One Year Anniversary of Switching to a Mac

This week marks my official one year anniversary of switching from a PC to a Mac. I did a quick 6 month check in after my original post, and so now I figure its time for my first years thoughts on switching.

In no particular order, here are a few of the things that I have to say about my Mac experience so far…

I love OSX. My biggest fear of switching was wondering how hard it would be to adapt to a new OS, a new way of computing, having a mouse with one button, etc and how everything works together. This, as it turns out was one of the easiest things about switching. With Mac’s own intuitiveness and with the help of some great friends, I learned how to get around OSX pretty quickly. Of course I am still learning something new every day. The widgets, tweaking Expose on the touch-pad, and running app’s like Quicksilver, etc.. all make the computing experience amazing on a Mac.

I am a HUGE fan of the long extended boot cycles. This was probably the number one thing (aside from never having to worry about anti-virus software again), that I was looking forward to experiencing. Like many others, I came from the world of system freezes, regular reboots, loooooooong boot-up cycles, etc…. again, on a regular basis. This just isn’t the case with a Mac.

It is refreshing to say the least that even with extensive applications running, editing audio and video, downloading TONS of media, etc.. the Mac never really ever requires a reboot, unless its doing a software update. Which is another thing I love. “Windows Update’s” to me were always a crap shoot. You never knew what you were really downloading, and often after you did download an update, your system would act differently. On a Mac, they tell you the software updates that are available, and you can safely install the update without having to worry about it (at least thats my experience so far). Things just work.

I just bought Leopard, so I am still a bit behind, but I am updating my two Macbook Pro’s and my wifes Macbook with Leopard this weekend. Looking forward to an even more enhanced user experience.

The Mac has really helped me tap into more of the creative things I have been involved in, most notably new media. I never thought in a million years I would ever be editing video of any sort, but iMovie changed all of that for me. With a little effort, learning some of the Mac’s software has been incredible for the creative juices. I look forward to continuing to explore the software thats out there.

I absolutely love Keynote (Macs version of Power Point). I actually enjoy putting together presentations for my talks, and for business pitches, etc. Keynote is simple and elegant, and it makes pumping out interesting, engaging, presentations a lot easier than Power Point could ever do.

I love iSight and the ability to do live video. The built in camera does many things for me, it helps me stay close to family and friends by doing video chat (especially when traveling), allows me to stream live on the internet from anywhere, helps keep the company’s off-site team members closer by streaming meetings and conversations from our HQ in Baltimore, etc. Very cool stuff all around.

My main issue still remains what every business Mac user who’s company runs on Exchange server’s is….MS Office for Mac is simply wrong. In fact the only time I have ever had an issue with a boot session, it has been due to a piece of software from the Office suite. Once I accepted an “update” for MS Office on the Mac, and proceeded to have nothing but issues for a week. It somehow worked itself out on its own. All that said, the bottom line is that if you depend on MS Exchange server for email, contacts, calendar, etc like my company does, using Entourage is like pulling teeth without any Novacaine. MS, please fix this. (Side note: there is talk of losing Exchange at my company, we have been discussing it. That would of course solve the issue, but right now I am the only Mac user).

All in all, as you can see, so far so good. I don’t really have any complaints about the Mac to date, and I am looking forward to installing Leopard this weekend to see where we go from here. At this point, I still can’t even imagine going back to a PC or a Windows environment in any way shape or form. Just watching my employees struggle and complain about Vista, is enough for me. Its hard to even fathom when using OSX is like “gliding on ice.”

Its safe to say that I am officially “converted”