Settling In
Although moving from Windows to the Macintosh is nowhere near as stressful as moving house, I now realize that it will take me much longer than I’d anticipated to settle in to my new environment.
Starting up the Mac was easy enough—it automatically found the DHCP address that my router assigned so I had Internet access immediately. Connecting to my Windows PC was just as straightforward. So far the most difficult (actually, time consuming) tasks have been configuring my primary applications:
- Mail (account information from Eudora)
- SpamSieve (whitelist from MailWasher)
- Firefox (bookmarks and search engine extensions)
- NetNewsWire (subscriptions from FeedDemon)
- Address Book (contact information from Outlook).
A week later, I feel as though I’ve moved to a new house in another country, whilst leaving a lot of my belongings behind in the old house. I know I’ll eventually get everything shipped across but I didn’t have any idea how much stuff there would be to deal with. (One way to address this might be to use it as an opportunity to throw a bunch of stuff away.)
Another thing I didn’t understand—given the overwhelmingly negative response to Jeremy Zawodny’s announcement that he was switching back to Windows—is that I appear to have bought myself a one-way ticket. That’s OK, since I like Macland a lot. The citizens are friendly (unless you turn out to be a traitor), the language is relatively easy to learn, the landscape is pleasing to the eye, the architecture is well-engineered, the utilities and public transport are reliable… all-in-all it’s a pretty nice place to live.
In fact, I rather wish I’d done this a year ago, a few months after Panther was released. (I’m not an early adopter—I’m happy for more adventurous souls to blaze hardware and software trails on my behalf.)
I suppose it makes sense that my first priority was to get mail, RSS feeds, and a web browser working properly—since I rarely watch television, read newspapers, or listen to the radio, the Net has become my primary means of keeping abreast of what’s happening in the rest of the world.
Regarding the primary applications I’ve installed, Apple’s Mail together with SpamSieve seems—so far—to be superior to the Eudora/MailWasher combo I was using on the PC—even though I’ve already struck the Disappearing Links To Replied Email bug that Michael Bream reported to Macintouch:
I am running Mail.app v.1.3.9 (v619). When I reply to an email in my “inbox” and then file the email in a folder, it loses the link to the reply. In other words, after I reply to an email, I can’t change the location of the original or it will lose the correspondence thread. Is there a work around for this, or an upgrade that I’m not aware of?
As a general rule for myself, all email in the “inbox” needs to be replied to, and once I reply, I file it to stay organized. I thought this is how most people do it, but I lose my correspondence links…
I thought this was how most people did it too (though that might just be because it’s how I do it). My (hardly satisfactory) workaround is to file the email before I reply.
Anyway, after only a week’s training, SpamSieve is doing a demonstrably better job of identifying spam than MailWasher could manage after nearly two years of use.
Making the switch from FeedDemon to NetNewsWire was just as easy, particularly since Lisa, the Digital Medievalist, generously gave me a NetNewsWire license as a housewarming gift. (Lisa had purchased a number of licenses as a way of supporting Brent Simmons and Ranchero after NNW had been unfairly criticized by an inexperienced and unreasonable user.)
Although FeedDemon was one of my favorite Windows applications, I’m delighted with NetNewsWire (and looking forward to the release version, which will allow me to sync with Bloglines).
Getting my contact information from Outlook to Address Book looked like being the most difficult task since Address Book can import a batch of VCards but Outlook only exports them one at a time. But a little Googling turned up a product called You Perform, a set of Outlook add-ons from the people who do You Control for Mac OS X. You Perform includes a VCard Converter that allows you to convert all your contacts to VCards in a single operation.
Once I had these basic applications running, I turned my attention to the next item on my list: a text editor. But how I found the right one can be the subject of another post.
My overwhelming impression is exactly what I’d hoped for—visual elegance together with rock-solid stability (both of which are in short supply in the Windows environment).
What don’t I like, so far?
- The standard Apple mouse and keyboard, which I immediately replaced with a Microsoft Natural Keyboard and IntelliMouse Explorer. How anyone can be productive with a one-button mouse is beyond my comprehension.
- The Finder. I never imagined I’d miss Windows Explorer so much. Not being able to copy a file by right-clicking and dragging it to another folder, not being able to send a file to the trash by selecting it and pressing the delete key are real (albeit minor) annoyances. Macintosh Explorer didn’t feel quite right but I suspect that either Path Finder or Default Folder X (or both) might solve the problem.
- The Firefox bug that doesn’t allow me to middle-click to open another browser tab.
- That this (relatively high-end) Macintosh doesn’t feel as snappy as I’d expected.
While the general response to Jeremy Zawodny’s departure was “Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Arse on the Way Out,” I suspect this is what he meant when he wrote that his “Mac felt slow and awkward for daily ‘office’ use” while on Windows he feels like he’s “getting more out of the hardware.” I don’t feel my Macintosh is “slow and awkward” but I do keep wondering whether there’s a preference dialog that would allow me to turn off some of the eye candy.
Zawodny’s main criticism of the Macintosh—“the tab key being useless in most dialogs, the lack of hotkeys in most apps”—was ill-founded, he hadn’t turned on Full Keyboard Access (which allows you to use the tab key, arrow key, and other keys to select buttons, lists, and other items on the screen).
If Zawodny had read Dan Frakes’ Mac OS X Power Tools and installed Quicksilver, he might still be using a Macintosh.
In fact, applications like Quicksilver make the Macintosh so pleasurable to use and me so happy that I came back. (Liz Lawley has recently written an excellent introduction to Quicksilver, with some practical examples of how she uses the software. And Merlin Mann provides a constant stream of Quicksilver tips and tricks: check out his Quicksilver category at 43 Folders.)
Now I can think about doing some real work.
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