I have worked on Microsoft software and operating systems since I was 12 (19 years). I have always been of the opinion that they have the simplest interface, easy to use applications and one of the best office use toolset like word and excel. Doing some more thinking on the subject I think this stems from the fact that we always had windows and other microsoft products in my school and college.
In my new job @360 Vantage the leadership decided to give me a mac machine and asked me to try it out. I must say I had my apprehensions. How quickly can I learn to edit stuff here? How would I know the new shortcuts? How do I manage my documents.
With some help from apple.com and colleagues out here I must it was a piece of cake. I was up and running I should say in a day or so. I may not be a master of the same yet but I am getting there.
Following are some pros and cons for a mac.
CONS
1) Enterprise acceptance - Mac and its software have little enterprise acceptance. So we being an IT services firm always get artifacts from clients in office/microsoft formats which we later have to convert or have to use virtualization to open.
2) Software adoptability - For IT developers not all development IDEs and studios are available in a MAC. We personally faced this issues for visual studio and cast iron ETL development tools. We again had to use parallels for use the tools in a virtualized environment.
3) Office for mac - This software is in no way similar to the office 2010 tools and its product line. Also it does not have outlook 2010 or projects as well. All in all not easy to use and has an extremely steep learning curve for people trained on office for windows.
PROS
1) Ease of use. - Mac has an amazing form factor which is good to eyes and ways in use. Amazing set of shortcuts on the key board.
2) Accessories - tools like blue tooth/wire less key boards and magic mouse is one more example why apple looks forward to make people's life easier
3) Speed - My last windows machine used to take 12 minutes to load. My current MAC takes 12 seconds for the same. It just amazing how a hard boot takes less then a 15 seconds to load.
4) Native iphone and itunes integration - As a user of iphone and ipod, itunes is much more faster and does not take a lot of memory at all
5) Zero crash. - I am yet to suffer from a crash or hang up in this environment which coming from windows world is simply unbelievable
6) Multi touch and ease of navigation - The track pad on macbooks is exactly like the touch ipad/iPhone like devices, multi touch, zoom in zoom out works very well too.
There are many such points and I will keep on updating this blog as I think of some. All in all I think I will be converted to a mac junky by the end of this quarter and I plan to stay there for a while.
And then came the iPad. As a new cool toy it really blows me away. Its small, its functional and it works as a work time tool more then the iphone.
Some cool features are
1) All iphones work as is.
2) Office documents work
3) Keyboard is pretty huge and can be used as a normal keyboard.
4) You directly present from the iPad by connecting to a projector.
5) Reading newspapers and books is awesome.
