Mac OS Switching: Will the cat change its spots?

IanFogg | June 09, 2008, 04:25 PM

Using a Mac as my main computer has reminded me how little we are tied to Windows today. All of my main Windows software works on the Mac too: MS Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, IM, iTunes, Adobe apps, Twirl etc. etc.

With the rise of web 2.0 online applications -- gmail, google docs, facebook, flickr etc. -- our reliance on local apps that are specific to a particular system reduces. Over ten years after Netscape articulated this Internet threat to Microsoft's desktop dominance, Mac OS and linux are delivering viable alternatives that are as compatible with the Internet as is Windows. Adobe's Air, Mozilla's off-line initiatives and others promise to deliver the write-once, run anywhere application, that Java once aspired to.

It's time to revisit switching to Mac OS.

In my experience, Mac OS is fast to start-up, lightening to put to sleep or wake up. Mac versions of Windows applications for the most part feel just like their Windows alternatives, and there's always the option of running Windows on a Mac too these days (see VMWare Fusion, Boot Camp, or Parallels). Mac MS Office 2008 even has a more familiar UI than Windows Office 2007 for users familiar with Windows Office 2003 or earlier.

The only real issue I've found with using a Mac full time is the low quality of the official Microsoft Office 2008 suite for Mac. It's slow, at times astoundingly slow (esp. Excel), and I encountered some irritating compatibility issues. However, even then when it failed, I found NeoOffice did what I needed. I switched from MS Excel to NeoOffice as my default. Not only is NeoOffice more reliable and much faster, it's also entirely free (based on the cross platform OpenOffice).

This is the other reason it's time to re-consider ties to Windows and look to Mac OS, or Linux. Free open source software that is good enough, and often excellent, and free ensures that now there are choices for most common tasks on every OS, not just on Windows.

My Mac-owning friends tell me that I've missed both the point and much of the improved experience if I don't use Apple's own Mac applications (Safari, Mail, Address, iCalendar etc.) and the neat integration between them. Maybe. But for a recent switcher finding familiar applications to hand is a necessity. I'm still exploring iLife et al, and my experiences there will follow in a different post.

If Apple were ever to "change Leopard's spots" and offer Mac OS to PC users, for them to run on PC hardware, then having these familiar applications available would be a necessity. And, in these times of a resurgent and confident Apple -- perhaps even an over-confident Apple -- is there anything left which is an inconceivable Apple ambition in digital markets?

[to come in a future post: Running Windows on Mac hardware!]