When I decided to switch to the Mac one of the first things I did was create an application to application comparison matrix in order to ensure I could find an comparable Mac replacement for all my important Windows applications.  I found some great articles written by others who’d made the switch and that really helped in that process.  Now that I’ve had my Mac for a year and a half or so I’ve found replacements for virtually everything I had on Windows.  In order to help others who are making the switch to a Mac or maybe just looking for a Mac replacement for a Windows application they can’t seem to shake, I thought I’d put my cross-reference list here, albeit it in a very informal, unstructured manner (trying to avoid a boring list).  I’ve included links where possible.

My hope was that most of the apps I used on Windows would have a Mac port.  That way I wouldn’t have to learn something new and the learning curve would be shortened.  I’m not opposed to learning something new but switching everything over at once and having to relearn everything is a tall order and I wanted to be productive as quickly as possible.  Luckily many of the apps I used on Windows had Mac ports.  Firefox, for instance, is available for both (as well as Linux).  I used Safari for a while but ended up going back to the comfort and familiarity of Firefox.  Unfortunately the default theme for Mac Firefox is kinda ugly, in my opinion.  I use the Silvermel theme and it both looks and works great.  There’s also Opera and Camino, as well as a slew of other, more obscure browsers to choose from.  Most recently though I’ve been using  Google Chrome; it’s been lightening fast, incredibly stable, and has a great bookmark syncing feature.  It’s also available not only for the Mac but for Windows and Linux as well.  No matter which browser you go with giving up Internet Explorer will be incredibly satisfying.  That thing is a piece of crap.

For graphical FTP transfers I used Filezilla on Windows.  Although there is a Mac version of Filezilla that works fine I use a program called Cyberduck, primarily for the Mac look and feel and the ability to drag and drop from the Finder.  For instant messaging on Windows I used an open source program called Pidgin; the Mac version of Pidgin is called Adium and it’s very good.

I used RealVNC on Windows for remote control.  The default VNC server on the Mac, at least the version that shipped with Leopard, just sucks.  It’s so slow it’s unusable.  I actually had to turn that service off and install Vine Server.  Vine Server is free, but their client is not.  I now use Vine Server to serve up my Mac for remote control, and I use JollysFastVNC as my VNC client to connect to other VNC servers.  JollysFastVNC is free and works reasonably well.  To control my Mac from a Windows box I use the TightVNC viewer (which is also free).

I used Thunderbird on Windows for my imap e-mail.  While Thunderbird is available for the Mac, I actually just use the Mac Mail client that ships with the Mac.  That ties directly in with the Mac Address Book.  I recommend using Mac Mail along with the Mac address book because other Mac apps are integrated with them and it makes life easier.  One of the things I really like about the Mac is that so much of it works together, which is incredibly useful.  Mac Mail also has a nice RSS reader built in; it’s a great replacement.

For word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations on Windows I used OpenOffice.  OpenOffice now runs natively on the Mac and the port is pretty good.  There’s also another port of OpenOffice for the Mac called NeoOffice and of course Microsoft Office is available for the Mac if you really need it.  I’m now using iWork now since it’s got more of a Mac look and feel and better OS X integration.  iWork can read and write most MS Office files and can export in several other formats.  Since I don’t do much file sharing with other office users I’m not too worried about exact compatibility; iWork does just fine.  iWork contains a word processor (called Pages), a spreadsheet (called Numbers) and a presentation app (called Keynote).  It’s actually pretty fun to use too.

For several long, long years I was stuck with Microsoft Outlook at home.  No longer; I use Apple’s iCal along with my iPhone.  Free at last!

For general text editing and/or programming I used Gvim on Windows (being a vi guy).  MacVim is the Mac port of Gvim and it’s very good.  It has tabs which are really useful for working with multiple documents.  I also use another editor called Text Wrangler when I don’t need vi functionality.  TextEdit ships with the Mac and is similar in nature to Notepad.

Audio management was easy; I was already using iTunes on Windows so I transitioned right over to iTunes on the Mac.  The Mac comes with a DVD burner and very nice DVD playback software.  On windows I used Picasa to manage my digital photos.  Picasa is available for the Mac but I use iPhoto personally.  My digital camera just works with the Mac; I don’t need any additional software to unload my photos from the camera.  I also bought a new Canon scanner, the CanoScan LiDE 200 and it works just beautifully.

For image editing I was looking for something to replace Paint Shop Pro.  After a lengthy search I ran across a comparable replacement called Pixelmator.  I found it in a boxed version on Amazon for $51.  I’m very pleased with it.  You could also consider Acorn or Adobe Photoshop Elements as comparable Mac replacements for Paint Shop Pro.

I found I can play back virtually any kind of video file using the Mac.  Quicktime does most everything out of the box but I had to download Flip4Mac to play .wmv files.  It installs a codec that Quicktime can use.  To view .flv and/or .swf files I use SWF & FLV Player.  Both Flip4Mac and SWF & FLV Player are freeware.  For creating video and DVDs I replaced Pinnacle Studio with iMovie.  I like it much better than Pinnacle Studio.  I print DVD labels for all my home movies; on Windows I used to use MediaFace for that.  I found this great equivalent called DiskLabel that’s even better.

MySQL server and client tools are all available native and free for the Mac.

For genealogy research and documentation I used Heritage Family Tree on Windows.  I’m now using Mac Family Tree on the Mac and it is very impressive.  It utilizes some really cool built-in OSX technologies to graphically display family trees in a way I’ve never seen before.  It can also produce an impressive html rendering of a family tree that can simply be dropped onto a webserver (if you run one like me) or the manufacturer’s freely provided webspace.  I was very pleasantly surprised at just how good this software is.

In addition to all this stuff I also had a lot of utilities I used on Windows.  Fortunately I was able to find replacements for all of them.  Beyond Compare was a big one.  It’s directory and file comparison software.  It can look at two files and display the diff or it’ll compare two folders and show the differences, allowing you to easily sync files between them.  I searched high and low but was just stuck on Beyond Compare which has only a Windows and Linux version.  Then I found DeltaWalker.  It’s proven to be a comparable replacement.  I wrote more about it here.

For storing passwords I used KeePass on Windows.  The Mac port is KeePassX and work just as well and can read the same encrypted password files.  I just opened my existing file in KeePassX and was on my way.  Speaking of encryption, I used TrueCrypt on Windows to create encrypted volumes.  TrueCrypt is also available for the Mac and is just as easy to use.

There are some other apps that I used less frequently on Windows but were still useful or even necessary.  For digital books I used eReader and for taxes I used H&R Block at Home (formerly TaxCut).  Both of these have Mac versions.

One of the biggest hurdles was finding a Quicken replacement.  Quicken for Mac is just awful and most of the other personal finance software is still up and coming.  I ended up replacing Quicken with Moneydance, and I wrote a detailed article about it too.

And what if there’s something you just can’t replace yet?  You can always run Windows virtually with VirtualBox.  I used to use VMware Fusion but eventually it just stopped working.  VirtualBox is free and has most of the features you’ll find in VMware Fusion or Parallels.  Save the $80 and just use VirtuaBox; I wish I had from the beginning.  It’s also great for running Linux (and keeping multiple computers out of your office space).  Although I no longer run Windows in a VM I do run Linux in a VM.

So there you have it, how I switched off Windows and moved completely over to the Mac.  I hope you found it useful as you contemplate a switch to the Mac or if you already have switched and just need some some fresh options for turning off Windows.  Feel free to let me know below.  Once you turn Windows off on your Mac it’s like removing the ball and chain; you’re free to just run about, enjoying life again.

So after having the Mac for about a year and a half I went on the search once again for a suitable Quicken replacement for the Mac.  There were more players than I had originally thought but most of them did not have a comparable feature set to Quicken.  After doing some research I ended up settling on four possible replacements; iBank, GnuCash, Moneywell, and Moneydance.  What I found is that I experienced such poor performance on many of the replacement solutions I was unable to test most of these “feature by feature”.  All of the other applications had problems of varying degree importing my Quicken data as well.  Instead this is more of a review of Moneydance than anything else.

Requirements

I began by compiling a list of my requirements.  First, I was looking for a Mac-native Quicken replacement so I could finally get rid of my Windows XP virtual machine.  Second, I had to have the ability to track all the different account types I had; checking, savings, investments, loans, credit cards, assets, and cash accounts.  It needed to be relatively straight-forward and easy to use and I needed to have the ability to create customized graphs and reports that I could save for quick reference later.  I also needed to be able to import my existing Quicken financial records; I couldn’t afford to lose any history.  That requirement was crucial.  I also needed to be able to split a transaction between different accounts and categories.  If I could find a replacement personal finance application that did all these things, along with a $60 price point, then I was set.

Quicken also has a nasty policy of crippling prior versions to force users to upgrade to new versions.  I was also hoping I could get away from that with a replacement solution.

To test these applications I exported my entire 10 year Quicken history into a QIF file and imported it into each application.  I then tested the various features, as well as how well the import went.

iBank 3.5.4

My first impression of iBank was good.  It looks great visually and it seems like it’s got great potential.  There were a couple things that turned me off to it.  First was how slow it was.  It took 3-4 seconds to view the register each time I clicked an account.  That might sound trivial, but when jumping back and forth between accounts it became tedious.  It has great-looking charts and graphs but they also took many seconds to load.  I honestly didn’t get much further than that in my testing because of how slow everything was.

It also did a poor job importing my existing Quicken data; account totals were all over the place and fixing it was going to take a while.  Also iBank would only allow me 15 minutes of “playtime” with it in demo mode before quitting.  This limited my ability to preview the software thoroughly to ensure it met my needs.

iBank is Mac-only and does not run on Linux or Windows; not a show-stopper but it does impose a limit on where I can use the software.

In the end I had to pass on iBank.  It looks great and it looks to have great potential but for me it wasn’t quite ready.  It also has a $60 price tag, the same as Quicken deluxe, which put it at the top of my price point.  If it had one-to-one feature parity with Quicken Deluxe I could justify the cost; truth is it doesn’t, so it was difficult to justify it.  I would have felt more comfortable at $40.

GnuCash 2.2.9

GnuCash is a Linux personal finance/accounting application that has been ported to both Windows and the Mac.  This is great from a cross-platform perspective.  It also uses double-entry accounting.  The problems for me were that it was extremely slow on my Mac and the import of my existing Quicken data didn’t go so well.  Again, things were all over the place, requiring a massive effort to clean it up.  Generating a single chart took what seemed like forever-upward of 10-15 seconds-and clicking on a register caused me to wait much longer than I had patience for.  I also ran into problems when GnuCash tried to redraw the screen but this could just be the Mac port.  Regardless, it was still a problem.  It looks a little rough, nowhere near as polished as I’d like, but that in and of itself isn’t a show-stopper.  Aesthetics are low on my list though; accuracy is key for a financial app.

Ultimately I had to pass on GnuCash.  Although I can’t argue with the price (free) it just had too many problems for me to make the switch.  I have a friend who uses it so I believe it is a viable option, just not for me at this time.

MoneyWell 1.4.13

Moneywell showed the most promise out of any of the applications I tested but didn’t actually choose.  It also looks great, tapping into OSX built-in technologies (as does iBank), but it too was really slow.  It showed the same lag when viewing an account register or reports.  Moneywell focuses a lot on budgeting but I don’t really have many requirements for that.  My wife does all the budgeting and I just track all the expenses, providing her with information to help her adjust her budgets.  It also had trouble importing my existing data; it was pretty messed to be honest and would have caused quite a bit of rework for me.  The evaluation was reasonable (200 transactions and no 15 minute time limits) so I was at least able to get a decent look at it.  MoneyWell is Mac-only which is, as I’ve said, not show-stopper but is minor limitation for me.

Despite the very reasonable trial I wasn’t able to pull the trigger on MoneyWell in the end.  It looks great and it’s got great potential but it didn’t really do the job for me.  Maybe with less historical data it would be more responsive.  MoneyWell also might appeal to those who are more budget-oriented since budgeting is a key focus of the product.  Moneywell came in below my price point though-around $42-which seems like a very reasonable price given the maturity and feature-set.

Moneydance 2010 r3

Home Page

Moneydance had a lot going for it right out of the gate.  First off, it was fast.  Really, really fast.  Clicking on an account register displayed the transactions immediately, without any noticeable lag.  The interface has been updated to look more like a native OSX application, despite its Java underpinnings.  I used to think Java apps were slow; I now no longer have this opinion.  I imported all my 10 years of Quicken history into Moneydance with only a few minor errors.  Six, to be exact.  A couple correcting transactions and 15 minutes later all my totals were matching to the penny against Quicken.  Moneydance brought in my loan accounts as liabilities so I had to convert the open loans manually over to loan type accounts.  This wasn’t “wrong” per se; I just needed them to be in a loan account type so Moneydance would automatically calculate my principle and interest.  I left all my closed loan accounts as liability accounts since they’re functionally the same.

One thing that really caught my attention with Moneydance was the home page.  It’s simple and useful, kinda like Quicken used to be before all the bloat.  It shows me all my account balances and then calculates my net worth at the bottom.  It shows me a list of upcoming scheduled transactions in a list and in a monthly calendar view.  There’s an expense graph that looks very similar to the graph in iTunes showing used/open disk space (see below).  It looks great and is very useful to see at a glance exactly what you’ve spent for the month.  it doesn’t show percentages like Quicken but honestly I prefer seeing the actual dollar amounts now.  That’s turned out to be more useful to me.  By clicking on a segment of the graph you can drill down to the components that make up that segment and then all the way to the register transaction itself.  Very cool.

Expense Graph on the home page

Speaking of those loan accounts, Moneydance allowed me to easily set up a loan.  It tracks my principle and interest for me and set up reminders for the loan payment.  The principle and interest splits matched Quicken exactly.  Moneydance also allowed me to set up reminder transactions, just like Quicken.  One drawback is that Moneydance only allows for escrow to be sent to a single account.  So if you have an escrow account for both fire insurance and taxes you can’t split them in the loan payment.  I worked around this by creating an asset account to hold the money transferred to escrow, then entering two transactions in that new escrow account (one for fire insurance and one for taxes) to account for the split of the total escrow payment.  It’s a couple extra steps, but I only pay one mortgage, once per month, so it’s trivial really.  Effectively I’m accomplishing exactly what Quicken did.

All the account types I need are supported in Moneydance, satisfying one of my major requirements. As a bonus, Monedydance also allows me to update my Vangard Roth IRA though it’s online banking features.   I can also split transactions just as I could in Quicken; another requirement met.

Graphing and reporting are included but are admittedly not quite as “pretty” as Quicken, MoneyWell, and iBank.  As I said though, I’m not as concerned about aesthetics.  The important thing was that I could recreate all my existing Quicken customized reports and graphs in Moneydance.  Moneydance has what’s called a “Search” report that accomplishes what Quicken’s “Easy Answer” reports provided as well as net worth, income & expense, account balances, investment tracking, and other reports and graphs one would expect from personal finance software.

[Update 7/23/2010: A particularly useful feature I've recently discovered is the concept of "tags".  A tag can be used to further group categories of expenses.  So if, for example, I take a vacation and want to track the total cost I could create a tag for it and then assign that tag to expenses in various categories associated with the trip.  I might have spent money in categories like "Travel", "Gas", and "Food" which would normally appear as unrelated on a category report but on a tag report they'll all be grouped together.  Moneydance provides a convenient tag report to show the sum of these exepenses.  I believe Quicken also provides this functionality but so does Moneydance, so that's another requirement met.]

Moneydance also allowed me to store additional information for accounts, such as account numbers and other attributes, just like in Quicken.  It uses double-entry accounting for increased accuracy.  The nice thing is that it does it under the covers, exposing it as accounts and categories, allowing Quicken users to more easily transition.

Another thing that I like about Moneydance is that it’s cross-platform.  With a single license I can run it on the Mac, Windows, and Linux.  I’ve tested it on all three platforms and it works great.  This will allow me to also work on my finances on my laptop (which is a dual-boot of Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux) and not just my Mac .  Similar to Moneywell the trial is very reasonable; 100 transactions before you have to buy a license.  That gave me plenty of time to evaluate the software.

Moneydance can also be set to encrypt its data file, similar to Quicken.

For all the things Moneydance gets right there were a few caveats.  As I said, graphing and reporting aren’t quite as pretty but they’re practical and easy to use.  Also Quicken allows a user to store checks and other documents and associate them with a particular transaction.  It allows a user to store bank statements and associate them with an account as well.  It also can encrypt these if you like.  Moneydance doesn’t support this so to get around it I just store the statements in a subfolder along with my Moneydance file on a password-protected disk image.  Not as convenient but not a showstopper.

Quicken also has some retirement planning features but I used them only once or twice and then kinda just dropped it.  Replacement software didn’t have to have that kinda stuff to meet my requirements.

Moneydance also crashed once during the evaluation but nothing was lost or damaged.  Overall it’s been stable; stable enough for me to not really worry about it.  [Update 2/22/2010: Moneydance has crashed a couple more times in the past two weeks or so I've been using it.  None of my data was corrupted but it has been a little frustrating.  I save more often now and the problem isn't chronic enough to cause me any major headaches.][Update 7/23/2010: I'm now using the 2010 r3 release and Moneydance hasn't crashed since.  Prior versions seemed to be unstable while working with reports and graphs but I've been working extensively with reporting and graphing and have had no stability issues.]

[Update 2/22/2010: Moneydance has an open API, which allows developers to write extensions for it.  These are free, by the way; you just click through a wizard to install them.  I now use an extension to check my stock prices and to check for software updates.  The coolest one is an extension to help me payoff my debt early.  If I stick with the plan I could be completely debt-free in 10 years!  We'll see.]

[Update 4/27/2010: Another really useful feature of Moneydance is the ability to perform calculations within virtually any amount field.  So if my receipt breaks out tax by grocery/non-grocery, I can simply type .86+1.59 and it'll automatically calculate the value.  Very useful, fast, and cool.]

There’s also now an iPhone application released by the developer that allows you to enter transactions and then sync them with Moneydance over wifi.  It can be downloaded for free from the iTunes store.

Untested or Moderately Tested Applications

There were a few other applications that I really didn’t get to test because I just ran out of time and patience.  You might want to check these out in your search.  They are Money from Jumsoft, Cha-Ching from Midnight Apps, and iFinance from Synium Software.  I very briefly tested Money from Jumsoft; it looked great and it did import my financial data but it crashed when I tried to view my checking account.  Again, probably too much data.

I also briefly tested KMyMoney (for Linux) with only my checking account data.  The import completed and the software was able to handle the volume of transactions but it made assumptions about my accounts that couldn’t be changed.  For example, it decided my credit card accounts were actually checking accounts and the would not allow me to change the type of account.  I do not know if KMyMoney would be able to handle all of my data (probably ten to fifteen times what I actually loaded) but without being able to fix the incorrect assumptions the QIF importer made I’d have to start all over again, not to mention it has no Mac port (both of which are show-stoppers).  It also provided only reporting (no graphing).  Both the reports and the app looked great though, it appears to have lots of potential, and it’s free.

Conclusion

If you’re starting from scratch and don’t have lots of existing data to import, iBank, GnuCash, or MoneyWell might very well suffice.  iBank and MoneyWell (from a Mac perspective) both looked very nice. In the end, however, I chose Moneydance.  It had all the essential features I needed and all at a reasonable price ($39.99), with no crippling “sunsetting” policy that I’m aware of.  Since it was so feature-rich (and the other products I evaluated were so excruciatingly slow) spending a significant amount of time studying every nuance of the competition soon became pointless.  Moneydance runs natively (well, counting the JVM) on the Mac-as well as Linux and Windows-and has now allowed me to turn off my Windows XP virtual machine, freeing up 1 gb of RAM on my Mac.

Although it doesn’t have exact feature parity with Quicken for Windows, it does have parity with what I consider to be the important features and that was enough for me to make the switch.  It was also the most Quicken-like out of the bunch (I’d say Moneydance most closely resembles the “Deluxe” version).  Not that being different is bad at all, but I was explicitly looking for a Quicken replacement.  I bought a Moneydance license this past Friday and at this point consider it money well spent.

»Download Moneydance

DeltaWalker Folder Comparison Window

Before I switched from Windows to a Mac I did a lot of research.  One of the things I spent a considerable amount of time on was software.  Could I find Mac equivalents for most, if not all, of my Windows software?  I found that I could find a Mac equivalent for almost everything, save for a couple programs.  One of those programs was a little file/folder comparison and sync utility called Beyond Compare.  Believe it or not, this was almost a show-stopper for me because I literally use this program every day.  I bought it back in 2005 for $30 and have been using it constantly ever since.  I had been certain that a comparable program for the Mac would be easy to find but it just wasn’t.  (I’ll refrain from using a bad “it must really be Beyond Compare” pun.)

So I compromised with a workaround; run Beyond Compare in a virtual machine and set all non-Windows local directories up as network shares.  This works, but it means that I’m still dependent on opening Windows XP every time I need to sync directories.  Every three months or so I’d check back again to see if Beyond Compare had been ported to the Mac or if a comparable competing product had been released.  After a year and a half, I finally found that product.

It’s called DeltaWalker.

Funny enough, I’d evaluated this product more than a year ago but had written it off because it just wasn’t good enough yet.  Well, a lot can change in a year and apparently these guys have been hard at work on this thing.  DeltaWalker 1.8.7 is almosty what Beyond Compare 2.x is.  That’s now close enough for me to pull the trigger and buy it.  The biggest missing feature right now for me is the ability to save what are called “sessions” (a file or folder pair with syncing rules).  It’s pseudo-implemented right now; sessions are automatically saved but you can’t name them.  The next version, 1.8.8, is slated to have the ability to name sessions and set favorite sessions; that’ll bring this much closer to a 100% comparable BC 2.x replacement. [* Update: 4/7/2010 * Version 1.9 has been released and now offers the ability to save and name sessions, mark favorite sessions, and to import or export sessions.   The Mac version now sports a new Cocoa interface which looks great and provides a true "Mac-like" experience.  Session filters have been improved and simplified, making them very easy to create and maintain.] What’s also really cool is that DeltaWalker is cross-platform; there’s a Linux, Windows, and Mac version.

Beyond Compare Folder Comparison Window

But there are also a few things about DeltaWalker that make it rise above when compared to Beyond Compare 2.x.  DeltaWalker has sftp support; BC 2.x has only ftp support.  DeltaWalker also has this really great feature that allows you to click on two files being compared in a folder comparison window and then will open a new window below showing a file diff.  This makes it really easy to see the actual differences between the files, perfect for programmers.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat and more than one way to synchronize two folders or run file diffs.  Beyond Compare was my preferred method and I found after doing some research that I’m not the only one who felt that way.  There were lots of people looking for the same replacement as me.  I understand that Beyond Compare 3.x has features that the 2.x version doesn’t have, but 3.x is only available for Windows and Linux.  For a Mac user it’s the same as it not existing at all.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d buy Beyond Compare for the Mac today if it existed.  Fact is it doesn’t, and it doesn’t appear that it will any time soon. [With the new Cocoa UI, filter enhancements, and session saving I'd now choose DeltaWalker over Beyond Compare 3, even if BC3 were available on the Mac. As much as I like Beyond Compare, the fact is that Deltopia took the time to get there first.]

DeltaWalker (at the time of this writing) is around $40 for a personal license for a single platform (Linux, Windows, or Mac).  A personal license for all three platforms runs around $75.  Commercial pricing is higher.

So if you’ve switched to the Mac like me and haven’t been able to find a way to replace Beyond Compare, DeltaWalker is a worthy replacement.

One of the things I really like about it is that it’s so well-designed.  I’ve really gotten on board with the integration that Apple has provided between the Apple-developed apps.  In fact, some of the other apps have hooks into OSX for various functionality.  I even switched over to Safari about a month ago.  The switch from Firefox to Safari wasn’t because I didn’t like Firefox; it was mainly to capitalize on the integration with OSX and also with the iPhone I plan to buy soon.  Safari is good; I really didn’t feel any pain from the switch.

Another aspect of the design that I really appreciate is the all-in-one nature of the iMac.  There are really not any user-serviceable parts (aside from memory) with the iMac but the compact design means that my office is free and clear of clutter.  I have a single machine sitting on a small desk in a small room.  Nothing on the floor and minimal wires and cords snaking down the back of the desk.  What’s even better is that this machine is powerful enough to run both Windows and Linux in as virtual machines.  In the past I had multiple boxes sitting on the floor of my office taking up space and making an awful racket.  Now I have a single, silent machine running OSX for my day-to-day work and running Windows and Linux as if they were just applications.  Zero physical footprint in my office for both of these operating systems.  I’m smitten with the concept.

The other thing I really like are the Mac apps.  Mac Mail, Address Book, and iCal are so much better than Outlook.  They’re leaner, faster, simpler, and more reliable.  Outlook crashed at least every other day and took forever to load.  Still, even in 2009, Outlook’s IMAP mail support sucks.  Mac Mail is clean and simple and never crashes.  iCal is the same way.  They all sync with my Palm (and eventually with my future iPhone).  And almost every app I used to use on Windows has a Mac version or a Mac equivalent.

I also love the Mac Dock.  It’s not that I hate the Windows taskbar but the Dock is so much more versatile.  It takes up some screen real estate though, but that’s not a show-stopper.  Next time I’ll buy an iMac with the gigantic screen; the size of the Dock won’t matter then.  Even with the smaller screen it’s still not too bad.

I did have a problem with the mouse on the Mac because the acceleration curve is different and Windows/Linux.  That was a frustration (and still is) but I fixed it.  I’d like to see Apple address this and just simply provide the ability to control the acceleration curve.  It wouldn’t be that hard for them to do I think.

Occasionally I’ve had to reboot it, probably four or five times; over the course of six months that’s not too bad.  My work laptop (Windows XP) has to be rebooted two to four times a month.  It just seems to get “stuck” and nothing will bring it back to life (except a reboot).  So far I haven’t had any situation where the Mac just stops responding altogether; sometimes it just gets a little screwy and has to be rebooted.  It’s rare though.

As a side note I downloaded the Windows 7 beta, the one with Microsoft’s Dock knock-off, and realized it’s basically just Vista all over again.  Makes me glad I decided to switch to the Mac.  The thought of having to endure yet another release of Vista gives me great pain.  :(

So in the end the decision to switch was a good one.  I’m very pleased with the design and the performance of the Mac, and I’ve found an application for just about anything I need.  There’s no shortage of software for the Mac, much of it open source and free.  I’ll definitely buy another one when this one gets too old.  Right now I’m planning on upgrading after my car is paid off, in about 3 1/2 to 4 years.  I think I’m going big then, top of the line, gigantic screen and all.

After about two months I finally just looked on Google.  I searched on something vague, like the mouse didn’t feel right or something like that.  Lo and behold the answer to my question was there; it was the mouse acceleration curve.

Turns out, somewhere along the line between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.5 Apple decided to quietly change the acceleration curve on the Mac.  The result is an acceleration cliff; the mouse moves quickly and then, right before the target it slows down…to a crawl.  Normally the mouse would slow down incrementally, gradually, allowing the person to place the pointer directly on the target.  Once the mouse slows down it creeps across the screen.  This was causing me to overcompensate and making my arm ache after a while.

I’m not the only one who has problems with this.  Traci, on the other hand, can’t seem to notice a difference and has no problem at all.  Some Mac heads will defend this behavior because of an undying allegiance with the almighty Apple.  That’s bullshit.  Linux does not suffer from this problem; the acceleration curve provided by X is just right like *gasp* Microsoft Windows.  Turns out Microsoft got this right.  They’ve done a lot of work on pointer ballistics and have put a lot of thought into the mouse on their systems.  I’m not part of the Apple cult; I love my Mac and I’m fond of Apple but they screwed this one up.  They don’t even offer a way to modify the curve, just the cursor speed.  Those are not the same thing.

Fortunately after some searching I found some solutions.  Some have coded fixes for this and sell the software for around $20 to $30.  I don’t particularly like the idea of paying to fix something that shouldn’t be broken in the first place so I found another way.  I have several Logitech mice sitting around the house.  I have one that is a three-button, scroll wheel mouse that’s relatively new.  It was the mouse I used on my old system before the Mac. I downloaded and installed the Logitech Control Center for the Mac and hooked up the Logitech three-button mouse to my Mac.  I set the acceleration curve to 1 and then assigned the left and right buttons, along with the scroll wheel and the scroll wheel button to their Mighty Mouse counterparts.  This mouse has a third button.  On my Mighty Mouse I had the two side-squeeze buttons set to run Expose.  I was able to map my third button on the mouse to Expose, completely replacing the functionality of the Mighty Mouse with the Logitech mouse.  Now the acceleration curve is fixed and my Mac feels like a real computer again.

I’ve read that you can also buy a Microsoft Intellimouse and install the accompanying drivers.  This apparently fixes the problem too.  As I said there are third-party solutions like Steer Mouse as well.

So I didn’t find a free solution but I was able to utilize an existing investment without having to spend any additional cash.  It’s frustrating that this even had to happen.  Apparently the acceleration curve has a different effect on the mouse pointers of the Mac Books.  It seems to be the iMac that suffers primarily from this.  I could live with that if Apple would provide a way to adjust the curve.  I can only hope that it’ll make it into the next release.  Of course it took them forever to wake up and realize that the right click button on the mouse was important and they finally included it, however begrudgingly.  Sometimes they can be hard-headed.

I hope this might help someone who is having this same problem.  If you’ve already got a Logitech mouse lying around the Control Center software is a free download.  You might also have an Intellimouse with which you could do the same thing.  Both of those mice are pretty cheap so if you do have to buy one it won’t break the bank.

As a result I decided to take another look at the Mac. It had been a few years and since then OSX had been released and the prices had dropped some. Long story short, I began to think seriously about a Mac and began researching what it would take to switch from Windows. I found that it was easier than ever to make the switch.

So after about a year of Vista Traci finally had had enough. We decided to pull the trigger about two weeks ago on a new iMac for her. We received it on a Friday and had her completely moved over to the Mac by Sunday morning. After spending the weekend with her Mac I decided it was time to make the switch myself and ordered mine.

I originally thought I wanted the 24″ display but after working on Traci’s I decided 24″ might be a little too large. I instead opted for the 20″ display but increased the hard drive to 750 GB and the memory to 4 GB. I also bought the wireless keyboard and mouse because the cords were so short and I wasn’t sure they would reach once I got a new desk (sometime in the future).

The Bad

There really aren’t that many negatives about this computer. My biggest disappointment was that the wireless keyboard had no number pad (or the buttons in between the number pad and the main keypad). It was a shortened keyboard missing many keys I regularly need. I called Apple and they shipped me a replacement wired keyboard at no charge. Now I have the full-sized keyboard and love it. I can’t really call this a problem since Apple fixed it promptly for me.

There are only three USB ports so they go pretty quickly. The keyboard has two USB ports which gives you back an additional port at least. I don’t consider this a show-stopper; I could pick up a USB hub for a few bucks if need be. Five USB ports would be better.

The speakers are adequate but not great. I’m not too surprised considering it’s an all-in-one solution. It wasn’t a big deal to me in the first place so I’m not too worried about it.

Also iSync didn’t work so I had to buy a replacement which set me back $39.

The Good

Now here’s where the list gets long. I love this thing! I like so much about it it’s tough to know where to begin. First off, it’s not Vista! That’s a big deal to me because I really didn’t like Vista and the thought of spending maybe a couple grand on a new box, only to have to put Vista on it, made me ill. I’m running Max OSX 10.5 “Leopard” and it’s top notch. It’s what Vista should have been. It’s clean, it’s consistent, it’s rock-solid, and it looks beautiful. It’s also Unix which I really love.

One of the biggest gains for Traci and me is that we were finally able to get rid of Outlook. I’d been trying for years but I was stuck; nothing else did the job completely. Outlook moves like a bloated cow and its IMAP support completely sucks. It did the job but not without pain. Now Traci and I are using iCal instead. She can e-mail appointments and tasks to me just like we did with Outlook and then she syncs her iPhone to iCal. I sync my Palm Z22 to iCal as well. Unfortunately due to iSync not working I had to buy a copy of The Missing Sync to sync my Palm to my Mac. That software works perfectly though so although it was an unexpected expense it was worth the money. It also syncs my tasks and address book.

I’m using Mac Mail for my IMAP e-mail and it works beautifully; much faster and better than Outlook ever did. Things truely work the way they’re supposed to now.

I’m using VMWare Fusion to run Windows on my Mac. There are a couple programs that I haven’t been able to completely replace yet; Quicken and my family tree software primarily. I’m also using it for my scanner. My scanner is old and won’t work on either OSX or Vista. No matter which way I went that scanner was dead. This way I’m running it on XP in VMWare and giving the scanner a second lease on life.

Virtually all the software I used on Windows has a port for the Mac or an equivalent. I’m finding that I use Windows on my Mac very, very infrequently. I’m using OpenOffice, Firefox, and TrueCrypt natively on the Mac. KeePassX and Adium are Mac equivalents for KeepPass and Pidgin, respectively. There’s a lot of pre-loaded software on the Mac that replaced applications I was using on Windows. No surprise that my iPod works with the Mac.

Speaking of the VM I’m also running Ubuntu and will soon install Fedora 9 in a VM as well. The beautiful thing about WMWare is that it has allowed me to get rid of a physical box in my office for Linux. I added extra memory to the Mac to handle the virtual machines and everything is performing beautifully.

I love the look and feel of all the hardware. The wireless Mighty Mouse feels great and the keyboard looks and feels smooth and natural. I love the low profile keyboard with the near-silent keys. The display is beautiful and the 20″ screen feels comfortable and has enough real estate for everything I need to do. The all-in-one design works nicely in my office, eliminating the CPU unit on the floor and freeing up space in a small room.

My old computer had six case fans and two power supply fans. It sounded like a C-130 taking off and you could hear it all through the house. The Macs are silent; I can’t hear them at all. Our entire house is now free from computer noise (but not from the noise of a three year old!)

Backups used to take me an hour and a half every other week but I’ve been using Apple’s built-in backup utility called Time Machine. Time Machine is wonderful; I plug in an external drive and it recognizes it and asks me if I want to use it for backups. I say yes and it does the rest. I’m now backing up my entire system by simply plugging in a drive. Brilliant.

I bought a Linksys print server a few years back to put our printer on the network. It took me three hours to get my Windows box to see it and to print to it. It took me five minutes on the Mac. Seriously.

Conclusion

It’s been a little less than a week now and I’m completely satisfied with the iMac. I couldn’t be happier with the decision to switch.

First of all, I had to consider my options. I have three options really; Windows, Mac, or Linux. I know there are other operating systems out there but for my personal machine at home none of the other options make sense. Given these three options I first needed to identify what I really wanted. Part of me, at least the non-conformist in me, wants to buck Microsoft completely. Sorry to disappoint all you Linux apologists out there but Microsoft is and will continue to be a major force in the computing world for some time to come. There is no escaping Microsoft completely, especially if you’re coming from a Windows world and have already come to use some Windows-only software.

But I still want to buck Microsoft as much as I can. In my younger days it was because they were the “Evil Empire” engaging in shady business practices and monopolistic control of our computers. Now, several years later, I’ve accepted the Evil Empire’s place in the computing world and, although I still disagree with many of their practices, they have a certain value. About 90% of the world’s computers run some form of Windows so it’s essentially ubiquitous and you can run damn near anything on it. And Windows 2000 and XP aren’t half bad either.

But now fighting the “good fight” isn’t so much the reason for wanting to bail; a lot of the reason is Vista. Yeah, Vista. I’ve been very underwhelmed with what I’ve seen so far and the thought of buying a new machine and running Vista on it makes me feel like I’m wasting my money. Vista sports a new interface, sure, and it does make use of 3-D graphics cards, and it has beefed up security a little but really it looks like a translucent version of XP. It suffers from a lack of drivers right now but those problems will subside over the next year or so, just like they did with XP. But man, Vista is just so…lame. It’s hard to describe how disappointed I am that Vista was the best thing Microsoft could churn out after five years of development.

So with a strong reluctance to jump on the Vista bandwagon the next time around I started looking at my options. I first reconsidered Linux, as I’d done in the past. I’d tried on at least one occasion in the past to switch to Linux completely but it just couldn’t compete on the desktop at the time. There wasn’t even a decent office suite at the time (this was during the days before OpenOffice). Ubuntu has made tremendous inroads in the consumer desktop market and Fedora has come a long, long way as well. I currently run Ubuntu in a VM and my webserver is running Fedora Core 5. I couldn’t ask for a better OS to run my webserver on but even now Linux is still lacking on the desktop and I don’t think that a year is going to be enough time for that to change significantly. In no way am I giving up on Linux; I will very likely always run my webserver on Linux, but for now Linux just isn’t going to be an option for replacing my desktop computer the next time around.

Naturally my choice wheel rolled around to the Mac. I’d looked at Macs back in 1998, right around when the iMacs were introduced, but they were way, way out of my budget. Over the years I casually followed Apple’s activities but never really seriously considered them a possibility due to cost and compatibility. In 2005 my wife bought me an iPod and I love it. I use it five days a week, every week, and it’s performed without issue. I love iTunes as well. I’ve been impressed with what Apple has brought to the market over the past few years, and I’ve been reading good reviews on OS X. What I really liked about OS X was the BSD kernel. After working professionally with Unix for seven years I’ve come to appreciate the stability of Unix (which is why I like Linux too).

I decided to hit the Apple site and check out what their latest offerings were. After I got over the sticker shock (common with Apple hardware) I decided to compare it head and head with a high end PC running Vista. I priced one up at United Micro (where I bought my last custom-built PC) and found that the Macs weren’t really so far out of range. Head to head, against a good Windows PC, the iMac fared pretty well. Apple offers three tiers of Mac; the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the Mac Pro. The Mac Mini just isn’t powerful enough for what I need. The Mac Pro is beyond my price range; it’s really a server class machine. That left the iMac and it was pretty much right in the range I needed for a personal desktop.

There have been several important changes to the Mac over the past eight or nine years. First off was OS X. It’s gotten great reviews and from what I’ve seen it looks very, very impressive. They’ve redesigned the line, offering large 24″ flat panel monitors, up to a terrabyte hard drive, 256 MB video cards, and lots more onboard hardware. Also, the Macs now run on Intel hardware, paving the way for faster processors and virtualization (which I’ll get to more later).

There are a few drawbacks to the iMac. For one thing it’s the all-in-one nature of the machine. The only thing user-serviceable on them are the memory banks. You can’t touch anything else inside this thing. So if something goes bad it goes back to Apple for service. There’s not tinkering under the hood. I’m also not sure what kind of second life these things can have either; there is no separating them from the monitor. There is also vendor lock-in; once you go Apple you go Apple. If you think the Microsoft stronghold is bad then Apple is worse.

But despite the drawbacks I still think that the Mac is my choice this time around. With VMWare Fusion (or Parallels) and Intel hardware, I can now run Windows XP in a VM at almost full speed. After doing the research I’ve found that virtually everything I need to do can be done on the Mac and what I can’t do I can do in XP on a VM. That kind of safety net is exactly what I needed. I can have all the ease of use and stability of a Mac but still do the few things I need Windows for. Provided I bump up the memory I should be able to run not only Windows but also Linux in a VM on the Mac, reducing the number of computers cluttering up my office.

So unless some kind of show-stopper springs up it looks like my next computer is going to be a Mac. I’ll continue to post about it along the way; hopefully these postings might provide some insight and information to other would-be converts. In my next post I plan to focus on my home network and how the Mac, Windows, and Linux all play a part.

Speaking of Vista, that’s really what’s sparked this whole thing…again. My wife’s laptop decided to burn out its video card so rather than fixing it immediately we came across a good deal on a new Vista desktop for her. After we got it home we ended up replacing the printer (incompatible with Vista) and bought two new copies of Outlook. My scanner won’t work with Vista either, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross another day.

After spending some time getting her machine set up I realized one major thing: I’m really not that impressed with Vista. I really expected something big for an OS five years in the making and I was, well, underwhelmed by the whole thing. It’s slow as hell, at least on her system, and the interface just isn’t what I thought it would be. I expected something revolutionary and it just appeared that it got a decent facelift.

Now before I get flamed for not appreciated all the hard work that went into this OS, these are just the observations of the guy setting up someone else’s computer. I haven’t had day in, day out exposure to it. But, having said that, if there was a wow factor to be experienced, at least visually, then I should have experienced that immediately.

So that got me thinking about my own computer, running Windows XP, now some three years old. I promised my wife it would last five years and most likely it should. But with only two years of full-time use on it before it goes into a career change, I figured I should start formulating a plan for upgrading when that time comes. I already know that my scanner is a dinosaur but they’re pretty cheap and I can figure it into the cost of a new PC. But honestly, the thought of having to move to Vista just doesn’t elate me the way I think it should. When I upgraded from Windows 2000 to XP I was pretty excited; XP had been out about a year and driver support had finally matured. After I installed it I was very pleased with it. Now, however, I feel like upgrading to Vista is a waste of money, especially considering the $200 price tag (for the high end version).

Over the years I’ve toyed with the idea of going Linux but to be honest with myself Linux just isn’t going to be there in two years. Maybe in five to ten, but I don’t have that long to wait. Linux has improved dramatically over the past ten years or so but it’s just not going to offer everything I need, at least not on the desktop. In that case I’ll ultimately need two machines, one for Linux and one for Windows, both in service for five years or so until I can consolidate virtually everything onto one or the other. Even then there’s not guarantee that everything will work. Linux works great for my webserver (I’ve never even considered anything else) but for the desktop it’s just not there yet.

So I sought out Apple again, to take a look at their systems and see just how expensive they really are. They’re still expensive, at least initially, but surprisingly after comparing a similar PC system from another custom-built vendor the price was surprisingly close. In fact, in this example, the Mac was actually less expensive than its PC counterpart. As a result my interest was once again piqued and it became a viable alternative. I’ve read stellar reviews on OSX (which is a free BSD Unix kernal) and shots of the OS in action have proven to me that Vista’s UI isn’t necessarily the best in town. Not to mention the Mac also comes pre-installed with some killer apps, all of which are included in that up-front cost.

There are some drawbacks, of course. Sure, you do get vendor lock-in in a big way but, as a result, the software is really in tune with the hardware, making the system very stable. Some games aren’t released for the Mac but I don’t really play games anyway. I still have a Windows laptop if I really need to hang onto some old software or games.

In this situation I’m only looking at a desktop replacement; my webserver will continue to be Linux and my fileserver will most likely continue running Windows XP (or possibly Linux). I’ll also keep a Linux test box around, at a minimum just to keep pace with new releases. My laptop will continue to run XP. But for the machine that I spent hundreds of hours on I want something rock solid, simple to set up and maintain, and-in a word-beautiful to look at. The Mac seems to fit that bill, at least on the surface.

So over the next year or two I’ll be previewing and evaluating replacements for Windows so that I *hopefully* won’t have to go to Vista. Linux, despite how great in some areas it is, probably won’t be able to fit the bill for the switch in that time. My only viable solutions most likely are to move to Apple or, when I buy my new PC, just put Windows XP on it. Hopefully I could milk a few more years out of it and then maybe a Linux switch would be possible. Virtualization is now a viable option too; I’ll be looking into that as well. I have a friend at work running Ubuntu Linux on his new computer with Windows XP in a VM.

The good thing is I have time. I’ll probably chronicle this process on the site so if that sort of thing interests you then check back later. I could, quite possibly, be posting to this site from a Mac in the not so distant future.