The Switch

Surprise, shock and amazament are just some of the reactions I got when I told my friends this: “I made the switch to a Mac.” Now I’ve express my excitement about Macs before, but never actually thought I’d make the switch. The catalyst was that my third Windows laptop in 5 years crapped out on me. I knew it was time for a change.

There are probably numerous articles out there about ‘making the switch’ and peoples’ experiences, good and bad, about it, So I won’t do that. I will be writing more frequently about stuff for Mac, and more than likely comparing them to stuff for Windows, because deep down I’m still a Microsoft man. But at four days, I will give my first impressions.

• This will obviously take some getting used to. The interface is drastically different from Windows and I was actually able to pick up on stuff pretty quickly. But the whole file system, app navigation, etc. is not native to me (but I’ve got to say the app navigation is awesome).
• Spaces and Expose are my best friends. It makes app navigation so easy. Also, F3, which shrinks all of the windows so you can easily select one- genius.
• The Dashboard. The widgets are great. I thought I had everything at my fingertips with a simple Google search. Now I literally have all the info I want with the push of a button.
• As a programmer I feel the development environment will be very different, and hard to adjust.
• However, with amazing Mac only programs like Coda and Things, I think I’ll survive.
• I still hate iTunes. Sorry guys, I just don’t like it. I need to find a good alternative (hopefully Microsoft will get on releasing WMP 11 or Zune Player for Mac soon, but I won’t count on it).
• Syncing my Blackberry seems to be a pain. I did it once successfully and now it gets stuck when I try to sync my Tasks. I’ll have to do something about that. I hope PocketMac supports Entourage 12 (2008) soon.

Well those are my first impressions. I’d like to do a write up on Coda, Things, and some other applications when I have time, but with the Spring semester starting in less than two weeks, I can’t promise anything.