Making the Switch, Living with a MacBookPro
Making the switch part 1 of ?
[Background]
First things first… I am a reformed Apple bigot. Yes once upon a time, there was a time when I’d rather die than be forced to use Windows. Think Different, think back oh, around the System 7 days.
I used a Mac whenever I could use a Mac and I was absolutely sure I was far more productive on the Mac than any Microsoft based operating system.
Back in the day I was lucky enough to work for a company that used Mac’s as much as Windows based boxes. We were a Premier Apple developer and did a number of high profile projects for Apple Enterprise. Back when Apple had a group dedicated to Enterprise. This was around the time they were desperately working on Copland, and before Steve’s 2nd stint as the man in charge.
Out of nowhere Apple killed the Enterprise team and decided it wouldn’t try to continue to play in that sandbox. (Remember this was pre OS X, pre X Serve’s and that the goodness that they would bring). As a company our hands were forced. At the time we got nearly 80% of or business from the Apple Enterprise group and we needed a backup plan since that was drying up.
Enter our immersion in the world of Bill.
Instead of new Macs we bought Wintel boxes, first Windows98 with an NT 4 domain to support the organization. Of course that brought good things like Exchange. We were also a Microsoft Partner, but only because we had to be.
It took a while but the conversion was made.
Throughout the whole Windows 95 run we all made fun of how much Microsoft was trying to copy Apple. That all of this ‘new’ stuff wasn’t so new, we’d all seen it before.
Cutting to the chase, over the years Windows got better. Windows 98 wasn’t all that but Windows 2000 didn’t suck that bad, in fact compared to Win98, it was pretty awesome. Matched with a Microsoft NT back end, collaboration was huge. We still had Macs, especially in the art department. Supporting them grew troublesome but we still kept them around.
From an everyday business application perspective, the native versions of Office have always been better.
For the longest time I still kept using a Mac when ever I could. In fact doing Palm programming required it. I continued to use Mac OS software and Metrowerks to do Palm programming as well as what ever business related or oriented products that I could find. Certainly there were good apps out there, even as we crossed over into OS X.
Reality started to sink in though. Most business-oriented tools were simply better on the dark side. From Office to QuickBooks, if you were using the Mac flavor of things you were getting hosed. For the longest Artsy fartsy tools remained better on the Mac but that eventually changed too, or at least Windows based tools were just as good as the Mac counter parts.
The last Apple computers that I paid money for were the Cube, and around the same time a PowerBook Titanium G4.
It didn’t take long at all for these pieces of hardware to get behind the curve. OSX, emulated software running on top took its toll. It didn’t take long for me or my wife to get frustrated with the lack of applications available for home schooling.
Yes I bought into the Mac, it’s safer myth too. For the longest time I left the family’s computer as an Mac OS based computer because they couldn’t dork it up as easily.
Unfortunately, both Apple and Microsoft screwed the pooch when IE for the Mac became a joke. Safari, well, it just plain sucked and we had far too many important websites that were incompatible.
A couple of years ago we made the switch at home back to, or over to the dark side. WindowsXP is very manageable. Limited privilege accounts are key. We’ve never been infected with a virus. We’ve never had to reinstall the home machine(s), other than when I have purposefully dorked them up or significantly upgraded.
[Fast Forward to Today]
Apple has embraced Intel. Parallels and/or Boot Camp let you boot this fancy hardware into Windows or simply use Windows.
Folks at work are hell bent on getting Intel based Macs instead of a new Dell or true ‘made for Windows’ piece of hardware.
So in an effort to understand the attraction, I’m now working from a MacBook Pro.
I need to see what the fuss is all about.
Come back later for more.
Written by datapoohbah on December 11th, 2006 with
3 comments.
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Bill
#1. December 12th, 2006, at 8:29 AM.
OMG - You drank the office koolaid