So THAT'S what it feels like

Doc Searls told me to wait before buying a MacBook Pro because new models were coming around the corner. He was right, I waited, and now I have a shinny new laptop compliments of the Apple store in Toronto. Last night, I needed to stop by and pick up a copy of Office for the Mac so I could start doing some business work on it. I zipped into the local Staples store.

Me: "Where's the Mac software?"
Him: "Why?"
Me: "Funny. I need to buy a copy of Office for the Mac."
Him: "I think Microsoft stopped making that in the nineties or something."
Me:  [restraint] Yeah, well, I think not, but thanks, later.

So, that's how the Mac users feel; that just blows. I ended up getting a copy over at a little store in Aurora, Ontario which caters just to Apple owners.

[Bonus Mac Commentary] After getting home, I realized I had bought the student/home edition. Good news, three installs, bad news, no Exchange support. Growl.  Well, my hosting provider has the 2004 version of Entourage that you can download and use with their service.  So, I install the Mac Office 2008 product, no problem.  I remove the Entourage Icon from the dock. I download Entourage 2004 from the Apptix site and install it. I then drag the Entourage 2004 Icon onto the dock. So, presto, change-o, I have 2008 for all products except Entourage which is 2004.  Not a big deal, you likely say, you can do this with PC Office.  While true in the software will run okay category, I must tell you there is a certain feeling of ease and almost magic when you just drag simple Icons around and stuff just works. I had the Entourage install as a sub directory of the download folder by mistake, oops.  I just dragged the whole thing to the Applications folder. Done. The Dock's Entourage Icon?  Doesn't care it just launches Entourage.

[Bonus Outrageous Suggestion] I'm not trying to sound like some Mac groupie. I started life on an Apple ][. I still know some 6502 programming.  Having said that, here's my suggestion if you are delivering software or a web service.  Get a Mac or get somebody that lives on a Mac involved in your project.  The stuff just works and, as I said, there is a certain sense of satisfaction you can deliver to your customers by emulating much of this "it just works" magic.  I know, it sounds all groupie like but if you'd like to see real magic happen in a grand scale, the Microsoft Mac Applications Team should be put in charge of all Microsoft application development.  Okay, I'm done as I have to install Windows Live Write in the Parallels world as I can't find a blog writing tool even close.

Comments

[Jevon]

I will be interested to hear what you think of Office 2008. I have been raving about it like a mad man.

Powerpoint is especially nice.

Oh, and it has Auto-Save, so for that reason alone it beats iWork.

[Ryan]

Was the "me/him" conversation between you and Doc Searls, or between you and the Staples salesman? Far more egregious if it was the Staples guy.

[rick segal]

oops.
Sorry, it was with the Staples guy, hence the post.

[Jim]

Rick,

I bought my first Mac when it came out in 1984 and have been addicted, smitten, or whatever the right word of intensity since. As a software guy, all the products I've built or marketed have been windows based, so I've had a PC on the back corner of the disk to run my app, but all my business productivity solutions are Mac based.

I too appreciate the elegance of implementation of Apple. Last week, BusinessWeek offered a rare look inside Apple's development process by publishing an article about one of Apple's Senior Development engineers. He described their process of requiring 10 different UI implementations for a specific project or "feature of a product" before narrowing down to the 3 best and finally the implementation choice.

I have OFTEN mentally justified the purchase of Apple products "to keep in touch with how REAL interfaces should work" and to provide "inspiration for the projects I own."

I enjoyed your post... for the rest of us. ;-)

Jim
President
AWhere.com

[Farhan Thawar]

Unfortunately I'm not a Leopard fan. I've had the same problems with Leopard that I've had with Vista (slownesss, slugish-ness, crashing, etc.). Since Vista SP1 came out this week I tried to remove my Boot camp partition and re-add it so I could do a nice re-install of Vista clean.

Leopard re-booted my machine and gave me the "No operating system found" message. Of course it was just going to my non-existant Windows partition (it forgot to delete the boot entry). Then I tried to create two equal partitions and it gave me the "can't create move files, please backup your OS X and re-install". All the while I had 90gig of my 120gig free :(

I ran Boot camp again, trying to create a measly 32gig partition for Vista and it spun for 12 hours straight until I killed my machine. Another reboot later and I finally did create my 32 gig partition (Boot camp assistant works once per reboot!).

Too bad, I was hoping Leopard would continue the gap to Vista that the iPhone did to Windows Mobile. Guess not.

I'm sticking to Vista.

[J. Shirley]

Rick,

I'm happy to see you jiving on the mac. I just switched when the new MacBook Pro line was announced. I departed from Linux on the laptop, and really pleased with it.

Please do post a review of Office 2008. I'm debating about buying it myself, so a review would be most welcome.

I've actually been very happy using just Google Docs, and with Safari 3.1's improvements it is just going to get better. The only thing missing from my Mac toolchest is a good Visio-type program. OmniGraffle just doesn't seem to fit the bill, but it sure is pretty.

(PS., If you're ever in Portland and have some time, drop me a line. I'd love to grab coffee with you sometime)

[Mary Schmidt]

Well, Apple does inspire (create) awe and addiction. Charlie Rose chose to fall literally flat on his face rather than damage his brand spankin' new MacBook Air (and I gotta think he could have afforded to buy another one...)

I think Apple is almost worth the price for the drag and drop alone.

It is amazing how behind some people are...I still get dubious looks when I tell people they can run MS apps on the Mac.

Then there's the whole free open source software discussion - "Well, it can't possibly be any good (Firefox, Wordpress, Google, etc. etc.) if it's free! I'll just keep paying Microsoft" (Right, pay more money for buggy virus-prone stuff.)

Have fun and welcome to Appleland!

[Mary Schmidt]

Well, Apple does inspire (create) awe and addiction. Charlie Rose chose to fall literally flat on his face rather than damage his brand spankin' new MacBook Air (and I gotta think he could have afforded to buy another one...)

I think Apple is almost worth the price for the drag and drop alone.

It is amazing how behind some people are...I still get dubious looks when I tell people they can run MS apps on the Mac.

Then there's the whole free open source software discussion - "Well, it can't possibly be any good (Firefox, Wordpress, Google, etc. etc.) if it's free! I'll just keep paying Microsoft" (Right, pay more money for buggy virus-prone stuff.)

Have fun and welcome to Appleland!

[Baysharam]

Whomever Microsoft employs to develop Entourage should be deported to North Korea. That has to be the most craptastic program I ever use

[Larry Borsato]

Keep in mind that the reason you can move apps around easily on the Mac is because the apps are really self contained bundles - with everything inside. There are none of the loose dlls in different places that Windows has.

That said, I can't imagine why in all this time Windows hasn't adopted the same idea.

[Ehmac dot ca member]

Used to be a nice Place to visit but some there Elitist Jerks & now you have to pay for posted equipment so pretty well a Dead zone but the " Mayor " there gets Free Apple stuff so We Guess he Doesn't Care