A DEPLORABLE/BEAUTIFUL MAC TRANSITION

Editor's Note: Please enjoy this guest post from a dear friend of D/B. It's a great analysis of his recent transition from PC to Mac, and a must-read for anyone considering a similar switch. Comments/thoughts are encouraged!

My advice to anyone considering dumping your PC for a Mac: Do it, but be ready for a fight. I recently installed an iMac and a MacBook Pro at home to replace two aging Dells running Windows XP. I also replaced an Ethernet network with a wireless network, added external storage, and finally implemented a decent backup solution. Software-wise, I moved an iTunes library; translated Outlook mail, contacts, and calendars; and reestablished DVD ripping and burning, photo management, Microsoft Office, Quicken, and amateur movie making.

Let’s start with the beautiful. My expectation was that I could take my new Macs out of the box and make them work. That promise was mostly true. I was up and running on the Internet in about 20 minutes. If I had no computer experience at all, though, I’m not sure I could have done it on my own. There’s a fair amount of configuring to do with a new wireless network (password, permissions, file sharing, user accounts). The hardware worked well, and Airport immediately found my new wireless network (even though my router wasn’t an Apple product), but only because I already knew how to hook up my cable modem to my router.

Mac OS X is also beautiful. I was brought up on Windows, starting with the original release, and all the way through Vista (on my work computer). I am sick of Windows. I’m tired of having to configure everything. It seemed as if I spent more of my time in Control Panel than I did in Word. Typical situation: No sound? Control Panel…Sounds…oops, for some reason, it’s not recognizing my sound card. OK, think, think. Control Panel…Hardware…Device Manager…Drivers. Arrrggh! Drivers. I hate drivers. Those little black box programs that you have to have and you don’t even know why. Maybe you have the driver, but it’s not up to date. Without you knowing it, your hardware manufacturer fixed a bunch of things, but you had no idea. Don’t even get me started about drivers.

Mac OS X is not driverless; in fact, I had to use an installation CD to get my Bluetooth printer to work, even though I bought the printer on the Apple website. That was a little disappointing, and it still won’t scan (even though it prints and copies fine). Side note: I chose to use Bluetooth to print (instead of using the wireless network) because my printer and my wireless router are in two different rooms. Part of the reason I moved to a Mac is that I needed to remove the labyrinth of cables and power cords that was devouring the floor under my workspace. With Bluetooth mice and keyboards and a wireless network, not to mention the fact that the iMac doesn’t have a box (just a screen with the components built in), and the MacBook Pro also replaced a box, we cleared out the whole mess, and now hardware maintenance is MUCH easier.

The beauty of the Mac user interface was a key selling point for me. The dock beats the icons off the Start Menu. Spotlight eliminates the need to remember which folder your icons are in (yes, Vista has a new search feature on the Start Menu, which is similarly helpful). Columned file browsing is much easier to navigate (although I miss the “up one file level” button), and Cover Flow is very cool.

I felt a little lost for a couple of weeks (for example, Delete on a Mac equals Backspace on a PC; you have to press two keys to get PC-style Delete—a quick Google search educated me), but so far it’s worth it.

The transition from Outlook was surprisingly easy. The catch here is that you can’t just move your .pst file to the Mac and then translate it there. Instead you have to use a program (Outlook2Mac: $10 and completely worth it) to translate your mail, contact, and calendar files on the PC, then move them to the Mac. It helps if you have an external hard drive to move the files because they probably will be pretty large. Outlook2Mac quickly translates all the folders (even the Deleted Items folder), or you can select which ones you want translated. When you get them on the Mac, Mail brings them in flawlessly.

Now for the Deplorable. Ugh. Let’s start with Parallels. I have PC software that you can’t get on a Mac. A big selling point of the Mac is that you can run Windows on a Mac in two ways: at start up (as the exclusive operating system in use at a time) or alongside Mac OS X in a separate window. “Great!”, I thought. I bought my copy of Parallels, partitioned my hard drive, and proceeded to install my copy of Windows from the CDs that came with my Dell seven years ago. That last part is important: seven years ago. You can only install Windows on a Mac if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 on CD. Some website somewhere (thank you, Google) said you cannot install SP 1 on your Mac, then upgrade to SP2 over the Internet. You have to have it on CD, which I don’t. So I was faced with buying a brand new version of Vista just so I could use Windows on my Mac. That sort of defeats the purpose, so I bailed on my Windows software and returned Parallels.

My Parallels odyssey was not over, though. I had already started to install Windows before hitting an error message and researching the problem. In trying to resolve the error message, I inadvertently overwrote Mac OS X. Probably my fault, but in my defense, the interface was not as intuitive as you might expect from a Mac. I wouldn’t intentionally overwrite the operating system. Nevertheless, that’s what happened, so I had to reinstall Mac OS X on the iMac. Easier said than done. Mac aficionados probably know the keys you have to hold down to boot from a CD, but I didn’t. Thankfully, I had another computer that enabled me to look it up on the Googlenets.

On to the software transition. When you move an iTunes library, it’s not enough to move the music files if you want to keep your ratings and play counts. There are hundreds of webpages devoted to this, and in the end, I have no idea what I did right. I was at the point where I was manually searching and replacing file locations in the iMusic Library file (a text file that maintains all your metadata [ratings, play counts, and file locations]). When you change the location of your library, you have to “consolidate” your library by clicking Consolidate Library option on the menu so that your metadata file gets updated with the new file locations. If you have a large music library, it can take an hour or more. When seven consolidations failed, I started trying things at random. I don’t know what worked, but I have my playlists, counts, and ratings. However, I lost some tracks randomly. I don’t yet know how many or which ones, but at least two complete albums were missing. I found out later they were still on my hard drive, but not in my iTunes library.

More deplorable stuff: If you’re a Quicken user, you’re screwed. There are no two ways about it. Intuit provides a very detailed set of instructions, but even they warn you that there will be problems and that there are 14 components that cannot be transferred (scheduled transactions, loan setups, ESOP plan accounts, and several others). First you have to make sure all of your accounts have fewer than 15 characters. Then you have to export each set of data separately (export your accounts, then your categories, then your transactions, etc.). I dutifully purchased Quicken for Mac and followed the instructions to a T. The result? Total garbage. My checking account showed a balance of $900,000, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. Every account balance was off. Quicken warns you that you may find some transactions will move into other accounts, but there’s no way to tell which ones. If you relish the idea of re-reconciling multiple accounts over multiple months, then you’ll have a ball. I gave up 13 years of Quicken data and started from scratch. Parallels was my Plan B in case the Quicken transition didn’t work. I didn’t have a Plan C, so I said goodbye to my Quicken history. That was painful.

More deplorable, in brief:

1. You can’t just plug in a Windows-formatted external hard drive to a Mac. You may need a program to read NTFS-formatted drives. My hard drive issue was compounded by having one drive fail, and then discovering that my new wireless router did not have a USB port to allow me to plug in my external HD and use it for wireless backups. Got a new wireless router with external storage (not Time Capsule), but Time Machine wouldn’t recognize it. I gave up and went to Time Capsule, which is fantastic, but extremely SLOW in file transfers (wireless Internet seems to be sufficiently fast).

2. DVD back-up works well, but it took a while to figure it out, and I had to buy a program (Popcorn), whereas all the Windows tools were free downloads. Suggestions: MacTheRipper (free download) replaces Windows’ RipIt4Me and DVD Shrink for ripping and shrinking, and Popcorn ($40) replaces Image Burn.

It’s been three months since my transition, so I’ve had some time to get used to Mac OS X. I’m not as lost as I was. I still feel like I’ve only found about half of the features and hidden tricks. Despite all the headaches and data loss, I’m glad I did it. I’m just glad I never have to do it again.