A faithful PC user switches to mac and never wants to look back! (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Agreed! This software is the best investment for working with
your Pocket PC or Palm device and Mac.

 

[DaveF]

I haven't looked into Missing Sync, but the conversion of my Palm from PC to Mac was remarkably unremarkable. I installed the Mac versions of my third-party programs set the Conduits for Handheld Overwrites Mac (to be safe), set up the Palm for Bluetooth sync (to be whole hog about it), and sync'd. And it sync'ed. No problems at all that I can see. No special software or OS contortions required. This was my biggest concern and it went smoothly. Kudos to Palm for a robust software/hardware system.

Unfortunately, I am now running into the cases where Windows software is better supported than Mac software. Mac Palm Desktop is OK, but in general I think the PC version is better designed and has more features.

The hardest part so far has been transitioning photos from Picasa to iPhoto. Picasa is a fantastic photo management app. I don't understand iPhoto yet, and I may be premature, but so far I find iPhoto is greatly disappointing. What should have been a 10 minute, automatic import process (as Picasa would have been) took me several hours and an obscure, custom script to kludge iPhoto into getting my photos imported in an organized manner. And a report to Apple about incorrect documentation.

On the plus side: plugging my new printer into Airport Extreme was pretty easy to get going and really "just worked"; my Pixma MP600 is now a network printer. Very cool (A sidenote: the multifunction features (scanning, memory card reader) do not work across AirEx. This is universal to multi-function printers, and is just the state of technology. Disappointing, but I can plug in locally when I need the infrequent scan.)

I'm taking notes on my transition process, good and bad, so I can put together a proper review and maybe a guide for future switchers.

Tonight (hopefully): iPhoto wrap-up and Office 2004, and copy all my data.

If that goes well, I've got a slip-streamed XP SP2 CD prepped for trying BootCamp.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

iPhoto is, in general, poorly documented and secretly powerful. You might want to drop into your local Apple Store when they run their free iPhoto workshop and/or just drop by and ask questions about it.

What are you trying to do and having trouble doing? Is it about keeping folders organized? I can help you out with that.

 

[DaveF]

Aaron - thanks. I haven't transfered email yet. I'll have to investigate. I don't use my PDA for email, and use Palm Desktop for calendaring. But syncing to iCal could be good. Thanks for the tip.

My iPhoto frustration is that it doesn't understand file-system hierarchy for importing & organizing photos. Import all photos from Picasa's file structure and all my name folders and organization is lost. Maddeningly, the documentation says it does, despite actual behavior. Through a downloaded script and tedious re-creation of folders, I brought my organization into iPhoto.

Beyond that, it duplicates all my photos in its own directory: I don't know if I should / need to keep the originals?

Your tip on going to an iPhoto workshop is a good one. I just don't understand the method to its madness yet.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Dave,

Don't know if this will help or not....

When I first got my Mac I immediately put in Parallels
because I never believed for a second that any of the "basic"
software included with OSX would be comparable to what I had
used on a PC previously.

In other words, I used Parallels as a crutch for the
first month.

I HATED Apple email continued to boot into Windows via Parallels
just to use Outlook.

But as with most things, as you spend time getting used to new
products, you suddenly become aware how much better they are.

I now LOVE Apple email. It just took me a while to figure out that
it does everything OUTLOOK does but in a different way. OUTLOOK
had email, appointments and contacts all under one roof. iCal and
Address Book are not attached, but Apple email interacts with those
programs nonetheless.

I just think in time you will stop booting into Windows altogether.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

If nothing else, Mail.app is worth using for it's lack of security vulnerabilities...unlike Outlook.

 

[DaveF]

While I use Outlook at work, I gave on it at home last year after a weird crash. I switched to Thunderbird. But then I started using Gmail as my spam filter (auto-forwarding all email to my domain on to Gmail, then downloading to T-bird). Well, I've found I prefer Gmail to Thunderbird in general.

I'll use Mail.app, at least for local storage of my email. (I hope I can import my T-bird mail files into Mail). But I've gotten so used to Gmail's conversation-oriented view and Google-search oriented mail management, that regular mail -- even Outlook 2007 at work -- seems weak in comparison.

And tonight, I sat on my couch watching Creature Comforts and during commercials downloaded 720p movie trailers from Apple.com. Neat!