Apple (continued)

I am permanently cross platform.  I can't operate solely in the Windows world and I can't operate solely in the Apple world. 

But I love Apple.  I've written that before a few times.

I have migrated from one windows computer to another windows computer at least ten times in my life, probably a few more than that.  It has always sucked. I am procrastinating getting off my current thinkpad for that exact reason.

Well the migrating experience doesn't suck with a Mac.

Jessica got a new powerbook to replace her five year old iMac this weekend. Yesterday we opened up her new powerbook and got ready to do the conversion of five years of her life onto the new machine.  I was dreading the experience.

About the third screen on the new computer was a suggestion that we connect the old Mac to the new Mac with a firewire cable.  Fortunately I had one in the basement and we did that.

Three hours later, after the birthday dinner, her new powerbook looked just like her old iMac and had everything on it.

Wow!

I love Apple.

Comments

[Bryan William Jones]

Now, this very thing happened to a colleague of mine. He had long been a Windows user and decided to replace his Windows laptop with a Powerbook about two years ago. The Powerbook had proved to be tremendously productive and traveled the world with him allowing a level of productivity not possible with his old Windows laptop. Well, the experience was so successful, he decided to replace his Windows desktop with a new dual G5 and was dreading the prospect of moving many gigabytes of data, a great number of individual licensed applications, emails that are critical for his work collected over those two years, bookmarks for his browser, etc....etc...etc.... He called me up and asked if there were any way to ease the migration. When I simply said "wait for the prompt and plug in your laptop to the desktop and wait" he was incredulous. "But I would like to transfer all this stuff". I said "yes, just follow the prompt". The experience was so seamless that he has since replaced his Windows machines at home with Macs and has become quite the advocate for the platform.

This is the sort of experience one wonders about. Why has not Microsoft has thought about migration? Why is not this feature part of Windows? Why is it that Apple, and not Microsoft historically have appeared to be actually thinking about how people use and interface with their computers? It appears that Microsoft has let Apple perform much of the human interface work while they simply copy (rather badly in some cases) the innovations of Apple? Like you, my work is cross platform, but it is moving more and more towards OS X because of the level of productivity the platform offers. Moments like this when you realize that you are not going to spend an entire day (or two) performing a task that takes in reality perhaps an hour or two are the times you really appreciate the thought and effort that go into a properly engineered product. Most of these moments with computers and realized productivity have been experienced with products from Apple Computer.

[Chris Robison]

Agreed 100%. As I'm reading this, I'm sitting in my favorite bar in the Village before it gets too busy with football fans.

I'm on wireless (on my work PC). But not 5 minutes before reading this post, had helped my favorite bartender configure her new iBook 14". She asked me what I would get and I told her that I used a PC for work but much preferred the Apple PowerBook for home use. For her needs, the Apple will be a better machine that she can more easily support. Plus, Apple beats everyone on both form factor and interface design. You may pay a bit more out of the box but I think that the quality and value more than justify the cost for home users.

At work we all use PC laptops but if you were to catch us talking about computers, innovation, or what we are into personally, Apple is often at the center of the discussion. We all think that they are going to continue to move into packaged media appliances and will lead the way in centrally managing home media (whatever that may mean but think iTV, music, Tivo, on-demand cable, etc. rolled into one sleek interface).

Thoughts?

--chris

[matt shobe]

i, like fred, keep my feet in both worlds even though my primary day-to-day machine is a powerbook g4. i still have to make sure my website work is Windows browser-compatible, so i keep a WinXP machine handy. i've been an apple customer since the Mac SE/20 days, and although i've drifted away, i've always come back to that peerless user experience. the doggone things remain irresistable to me.

that said, my four-year-old Thinkpad T20 'feels' every bit as fast as this 9-month old G4. i fear a lot of my computing horsepower goes into keeping the glass clean and shiny rather than in spellchecking, rendering, and generally moving my data about. i've got 768MB of memory, so the usual excuses shouldn't apply. however, i haven't rebooted involuntarily since August. tradeoffs, indeed.

[André DiBiagio]

The feature you are discussing has been available from Microsoft since their release of Xp. It is called "File and Settings Transfer Wizard" and works quite well. Unfortunately MS has buried it about 3 levels below the start menu. This might explain its relative obscurity.

For users of MS Office there is a similar tool available that transfers office settings, custom word lists etc.

On to Music: Some great choices listed on your blog Fred. As a Norwegian I was pleased to see Sondre Lerche turn up on your heavy rotation list. Can I make another Scandinavian suggestion? Kent with "Vapen & Ammunition". A few years old but I think you might enjoy it.

Cheers.

[jackson]

As many well know, I'm not very tech savy, but I love Mac, probably beacuse of that, it rarely makes me feel stupid, and I can usually manage what I need to do without calling the IT dept.

[jackson]

As many well know, I'm not very tech savy, but I love Mac, probably beacuse of that, it rarely makes me feel stupid, and I can usually manage what I need to do without calling the IT dept.