The case against switching to a Mac

COMMENT

Think moving from a Windows PC to a Mac is easy? CNET Webware editor Rafe Needleman says his recent experiences may make you reconsider.

When my latest ThinkPad began to get unreasonably slow, as Windows laptops often do after a year or so of use, I thought it would be a good time to move to the Mac platform for a while to see what all the fuss was about. My wife's three-year-old laptop was also running out of steam, so I thought we could make the change together.

I was looking forward to an interesting period of learning a new platform, and thought my wife, a heavy email and internet user but not someone who enjoys tinkering, would appreciate the fit and finish of products in the Apple ecosystem. I didn't think we'd have to give up much.

We bought ourselves a matched pair of MacBooks and went cold turkey over the holidays, leaving the Windows machines at home while we travelled to my wife Jennifer's parents for a 10-day stay. Technologically, it was not the happiest of breaks.

Before I get into the things that have been driving us batty, let me just say the Apple hardware we moved to is gorgeous and has been reliable. I'm enjoying the stability of OS X and the genius of the multitouch trackpad. And I love that once I've put the MacBook to sleep by closing the lid, I don't have to worry about it not restarting when I open it.

But when it comes to the applications my wife and I use, and moving data from Windows to Mac, and accessing hardware we already have, the process of switching continues to be rocky. Not all the issues we have are with Apple products, and that's rather the point: no platform exists in a vacuum. People use other apps, and have their own training and hardware. Switching means overcoming a lot of technological inertia.

User interface
The first hurdle anyone switching from a Windows PC must negotiate is the shift to the Mac OS X interface. The shortcut keys and user interface conventions of Windows don't apply on a Mac. Some of the changes are easy to make, but others are not. I am getting used to other user interface differences touted as superior by Mac nuts, even though I don't appreciate them.

The Mac menu bar is always on the top of the screen, not the application window, so you can end up with a menu bar for one program showing while your workspace is from another. The oddity vanishes with a click of a mouse, but it makes no sense to me, user-interface theory notwithstanding. And so on. Nothing major, and the concepts are not radically different. It's like learning a new dialect of your mother tongue.

Email
Both Jennifer and I were using Outlook on our PCs before we moved to the Mac. I connect to work Exchange servers, and my wife uses POP email hosted by her small company. I loaded up Entourage on my Mac so I could continue to use our corporate servers. I found it a pale imitation of Outlook. It doesn't do as much — no colour-coding by rule, for example — and the interface is quirky.

There is a three-pane view, as in Outlook, but you can't customise it, and it's a big waste of space. I may learn to accept it, but I don't think so. I put Jennifer on Mac Mail and it's working satisfactorily for her new email.

The real problem was importing messages from Outlook into a Mac Mail app. There's no easy way of doing it. Neither Entourage nor Mac Mail reads Outlook PST archive files. There is a workaround: use the PC version of Mozilla Thunderbird as an intermediary. It reads PSTs and writes MBox files, which Mac Mail imports. There is also a paid app, Outlook2Mail, but it didn't work for us.

Unfortunately, Mail on Jennifer's Mac would crash after I imported the MBox files from Thunderbird. A little Google searching led me to rebuild the Mac Mail index file, which seems to have fixed the problem. But I moved us to Macs to avoid this kind of hackery.

Apple says stronger support for Exchange severs in Mac Mail will be coming in the Snow Leopard release of OS X this year.

Calendar and mobile devices
Jennifer can't stand Apple's iCal. There's no week view that shows as much information as you can get in Outlook, and she's been getting invitations to meetings sent from Outlook users without critical information in them.

Personally, I find the calendar in Entourage just fine. But Jennifer is also a BlackBerry user. To date, we have not found a workable way to sync her Mac and her company's group Yahoo event calendar to the handheld. PocketMac, distributed by RIM, simply does not work for her as advertised.

A popular workaround that uses Google services as an intermediary won't work for her either. It requires Jennifer to upgrade her company's Yahoo calendar to the new version, but doing so will cause her colleagues' installations of Intellisync to fail, leaving them without Outlook sync for their calendars.

For these reasons, she's now using her old laptop alongside her new Mac, and keeping a paper calendar as well. This is clearly not a workable strategy and is causing some friction in our marriage as well. Thanks a lot, Mac.

Photos
Compared with Picasa, which Jennifer and I had been using on our Windows machines, the Mac's iPhoto product is frustrating. Its need to create copies of images on our hard disks makes no sense to us. Having to import...

Talkback

So you won't be trying Linux any time soon ...

OK, OK, I know, getting my coat now :)

Tezzer 13 January, 2009 19:48 Reply

Windows will slow down if left alone. A clean install discarding all the harware vendors awfull software and a little maintenance will keep your windows machine flying along for years if need be.

roger andre 14 January, 2009 01:06 Reply

So, it's mainly third party software you have problems with (I know, most of what you want to use is third party).

I, too, don't understand the vast difference between Office:Mac and Office:PC but, like Entourage, it's Microsoft that's to blame - they write the software. I especially don't like the lack of sortcuts (Alt-I R to insert a row would be useful, for instance).

Office:Mac (ok, I have an older version) also doesn't respect Command-Tilda to change windows within an application. The next window is brought to the front, but the focus remains with the previous window.

2000364563 14 January, 2009 13:29 Reply

If your everyday life depends on Microsoft software, it is not a wise decision to switch. Then you should use Windows.
Mac is different. Try iWork and the Leopard server solutions to do the same things the Mac style. Also think about exploring the free software products though MacPorts and Fink.

petmucreg 14 January, 2009 14:11 Reply

On the top of the window you will see Three buttons, day, week & month so the statement about not being able to see a weeks view is incorrect!

beegrich 15 January, 2009 13:13 Reply

I had an apple mac for christmas and was an avid windows lap top user. I consider apples are fantastic and would not go back to lap tops. The calender in Apple is fantastic and you can see in advance and it is a better system than windows

debbie donnelly 15 January, 2009 13:47 Reply

Ah but have you tried Red Hat!!!!!!!!

debbie donnelly 15 January, 2009 13:49 Reply

Good article. Many good points to discus :) I hope it'll lead to a productive debate.

Why is Mac different? and more importantly why should I have to change the way I work to fit in with a computer? If apple really want people to move to Mac shouldn't they be making the moving process as easy as possible, not just stubbornly forcing users to change rather than their software?

1000198610 15 January, 2009 14:08 Reply

If there are any would be Mac users reading this I would not be put off my switching mail platforms

When I switched machines and had a large .pst file to get across I used Little Machines as a program to help, It was free then, and might still be but the switch export, import facility was painless and worked first time.

MS products on a Mac are not going to be developed to the same state as MS machines and O/S so you need to consider how much you really love Outlook etc but I one aspect I do love about the O/S on the Mac is that you can just open email or calendar without opening up all the functionality that comes with it in MS O/S.

Since switching 18 months ago and moving to the .mac or now me.com account every synchronizes with the online account, which is just great for me.
On the road the Macbook provides all I need, when I get home I switch on the imac, make a coffee and all my mail and calendar correspondence is there on the home machine - no intervention needed. And in between the two there is always the iphone to pick up email on the run!

You will either love it or hate it, the beauty is that the Mac will run Windows in VM mode should you really need it and I do because most of my corporate clients still use MS.

Only you can decide at the end of the day, for me there is no looking back.

beegrich 15 January, 2009 14:25 Reply

Because thats what makes you different!!! Apple is very different in its approach

debbie donnelly 15 January, 2009 14:30 Reply

We have recently purchased apple macbook pro for our company as we have just launched our new recruitment site. We have found them extremely frustrating as there is no right click button and this is a huge shortcut in windows. I am sure you all agree?

Carolyn Wayman 15 January, 2009 15:35 Reply

Having just made the switch after being a Windows users for many years I found it less painful than the author's story, but still a pain in many regards. Whilst I appreciate that the Mac is different and my long experience with Windows has entrenched me in familiarity with that platform my main gripe is that Mac is not at all intuitive as they claim. I won't list the many idiosyncrasies and gripes I have summarising them thus: it's not as clever as it thinks it is, and whilst all those Mac fans are busy slagging off Windows they've failed to see Windows pulling alongside and ahead in many aspects. Overall I'm happy with my Mac - mainly induced by the hardware design and integration with OS, but overall I'm dissapointed that it's not the masterpiece Jobs & co. think it is.

nonononon 15 January, 2009 15:40 Reply

Can't you right click on the trackpad by using 2 fingers and then click?

beegrich 15 January, 2009 15:41 Reply

Just get a 2-button mouse or setup the trackpad to right click when you tap the corners

nonononon 15 January, 2009 15:48 Reply

-Thunderbird with the 'Lightning' extension gives you POP email and calendar with week views (available for Win, Mac and Linux).
-Open Office gives you all of the everyday functionality you should need (available for Win, Mac and Linux).
-Picasa (available for Win, Mac and Linux),

You should try dual-booting with Ubuntu.
-Evolution gives you Exchange access and colour email filtering (Linux/Gnome only)

Can't help you with the music though, try '7digital' next time (MP3 only).

Mark 15 January, 2009 16:21 Reply

Being a Mac Fan as well as a Windows fan, I feel one should differentiate netween the Macs failings anf that of other parties. The Printer issue is probably down to HP, as they write the drivers, likewise Microsoft are responsible for how Outlook, Word etc look and behave.
I feel it is unfair to chastise the Mac over 3rd party software.

Moving itunes from PC to Mac, easy. emails are a challenge but achievable.
One could blame Windows Vista for the fact my HP printer is not detectable over ethernet but that is the fault of HP!

Overall though, fair comment in that things are not as straight forward as the average user would expect.

67821 16 January, 2009 16:43 Reply

Ok so maybe the best thing to do when switching from windows to mac would be to have both platforms living side by side for a while and make the transition gradually, so if a particular device is taking a while to configure then plug it back into your old hardware until the problem is solved. I think that's the most sensible way forward if any hold ups are going to affect your business or hobby.

roger andre 16 January, 2009 19:00 Reply