I don’t know what kind of Apple hate this post is going to bring down on me, but I’ve just gotta vent.
I was having a conversation with a fellow blogger yesterday (I won’t say any names as to not place a target on this person as well). I was talking about my current email situation. Last week I switched my work email over to gmail becasue I so passionately hate Entourage. Really, my biggest problem is that I just needed to be able to freakin’ sync my google calendar with my work calendar in any way. I’ve explored every option available and the best solution I had was to forward my email to gmail and use a google calendar. The positive side of things is that my wife can now see my calendar and all is well on that front. However, there are some issues I have to work around. Man, I wish it would just work.
I guess this is what frustrates me. Google sync came out for Outlook nearly two years ago.
A few months ago, I needed to work with some videos to put on our Kids Church computer which is a Windows machine. In order to work with this video file, I had to purchase the codec for $25. On a Windows machine it wouldn’t have cost me anything.
I just read about this amazing Bible software, but currently it’s just for Windows.
Oh, and Chrome. I was so excited for Chrome to come out over a year ago. Is it out for the Mac? Nope, not yet. I’m actually using a developers build just so I can use it on my Mac.
When these things happen, it reminds me why I left Apple before. Oh yes, I did. I grew up on a mac. I had a mac all through college (I was the only one in my dorm with a mac). It was the incompatibility that drove me NUTS. I was always frustrated to go to the giant computer store and walk by isle after isle of PC software to get to my end cap of software compatible only for the Mac.
It’s different now. Apple makes a remarkable product. I really do love my MacBook Pro. I love my iPhone. However, (for those of you PC people one day dreaming of switching), it’s not all unicorns and rainbows (I don’t even know what that means). There is a price to pay. By moving to Apple, there are things you will be giving up. You’ll be joining a niche community. At times, you’ll feel limited. At other times, you’ll spend a lot more money. Although they make quality hardware and innovative products, they aren’t the perfection that Mr. Jobs would like you to believe.
Okay, so that was my Apple rant. I feel better now. 🙂
But the kool-aid tastes so good 🙂
I remember being on the opposite end at college. Our university was largely an Apple/Mac university in the days of Windows 3.x. That meant we got to learn all sorts of things that we’d never use in the real world to teach us concepts (programming w/ Mac Pascal, word processing w/ WordPerfect for Mac). Admittedly, there were some good things that Macs could do over PCs then, but we only got to use the little B&W Macs and maybe an Appletalk network. Trying to convert my Windows Excel file over to a Mac was a little painful, but doable. I was actually pretty pleased when the school realized that there was a whole ‘nother type of PC available and a lot of people used those, too. 🙂
I appreciate the straightforward review of some of your more problematic moments as a Mac user. We don’t hear about those often. I had a friend get a virus on her Mac (yes, it happened) and the immediate response was “Macs don’t get viruses” instead of being able to find a good AV program for her. (Generally true, but not helpful if it does happen. 🙂 )
Now if your church would just move to Exchange 2007 or MacServer your world would be better!
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..Why I Sponsor a Child with Compassion International =-.
Is your mac Intel based? You could run parallels with a windows installation.
As a cool-aid drinker i am shocked by your betrayal. BTW you can get chrome for a mac http://www.labnol.org/software/download-google-chrome-for-mac-linux/4555/ Our church uses gmail and gcal love the integration with my mac.
While I agree that Mac has it’s issues, you can run Windows on a Mac with Bootcamp, VMWare Fusion, or Parallels… can’t do that on a PC 🙂
I just made the switch to Mac after battling a virus on my PC for a few months. So maybe you can’t always have the sugar with your kool-aid, at least you don’t have to worry about it being poisoned!
thanks for the perspective – i have truly been dreaming of unicorns and rainbows waiting for the day when i’ll get my mac! 😉 i know who i’ll come to when i’m struggling with the switch!!