“Truth About Switching to a Mac…”

I switched to a Mac over a year ago now and have been trying to write a post of some kind about my experience which has been mostly positive so far. Today, while browsing around with Safari I came across a post titled “the truth about switching, what its really like to move to a mac” by a guy named Bill Westerman. I thought the post was right on and just about summarize my own experiences. I didn’t switch to a laptop as he did though and so I don’t take my mac to work with me but I gab on about my Mac now and again at work and get funny looks or blank stares. My XP setup at work is also displaying a dock similar to the Mac dock so I agree with his points on spending lots of time tweaking your windows machine. Anyway, check out the article its pretty cool. The only thing that I would add to his list …

#23 You will be surprised at the amount of software available for the Mac.
Before I switched many folks told me that they don’t write many programs for the Mac so I won’t find much out there. What a load of tripe that has been. Not only did I find that most of the programs I was using on my PC had a Mac version but I also found many useful programs out there for free or a small fee. In addition, my Mac came with many of the programs that I needed to get started (Mail, iCal, iPhoto, DVD Player/ CD Burner) just to name a few.

Personally, I’ve been having lots of fun since I switched and I’ve spent more time getting things done rather than re-formatting my hard drive due to OS issues. I’m still have those ah-ha moments and have only regretted the purchase once when the Apple keyboard and my Wacom tablet wouldn’t play nice together. I finally got the thing working but had to hook up a different keyboard to the machine. Guess the drinks splashing all over the keyboard was not a good thing in retrospect.

My Thoughts on Oscar Night

For me the Oscars is usually a good excuse to get together with a few friends and blow off some time for a few hours. Last night I did just that except that afterwards I was like why did I waste all that time? I thought that Ellen DeGeneres was annoying with her little stunts her name should be changed to degenerate big time. Good grief people actually think that she’s funny? What a total snoozer. The other thing was that they made some changes since the last time I watched this (few years ago). The awards that most of us don’t care all that much about like sound editing was first on the list this year. Not sure why they changed this but here is the thing. For us folks on the East Coast staying up until 12 AM to see who won for best actor, picture and the like is not a good thing when we have to get to work in the morning. I came home at 11 and they were on a commercial break. BTW there was a nice pile of snow to greet me on the way home last night, good thing I left just before 11 coz things got nastier out there after that. All in all congrats to those who won but seriously, next year I’ll check out the website the day after. BTW I liked the Apple iPhone commercial although I almost missed it with all the conversations going on in the room.

Leopard Around the Corner?

I was checking out the latest get a Mac Add, I have to admit they crack me up. Really I was just procrastinating so I decided to browse around and amuse myself. Anyway, I noticed on the Get A Mac site towards the middle where they list the reasons one should get a Mac that there was a photo of mail with stationary… I recalled right away that this was something not released yet but was to be release with Leopard so I was curious to see what was up. I scrolled down there and read and saw the following words… “But even as Vista falls short in features that have long been part of Mac OS X, it’s about to lag even farther behind. Because Mac OS X Leopard is right around the corner. And with it will come an even richer set of features to make using your Mac easier and more amazing.” So I’m beginning to think that the rumors of Leopard coming to the masses in March might be true. They even went on to highlight Time machine. I could really use Time machine about now. My current backup software is kinda slow and quirky.

Had to go to work

So when I woke up this morning I didn’t get a phone call from my Boss which meant that I had to go to work in the snowstorm. I was walking so no big deal until I stepped into my backyard and my foot sank snow filling up to the top of my boots. I looked all around and people were shoveling their cars out of the snow. I set out to get this whole walking business over with. After 20 minutes or so I made it to the office (it takes me 5 minutes to get there usually) hot and sweating just a bit with all those layers that I piled on before going out the door. I felt like I just came from the gym rather than my house but I sat down at my desk and cooled off a bit (its usually cool in my office). Anyway, the next thing that I noticed was how quiet it was. I realized after a while that only 4 of us had made it in. My assistant called in and other people did too. My Boss and one of the techs who live in the City was downstairs. The day went from bad to worse and it took me just as long to get home except now the wind was picking up and things was getting a bit slippery. At one point I had to cross the street and I was hoping that the oncoming car would heed the stop sign before they got to it. All in all it was OK but I was certainly glad to be home end of day.

Will there be work tomorrow?

As I’m headed to bed I’m wondering if there will be any work tomorrow. See I’m living in the Northeast and there is a Heavy snow warning in effect until tomorrow evening. We were spared the big snow dump last week but it seems that it is dumping on us this week. We were supposed to get 2 feet by this afternoon but the temperature was so cold the snow didn’t really start up for a while. I looked out my window at 8:30 PM or so and noticed that there is at least 1 foot and the wind is picking up out there Wow it looks like Christmas outside, the white Christmas that we never had. Anyway, a bunch of the roads going out of town will most likely be closed so my Boss is the designated caller tomorrow. All this won’t bother me that much since i walk to work anyway but its no fun being at work by yourself. Buuuurrrrrh!