I sold and bought my first PC a long, long time ago. Back in the late 80s I owned a Mac, I think it was a Mac2. I honestly thought there would never come a time where I would buy a Mac. Ever.
Then I upgraded my PC to Vista. What a disaster. I had grown accustomed to my PC freezing every now and then. Enter Vista and my PC was frozen more often than it was working. The biggest culprit was MicroSoft Outlook.
The application has to have a memory leak. I could follow memory numbers as they grew and grew. Then as my email was downloading, the rules would stop working and everything went straight to my inbox. Spam and all.
When you get as many emails as I do. Thats a problem. When it also causes the system to freeze, its more than just a problem.
My first step was to get a copy of CPU Magazine with Vista tricks. The tricks helped. Everything froze or crashed less often. Significantly less often. But the annoyance factor was beyond belief. I dont run any special applications. I run outlook, Office and firefox. Thats it.
I had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to be a PC owner. The thought of someone calling me and asking me to go to my computer to find something was paralyzing (ok, not that bad, but it sounded cool writing it).
This wasnt just a problem on my Desktop, it was a problem on my laptop with Vista as well.
So a few months ago I made the executive decision to buy a MacBook to replace my laptop.
I haven’t looked back.
Its not that there arent hassles with the Mac. There are two. One there isnt a version of Outlook for the Mac. As someone who has more than 10 years and gigabytes worth of emails in multiple outlook files, the concept of exporting and importing wont fly. So i am keeping my PC Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master database. But I only do so after deleting unimportant emails from the server using my Macbook.
The 2nd problem is the lack of the right mouse click. I know its a Mac thing to only have one button, but its a hassle. Sure there are work arounds, none of which are quick and easy for a longtime PC user.
Both of these are easily offset by 3 simple Mac elements that make me very happy.
First is that when I close my MacBook without turning it off, it doesn’t lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.
The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.
Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).
Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook
My Mac Mini runs Vista quite well using bootcamp and was the easiest Vista install Ive ever done
However, Vista is only being used to run MS Office Communitator and a few games for the kids.
OS X still runs much faster.
Comment by John -
If you wanna read more about the on-going Apple vs PC debate, check out web.illish.us to see this week’s blog.
Comment by realizePhiladelphia -
Mark,
My business partner ad I recently made the switch to MacBook Pros after giving up in frustration on Windows. Since the transition we have never looked back. We love our MacBook Pros and have found that the native Unix environment fits perfectly with our backgrounds in other Unix/Linux OS.
We use gmail for all of our e-mail, so even though I have office loaded on my Mac I haven’t tried Entourage so I can’t speak to that product. However, Mac Office 2008 is a great product overall.
Have you considered installing Window on your Mac using Bootcamp? If you do that you can boot directly into Windows from your Mac (I know it seems wrong on some level). Also, if you install Parallels you can access your Bootcamp partition as a virtual machine in Parallels without rebooting.
Comment by DJ -
never used Mac/ but next investment will be Mac. The freezing of Outlook (which causes me horrible thoughts) should be Out-lawed.
Comment by mary -
I went to high school in the late 80\’s early 90\’s, finishing in 92. Our school had mac\’s, I couldn\’t stand them, lol, but have always wanted to try these more advanced macs around now, but alas, they are just too expensive for me 🙁 My last windows experience was XP. I was very anal with security on it. Spyware, virus full scans every week, running programs to clean the cache and history etc. It got to the point where I simply had lost all enjoyment from my computer. And hey, I\’ll admit it, the vast majority of software on my computer was pirated. I have trouble being around people, was outed, bullied, harassed in high school and that left some big problems within me not coping around people 🙁 so at present I don\’t work. Plus there is the whole life long memories and experiences with ufo etc that I am trying to understand, anyway, I have wondered in my thoughts. I dumped windows nearly a year ago, moved to linux, opensuse to be exact, and the experience is just amazing, brought the computer back to what it should be, one of enjoyment and not the hassle that windows has become. It just goes to show, you can hold a large percetnage of the market with a inferior product, because compared to linux microsoft is still years behind what can be done on linux with far less memory than it needs to be done on windows.
Comment by Richard -
I switched exactly one year ago and like you, I\’ve never looked back. I\’ve seen my productivity skyrocket this year and actually look forward to the time I spend on my computer now.
Once the initial period of learning your way around Mac OS X is over, they\’re really a blast to use…
Comment by Switcher -
Fighting with spam in mail seems already impossible( I created new boxes but after awhile i started to recieve spam there too.(
Comment by Cool materials -
Its better to have mac other than PC because have lots of advantages except that its too expensive.Also its little difficult for the first time users to follow up the windows or to use it, either the apple or the Vista product.
Comment by merlia -
If I ever get rich enough, I\’ll buy one! It\’s been a dream for a long time. I think the salesmen get sick of seeing me enter the store to play with theirs. LOL
Comment by Bonnie Ryde -
yay! welcome to the apple family, mark. great job with dancing with the stars. you tried your best :] it was great watching you.
as a youngster i was all PC. Until the \”have-10million-different-viruses-in-one-computer\” era came and I was devastated to not be able to use paint (hell, i was only like, 10 years old). And now as a teen, my family bought me a mac because of good grades in school and i absolutely love it. yeah, the right click is a problem for me too since i used windows before, so I\’m using a standard mouse. macs are great. my desktop never freezes. or maybe because you have a crapload more emails than i ever do, haha. let\’s make a good mavs season this year.
gettin\’ kobe? dont let go of harris or howard. they\’re rising…and its making me oh so very anxious to see them in a couple of years.
Comment by Kimi -
I am a sophomore in college and my sister brought a ibook G4 her freshman year, she is now a senior, and had to upgrade her computer her sophomore year because she choose a graphic design major. I have had her ibook ever since and would not give it up for anything. I am the person that can freeze a PC in five minutes, but my ibook just gives me a black screen until it can catch up with me. Nothing gets lost and everything is jsut how it was before.
Comment by Ellen -
when you close a MAC notebook, it hibernates. You can do the same with PC notebooks, it\’s a setting you can modify in power settings.
Comment by Simbarashe -
Just to reiterate, if you use two fingers at once it is the same as right clicking. Or you can buy a two button usb mouse.
Or you can post a Mac commercial.
It amazes me that most Mac users will spend over 2 grand for word processing and email.
Comment by Chris -
Just use \”ctrl + click\” on Mac. It\’s the equivalent of right click. Mac\’s are the best. But I can\’t believe you didn\’t get the MacBook Pro. I actually have a better Mac than Mark Cuban. Cool!
Comment by Max -
Your postings re: DWTS brought me to your blog and I found your lament about VISTA. I think your problem is email. It\’s a bad habit. There are far better ways to collaborate. In fact, it has been my pleasure to help organizations wean themselves off of it.
My main gripes with email are (1) it is not secure, (2) it is not manageable, (3) it wastes valuable network resources… shall I go on?
…and, if you must use email, get off Exchange. It is way too expensive and vulnerable.
Comment by Jack Durish -
The comment quoted below illustrates the problems with the Microsoft world and why I too switched from a Vista machine to a new Mac. By this time in the computing world, a User should not have to know or care anything about a BIOS upgrade. When I connected my new Mac, it started working perfectly right away. The laptop I installed Vista on was Vista Ready and was 6 months old.
46. Mark,
\”Sorry you\’ve been having so many problems with Vista. When you upgraded your PC to Vista, did you make sure you had updated to the latest BIOS first? I\’ve seen several instances where BIOS updates AFTER the upgrade make things worse, but if you upgrade to a Vista BIOS *before8 upgrading to Vista, then things tend to run much more smoothly.\”
Comment by George -
Cuban-
1. Hopefully HP didn\’t see this blog.
2. Not sure what kind of cellphone you are rocking these days, but I think you need to get an iPhone. I doubt you still have a Sidekick, but I remember hearing you say that the Sidekick was the best phone you ever had… wait until the 2nd gen of the iPhone comes out and buy one… it will blow your mind
3. You are getting screwed by the MLB. The Cubs and the MLB need owners like you… After seeing what you have done in Dallas, I am AMAZED that the owners would not want you to become part of their league. REVENUE SHARING.. the more money you are making, the more money David Glass puts in his pocket… I actually wish you were able to buy the Pirates, because I know you could have done with that team.
Good luck.
Rick from Boston
Comment by Rick Walega -
I use mozilla firefox and mozilla thunderbird for email, sunbird/lightning for calendar functions that are integrated w/ the thunderbird email.
I also use openoffice.org programs to replace Office w/out a hitch.
Open source, no problems. When there are problems the open source forum community has fast fixes. Power to the people!!!
Comment by Steven -
I hear ya bro. Macs are the way to go!
Comment by Megan Halvorsen -
Mark,
The double click is simple! Use a PC mouse. I use a wireless PC mouse and I love it! Cut…Paste…whatever…no problema!
I am in the same vote as you…PC…Mac!
Comment by Jeremiah -
For your e-mail databasing you should check out MailSteward – http://www.mailsteward.com. It saves all your e-mail into a SQL database on your Mac which lets you do really fast searches and works with attachments, imports your existing e-mail from other programs… Best of all, the guy who programs the application really takes requests and feedback and updates the app regularly based on user input…
Comment by James Irwin -
have you read \”icon,\” one of the bio\’s on steve jobs? I went mac crazy and bought an imac for home, which i love, about 3 months ago.. shortly after, i listened to the keynote on Jobs and was like damn.. this guy is a presentation god… i\’ve got to know this person, i have to figure out what makes him tick..
After reading the book, i almost wanted to give my imac away.. but thats compulsive. Jobs has marketing skills. he is definitely a visionary for technology. however if you read the book, you\’ll learn that he didn\’t treat others well.. nasty actually.. it sickened me, well almost, after having such a man crush, to become aware of how greedy, and non-personal, this person is/was.
Maybe it\’s a characteristic of all powerful guys like Jobs.. i don\’t know. i haven\’t met many of them.
Anyway.. Go Mavs.
Comment by pj -
Great job on DWTS! My husband and I are Mac users, and he uses an external mouse for his keyboard when he\’s at home or work– it has a \”standard\” mouse with both right and left clicks. He loves it!
Comment by L -
Mark–probably already mentioned in all of the comments, but Entourage and Outlook seem to blend pretty easily. I can send my husband invites using Entourage and he can read them/respond just fine in Outlook and vice versa.
I have a 2.5 year old iBook G4–kind of antiquated now, but serves my purposes–and he just got a brand spanking new Dell laptop from his employer. I can boot up my computer, check my e-mail, and shut the whole thing down again before his computer even is finished booting. I could never get a PC to do the same thing.
Maybe if DWTS doesn\’t go all the way for you, Mac could always put you in as the new \”Mac Guy\” if/when Justin Long goes away. Not that you need the money, but those commericals are hysterical….and now you totally get it.
Comment by Kate -
I think, MacOS is better. But, it\’s less common, than windows…
Comment by Evgen -
There is a utility that quickly and reliably converts your Outlook PST files to mbox format, which is supported by most email programs. You might want to have a go at it. I\’ve done it a million times and it works pretty good. Thunderbird does some MS conversion too, but I haven\’t used it myself.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ol2mbox
Comment by Hans Bezemer -
I have decided to FINALLY make the switch too. In the past, I was happy with PCs thinking that they are for business and Macs are for creative stuff.
But now, after a seemingly endless slew of computer problems, I\’m fed up. I heart the sleekness, simplicity, and hassle-free-ness of Macs (not to mention all the cool features) and I\’m ready to convert.
Comment by Sandra Possing -
I want to throw in my two cents worth about your switch. You see I use all three types of systems: MacBook with Dual Boot Windows XP (and parallels to access the partition) and Ubuntu Linux on my Dell D820. By and far I am in love with me some Linux. The reason is this….I don\’t have to run windows on my less expensive (and a lot easier to maintain) Dell system. Plus, I am generally turned off by the \”Everyone Else Sucks\” attitude of Mac Fanboys. I have gotten talked down to by Mac Fans because they see me with a Macbook on my desk and a Dell Laptop up and running. You see, everything that I want to do I can do in my Linux OS. If I have a problem, there is a lot more detailed information available on the web for Linux than there is for OS X or windows. Oh and by the way, Mac has chained their OS to their hardware…trading one slave master for another is still slavery.
Comment by David -
Hey Mark –
Great job on Dancing with the Stars! If you want to run Outlook on your Mac try running VMware Fusion or Parallels.
Comment by Tony Simpson -
Congrats on the switch.
I switched over a few years ago when I bought a used Mac just to learn OSX.. fell in love and over the next few years I gradually moved over.
I used to work in IT (in IS now) in a Microsoft shop so it was and still is a joy to come home to my Mac every day. 🙂
Been a full time Mac user for about 3 years now.
Well, full time in my personal time.. I\’m forced to use PCs at work. 🙁
Comment by Steve -
Before reading your post I was *this* close to buying a Mac. I\’m heading out the door to get one right now…
BTW, I just officially made the switch to Firefox… soooo nice!
Comment by Tim White -
Once you go MAC . . . anyway, I\’m glad you are back in the fold. I have both PC and MAC. Usually I work on the MAC unless I MUST work on the PC for work related reasons. Yes, the system always costs more. But the peace of mind . . . priceless.
Comment by Telemill -
From MDN info.
\”MacDailyNews Take: Mark, meet Little Machines\’ $10 Outlook to Mac (O2M). Buh-bye, so-called \”hassle\” number one. Please dispose of that PC in an environmentally sound manner.\”
Number two seems fully covered above.
Enjoy your Mac. (PS have you tried iChat video yet. Super easy, works great. Nice video. I use it on the road all the time. )
Elder Norm
Comment by elder norm -
I use OWA or Outlook Web Access in my Mac so I can see all my email from FireFox. All the emails are stored in my Exchange Server, then it is easy to check my complete archive of emails from any computer. I have all my calendar and contacts functionality as well.
The right click in the Mac is a great stuff… I see many others already gave you the hint.
Good luck
Comment by Jose Antonio Morales -
Apple amazes me, and I am by no means an Apple fan, I am much much more of a MS fan. I have made a lot of money selling their products, but I can\’t help but feel terrible of what the current situation is around Redmonds products.
I used to tell people that Apple would be playing catchup to Vista. I was wrong, they would have been playing catchup to Longhorn, but that was never released – all the great ideas from that are basically missing, or completely half baked in Vista. No, we are left with a OS that has a very TERRIBLE UI, almost laughable, and it so feels like a skin on XP it is not even funny. Most of the stuff just feels moved around to make it feel \”New\” rather than for a point or purpose.
Look! New control panel UI, but they gave up after desktop background and the rest pull up silly dialogs dating back to Win95 (Some from Win3.1 you go font dialog!!!)
Sigh. I am a designer/UI developer. Vista could have been great, but it is basically a trainwreck hidden by a thin layer of gloss. Under the hood, things get even stranger, Vista seems so much more clunky than XP did, maybe XP was a clunky but was simply less bloated and you didnt notice. With Vista I notice.
I notice that my hard drive is constantly busy.
I then thought this was because the search indexer was indexing, but doing a simple search revealed that not to be the case since after the first couple days of in install I get lucky if results actually comeback from a search. WTF is this? I can type in \”Michael\” and it just sits there, forever. At least searches work in outlook fairly well, until it just fades to white and has to close down.
I just dont get it, so much time. Why is it Intellisync still has so many issues, why am I still rebooting so much, why with this brand new presentation layer to THINGS STILL FLICKER. I hate to compare everything to the mac, but they are the other game in town. You can change Res, Color depth, even plug in a second display and it does a simple fade to the new settings. Vista, goes black, then there is a silly cursor blinking in the upper left, maybe a randome WebDing or two glyph or two on the screen.
Sigh. I want to help fix. But I doubt anybody actually cares over there.
Comment by RyanLM -
Last year I went in to buy another Sony laptop PC, and came home with a MacBook Pro 17. I spent twice as much, but it was worth the reduction in aggravation many times over!
I thought it would be the other way around, but it has been the best experience I\’ve had with over 20 years of experience using computers.
Now let\’s just hope Apple doesn\’t let this all go to their head…like Microsoft did!
Comment by Randy -
Macs are great for designers and other creative types, while PCs are better for businesspeople and computer geeks, IMO. I use both, and tend to like the Mac a little better overall, as it seems a bit more user friendly.
Comment by hiddenboston -
Mark,
My husband just bought a brandnew Dell with Vista – he has had to restore it to original settings weekly, every week for the last 5 weeks.
We are going Mac when I replace my laptop because I refuse to \”downgrade\” to Vista. Thanks for all the passionate honesty you give us!
Comment by Pat K Weeks -
Nice post Mark… And yes, Macs are nice too. I wonder why anyone would want to upgrade Windows. It\’s nice to have new features, but I always have the policy with PC\’s that an upgrade comes with a new computer.
My experience as an IT admin for years was always that Windows does not upgrade well… My choice would be stick with XP, buy a new PC with Vista or switch to a Mac!
Comment by Brett Gilbertson -
Not sure if this was brought up, and I\’m not reading the 191 posts (I don\’t know how you do it) to find out. But here is my Outlook solution.
I\’m a corporate graphic designer working from home and I have to be plugged into to my Corp PC network to access servers and use Outlook. I\’ve loaded Parallels Desktop 3.0 to my Macbook Pro. Parallels is a virtualization application allowing me to run multiple operating systems simultaneously (Intel Macs). I have a dedicated partition on my hard drive running Windoze XP and public folders allow me to move files between the two OS\’s using drag and drop.
I have a window open with XP running and connecting to corp network on a VPN connection which also allows me to use Outlook and my many gigabytes of archived email folders on my MAC. I can minimize the Windoze window, move it to the Dock or move it over to a second monitor (use 2 monitors while at home and I\’ll never go back.)
Running normal PC apps like Office and Outlook simultaneously running OSX 10.4 with a a few other apps and I do not see a huge performance hit. If I am going to grind away in Photoshop or a 3D app I will end my PC session to take advantage of my CPU and RAM. You can also use your virtual PC to watch onDemand movies from Netflix, whose onDemnd service is only PC compatible.
Virtual PC, the application of yesteryear (PowerPC), used to hog CPU and make virtualization of operating systems inefficient. VMware has a new virtualization application called Fusion. I hear it is good but I haven\’t used it myself.
Good luck and long live the MAC!
Comment by Chuck -
I don\’t understand the difficulty of understanding the very simpleness of what I just said. It\’s not hard to look at a PC or laptop and see the labels that says \”Celeron\” \”Sempron\” and go: \”Okay, this is what that girl who commented on this blog said not to buy.\”
It\’s not that hard to understand that XP is just better than Vista. You can request that XP be installed instead of vista.
Yeah, the thing about Mac OS X is that it isn\’t all it\’s made out to be. In fact it\’s quite exploitable. Think of it this way in a very laymen term sort of way:
All the workers at this company has access to this secret place that really only very important people should have access to. Well now one of these workers have done something very bad to this secret place. This is just a kind of scenario where I am talking about the security of Mac OS X.
For a more specific, more technical explanation: Much of everything runs as root. Root is comparable to \”SYSTEM\” on Windows. Root has access to everything. Well, very many things run as root on Mac OS X. It is a highly known rule that you DO NOT run anything as root unless it absolutely must have it. A big rule of thumb in the linux community.
Now think of this: You are at your new house and you locked your door. Unfortunately no one told you that that lock didn\’t work. So an intruder comes into your house.
A more technical explanation: Mac OS X comes installed with applications that are used on servers. Not many people know this. With the running of server applications, people can have easy access and use exploitation to get on your mac and take over, so to speak. One of the widely known applications to run on a Mac OS X is apache. This is one of the things that breaks the rule of thumb for Unix distros. Never install applications that are used for server usage unless you are going to use it as a server.
The problem with PCs is that because people figured out how to make things cheap (This also pertains to macs) that they do make things cheap and it is very rare that anything made cheap will last you long. You could have paid a pretty penny for an iPod and a month later it doesn\’t work. That\’s because they are made cheap. I happen to have a gateway made in 1998. It still works. eMachines are a fine example of cheaply made PCs. My aunt\’s eMachine only lasted her three years. It died from a power outage. My old gateway lived through that and the countless other times of power failures and surges. It\’s not just PCs that can be made cheap. Macs are made cheaply too.
If you have been up to date on the news over iRate mac users, they have encountered many problems and most of the time they have been booed on by Apple fans who say that it doesn\’t happen and completely ignored.
Comment by Kelpie -
Outlook :
Thunderbird should be able to import Outlook mails, but my experience is that export/import of large Outlook databases may not work well (I seem to recall it took me a couple of days of hacking to recover everything). I\’d go with doing the transfer on a WinPC THEN copying the Thunderbird folder over.
I\’m using Apple Mail these days – Spotlight seems a lot faster than Outlook search BUT I\’m only using it for light use.
MS Entourage – again, I only really use my Mac outside a business environment so I can\’t say how it compares with Outlook. Seems a mix of people who prefer it, and people who curse it\’s missing features. I think it depends how tightly you integrate with Exchange.
Perhaps the easiest solution, until XP is de-supported, is to run VMWare Fusion or Parallels, both of which now offer a way to run Windows apps that sit in your dock, work with Expose, cut-and-paste with your Mac apps.
Comment by JulesLt -
Not having read this entire thread, if someone else mentioned this previously, I apologize. However, with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, you can take your Outlook PSTs and convert them to sortable PDFs with the Threads and all maintained as is. You could then take those old files onto your Macbook and go that way.
Check out Adobe\’s site for the details. Started using it at work about 2 months ago and it has been a godsend for travel, where I can just bring a portable HDD of my work e-mails.
Comment by Erik Merk -
Hey Mark,
For the outlook work around you might want to check out pegasus mail…
They have vista versions, too.
Very good application. Not widely used….
I urge you to use and promote openoffice.org, its open source and was donated to the group by sun.
It a total office suite.
Comment by Rich Bouzakis -
And I wish I could edit my last post, but Intel is kicking AMD\’s lazy ass. So go for an Intel processor when you\’re looking for a laptop or PC.
Comment by Kelpie -
Kelpie,
The information in your post is exactly why I don\’t buy PC\’s — I simply don\’t have the time or expertise to buy a PC and to research to make sure everything I buy and install is going to work properly. All the macs I\’ve bought and used over the past 15 years have worked when I bring them home and plug them in. That is why people buy macs. I don\’t have to worry about whether vista will work vs XP, etc. I have a friend in another city who just bought a new pc and can\’t get it to work. She isn\’t a techie (she\’s a recently retired schoolteacher). On the other hand my brother is a telecommunications analyst who does have the expertise to \”build\” a pc, but threw them all out and only buys macs now. He said they were \”pieces of junk\” and uses macs because they are built great, easy to use and don\’t have all the complications that pcs have.
Comment by Buffy -
I think this is a poor excuse to switch. I have had my share of fun with computers. However, people don\’t realize things about computers. PCs can be good. Infact you can pay less than $2k and get yourself a PC with 8GBs of RAM and a quad processor, provided that you build it yourself. However, when you\’re buying a pre-built PC look out for the followings:
Don\’t be fooled. Sempron processors may be an AMD processor, but they are low end processors which is actually, in my opinion, much more costly than paying for a low end processor other than a sempron. My processor is a low end processor and it runs better than a sempron.
Don\’t look for computers with a celeron processor. They too are like Sempron processors. They are low end and are not sufficient enough in performance for anything.
Don\’t get Vista. If at all, ask for someone to install XP onto your system.
I always go for the professional version of XP, because it\’s better than the home edition. You can get whatever home edition comes with. I use Windows XP 64bit and it\’s based on Windows Server 2003. It also supports more RAM than XP.
Do not install any Service Packs. SP3 actually has fixes for bugs that came up after SP2 was released. These bugs were actually fixed by other updates before SP2. I\’ll give you an example of why SPs are a pain in the ass: Remember that sweet under $2k quad core setup I mentioned? I tested out SP2 for XP 64bit on that. Before SP2: It worked great. Now you tell me? It has 8GBs of RAM and a quad core, should it be acting slow? No. However, after SP2 was installed, things did run slower.
If you have an old computer, install Ubuntu on it so you can dip your feet into Linux and be able to still use it without any extensive knowledge about Linux.
I also recommend installing Ubuntu if you are not going to play games or use programs that require an extensive amount of processing power and RAM (AKA 3D Studio Max, Maya, Fruity Loops Studio, etc). Maya is actually available for Linux distros. So don\’t be afraid to use Linux if you just use Maya. If you can\’t run it without any virtualization software on Linux, then just use Windows. Or dual boot.
Take a look at my blog for more information on things about this. This really just a summary of what\’s on my blog.
Comment by Kelpie -
Well, there\’s Entourage. But Microsoft (no capital S) hasn\’t released a Universal binary of Mac Office 2004. Mac Office 2008 should be a Universal binary.
That said, using native apps for the stuff Outlook does, I\’ve found, is much smoother an experience. Like you, when I switched, I used Office/Entourage for mail. It only took me a few months to start using Apple Mail, iCal, Address Book, etc. It just works better. No fan boy here either. In fact, if you look at my recent articles, I\’ve publically scorned the applegasm phenomenon.
But, when apps are better, they are better.
Good luck.
Comment by Aaron Brazell -
Hey Cuban and the rest of you ! Thanks for helping me make my decision on getting a PC (once again) vs. a Mac. I have been a PC owner forever and now it has gotten to a point where change is necessary. I\’ve been on the fence with all the pro\’s and con\’s on both products for several weeks now. After reading everyone\’s comments…I think Mac is the way to go. I think I\’ll pick up the iMac for the house and a macbook for my soon to be highschooler (man I feel old!). Thanks.
Lastly, Cuban, I heard you on the Murph and Mac Show on KNBR this morning and all I have to say is, there are always 2 sides to every story (Nelly vs. Cuban). So thanks for giving your side.
SEE YOU IN THE PLAYOFFS! GO WARRIORS !! OH! AND CHURN THAT BUTTER !!!
Comment by James -
Mark,
Welcome to macs! I had outlook on my old mac and missed it when I recently got a new 24\” imac. I got .mac which included email and like it better than outlook. — .mac costs about $100./yr, but you get a lot for your money besides email — check out .mac on the apple site.
Yes, I would never buy a pc — too many friends have tried them and have thrown them away because they said they were \”junk!\” Besides, macs are just plain fun to use, but I am a designer and macs were designed for designers in mind. You would love the macpro laptop — give it a
try!
Comment by Buffy -
Sorry to hear you went to a Mac. I have not used Vista yet and I do not allow my clients to use it either. I hardly see the point. Vista\’s overblown security isn\’t going to keep users from clicking every \”OK\” button they see out of jerk-reflex, it uses many more PC resources and Office 2007 is a pig of pigs.
There\’s absolutely nothing wrong with XP. It is a perfectly familiar and stable OS. Keep it updated and stop going to Eastern European porn sites and you\’ll run just fine.
Comment by Joshua Gramlich -
> Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook
Don\’t worry, give it some more time. 🙂
Comment by Eric Marden -
We welcome you with open arms 🙂
Comment by Justine -
Macs are excellent. They are perfect to use as an editing tool for music and home made videos. I wish I had one, but I have two pcs already.
Comment by Russell -
Mark,
The operating system should never freeze up. That being said, an application can hang/freeze waiting for something to happen. Most commonly, it\’s waiting for the hard drive.
If you haven\’t added more RAM and you\’re running any PPC code (Microsoft Office as of now or select an app and Get Info (cmd-I)), you must add more. It\’s worth it to go to the MacBook\’s (non-pro) max, 2G, and not that expensive. Without enough RAM, it will sometimes wait for the hard drive to spin up so it can use that for more RAM.
If you have external hard drives or mounted servers, make sure you eject before removing/changing networks. Also, only remove hardware while it\’s awake and can see it (good idea for adding too). If you have a server mounted and it cannot see it, it will look for eons to find it and pause everything in doing so. At some point it will show a dialog asking if you want to disconnect. Often, giving something two mins to respond is all it takes.
Also, avoid adding software that installs \”kernel extensions\” which, alas, is hard to quantify. Anti-virus software is one such animal that has been known to cause problems. Mouse software is another. Often, the OS does what you need for that so there\’s no need to install their mouse driver.
Lastly, a bit about security. It\’s a good idea to not give admin rights to your normal, everyday user account. If you only have one account on your system, create a new admin account. Switch to it just to be sure you can use it. Then, remove admin rights on your normal account. That way, you give less access to any evil software that might come such as spyware. This is what Vista tried to copy and turned into a nightmare (see Apple\’s commercial.) Installers and system prefs will ask for your admin password. You will have to manually check for software updates though. (Apple decided not to pester regular users if they don\’t have access to install updates.) Currently, nothing evil has been found in the wild. Only a few proofs of concept.
Hope this helps. Also, great sites:
http://macintouch.com
http://macosxhints.com
http://macsurfer.com
& macfixit.com (much of it is pay-only)
Comment by Pecos Bill -
Why didn\’t you just go back to XP?
Comment by David-Plano -
Mr. Cuban,
You can move your outlook to your Mac using the very familiar interface of Entourage (comes w/ the Microsoft Office Suite for Mac OS). The folks at your local Apple Store will actually move the stuff from your peecee to your Mac for you. Since it\’s been more than 14 days since your purchase, it won\’t be free, but if you buy a ProCare membership (works at all Apple Stores across the world, just $99/yr), the Mac Geniuses will do this and more for free. They use utilities that if you bought them, they would cost several hundred $ and you\’d only use the utilities once. Let me also recommend getting a One to One membership (also $99 a year) … this lets you set up an appointment online where you can have a custom class (one per week at any Apple store in the world) one to one, where a Mac Creative can go over some intro to Mac things for you. It\’s a great deal for switchers from the Dark Side… things like right clicking and so much more – that your Mac CAN do – all these things can be revealed to you so you can enjoy your Mac even more. In my opinion, the best Apple Stores in the metroplex are the Plano store (Willowbend) and the Southlake store – very professional folks there. Welcome to our cult.
Comment by shelley -
I switched to a MacBook Pro in August because of Vista being so horrible, and have no regrets. I wanted to let you know, if you click on the Apple logo top-right and then click on \’Mac OS X Software…\’ you probably know it takes you to a range of shareware and freeware apps. Only yesterday under, I think it\’s called \’email and communications\’ or something similar, I noticed an application that allows you to work with Outlook data files in Mail. So maybe importing your database isn\’t impossible, and may even prove remarkably easy.
I\’m now waiting on my new desktop machine – an iMac, and I\’m happy to say it\’s going to be a doddle to export everything, applications, files, photos, etc from the MacBook Pro to the iMac so I have it set up and ready to go within half an hour of unboxing it. There\’s a simplicity to Macs that is very appealing.
And while I\’m now a Mac convert, I\’m no Apple fanboy either. I think the iPhone is woefully inadequate, Jobs I find arrogant and at times grossly insulting in what he has to say – at the UK launch of the iPhone this week, for example – and the iPod, which I have long had in various incarnations, needs reformatting far too often.
But the computers… Yeah. Mac OS X is the big winner. It wipes the floor with Vista.
Comment by Andy -
So funny. My first job was at the age of 17 working for IBM in Charlotte, NC. Even as a TEMP preparing to enter engineering school, I had my own office, my own desk, my own phone, and YES my own brand new IBM PC with the cool DOS OS. That was in 1983. Since then I\’ve been a true PC-guy with periodic closet Mac-envy. VISTA changed all of that. For the first time in my life, it made sense to switch and so I did. I have the MacBook Pro and I\’m have been amazed at all of the attributes you mentioned PLUS my favorite attribute…customer service. I called customer service the other day to inquire about iLife 08 since it wasn\’t loaded on my computer although it was recently purchased. I was told that I missed the date of eligibility to purchase iLife 08 for $9.95 by two weeks. I was prepared to beg a little but I didn\’t have to. The representative (who by the way was easily to hear and understand since he wasn\’t in a room full of other CS reps.) asked me to log on to my account. When I did, there was iLife 08, already ordered and on its way to my snail box for FREE! Once you go MAC…I can\’t possibly see going back. It\’s funny how an bug-filled OS can bring down both Microsoft and PC companies like DELL at the same time.
Comment by Sidney -
Whoa, talk about a switcher story! Nice to hear! Welcome to the club 🙂
Comment by Jan Garcia -
Maybe you should buy a nice server to use as a PC.
Comment by Drugs -
Good on you, Mark Cuban!!
I\’m a computer dummy, but Mac has made me less of a dummy!!
Aloha!!
Craig
Comment by Craig Sako -
I make my living working on PC\’s but when I purchased my Dell with Vista a few months ago I started hating the Vista operating system and cursing Microsoft when it would crash or take forever to startup. Well Microsoft did a great job of converting me to a MAC.
This semester my wife needed a new computer for school and I thought a MacBook would be the perfect laptop for her surfing the web and checking email. Well I loved her MacBook so much I sold my Dell with Vista and I purchased a MacBook for myself. I love every minute of it. I do agree with the complaints you have described about the MacBook but I would much rather experience those issues than deal with the slow/crashing Vista.
I love the Mac products so much I purchased a 299 iPhone for myself and my wife and I just purchased some Apple stock. I strongly believe that Vista will cause many others to make the switch to a Mac.
Comment by Corey Cormier -
http://www.littlemachines.com/
This transfered all of my email from a PC to a mac. It kept all the dates, to, from, everything! It allows you to keep the email account seperate from other accounts within Mail. It\’s 10 bucks and well work it.
Comment by Mike Wrobel -
Some thoughts
1. Congratulations! I don\’t want to come off as a mac fan-boy, but you won\’t regret the switch.
2. Get a two button mouse. I like the mighty mouse (others will disagree) but just about any usb 2 button mouse will work
3. Get a copy of (dare i say it) Microsoft Entourage. The mac version of outlook is pretty much the same
4. If you restart you macbook every few days you should not have any freezes. I use as many as 4 different macs per day every day and if freezes that often something wrong.
Comment by Roger -
Mark,
It\’s a shame your not still using Lotus Notes, you could just switch to teh Mac version, although if it wasn\’t for Outlook you probably wouldn\’t have switched to the Mac
Neil
Comment by Neil Agate -
Nice entry though.
Comment by canl tv -
\”So i am keeping my PC Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master database.\” — Mark Cuban.
Download and install Parallels Desktop for Mac ( http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/ ) transfer your Outlook files (automatic process) to the Mac, then trash the PC forever. Best!
Comment by Michal Daniel -
Oulook Mail Conversion Solved – when I switched a few years back, I too had many years and gigabytes of stored email. Solution:
I picked up Little Machines\’ $10 Outlook to Mac (O2M) utility. Conversion was a painless and an almost automatic one time affair and I\’ve been happy ever since. You can reach them here: http://www.littlemachines.com. I use Apple\’s Mail, Address Book and iCal. Entourage is a bit sluggish for my tastes. Plus Apple\’s native apps sync effortlessly with my iPhone (former Treo user)
As for the right click – I see you\’ve been given plenty of options above. I presume it\’s now time to dump your desktops too?
Have fun,
-gb
Comment by Geoff Brandt -
Once you go Mac, you never go back.
Comment by eddie d -
I\’m a little surprised that only a couple of people mentioned using IMAP, either on the mail server itself or on the Mac. I\’m using a combination of both. IMAP allows you to duplicate some of the functionality of Outlook (like having messages / folders available from multiple computers while) while using a standard protocol.
I\’m tied to Exchange because of work and just use it (Outlook via Parallels) as the client for current stuff. I\’ll archive mail onto IMAP running locally and periodically sync the IMAP mailbox(es) to the server. Of course, I can easily do this because I having complete access to the IMAP mailbox store on both the backup server and local machine.
I\’m not sure about the IMAP setup guide from Stepwise that pruneau mentioned, but that may mostly be my preference for different software (but then I also have the background that allows me to know what I want to set up and how to set it up.
Converting your PST files is definitely the most difficult / time consuming of the tasks. Both of the ways that I\’ve converted PST files have been covered previously: Using IMAP (easy to do when IMAP is running locally); Using Thunderbird which converts them to a more open / standard format and then using scripts to convert the resulting files into a maildir mailbox format.
I don\’t think it has been mentioned, but another of the benefits of IMAP is that just about every email client will support it and you aren\’t tied to any specific one, and can change back and forth between clients without having to migrate the data again.
Enjoy.
Comment by pj -
Hi Mark,
Glad to hear you\’re enjoying your new Macbook!
I just wanted to add to the two button mouse topic.
Belkin makes a PS2 to USB adapter that would let you use your existing PC mouse AND keyboard with your Macbook!!!
(I know this works as i am using a no longer made Logitech Trackball that i used to use when i used PC\’s. I kept it and am using it with my seven year old powerbook running the lastest version of OS X!)
(As to why Apple uses/used the one button mouse, i heard a story, probably folklore, that the one button mouse was the standard as most users but also physically challenged users could use it. As this was the standard, ALL software, therefore, would work and be available to ALL users.)
fyi!
Russ
Comment by Russ Urquhart -
Apple tech support is worth every penny. I\’m sure they take questions like the button problem. And they will probably help with the mail problem as well.
Comment by Henry Isham -
Mark, I\’ve seen you speak at a couple of conferences and I\’ve always admired your ability to understand technology and it\’s impact on the entertainment business. Which leads me to ask: what were you thinking when you upgraded your PC to Vista? Surely someone with your tech savvy would have known that Vista is an unmitigated disaster. Furthermore, given your views on HD video quality and DRM, I would have expected you to rail against Vista\’s draconian DRM policies; e.g. automatically down-res of HD content if there is no content protection between the PC and the monitor/panel. I sure hope your corporate IT folks haven\’t mandated this – if that\’s the case you need to have a serious chat with your CIO.
So, what gives?
Comment by Dave Simmons -
Just get a regular 2 button mouse and plug it into your macbook. Thats what i\’ve always done and it works great.
Also, saw you at the game Monday night and hope you had as much fun as we did. Go Cubs. =)
Comment by ryan -
Welcome to the world of Mac. I\’ve been with Apple since well before the Mac as a user and developer. I will gladly offer any assistance you might like at no charge whatsoever. Your post made me smile, so I\’ve blogged it myself at http://www.darsys.net/quagmire.html
I think like anything new, you\’ll have a learning curve. The left/right click thing is software selectable on the laptop. On the desktop, just buy a two button mouse. I am sad to admit I use the Microsoft Optical Intellimouse and really like it. Works great — all the buttons do.
As for your Outlook issue, Entourage as others have pointed out, will do much of the trick. It comes with MS Office for the Mac. However, I would not be doing my duty if I didn\’t point you to OpenOffice (FREE and no need to support Microsoft) for both your PC and Mac because it\’s very good and does everything office can, or for the Mac, NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org) which is OpenOffice but made to look more Mac-like.
Contact me directly if you need help, advice, whatever. No charge. Really.
Comment by Eric Seiden -
Yes, the Mac Mighty Mouse is an Apple product that you can right click. http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/index.html
System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Mouse > Secondary Button (activate)
Enjoy!
Comment by Tim Kau -
Mark…..
Just talking with a friend since Mavs tickets arrived. It would be great if you could integrate the Mavs schedule with Outlook for 2 reasons.
1. It will sync with my IPhone so Mavs will always be at my fingertips.
2. It will be on Outlook since I have no choice but to run my business on Exchange server. I think Macs are great for personal use and will be a matter of time when they make a dent in the business arena.
Ramz
Comment by Ramsey -
Alright Cube\’s. Welcome to the bright side of the street. Next time, try the Macbook Pro. What a sweet machine.
MFFL…Mac Fan For Life
Comment by Mark Simpson -
mac is great and so is aapl stock.
there\’s probably fixes for the problems you are having.
run \”repair permissions\” in the disk utility OFTEN…i do it probably every other day…
as far as outlook, you might want to find a program on versiontracker which will help you integrate it into mac mail or entourage or some other mail client…
what i love about my mac is that there\’s seems to be always quick fixes for any problems….
and apple is one of the most innovative companies in the world right now—the stock is worth well over 200/share— i bet by xmas it will be up to that….
lots of itouches, iphones, and the new little nano\’s will be stocking stuffers.
plus you can run any pc software on a mac, which cannot be the same for pc\’s— everything is just superior. i wish i bought stock in mac when i bought my computer back in 2003 and it was at 70/share…even if i just bought 1000 shares i\’d have made around 100,000 in just 4 years. it was a good buy last week at 130–now up to 142 or something. still worth well over 200
Comment by David Brotsky -
no application menu shortcut keys on apple.
Comment by Robert Reddick -
I have 2 kids who just graduated from high school. As a graduation present, I told them I would purchase them notebooks. My daughter wanted a MacBook (minimum config) and my son\’s college recommended a Dell D830 (souped up version) running XP.
Prior to receiving the notebooks, we had 5 PCs in the house, all running XP Home. We had experienced all the normal problems with startup time, blue screens, viruses, ad ware, etc.
Both notebooks arrived within a couple of days, and I tried them out. I was stunned at the difference in boot time. MacBook is up in running within 15 seconds. The Dell took about a minute and a half.
But the biggest impression I had is that the Macbook was intuitive and easy to get around in. While the Dell was bloated and complicated to configure.
When my wife\’s notebook crashes next, we\’re getting another Macbook. Why live with all the problems that Windows gives you?
Comment by Tom Milner -
Actually a dbase as alrge as your outlook dbase might often crash on outlook mac as i found clients with more thn a 2000 email in one page database tend to crash a lot in Entourge
Appl\’e mail does a nice job – and you coudl use Fusion to run outlook on your mac from a windows partition if you really needed to.
Welcome to the world of mac
May it be as good to you as it has to us over the years.
Raul
Comment by Raul De Arriz -
Mark, Go get Little Machines\’ $10 Outlook to Mac (O2M). Do a search for it in Google. Quite honestly though… mail is way better and the way it intergrates with the \”Address Book\” is awesome. As for the right click… you have lots of suggestions and I recommend you join an Apple user forum to post your questions. There is NOTHING that can\’t be done on a Mac and the myths, lies, etc by PC users, retailers, etc. drives me nuts. Mac FanBoi? You bet! I want to DRIVE my car… not be a damn mechanic. I run a recording audio/video studio and my clients shouldn\’t have to \”insert error here… cancel or allow?\” OSX Leopard next month! Buh Bye Vista!
Cheers from Canada!
Comment by Ian Graham -
I have a mac love it. It kills vista http://www.myeclinic.com
Comment by madison -
On the PC, I use Mozilla\’s Open Source Thunderbird. Between that, Google Calendar and the \’Lightning\’ add-in, you\’ve got one of the most powerful email/calendar apps around. Outlook does suck badly.
Comment by Andrew Strasman -
The mouse that comes with any mac is two-button, as it has been for nearly 3 years now. You\’d think a guy who made it in tech could find his way around a user preferences panel. But I guess not.
Comment by Joseph -
Mark – I\’d suggest you check out Parallels. This is software that will let you run Windows applications within the Mac OS. Without getting too technical on the post, the software enables you to run applications for different OS architectures within a sandbox. The link is: http://www.parallels.com/en/
Now you can ditch the desktop. Enjoy!
Comment by Chris -
Mac rules because they know everyone, one day will need a computer; S Jobs does not see logic in mining every possible dollar out tghe consumer right this second. P.C.is an acronym(not feeling creative) for spending money
Comment by David Bass Dancy -
Call it as it is – Vista sucks. I\’ve had to remove it from several of my machines. Just bought a very expensive Dell notebook with Vista Ultimate and it blows so hard that I called Dell and they said \”Yeah, we know, send it back and we will send you one with XP Pro.\” And they paid the return freight. Love me some 24\” iMac…
Comment by Mark -
Welcome to the dark side! 🙂 Your story was actually pretty much a copy of mine, and since my first Mac 4 1/2 years ago, I\’ve become Mac-obsessed! Your next item should be an iPhone..it will definitely blow your mind! 🙂
Comment by Amber Yount -
It appears most people don\’t know that control-click on a Mac works the same as right-click on a PC. It may not be as fast, but most of us won\’t need it very often.
Comment by Jerry -
Spare sometime and $10 to move all your .pst files to Mail application on a Mac. You will never go back to Outlook.
Do it with http://www.littlemachines.com/
Comment by Gokul -
Hey Mark,
I too hate the two button thing, but found a little trick that can make it a no brainer and one hander at the same time. (I really got used to this damn quick) If you go to the trackpad options in system preferences, you can set the trackpad to detect when you have 2 fingers on it, and if you click the mouse button it is the equivalent of a real second mouse button.
Comment by Ron Holmes -
I haven\’t read all the readers\’ comments, so apologies for repeating the information if it has already been mentioned. There is a little application called O2M that may deal with your problem of migrating your Outlook email on the PC to the Mac:
http://www.littlemachines.com/index.html
Cheers, and welcome to the Mac brotherhood.
Comment by Mark McCormick -
If you don\’t like the \’two-finger\’ right click, you can use \”Ctrl-click.\” If your fingers for your left hand are in the \’home\’ position for typing, just drop your left hand about a half a letter. It\’s probably already there so you can \’click\’ with your right thumb. That\’ll put your left pinky finger in perfect position to hit the \’ctrl\’ key. Or, you can click with your right thumb by tapping the trackpad. I use both, depending on what I\’m doing. Takes about… and hour of use to get used to it. When your right hand\’s mousing around with the trackpad, your left isn\’t doing anything anyway.
I get frustrated on any Windows computer when I can\’t use \’ctrl-click, \’option-click,\’ and \’command-click\’ without moving my hands. It\’s not about having an option for right clicking – it\’s about having three of them.
Comment by Brian B. -
You\’re right, Apple made a big step forward with their Intel based computers. I tried the Macbook Pro and it is completely amazing – like you say – to start up within 26 seconds!
Vista made it too complicated with 6 different versions, that means 6 different manuals, 6 difeerent troubleshooting..
Apple rocks, now also with their iPhone available in UK on 9th november with O2 for 269 only, so cool!
Welcome to the club of switchers that grows every single day:-))
Comment by Matthieu Pesesse -
Ill jump in.
We are running almost all-Vista in our office. Love it.
Aside from a full 3GB RAM, heres a tip if your system has sudden unexplained slowness after youve used a vpn (even if now disconnected):
See hotfix in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934202
Basically, the machine gets set to slow/offline connection type for synchronizing offline folders.
Stays slow with intermittent trips to la-la land until you reboot. Then fine until you make the fateful vpn connection.
Comment by russian women -
If you get stuck, try out my free apps webpage:
http://web.mac.com/simon_elliott/iWeb/simon_elliott%40mac.com/Software.html
I have found that you can do without a PC and often without spending out on more apps.
Comment by Simon Elliott -
Your Mac freezes 3-4 times a month? Mark, either you\’re exaggerating (quite a bit!) or you have a defective unit. Come on! Swallow your pride and either tell the truth or send it in for repair 😉
Welcome to the MacUniverse! (What took you so long????)
Comment by DaviD -
When you describe the list of applications you need to use, the first thing that struck me was that you really are in prime territory for an easy switch. There are plenty of obscure and esoteric software arrangements out there that keep people tied to Windows, but if somebody came up to me and said they needed to be able to email, surf the web and use word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, and they weren\’t on some cripplingly tight budget, I\’d recommend a Mac without hesitation.
What makes this all the more strange is that it\’s this combination of software needs that has so deeply entrenched Windows in the corporate environment, despite their equivalent products\’ blatant inferiority.
If you\’ve not tried it yet (you didn\’t mention it), check out iWork \’08. You can save documents in Word (Pages), Excel (Numbers) and Powerpoint (Keynote) formats, and they\’re all very nice apps. Oh, and whilst cost isn\’t likely to be your number one concern, the whole package is a throwaway $79. I believe the comparative Office package is around $300.
Comment by Ben Darlow -
TO RIGHT CLICK ON A MAC JUST HOLD DOWN: ctrl + click. It functions exactly the same as a right click on PC. It took me months to figure that out but it was there the whole time.
Comment by Nikko Godoy -
dude ive had a macbook pro for over a year and the greatest thing is ive had no kind of problems with it! the warranty just helps me feel safer also. dude APPLE owns now..enough said!
Comment by gabriel -
Mark,
If your ever down Key West way, stop in and I\’ll hook you up with the \”Pro\” version of your MacBook– You\’ll REALLY love it!
Tom
Macintosh Systems Solutions
1001 Truman Avenue
Key West
305-293-1888
Comment by Tom Mulhall -
I actually haven\’t had a great deal of problems with Vista… Well I did have to reinstall it when I first got it – but since then it\’s been all roses! I also don\’t use Outlook though – I hate Outlook. I\’m all about webbased email. So maybe that\’s why I haven\’t experienced as many problems.
Comment by Weirdo -
Welcome back!
Comment by Switch Blog -
Windows version of Outlook can run on a Mac under Parallels and appear to be a Mac app. That is, it can run outside the VM shell, even though its a virtualized Windows app. Not sure in VMware can do this too. Then too, it might run under Wine.
Withe the free VMware converter you can convert your current instance of Windows to a virtual machine to run on your Mac.
Interesting story, by the way, about poor market share for Macs.
http://www.cnet.com/defensive-computing/8301-13554_1-9779313-33.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/technology/16digi.html
Unfortunately, the same is true for Linux.
For anyone using their computer for something they consider important, it\’s way too early for Vista. My rule of thumb is to wait 2.5 years.
http://www.cnet.com/defensive-computing/8301-13554_1-9770230-33.html?tag=head
Comment by Michael Horowitz -
Buy the best, only cry once.
If you want help moving that outlook database:
Step 0: 250 gig hard drive. This 2.5\” external fits Macbooks and Macbook Pros:
http://dealnews.com/deals/Western-Digital-Passport-2-5-250-GB-USB-2-0-Portable-External-Hard-Drive-for-150-shipped/187649.html
and is $40 cheaper than the bare drive that is in it! Grab at tie LED corner and pull the case apart to remove drive after step 1.
Step 1: Superduper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com)
Step 2: Fast connection (use a wire)
Step 3: Entourage Or Apple Mail on the Macbook
Step 4: Add your exchange account
Step 5: Add an iMap account
Step 6: Copy the folders in the exchange account to the imap
Step 7: Drag and drop emails (click 1 and select all) then drag to same folder name in imap and drop.
Step 8: Delete exchange account
Done
Comment by bill -
didn\’t read all of the comments so maybe someone has already told you this, but you can have an Apple Store Mac Genius transfer all of your outlook mail into Entourage for you if you sign up for ProCare. It\’s sort of like VIP service and support at the Apple Stores and it\’s only $99. it\’s worth it just for the data transfer, even if you never use the expedited service features. You have to go to an Apple-owned retail store to get it. You should check it out.
welcome to Mac, by the way.
Comment by rob -
Mark,
The Macintosh does indeed have a right-click. I know it may not seem so if you have a Mighty Mouse, which appears to have only one button but in reality has at least five. All you need to do is set it up in System Preferences. You want to click on the right button drop down box in Keyboard & Mouse Preferences and choose \”Secondary\” as the function of the right button.
If you have a third-party mouse like I do, then the set up is pretty much the same. My complaint with the Mighty Mouse (or at least the one I owned for 10 days before returning it) was that it is a touch sensitive mouse and for some reason, it didn\’t sense my mouse clicking habits very well, so most of my right clicks ended up being left clicks or even center clicks (which I ended up turning off).
I ended up getting a Danger Mouse (available from MacMice.com, but I AM NOT trying to sell their products, only give a little advice). This is the best mouse I have ever used. It looks like the Mighty Mouse, except it has TWO REAL buttons. It also has a 1400 DPI laser pick up that makes is EXTREMELY fast and responsive. In fact, I had to turn the tracking speed down in System Prefs because it is so precise. With all the other mice I have ever used, I have had to turn the tracking up to almost maximum speed.
So you see, Mark, there is a right-click. It does most of the functions of a Windoze right-click, including moving items to the trash, copying, pasting, creating new folders, etc.
If you have a really old Apple one-button mouse (which I doubt it, since you have a newer MacBook) then you might want to find a two-button mouse. Any two button USB mouse will do. The one-button mouse will still perform the same function of a right click, all you have to do is hold down Control and then click. The Control-click also works on a laptop.
Cheers!
Comment by Thomas Mastin -
I am looking into one myself. I have heard nothing but good about the new Mac\’s.
Comment by Josh Cox -
Someone probably already told you this but there is a right click. You just need to buy a two button mouse. On a MacBook, hold down the control button and then click with the trackpad clicker. Or do the two finger click.
The rumor of no right click is the longest running rumor and yet most false one to exist since the creation of the computer.
Comment by Son Nguyen -
Glad to welcome you to the Mac world. I\’ve been the owner of everyone of their laptops from day one and with only a short period – basically when Jobs was gone – I\’ve been a happy camper. Have used PCs as well but there\’s no comparison in ease of use. As for an Outlook alternative, I\’m watching Zimbra – just acquired by Yahoo! today – which looks like a great alternative, now even more of a solid player than before.
Comment by Joe Buhler -
You stole my slogan!
http://dscheidt.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!75582706FFDC005!1153.entry
Welcome to the dark side! BTW, there is a fairly easy way to transfer your Outlook files, check out O2M at http://www.littlemachines.com/. I don\’t work for them, but it does a good job of converting Outlook to the mac.
Comment by David Scheidt -
Hi Mark,
I tried to paste in the URL for O2M (See previous post). But ti didn\’t show up . . . .
Here it is again: http://www.littlemachines.com/index.html
James
Comment by James Gross -
Hi Mark,
Just read this at MacDailyNews.com, your import problem with Outlook might be solved with: \”Little Machines\’ $10 Outlook to Mac (O2M).\”
Hope this helps.
Comment by James Gross -
For Outlook I have used Outlook2Mac from LittleMachines.
It worked well – not perfectly – but I had three 1.5 GB PST Files compiled and manually fixed in Apple Mail within 2.5 hours.
But why didn\’t you bought a 15\” MacBookPro, buy th 2x2GB Memory at your favourite Retailer and add them, so you can use Windows if needed more easily.
I am testing at present VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac and at present prefer the simplicity of Parallels, especially the Snapshot Functionality is great…
Kind regards
MAX
Comment by Max Mertens -
@ #91 I find this a growing trend as well, people installing OSX on thinkpads instead of macbooks for stability and muscle. But I\’m not sure how they get around using biometrics.
Comment by thinkpaduser -
Thinkpads are the way to go. I have vista on my Thinkpad X60s and not a glitch. And about the memory leak, Vista doesn\’t use ram like XP or OSX, it sees it as cache where your frequently used apps reside even when your laptop is turned off. and you can easily increase your ram using any usb thumbdrive.
Comment by Thinkpaduser -
You would think, MS makes both Outlook and Entourage, but Entourage doesn\’t import Outlook mail!
There\’s a program though, Outlook2Mac (I think it\’s re-named: O2M now). It exports ALL of your Outlook, even attachments, etc. And makes it into files friendly for import into Entourage or Apple Mail. I imported years and years worth of mail this way.
And about the right click… change your trackpad preferences to allow a two-finger-tap to be a right click. You\’ll find it becomes very natural.
Comment by Timmy Chen -
re: Outlook
When I switched from Windows to Mac for my laptop, I had the same email problem. I used a piece of software called \”Outlook 2 Mac\” from http://www.littlemachines to import my Outlook email into Mac\’s default mail program (not Entourage). Worked great and is only $10. Haven\’t opened Outlook since. ymmv
Comment by Dave Lang -
A little trick I used to do to transfer PC emails to the mac. I\’d install Thunderbird on the PC and Mac http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/, transfer all the outlook emails to Thunderbird on the PC side, drag those profiles to the Mac Thunderbird section – then I could do a transfer those to mac mail.
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/moving_thunderbird_from_window.html
http://jermexpress.com/archives/2005/12/07/switching-from-thunderbird-to-mac-mailapp/
Of course, you can ignore all this and just convert your email to an IMAP account. Then you can drag and drop your email from the PC side to folders on your IMAP server – which would sync in real time to your mac side.
Either way, I hope it works out for you on the Mac platform!
Comment by Brady J. Frey -
You should load your MacBook up with as much RAM as you can afford, buy a copy of VMware Fusion and install a copy of Vista / XP on it. It really is the only way you can run Windows and stay sane.
Comment by Andrew -
The thing that seals the deal is when Microsoft wanted to do an ad on people switching from PCs to Macs, they couldn\’t find any, so they faked an ad, and were dumb enough to use a stock photo. Didn\’t take long for the cat to get out of the bag, for one more embarrassment in their long panoply of blunders, of which Vista is just one of the latest (along with the Zune and the XBOX 360 being outsold by the Sony PS2.
I use the Mighty Mouse. You have to use it for a while to get what it\’s really about. In graphics, such as layout and design the fact that you can scroll sideways and at an angle with the ball makes it a fantastic mouse to use once you get used to it.
Comment by Eric -
welcome back from the dark side!
Comment by dead cow -
1. If you bought a new Mac then you have a Mighty Mouse which is a 4 button mouse which, unfortunately come pre-configured as a one button mouse. Simply go to your system preferences to set up the actions for each button.
2. MS Office Mac will solve all your Outlook problems, but if you don\’t want to pay for that, try LitlleMachine\’s Outlook for Mac @ $10. http://www.littlemachines.com/index.html
3. Have fun trashing that Vista PC or sell it to some sucker if you really want to be mean.
Comment by Brau -
Well first there is a $10 program called Outlook for the mac by Little Machines.
Second, double tab with two fingers on the track pad for a \”right click\”.
Comment by GranitW -
Welcome back to the Mac. The more the merrier.
Isaiah
Comment by Isaiah -
I\’ve imported something like 12gigs of email from various versions of Outlook into Entourage. It took some doing, but it can be done. The secret was breaking up the files into 2 or 3 gig export files…
Entourage is a bit long in the tooth right now, but for a long time it was arguably the best Mac mail client despite it\’s being from MS. My guess is the new version coming out next year will bring back up to snuff.
The one great thing about having all the email on my mac is that I can now search it in seconds with spotlight… suddenly that huge archive is a useful vibrant source of info that I tap into daily.
Comment by raul Gutierrez -
Getting your email out of Outlook is only the first step.
One wonderful thing about the Mac and OS X is how many of it\’s applications, i.e. Mail, Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, etc seamlessly share their data reducing redundant input forever. This benefit was thought to be lost if one was forced to retreive that data from sources using Microsoft Exchange Server. Not the case with the following…
Groupcal 3 allows you to access and manage your Microsoft Exchange calendar seamlessly from Apple\’s iCal. Synchronize your events and tasks, book people or resources for meetings, respond to meeting requests, view Free/Busy time and much, much more. All with no need to install additional software on your Exchange server.
AddressX makes it easy to access your Microsoft Exchange Server Global Address List (GAL) contacts directly from the Apple OS X Address Book all separated into its own address group. All with no need to install additional software on your Exchange server.
In addition to Emailchemy I\’ve also seen O2M (Outlook to Mac) for transferring data out of Outlook. While Entourage works for some it is still a deliberately handcuffed/limited application from Microsoft. The less Microsoft is involved the better off everyone is!
Comment by SBC -
Welcome to the Mac, Mark. A quick suggestion that will make your user experience a lot better…
As others have said before me, install Entourage and import your e-mail into it from Outlook. It\’s pretty seamless.
Then immediately open the Mail app that came installed and import your messages from Entourage into Mail. The throw Entourage away. It\’s a piece of crap. Mail has decent junk filtering out of the box, but if you want some really tight spam control, plop down $30 and download a copy of Spamsieve. I get thousands of junk messages every day and it filters 99.9% of them.
Oh, and unless you have an Apple tattoo, you\’re not a fanboy.
Comment by Destructo -
Quick one here: I don\’t like tapping on the trackpad. I have that disabled. If you are not going to use a mouse then just hold Control and click. That is a right click as well.
Just make sure you don\’t try Command… It\’s actually Control > Click for this one.
Comment by Marty -
Mark,
I recently switched over to Mac as well and most of your comments ring true with my feelings as well. Seems as though everyone has answered any issues you may have had thus far with the Macbook.
But the one extra thing that I have learned is that if you upgrade the Macbook to 2GB RAM your computer will freeze even less (if you can even believe that, being so familiar with windows) should get it down to maybe once per month or every two months! Anyways hopefully this helps!
I never wanted to call myself an Apple fanboy, but the more and more Apple products I try out…I\’m slowly moving towards that term…and not by choice…
-J
Comment by Jeremy Salter -
The solution for your Outolok hassle:
http://www.littlemachines.com/index.html
Comment by Wu Ming -
If this was mentioned I didn\’t see it…
Mark can also install Windows XP on a partition on his MacBook and boot up into it whenever he needs to (if he ever does).
Those of you saying \”the Mac doesn\’t work in the PC world\” are over a year out of date. All Macs can now run Windows as well as any HP or Dell. Not that its saying a whole lot:)
Comment by Matt House -
Why wouldn\’t you just get a computer running XP and use hibernate instead of shutdown. You can buy a new HP w/ XP installed on it. XP has been stable since service pack two, and hibernate lets you resume use in a few seconds without draining any battery life. I know Money ain\’t a thang, so the extra few hundred bucks for a Mac wouldn\’t phase you, but I don\’t understand why you\’d upgrade to Vista, when it doesn\’t offer any real advantages over XP.
Comment by Andrew -
Hello Mark,
Everyone else covered your two points, you might also want to browse through http://www.MacDailyNews.com as they are a good source of info – including listing your blog.
One thing I want to warn everyone about is that while the software on a mac can run non-stop for months without crashing, the hardware it turns out needs a break. My MacMini died this morning (just turned off while I was using it and won\’t boot) after running for about 2 months straight (I put it to sleep when away for more than 1 hour or overnight). It is 15 days past it\’s warranty (purchased Sept 1, 2006).
Maybe that\’s why Windows systems crash, to ensure they reboot/shut down and give the hardware the chance to cool off. So make sure to shut down your Mac every once and a while to let it completely cool off. I guess I need to move forward my intention to upgrade my Mac to a MacBook.
Otherwise, it has been awesome.
Enjoy it,
Jack
Comment by Jack Levy -
Just thought you should know that for $10 (yes, $10), you can buy a nice little program called Little Machines\’ \”Outlook to Mac (O2M)\”.which will transfer all your Outlook mails to the Mac. Here\’s the link:
http://www.littlemachines.com/index.html
As others have suggested, I LOVE my two-finger tap on the trackpad for a right-mouse click.
Looks like your hassles are over…
Welcome to computing the way it should be…
Comment by E. Blasberg -
see below for solutions:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/14914/
Comment by 5andman -
Mark, I don\’t think it\’s your PC. It\’s just Vista and Outlook.
I own a Thinkpad X60 with identical hardware to my Mac Mini, and I\’m still using Windows XP. Every piece of software runs faster on my Thinkpad, and it has not crashed once since I bought it last April, even though I use it as my main computer at work(connected to a large monitor, of course). My Mac mini, on the other hand, is a bit less responsive and has crashed a few times while idling. If I have to choose only one computer, I\’d go back to Windows XP without hesitation. I\’m too old to figure out the smart tricks that will make a Mac work faster.
I don\’t use Outlook and I don\’t work with Graphics/Design apps so my words probably doesn\’t mean anything. Just want to share my experience. (Before anyone starts debunking me, I\’d also like to add that I\’ve never had to reinstall Windows because of virus or speed issues caused by bloat. Never had a virus. That\’s since 1995. BSODs were few and extremely rare after XP came out. I can brag \”It just works\” for a Windows system just as well as a Mac, which surely works but not nearly as great as I had believed before I tried to switch. I was a Mac Fanboy when I didn\’t have a Mac, because it used exotic hardware and looked really cool and I was young and read about them all the time on those nicely designed magazines. Nowadays I\’m not looking forward to a Mac any more.)
Comment by Felix -
1. Mail is Apple\’s version of \”microsoft outlook.\” or you can get entorage, which is microsoft outlook for the Mac.
2. Right click is ctrl+click or you can enable the two finger+click in your system preferances. If you want an external mouse, Apple\’s wireless Mighty Mouse is a 4 button mouse. You can enable right click on that as well.
-Mike
Comment by Mike Pescetto -
Mark – glad to hear you like your MacBook! Can I send you an invisibleSHIELD for it? It\’s a clear film that protects it from getting scratched and discoloring. I\’d be happy to send you one for your sidekick too. See http://www.invisibleshield.com (as disclosure, I work at ZAGG Inc, the makers of the shield)
BTW, love your blog. I knew about you as the Mavs owner but didn\’t know of your business success and blog \’til a year or two ago. Nice work.
Comment by cameron -
Let\’s solve those issues:
Mouse Right Click:
HOLD THE CONTROL KEY AND CLICK!!! Right Click solved. It\’s been that way a LONG TIME! You don\’t need to buy a mouse or do anything special. Like they say, \”It just works\”.
Outlook:
* Use Parallels on the mac (http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/).
* Launch Parallels in about 10 seconds
* **UN-SUSPEND** your XP (forget Vista!) in 1/1000000000 the time of even **unhibernating** your windows machine! Though booting your Virtual XP machine in Parallels is a zillion times faster than booting a real PC (Probably because you NEVER use it and gum it up with crapplications.)
* Hey look, Outlook\’s already open because it was when you last suspended your virtual XP machine in Parallels.
* Download your mail.
* Backup the Outlook file directly (since the Mac can read write into the virtual machine file and share files with the Parallels virtual machines
* Quit Parallels (automatically suspending the virtual machine).
* Take your PCs and give them to your enemies.
You may even be able to automate this with Applescript where the MacBook launches Parallels at some time in the night, lets Outlook do its thing and then shuts down.
Extra:
For extra comfort, max out your memory, backup your documents. Save more years of your life. In the zillions of hours you\’ve just been saved, make quick easy home movies of anything in 30 minutes to share with friends and families. REALLY organize your photos and create and order the sweetest stylized personalized photo books for your coffee tables and friends and families.
Find yourself working and thinking instead of solving Windows problems or dealing with the 1000s of stupid little redundant limited PC software downloads from tucows or download that is *just* another $39 or $29 just so you can convert an MPEG or read a DVD. Find yourself enjoying doing what you like to do, not what you have to do.
What is the cost to America of the time spent rebooting Windows 3.1, 95, XP, and Vista and noodling with Windows? I bet this cost dwarfs sick time.
Comment by iJames -
I\’m glad you are liking your Mac. Most folks seem to have addressed the right-click issue you spoke of. Whether or not any of the suggestions will work for you is another story. There does exist a way to get Outlook Data out of your PC and into your Mac. I work at a Mac service place and I use it daily. It\’s a little piece of software called Outlook2Mac. You can find it at http://www.littlemachines.com/ Ypu run the program on your PC. It takes all of your files and folders of emails, calendar data, contacts, everything, and puts it into a single folder on your PC. You then copy that folder to your Mac and import it into the Mail program, Address Book, and iCal on your Mac. As always, back up before you try this, but I use it almost daily and I\’ve had no issues. Oh, and if you prefer, it can also be imported into Entourage, the Mac equivalent of Outlook for the Mac.
The software\’s cheap too, I think it\’s just $10. Might be worth it to eliminate a computer from your desk.
Comment by Rex -
Mark,
Do yourself a favor – suck it up and import the email over to Entourage or like-kind OS X client. The UNIX mbox format for folders is a godsend. Deal done – drag and drop the whole folder onto the desktop, and archive. It rears it\’s ugly head again? Just drag it back and continue the correspondence.
Well worth the time – particularly if you have a lot going on in the inbox under different subjects/deals/clients.
MG
Comment by Michael Gracie -
Welcome aboard, Mark.
Check out myfirstmac.com (http://myfirstmac.com).
It\’s made just for people like you. It has articles on the right-click and how to transfer Outlook contacts and all that type of stuff new Mac users are looking for.
Great blog, great points of view, and it sure is nice to hear a candid, unfilterd voice from the ranks of the super-wealthy.
Comment by Chris -
For the most part I am a Mac user and if I regret one thing in my tech investments it\’s that I did not get a Mac sooner than I did. It is to a good degree still a \”Windows world\” and I\’m thankful Apple went with the Intel chip so we could have good vitualization choices like VMWare and Parallels as I do need to use Windows for some software. I do however spend about 90% of my time using OSX and I love it. I find OSX less distracting in terms of dealing with problems and a user interface that is too busy. However my mouse of choice is a Microsoft Intellimouse and it works great with my Mac. I actually prefer the Microsoft mouse to any mice Apple has come up with.
Comment by Patrick -
Mac is a equal to PC – the playing field is even and level – now if mac had better prices; or competition (AMD vs Intel) etc… instead its a monopoly and I don\’t like that.
-.rb
p.s. I\’m a microsoft addict still – anyone got 12 steps?
Comment by Paintless dent repair tools -
Great for you! I was a Mac user for a long time and switched back to Windows boxes and life has been great. Sorry to hear about your Vista issues. Most new OSes have lots of issues, even OS X. OS upgrades should never be taken lightly.
It\’s a just a tool at the end of the day.
Comment by Jim -
Dear Mark,
I do not own a Mac, but I know a way out of your outlook misery. And better: once you are done, you can kiss good bye to all those proprietary mail files M$ is locking you in.
The way out is called IMAP, and what\’s better: having a PC, a MAC, and a network between both gives you the physical infrastructure to do it.
Basically, you outlook client (whatever version you are using) knows how to talk IMAP, and possibly uses it to talk to some of your e-mail providers.
What you need to do is:
1) set up your MAC as a IMAP server
2) connect outlook to you brand new IMAP server
2) transfer all you e-mails from your PC to your IMAP server (i.e. to your Mac)
At this point, you can choose to keep you e-mails in the MAC IMAP server, or transfer those e-mail back to you favorite e-mail client, it\’s up to you.
But the most interesting thing in this process is that step 2 is going to free you from the M$ tyranny, and that it\’s going to be as easy as copying file from a folder. Because for IMAP naturally organizes e-mail as files in a folder.
Now, for the software part, and how to make it work. I did it for myself by switching from Outlook to Mozilla mail client and I have a permanent home IMAP server running on debian, so your case is different.
Apparently, you can set up a IMAP server on your Mac using those instructions: http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/eart.index.html.
Once this is done, you won\’t even need your old PC anymore.
Comment by pruneau -
Dude, you should get your facts straight before posting things to the public as \”facts\” rather than simply as your own personal questions needing answers.
Three important comments for you:
1. Microsoft Entourage (part of Microsoft Office for Mac) is the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Outlook.
2. You can easily transfer all your stuff from Microsoft Outlook to Microsoft Entourage simply using the outstanding program \”Outlook2Mac\”. This transfers Outlook data from the PC to almost every major email program on the Mac, including Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage. Check it out here:
http://www.littlemachines.com/
3. There are MULTIPLE WAYS that you can right-click on any MacBook/MacBook Pro:
b) Hold down two fingers on the trackpad while you click. (You must turn on this option in the mouse system preference first.) You can also use two fingers to SCROLL in any direction on your laptop.
b) Hold down the control key while you click on anything.
c) Plug in ANY multiple button mouse and its right-click button will work right out of the box! For Apple\’s Mighty Mouse, you have to enable its right-click button in the mouse system preferences.
d) Use ANY wireless mouse and its right-click button will work right out of the box!
e) If you need even MORE functionality from your external mouse, download the great utility USB Overdrive, which goes even FURTHER in providing great mouse functionality.
Comment by Scott Rose -
Mark-
The best way I have found to transfer Outlook mail to another mail app (on a Mac or Windows PC) is to use an IMAP account as a temporary transfer conduit.
1) Add an IMAP account to Outlook.
2) Select a mailbox/folder in Outlook, \’Select All\’ messages, and drag them to a mail folder in the IMAP account.
3) Wait. 😉 Depending how large a mailbox you have, this could take a while.
4) Add the same IMAP account details to the destination machine\’s mail client (For that MacBook, Apple\’s Mail.app is solid, beautiful, has a very effective spam filter, and ties in nicely with other OS features).
5) \’Get Mail\’ on the destination machine and watch as the message data on the IMAP server is synced.
6) Organize the imported mail into folders/subdirectories as you wish.
Comment by Matthew Rosen -
\”Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook\”
So being enthusiastic about an Apple product is OK, as long as you don\’t consider yourself a \”fanboy?\” Sounds kinda like the same thing, except maybe the \”fanboy\” has been enthusiastic for longer than you…and that\’s somehow a bad thing?
I really don\’t get this whole \”I love Macs, but I\’m not a Mac-lover\” thing I\’m seeing a lot of lately. The only reason there\’s a stigma around Mac enthusiasts (a.k.a fanboys) is non-Mac users created it.
Anyway, glad you like your MacBook. I\’d say \”welcome to the club,\” but that may be a little….\”fanboyish.\”
P.S. Yes, I\’m expounding on what John Gruber noted.
Comment by Billy K -
Why don\’t you use gmail? I switched and have never had spam. Loads way quicker than outlook, which should be no surprise. Isn\’t outlook by Microsoft?
Comment by greg -
I\’m there with you Mark, used Windows since 93 and as of this month am a proud owner of the Macbook Black laptop. I agree the lack of a right-click button sucks, it\’s even worse if you install bootcamp and run Windows on it, after 30 minutes I ended up repartitioning and just keeping it a Mac.
Comment by Taylor -
I normally don\’t like you (because I\’m a Warriors fan), but I can\’t help but commend you on your latest switch. I wish you much happiness on your new mac journey. But I hope your upcoming NBA season replicates your PC experience. Peace out.
Comment by Stan -
Mark, I am ashamed for you. As a long time PC user/developer, surely you never went to 2000 or XP prior to SP1? I\’m sure you never recommended your clients to do it.
And for all these mac moonies, and for your experience Mark, the reason you aren\’t having any hanging problems is because you are on a much later version of Sylvester(or whatever ferocious puddy tat they are on now).
Granted, its a vastly different scenario, but OSX initially was even worse (as in, it simply didn\’t have certain networking, management, applications or just plain working components), and every Jaguar, Leopard, etc, upgrade has its own issues that only get resolved with Apple\’s software update, just like in Windows. In fact, these 10.4, 10.5, etc, are just that- service packs. Clever marketing and a few new applications makes them \’OS updates\’.
And you know better than anyone what the tradeoff is for that fast boot- Give me a laptop line with one BIOS, fewer changeable parts, fewer models, and a supply chain with a limited number of vendors and I could build you a Linux based laptop that would be the same email reader/browser you currently have and boot even faster, for a lot less and without forcing you to monetarily contribute to the further decline of human civilization.
In fact, I have a business plan related to that laptop idea, so hit me up. 🙂
The Apple logo is more accurate than people know; fail the test of temptation, take a bite, and the garden of eden is gone and its hell on earth (or at least more money in Satan\’s pocket). The day of reckoning is coming for Apple. iPhone blowback is just the beginning. mark tape…
ps. I will give you the standby is nice, but again, one bios, one motherboard vendor, and alot less code (not to say that vista isn\’t bloated; at this point in a codebase lifecycle any OS surely would be)
Comment by Gary -
I used a cheap shareware program called O2M from Little Machines to migrate my 45,000+ email messages and calendar of about 5 years from Outlook to Apple Mail and iCal. It took a long time to export everything, but it worked great and I haven\’t looked back. It is unbelievably easier and faster to search through email using Mail than it ever was with Outlook. And, Smartfolders are amazing.
Comment by patrick -
A lot of folks have already commented on the right-click solution, but I would want to add that with Parallels, VMWare or Apple\’s own Boot Camp, you can still run a copy of Windows XP on your MacBook for any legacy software issues.
Enjoy!
Comment by Paul Greatbatch -
For the Outlook issue – have you tried Parallels? Install it and flip to windows or better still, run Outlook on its own over OS X. Brilliant.
Comment by Ivan Pope -
Thing about Macs and pricing – IMHO if they actually gained enough market share (i.e. enough people started buying them), eventually they\’d lower their pricing, just like they did with iPhone. I was stuck as a PC user until recently, and I\’ll never go back.
Also, if someone\’s going to learn Vista, they should save themselves the extra time/money and learn OSX instead… they\’ll be smarter for it, and happier in the long run.
Comment by Jim -
There is no elegant way to transition your mail from our PC to a Mac, but I have found the best way is to use Parallels or the newly released Fusion to keep things going. By using one of the virtualization environments, you eliminate the need to head over to your PC every so often and it allows you to use the other programs that have still not been ported over to the Mac.
Comment by Kevin -
Mark, have you ever try FreeSW? Ubuntu? I think is perfect and is FREE!!!
Well, If you like it of course…
Comment by marko -
Forgive me if you\’ve already answered this -but I\’ve always been curious how you organize your permanent emails. Do you save them by year? By sender? Type?
Thanks.
Comment by Janet Pierson -
I\’d love to buy a Macbook but can\’t afford it right now. I have heard that they are better. I use a Mac at school since most schools are apple. I do know that Mac does have a mouse that can left/right click but again that\’s a mouse not a notebook.
Comment by browie -
I couldn\’t do anythink without my MacBook, I need it, I love it
Comment by Mad -
I\’ve never had a Mac – but I just put the purchase in the budget for next month – WHY? VISTA – I am TOTALLY with you on this one.
I went to an Apple store, played with a Mac Book for 20 minutes and I\’m convinced it will work just fine for me.
After more than 20 years on PC products – I\’m done. Add in the iPhone, iPod, and increased Mac use among my colleagues and there are no reasons to stay with a PC – and my latest PC laptop is only 7 months old. I don\’t care. I\’ll eat that.
Comment by ann michael -
Hello Mark,
I switched to a MacBook Pro in January and have not look back. Since I work in accounting, I was worried about the lack of business apps for the Mac. Then I installed Parallels running Windows XP. This program creates a virtual machine so you can run windows and the mac os at the same time. I just upgraded to Parallels 3.0 and it works great. You can run native Outlook in the virtual machine and drag and drop files from either operating system. You can even open files using the PC programs from the Mac desktop.
I prefer to use native Excel as opposed to the Mac Excel or the spreadsheet program in iWork. I also run Quicken and Quickbooks from the virtual machine. Printing is fine. The only thing is to configure your virtual hard drive large enough to handle the programs and files you might store there.
Good luck.
Comment by Gregory J. Amani Smith -
Nicely said Mark and good for you. I have been thinking about it myself after trying to set up my mothers PC so she can view her images in the correct resolution without stretching them as she is a portrait artist. I don\’t think I have any hair left. We discussed Mac as a potential way to go.
While I did the dead simple logo for my blog MarketSaw on a PC, I am pretty sure I could have done a better job with a Mac.
Check out http://marketsaw.blogspot.com
Comment by Jim Dorey -
Im a bit curious, though, why you decided to go with the Mac instead of downgrading back to Windows XP.
I\’m not a Mac hater or fanboy – they\’re unmatched as far as multimedia is concerned but the hardware AND software is expensive as all get-out. I typically use Linux for work, Windows for multimedia.
Could you go into more detail about your decision?
Comment by Brian Boyko -
re: exporting from Outlook folders:
Yes, it\’s a pain, but if you can move everything onto an IMAP server you might be much happier. Unlike POP3\’s store-and-then-download approach, IMAP is designed for all your email to reside on the server. You then access your email on the server as needed. This solves a lot of issues like how to be able to share your mail archives on different computers, avoiding the single-point-of-failure problem of having all your mails stuck in a single archive file (and yes I have had Outlook archive files get corrupted, so it definitely can happen), etc.
Tricky part, of course, is moving things from the outlook archives to the IMAP server. If you mostly keep your email in just a couple of folder then this is an easy, drag and drop thing. It gets tricky, though, if you filter your emails into many different folders, such as people do very often with mailing lists.
HTH
Comment by DAR -
2 finger tapping; 2 finger scrolling.
I know it\’s been said already, but I repeat it in case you\’ve missed it in the pile.
Comment by Craig -
Mark,
(1) You can set a Windows laptop to remained powered (no power-down or sleep) when you close it. This is a simple power option.
(2) Maybe Outlook is the real culprit. Suppose they made Outlook for a Mac… then you may still have a freeze problem.
(3) If you hibernate your Windows laptop then you can \”boot up\” quickly as well.
I only reboot my Windows XP laptop about once a week. It remains fully powered when you close it. When I press the power button my first option is to Hibernate. No problems.
I will admit I not ready to put up with Vista. But Windows XP will be fine for another year until Vista SP1. And by then software vendors will have written Vista software which runs more efficiently.
Im not knocking Macs, but Mark, your top three reasons for switching are not really big issues.
JMP
Comment by John Mark Parsons -
I\’m with you brother….typing this on my MacBook Pro. I\’ll *never* go back…
Don\’t look back in anger…
Comment by Jason Chesworth -
Seriously, are you retarded… I see the problem in the 2nd paragraph. \”Then I upgraded my PC to Vista.\” WHY would you upgrade to something that offers you nothing, as you said you only use outlook, office, and firefox… if you don\’t need more then that stick with what you have. This is why I still run on XP. Also you haven\’t giving M$ the approximate one year untill most of the bugs are worked out, its the same thing with XP. XP was awful during the first year and then it became the OS to have. MAC is the worst choice out there, its costs a ton and offers much less performance.
Comment by Name Goes Here -
I\’ve been using a laptop with Vista for the past few months. I find it a big step backwards from XP. The load times are a joke. The security seems to get in the way and slow down response time.
With all the negative press that Vista has been receiving, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds.
Comment by John Taras -
Entourage sucks – don\’t waste your time. It\’s a pale shadow of Outlook, and as a Mac app it\’s laughable. Importantly, MS has put a lot of effort into frustrating the use of OSX conventions in Entourage so you will inevitably be, well, frustrated by it.
Use Mail, iCal and Address Book – the resident OSX apps. They\’re very effective, and integrated into the OS. I have 5 years of emails within Mail – thousands of messages – no worries. And thousands of contacts in AB – again, no worries. iCal integrates nicely with Google Calendar, and my BB.
The **ony** reason to go with MS apps on the Mac, IMO, is because you **have** to – eg, Exchange Server.
But if not, I would say don\’t waste your time.
Comment by Rob Hyndman -
I was thinking of getting a Mac but i got an IBM laptop instead the finger print security device sold me on the IBM! lol
I\’m a sucker for hot new technology, I think IBM are releasing the waterproof laptop soon -). I think the Mac is let down because of its incompatibility to the generic pc world.
Comment by Ikedi -
Dudes 3 gig e-mail idea on google is a non starter for Mr. Cuban, because probably he doesn\’t only receive \”doc\” e-mail, but also some heavy media attachments. 3 gigs is going to be used and gone in no time. Also from not so price sensitive user prospective Mac is probably the way to go. On the other hand it is really stupid to compare windows to any Mac product, because there is like only 25 different hardware configs which mac\’s carries where is there is infinite number on of hardware configs on PC. Also add up major OS upgrade on top of that and u will get a lot of crashes. It is just too completely different systems. Mac should be compared not to average PC but with XBOX 360. Man this stuff never crashes(please don\’t bring up overheating issue) and it works like a clock and costs only 350. And don\’t tell that u don\’t have iBS on it, because if Microsoft wanted it they would have probably put all the different applications on it. But it is stupid to do because it will cannibalize their windows system.
Also our tech guru Mark has to realize that Mac is also a PC, but the more expensive one.
But anyway Mark i think Mac is a good choice for you. I am looking forward for you shelling huge $$$ to upgrade next time around. Enjoy.
Comment by Tim A. (LA kid) -
There is a utility called Sidetrack that will let you use one corner of your trackpad as a button for right clicking.
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/
This utility was popular a couple of years ago before Apple introduced their way of right clicking. Sidetrack has other options as well, like letting you use one side of the trackpad for scrolling.
Comment by Bruce McL -
Great choice in moving to a Mac. As many people have mentioned, the mouse issue is a quick fix. I\’ve used Outlook in the past, and to be honest, it is not the cream of the crop that people claim it to be. Move yourself to gMail and you\’ll be very happy, especially considering the amount of email you get. You\’ll get like 3 gigs of space, an email search feature, and all replies and responses between you and your receiver are kept in a single email, making the old replies in quotes.
And here\’s an even better thing about gMail, you can attach it directly to your domain name and use their interface. For example, the typical gMail account is \”name@gmail.com\” However, I have learned that you can set it up so you can have the email \”name@yourdomain.com\” and still use the revolutionary gmail interface. If you have multiple domains, all the email to each domain can be handled in a single inbox!
Anyways, I don\’t work for them or anything, but you can find out more at http://www.google.com/a/ and read about their Google Apps for your website.
Comment by Mac -
You have deleted my comment. Now you know that you can\’t be a good blogger if you\’re against the PC. The readers opinion counts so don\’t delete the comment if someone is against the Mac.
Comment by Blog writer -
My god, what a sad state of affairs when you are willing (forced?) to switch platforms only because one can read you mail and the other one can not.
I hope (trust) your Mac will appeal to you in many (many!) different more ways besides the trivial stuff.
Comment by Mike -
Mark,
Sorry you\’ve been having so many problems with Vista. When you upgraded your PC to Vista, did you make sure you had updated to the latest BIOS first? I\’ve seen several instances where BIOS updates AFTER the upgrade make things worse, but if you upgrade to a Vista BIOS *before8 upgrading to Vista, then things tend to run much more smoothly.
Also, if you just use Outlook and Safari, did you try reformatting yoru PC and doing a completely clean installation?
Finally, I\’m sure you get a crapload of e-mail a day, and those huge Outlook files is what\’s killing you. Are you running Hosted Exchange? if not, you might want to check out companies like ASP-One. For $10 a month you get a bunch of e-mail space, and your Outlook rules can run on the server instead of as they are downloaded.
For your e-mail archives, I recommend the \”7-6-6 rule\”: Every 7 days, archive anything older than 6 weeks into an archive folder that holds no more than 6 months of archived mail. And only have the most recent archive file loaded. If I need something older than that, I load up athat archive folder for only as long as I need it, and then close it.
Using all these tips, my Outlooks runs *a lot* faster. The next time you\’re in town when the Suns play the Mavericks, drop me a line and I\’ll see if I can\’t give your Vista install an extra boost.
Comment by Robert McLaws -
Mark, I respect you as a businessman and an awesome figure head for the NBA, I understand you don\’t claim you are any big tech head or anything, but your post about vista is just silly. So many Vista owners have great experiences. It just needs the hardware to match. Granted a lot of everyday users cant afford the latest and greatest, but you sir surely could. Can you give us some specs on the machine you had? Because I have no problems at all on my T60. It runs better then any of my macbooks, i love it so much I loaded it on one of my Macbooks.
Comment by Keegan -
I\’ve been turned onto Macs in the past few months, especially after the store I work for (Best Buy) finally got an Apple Store put into our location.
Truth be told, I probably won\’t go away from using a PC because I\’m so used to it, but never say never.
Comment by Sean -
I had to quit Macs in the early \’90s when Apple was totally messed up.
I returned in 2004 with gigs (12 years\’ worth) of Outlook email archives. It was a trivial task to accurately import them into Thunderbird on my Windows PC. Then, it was an equally trivial task to accurately transfer those mail files to the corresponding Thunderbird directory on my Mac. All came across intact.
I\’ve retained an old Windows laptop for occasional travel use, and I wouldn\’t go back to using Outlook on that computer if you paid me.
As for Entourage on the Mac? I\’d kill myself first.
Thunderbird is absolutely excellent for all professional and personal needs. And the ease of moving mail files to any other machine (*nix, Mac, or Window) demonstrates how all software should work.
Comment by Kuahine -
Well, there are as we all know split opinions about this. There are ups and downs for PC and for Mac alike. It\’s all a mater of getting use to one or the other. The Mac person will never switch to PC and viceversa.
My opinion as a PC user (for all of my life): will NEVER switch to a Mac.
Comment by Blog writer -
I\’ve been contemplating a Mac since they switched over to Intel processors, Apple makes such nice hardware! The only reservation I have is that one of the applications I use is not available for the Mac, which is SolidWorks. I Suppose I could install WinXP on a Mac also. Maybe my next laptop, which I will be due for in about a year, will be a Mac
But actually I\’m pretty happy with my PC experience. I have a Gateway desktop that is now almost 6 years old. It is running Windows 2000. I use it as my main desktop machine and as a home server so it is up 24/7. I generally only re-boot it when I am forced to by Windows updates, which happens about once a month. I can not recall the last time I had a freeze requiring re-boot or a blue screen. I have a Dell laptop running Win2K. I\’ve had it for 1.5 years now and can only recall one or two blue screens in the entire time I\’ve owned it. I have had to reboot a hand full of timed due to applications hanging the machine, specifically web pages launching java or flash apps in Firefox that for some reason consume the entire processor, or large acrobat downloads in broswer windows that hang the browser. I also had a few hangs with Adobe Lightroom Beta, but it has been quite stable since V1.0.
I also use a Dell desktop with Win2K at work. It is very stable also. Only misbehaving apps such as the antiquated Novel client my company uses and Solidworks 3D Solid Modeling package have been able to hang this machine in the past ~three years I\’ve had it.
I just placed an order for a new Gateway quad core machine. I specifically ordered it with XP Pro and not Vista as I\’ve read about waaay too many issues with Vista. This machine will replace my 6yo desktop machine.
I have not looked into whether this is doable or not, but wouldn\’t it be cool to be able to run Mac OSX on a PC, after all they use the same processors and basically the same architecture, accept for the bios.
Comment by JeffH -
Mark,
Get the Logitech Marble USB mouse and it does have a right-click for use with the Mac.
Also, sounds like you\’re storing more email than you need to. Take a look at my tutorial on creating an off-site email archives that is searchable. That way you can feel free to delete as much as you want from your computer, knowing that everything you send and receive is archived if you need to refer to it, but you keep your email program database file lean and mean so it runs fast with few problems or clogs.
http://www.iadam.org/
Finally, others have mentioned it, but Entourage is indeed a good program comparable to Outlook. Definitely worth exploring.
Good luck,
AB
Comment by Adam Boettiger -
Mark:
Regarding email. Here\’s my emailing set-up:
1. A Google Apps private domain email account.
2. A dot Mac email account.
3. I created a POP3 account within Apple Mail for my Google Apps email. I then downloaded 1,400 archived emails into Apple Mail.
4. I then went into my Settings for Google Apps email and turned-off POP3 access and initiated Forwarding of my email directly to my dot Mac email address. I archive all emails in Google Apps.
5. In my Apple Mail program I get an error icon saying that the server for Google Apps can\’t be reached. It doesn\’t matter because all my email goes into my dot Mac Inbox. By leaving my Google Apps email box \”active\” I now have the option of using that private email address as a return address when I write a new email (Hey Apple, please make the choice of Return Address a regular option).
6. I do not use my dot Mac email address actively.
7. I also have a @gmail.com email for any time I need to give an email out for signing-up for a service. This gmail account also forwards to my dot Mac Inbox within Apple Mail.
8. By changing the View settings for the columns displayed inside Apple Mail you can put the To column in so that you can see which email account each email is from.
9. I now have an IMAP email service.
10. Perhaps the best part of using Apple Mail is that I can with a few clicks easily add names/emails from within Apple Mail to my Apple Address application.
Good luck!
Comment by Timothy Post -
Mark, you are certainly too smart, and too well steeped in your own technical expertise for anyone to try and give you the typical Mac is better spiel, but all I can say is that the more you use it, and the more you extend your tool set further into the creative realm, the more you will bond with your Macbook in ways that could never be possible with a PC. I\’ve been a longtime enthusiastic Mac user, and never take debate that Mac or PC is better, especially since since the only thing that matters is how productive and happy the user is, but it certainly makes me smile to read your post.
Comment by Michael Longfellow -
Mark,
I have a new HD video camera arriving tomorrow and would love to sit down with you and ask you some questions about the experience. For instance, did you troubleshoot the issues on your previous PC yourself, have a staffer do it, or what? Did you bring in a trusted IT Pro or Partner to help figure out the issues? Im just curious how much time was spent trying to analyze the issues that led to your frustration with the PC and operating system. I would also like to know your thoughts on what we are doing right and wrong in regards to Windows Vista and the world of personal computing.
I would also like to record what you like about the MacBook, OS X, and what applications you use. Let me know if you are interested.
I would also be interested in interviewing other people on the same subject. I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex so feel free to contact me off my blog if you are interested. I believe Marks blog links my name to my blog.
Best regards,
Keith Combs
Microsoft
Comment by Keith Combs -
The right click thing\’s been covered. As for the e-mail issue, my solution\’s been to use IMAP and leave everything on the server. I can run any e-mail program I want, on any machine I want, without worrying about exporting or importing files.
Comment by Colin Morton -
If you can just buy a 3rd party mouse than theres no real problem. My only real concerns about buying a mac are 1. How easy is it to learn for someone who has used windows all their life? 2. Whats their customer service like? After some disappointing experiences with Dell I find good customer service extremely important. (they used to be great now there as lousy as everyone else, IMO) My only other real problem is that they\’re more expensive than other pc\’s but if there are fewer hassles that are easier to relieve than i may make the switch in the coming months.
Comment by j -
All my powerBook freezes seem to be related to an interrupted sleep state. For example, closing the lid, remembering something, then opening it again. Sometimes I then get a freeze.
Usually when I close it again and wait for the sleep light to start breathing, I can then open it up and it wakes normally. Took me some months to figure this out.
Comment by Dennis Chamberlin -
Don\’t listen to what they say…Mac does have a right click. When you are clicking on something, just hold \”ctrl\” and click on something. All of your right click options will be there!
Comment by Jesse Moffat -
I agree with most of that… a couple of annoyances for me include:
Difficulty in maximising windows – I like windows to take up the full screen and I like to alt-tab between them. I HATE accidentally clicking outside a window when I want to scroll it.
The right click – why can\’t you just give me two buttons? The two fingers on trackpad for MBP is annoying, and the right mouse click on Mighty Mouse is not 100% accurate. Also, Mighty Mouse middle mouse button hurts after awhile 🙂
Best thing – all the nice efficient apps.
Comment by James -
Lost a lot cred with that article Mark.
Comment by Wes -
I actually work on both Mac and PC and can verify that Mac is a far superior product. I don\’t think I\’ve ever heard an argument the other way around. There must be some truth to the superiority of the Mac way.
Comment by Bob Wegener -
Everybody has shared (or is sharing) your experience with Windows based PC\’s and slowly everybody will see the light as well, and switch to a Mac. You did exaggerate on the loading time for Mac OS X compared to a Windows product………you need to eliminate one zero (1/100000000)—much more accurate). A sign of good engineering. Sorry Mr. Balmer!
Comment by Nick -
Hello Mr. Cuban,
I was curious if you\’d be using your MAC to make any deals to get a second season of The Black Donnellys put together to get some new episodes to put on my new Fav. station HDnet.
Thanks,
Jacob
Comment by Jacob -
Hey Mark, Good to see you going on the light side of things for a blog or so. Im not a comp wiz by any means but never ever ever in my life have I seen an industry that is capable of bamboozling people into accepting the reply \” Turn it off and reboot it, It\’ll be ok then.\” I mean WTF!!!!? Can you imagine going to your fridge that you spent the same kind of money on and the food be warm and the manufacturer tell you that and you say \”Oh Ok, why didnt I think of that? Thanks for the tip.\” Or with your giant HDTV if it just goes like blank or anything along those lines. I have to say that the PC industry has the market cornered on BS when it comes to explaining or rectifying problems. Sure hope that Orange Juice is cold in the morning. Thanks for the thoughts
Comment by Frankie from Lawnside -
Mark, have you tried going into the trackpad preferences and turning on the 2 finger tap = right click option? It took me a few days to get used to, and now I\’m pissed when I use a non Mac laptop and try to right click that way.
I do like apple\’s \’mail\’ application but I understand that it\’s not outlook even though I never truly cared for outlook.
Comment by James Miller -
Bulletproof advice for any serious Outlook user thinking about switching to Mac from Windows:
1) Do it. You\’ll be fine.
2) DO NOT USE ENTOURAGE. Never ever ever. Anybody who says Entourage works well is not a serious Outlook user.
3) If you must use Outlook, as so many of must, for compatibility with the enterprise, you should install XP under Parallels, and run Outlook there. Does it work well? No. It works the same as on your Windows box, which is rather badly, but it\’s still better than living with Windows year-round.
Comment by foogert -
I ditched Entourage for Mozilla Thunderbird. It\’s not Outlook, but it is MUCH better than the alternative. There\’s even a calendering plug in called Lightning that makes Thunderbird even closer to being a complete Outlook replacement. Only problem is the lack of good synch support for iPhones or other smartphones.
Also, as noted above, an external 2-button mouse works just fine for right-click. I have a cheap Kensington that I prefer to the Mighty Mouse.
Comment by rslux -
More and more I have been reading these stories. Even some of the biggest MS supporters that blog have purchased Mac\’s over the past year and a half. The simple fact is Apple makes the best PC\’s on the market. I do have both in my home as my wife refuses to switch from her Tablet PC. Even have Vista loaded on one. I like most of what I see but the driver issues keep me from upgrading all my PC\’s. As I built this machine myself. I just can not believe MS and what they have done with Vista they need to publicly get rid of some people to make a point.
On a side note as a fellow Dallas area resident, I wanted to say hey neighbor.
Comment by Corey McLaughlin -
More and more I have been reading these stories. Even some of the biggest MS supporters that blog have purchased Mac\’s over the past year and a half. The simple fact is Apple makes the best PC\’s on the market. I do have both in my home as my wife refuses to switch from her Tablet PC. Even have Vista loaded on one. I like most of what I see but the driver issues keep me from upgrading all my PC\’s. As I built this machine myself. I just can not believe MS and what they have done with Vista they need to publicly get rid of some people to make a point.
On a side note as a fellow Dallas area resident, I wanted to say hey neighbor.
Comment by Corey McLaughlin -
My solution to Vistaitis has been to keep XP and not upgrade, which is cheaper than Macification. But I also have an odd prejudice against Macs. I don\’t understand why, because they have been better machines for some time and I have naively waited for PCs to catch up.
PS – you should test out Yahoo Mash – I\’d love to hear your take on how the Social Network space might shake out.
Comment by Joe Duck -
I had a similar experience about 2 years ago and now can\’t stand even testing out web designd on a PC.
With email, I actually found that MS Outlook couldn\’t handle it all so I had all these unused archives from years ago. On the Mac I was able to import ALL of my email from 15 years using Emailchemy and have access to all this stuff I had forgotten existed.
Apple Mail is an excellent program as well.
Comment by Narendra -
Hey Mark – There is a very easy way to right click on the macbook. The easiest way I found is you can set the trackpad to right click when you have 2 fingers on the trackpad. You can also set it to scroll windows when you use 2 fingers moving side-to-side or top-to-bottom. I actually find this method much better than any pc laptop i have used. I am a long time pc usr and still use a windows machie everyday – the problem is that I look forward to shutting it down each day so I can go home and use my mac. btw – these settings can be found in system preferences – keyboard and mouse – trackpad.
Comment by chris -
I think microsoft adds these problems on purpose to make money selling the solution. Macs are pretty much problem free.
Comment by Kevin -
The fact that mac users are so smug.
Nice entry though, especially the title. Holy cow, MC.
Comment by Chris Johnson -
Entourage is pretty good, especially if you\’re using Exchange as your mail server, but not perfect. Hopefully Office 08 will offer a better alternative.
As for the right mouse button. I switched to a Mac a few years ago and couldn\’t ever imagine going back, but having the right click disabled by default is very lame, as is the fact that the single mouse button is so big on the MacBook — and pro — but there\’s no right click button. Personally I use the tap to click anyways, but still, it\’d be nice if I didn\’t have to hear everyone complain — including my wife.
Comment by Ben Drawbaugh -
I guess I get to be the resident linux geek, but to me that\’s the best solution to solving the Windows mess without spending an arm and a leg on a Mac (which, of course, is not a problem at all for you). I\’m not anti-Microsoft by any means, I\’m not a fanboy, but it\’s become entirely too difficult to run a Windows system \”cleanly\”. I do still have to use it for work, though, because of Oracle, and Outlook is a heck of a program. At home I use Evolution and it\’s a fairly nice clone. It\’s not as polished as Outlook, but then again I don\’t have 10 years worth of email to worry about.
Comment by Matthew -
Yeah, I echo the sentiments above. But also, if you don\’t want to use Entourage, Mail is way better anyways. I went Mac about 5 years ago and got a Powerbook G4. I\’m still using it and it runs like a champ. My wife and I have an ongoing joke of how many PC\’s we will run through while having one Mac. We have had some given to us, some almost brand new, all newer than my Mac though and we are on our third PC. Unless someone develops something better than a Mac which is highly unlikely in the near future, I\’ll be a Mac guy for life.
P. S. I also like right click\’s on the mouse, thank goodness Steve Job\’s conceded a small bit of his pride and got a right click mouse rocking. But don\’t tell him, I\’ve had a Microsoft mouse for 5 years now (the longest running Microsoft product I have that works, but I did get it before the right click apple mouse came out) Peace.
Comment by Ross Middleton -
Mark, get a two-button mouse. I use the Logitech bluetooth two-button mouse. It \”just works.\” Nothing to it. http://tinyurl.com/3xagcl
Comment by Dave Winer -
Uhh, doesn\’t the Mac Mighty Mouse detect right and left clicks?
http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/
and logitech etc make third party two-button Mac mice… for a while now.
I use a logitech deal that has like 5 buttons you can preset.. Hope that addresses issue #2
Comment by Michael Byrne -
I\’m sure HP will enjoy reading this post after they used you in their commerical ; ) Although your issue is with Vista so they shouldn\’t be too miffed.
Comment by Mason -
Once you go Mac, you never go bac. (hmmm…not an entirely bad slogan!)
Nice call, Mark. Have been a Mac guy myself for about the last half decade or so, and there is indeed no going back. Am typing on a G$ Powerbook as we speak, andd though i appreciate the superior quality, would never consider myself an Apple fanboy either.
Don\’t even own an iPod.
But I just wanted to take a sec to talk quickly about remarkable things to tell your grandkids, as you mentioned in your Dancing w/Stars/Meaning of Life commentary…
1) Imagine telling \’em about the World Series titles you won for your homwtown team, which you successfully resurrected and turned into a competitor in a single off-season. Imagine telling \’em about going to-to-toe with Steinbrenner, and getting the best of him and him $200 million squad. That\’s a tory.
And 2) Imagine telling em\’ how you helped mix up the American politcial landscape in what turned out to be the most critical election of any of our lifetimes–\’08… Or how you helped open the eyes of the American populace and made helped make sure we gave it our best shot with our best candidates. That\’d be a nice change, huh?
Except, when it was all said & done, you wouldn\’t have to tell your kids about that… They\’d read it in their history books
Later m. Take er easy in TX.
DS
p.s. saw HDNet lampooned on SNL last nite… First sign that they\’re a little concerned, I\’d say…
Comment by Dixon -
It seems I was a little late to the party during the typing of my response, haha. At least you can verify by the number of comments, the two-finger-tap is convenient and seamless.
Just to clarify Oliver Dueck\’s suggestion on the e-mail issue: Unless something has changed extremely recently, Entourage is unable to natively read Outlook Personal Folder files and cannot read archived emails without first re-importing them back into the main database, so you would still be stuck with the same predicament you have now.
Comment by Amin Issa -
I love my macbook pro. I haven\’t rebooted in over 30 days and everything is working great!
Comment by Mitch -
Sir, there is an option on MacBooks (and MacBook Pros) which allows you to access a \”right-click\” menu by simply tapping on your trackpad with two fingers, rather than one. If it is not currently enabled for you, click on the Apple Logo in the top left area of your screen, followed by a click on System Preferences. Within that menu is an area for your Keyboard & Mouse options. Head on within that, and there should be a multitude of various options for your trackpad. As my laptop is currently not with me, I cannot relay the exact wording of the options, but there should be a checkbox for an option which allows for right-click via two-finger-tap. Look around within the trackpad options while you\’re there, as you\’ll see a fairly complete listing of various efficient button combinations for a variety of helpful actions, one of which being the ability to zoom in on an area of your screen.
Thought I\’d at least alleviate one of your issues, since I knew an intuitive answer. As for your e-mail issue…Eesh. No simple solutions there, if the whole importing process is out of the question.
Comment by Amin Issa -
I can\’t speak to Outlook, but I just use a wireless 2-button mouse with my laptop (and desktops for that matter). It\’s a little extra money but well worth it.
Comment by Collin Brooke -
The Mighty Mouse has right click if you want to use a USB mouse or the wireless Bluetooth version; if you don\’t want to use an external mouse, use the two-finger click on the trackpad; Entourage is closest to Outlook equivalent, and it\’s not hard to transfer your mail over – lots of programs and websites, etc. that walk you through it. I would never buy a PC again as it stands right now…
Comment by Graham Brown -
Hi Mark: Love the blog, and happy to hear about your \”Mac-quisition.\” I echo the comments about Entourage – lots more coming on that front with the next version of Office for Mac (January 2008).
Also, I use a Logitech MX Revolution mouse at work. It\’s wireless, and has a little USB plugin for the \”receiver\” end of the device. Hides nicely behind my Apple Cinema display. I mention this because it has multiple buttons, and they may to the Mac right-click. All in all, I like it better than Apple\’s Mighty Mouse.
Comment by Steve Baranski -
You can right-click on a MacBook–it\’s just disabled by default. To enable it, go to the \”System Preferences,\” and then \”Keyboard & Mouse.\” Click on the \”Trackpad\” button and check the box for the \”Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click.\” So then it\’s tapping with one finger for left click, and two fingers for right click.. After a day it will be second nature. (And if you use an external mouse, then the right-click on the mouse works just like normal.)
Comment by Brian Madden -
Two comments:
1. The Outlook equivalent on the Mac is Entourage, and it is part of the Mac version of Microsoft Office. You should be able to move all your email over to it relatively easily.
2. As for the \”lack of right click\” and there being no easy workarounds, that\’s not even close to being true. The two finger tap method is very simple, especially if you are already used to two finger scrolling.
Comment by Oliver Dueck -
Macs are pretty sweet…haven\’t owned one myself but plan on it soon. Little pricey but probably worth it.
Comment by Electronics Reviews -