triple) I’ve found.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
And don’t forget Disk Warrior. You will have to pay for it. But when you need it, you need it.
Have fun!
November 30th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Hi Mike,
Sorry to hear you crossed over to the dark side. An article to make you change your mind??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
Maybe not……..
November 30th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Smiles – It funny how this Mac/Window inspires such vitriol from both side of the divide. My decision to switch was an emotional one really – not a technical one. I was just sick to death of windows. Whoever you shackle yourself to – it seems you can’t escape being devoured by some corporate. Pick your poison?
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Glad to see you switched, must admit to having Windows 7 running under Fusion 3 though but very rarely switch it on.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Yes, I find myself wondering why I have fusion. I hardly ever run any windows stuff. Still prefer Citrix ICA client under Fusion to the native RDP client in Mac. But that says more about RDP than does the MAC!
December 7th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Let us know if/when you figure out how to run vic natively on the mac.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Smiles. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. I did need the vSphere Client (aka VIC) I would probably run it under VMware Fusion. As it is all my kit is remote, so I’m better off using ICA/RDP/View to get to my lab environment held at a colocation – the VSC (vSphere Client?) isn’t especially bandwidth friendly…
December 8th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Hi Mike,
I’m on my 7th mac, cant recomend them enough. Give me a call if you need any info.
Cheers
Jamie