I’ve been motivated to write this blog article as I’ve helped a number of people who have switched to Mac in the past 12 months (and more than a few who’ve gotten iPhones).

When you switch to the Mac, particularly if you are still working in a MS Windows centric office environment, you are in for a period of readjustment as you get used to your new OS and start to slip the chains of Microsoft and their way of working.

There are two levels of slipping the chain, the first is the lowest risk but the least change, that is, you can simply keep running Windows and your native Windows applications.

You can do this with a product like VMWare Fusion . You’ll need your original Windows software, but you can run your Windows Office apps within your OS X environment pretty seamlessly.

The bad news is that I think if you want to be truly productive in a Windows centric office environment, then you probably need to stop here and stick with Windows. I think its fare to say that most of the Windows compatibility aspects of OS X software are good enough for casual work but start to struggle when things get complex.

Now I’ve definitely tried to go all Mac, I own iWork 08 and I truly have tried to use it to open and work with MS Office documents - but I think it’s fair to say that it doesn’t cope well with complex Word templates or Excel spreadsheets like that 150 page RFP document or that complex Excel statistical worksheet.

The obvious alternative is the Mac version of MS Office. It’s much better with compatibility (excluding VBA) - but still has its own flaws, particularly in the area of reliability and performance. It saddens me that MS Word under Windows under VMWare under OS runs faster and more reliably that MS Office on the Mac!

It’s not a total loss, I use it day by day and it does work well most of the time, but it definitely could be improved.

Now, if you really want to make the jump and go entire Mac native, then you can do that too, and the good news is that if you avoid the need to stay compatible with your Windows based colleagues you have some excellent choices available to you.

1. MS Office Replacement iWork 08

2. Visio Replacement - OmniGraffle ($99 to $199)

This is the closest thing to Visio on the Mac, its quite a good application and will let you work with Visio diagrams. Its commercial, but like most Mac software, reasonably priced.  

1. MS Project replacement - Merlin ($225)

This replaced MS Project, again its commercial, but compared to the…. um….. crap that is MS Project, I found it much more usable and logical. Again, its reasonably priced

1. MS OneNote replacement Evernote (Free!)

This is available on Windows and Mac (And iPhone), for note taking and screenshots its great for keeping things in Sync across your devices. The ‘Save PDF to Evernote’ feature that it makes available on the Mac is good for sending those travel booking receipts to your iPhone.

1. Single Sign-on 1Password ($29.95)

With 1Password you can actually do what you should have been doing all along - keep your passwords complexly long and unguessable and different from site to site, 1Password makes this a breeze

1. What came with your Mac.

Perhaps, like me, years of bundled crap on your Windows Machine has biased you against installed software, but the Mac stuff is ‘All Stuff, No Fluff’.

Here are the highlights:

iCal, particularly combined with MobileMe and an iPhone is great for appointments.

Address Book, spend some time keeping it organized and up to date. With an iPhone it will work with iPhone Maps, Mail, SMSing, and of course making calls. You can also do funky things like organize people into groups in your Address Book and then set up mail filters to organize your mail filing according to groups. Combined with Mobile Me you get it to and from your iPhone

Mail, you should look into smart folders to change the way you read mail - I have made Smart folders my primary way of reading my email as it arrives and have put the actual mailboxes further down the control

Friday, October 17th, 2008 @ 4:00 pm apple
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