The case against switching to a Mac

• Tags:
• OSX,
• Windows,
• PC,
• Mac

Rafe Needleman CNET News

Published: 13 Jan 2009 15:41 GMT

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...images manually into its library is a big drag on my workflow. Picasa simply adds new images on your hard disk when you fire up the program.

The problem with iPhoto is not just a hiccup caused by apps differing between the two platforms. In this case, the primary app to accomplish a task on the new platform is inferior to the old one. I'm waiting for a better solution.

Music
I have not even tried to move my iTunes library from my PC to the Mac. The instructions scare me. And that's ridiculous. It's the same program on both platforms — the data should be easy to move.

Other gripes
It seems every day one of us finds something on the Mac that doesn't work as it is supposed to. My work VPN application, Aventail, for example, won't reconnect to the company private network if the laptop wakes from sleep, until I reboot my Mac. This problem only occurs on some LANs, such as the one at my house. And Skype auto-starts on a Mac even if you ask it not to. To disable this, I had to do a Google search to find the secret to disabling auto-start in an OS X dialogue box. There's no way to correct this behaviour in Skype itself.

We found it very difficult to print photos on our HP inkjet printer. The device came with support for OS X, but to print to the photo tray from within iPhoto, we have to go three levels into an obscure and sadistically-designed dialogue box every time. On the PC, photos are printed on the right paper automatically.

Also, in our house we have an HP Media Smart Server, a solid backup device. Apple's Time Machine backup app won't back up over the network to this or any other non-Apple network storage product. Fortunately, an upcoming update to the HP software will allow most Time Machine functionality to run over the network on the HP. But until it arrives, we're backing up to local USB hard drives.

Things don't "just work", as the Apple ads say they do.

Web apps — the great equalisers
One thing that makes switching easier today than it has been in the past: web apps and cross-platform products. If you use Google apps such as Gmail or Google Docs, the Mac is great. Using my favourite Twitter apps, Twhirl and Tweetdeck, was easy, since they are AIR apps, and AIR runs on Mac and Windows.

My favourite note-taking app, Evernote, is cross-platform too and, after I installed, it automatically downloaded all my notes from the cloud. I also like being able to sync my data files across my Mac and my desktop PC using Microsoft's free Live Sync. Apple's competitor, Mobile Me, costs $99 a year.

On the other hand, Office 2008 for the Mac bears little resemblance to Office 2007 for Windows. I've just got used to the new Windows version of Word and Excel. Now I have to learn a new suite for the Mac?

Back to Windows
There is one thing I really do like about my new MacBook: it is a good laptop for running Vista, using Boot Camp, even if it is a little expensive for that purpose considering its specs. But after two weeks of resisting, I am dropping back to Vista on my MacBook, at least during this critical week, when I will be covering both MacWorld and CES and will have no patience for a computer that gets in my way and apps that don't work the way they should.

Vista and XP also run inside Mac OS X using virtualisation apps such as VMware Fusion, which I have tried and find amazing — but a bit slow for production work. Upgrading my MacBook's memory may help performance, and I plan to try that.

I still want to give myself more time to get comfortable with the Mac, but I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stand apps that don't work, such as Aventail or HP's printer drivers, or an email product that makes me less productive than Outlook.

If I were starting from scratch and buying my first computer, or if neither I nor my wife worked for companies with entrenched non-Mac-friendly email systems, I might be singing a different song.

But we're not school kids. We are grownups with serious amounts of technological baggage. The Mac has not been treating us well as we've tried to switch.

Credit: Switcher's lament: The case against Mac from CNET News

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