Switching from a PC to a Mac ought to be easier, as a disillusioned Dan Kaufman discovers.
My hands are trembling, I've developed a nervous twitch above my left eye and I'm blaming it all on my iMac. Perhaps I should explain.
For the past 15 years I've been a PC user and for the past 15 years Mac users have treated me with contempt.
As someone who has tested and installed hundreds of computers across both platforms, I realise Macs have advantages: they are brilliantly designed, have innovative features and, at least for now, are still more secure than PCs.
So why, as one Mac user asked with a level of disgust normally reserved for perverts, have I refused to convert until now? Well, quite frankly, because I didn't want to spend the extra money and I'm a slob who feels daunted by buying anything stylish.
Yet, when my five-year-old computer finally threatened to call it quits, the time had come for this PC nerd to make the switch.
The first things that struck me on entering my local Next Byte store were the white, shiny surfaces that gleamed everywhere, like a scene from A Clockwork Orange before the ultra-violence begins. Funky music played while a group of young groovers, who I soon realised were staff, clustered around an iMac like cool kids around a hot rod. Feeling decidedly inadequate I browsed the iMacs, fell in love with a 51-centimetre model, and gave myself one week to think about it. The next week I went to a different store dressed in my least daggy clothes (the staff still seemed unimpressed) and hauled an iMac home.
At first everything seemed fine. Everything was beautifully packaged, like a high-tech Japanese lunch box and my new iMac even played a lovely welcoming song. How quaint.
I began setting it up, moving all my documents, music and photos over from my PC using a flash drive, before the horrible realisation dawned: Apple Mail doesn't import Outlook email files.
Now let's pause a moment to think about this: Apple spends millions on television advertisements trying to convert PC users, most of whom rely on Outlook and yet something as simple as converting Outlook files to Mail is not built-in. That's a huge oversight.
Apple's website recommends two approaches: one, delete all your emails except for the crucial ones, which you can then email yourself. This, quite frankly, is not a decent option. The second is to use IMAP. This is a type of email account that allows you to store emails on your ISP's server so that when you download them a copy still remains with your ISP. Unfortunately, most home users, myself included, are stuck with a different type of mail account, namely POP, instead.
After searching online I found two alternative approaches. One is to buy a third-party program such as O2M (
Little Machines), which will convert the files for you. The other is to install Mozilla's free Thunderbird email program on your PC, as Apple Mail provides the option to specifically import Thunderbird files.
Being a cheapskate I chose the latter option. I installed Thunderbird, which converted my Outlook files easily, before transferring them to my iMac. Apple Mail recognised them and seemed to import them successfully ... until I realised that, when it had finished, half my emails were missing.
I tried again, selecting only the emails that hadn't been imported and of those only a fraction made it into Mail alive; from that moment on my iMac was cactus.
Every time I tried opening Mail it would crash, meaning I couldn't even delete the emails in there and start again. I Googled the problem and found several posts from people saying their Mail also crashes for no apparent reason and that the solution is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything.
Apple's "It just works" marketing slogan began to taunt me.
I went to bed trembling and disillusioned. Tossing and turning, I questioned whether it's normal for a new iMac, right out of the box, to crash within hours just by converting files. Besides, if I wanted to reformat drives I'd have stuck with PCs and spent half the price. I decided to get a refund.
The next morning I called the store and spoke to a woman who was shocked that anyone would be unhappy with their iMac.
Finally, however, she said I'd get a refund and so I lugged my iMac in that afternoon - only for her to tell me she checked the company's policy and that they only refund if they find a hardware fault. I left my iMac with them and they didn't find a fault, which meant no refund.
Obvious lesson number one: always check a store's refund policy before making a purchase.
Realising I'm now with the iMac until death do us part, I set it up again from scratch and coughed up $US10 ($10.23) for O2M to convert my Outlook files to Apple Mail. Thankfully they then imported perfectly, which goes to show how easily Apple could have built this functionality into the iMac in the first place.
Lesson number two: Outlook users should buy O2M.
It's now several weeks later and I have to admit I find myself falling in love with my iMac, much like a hostage suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
I'll stare at its sleek lines in wonder, caress its aluminium case, and gasp at little joys such as the way the calendar icon automatically updates itself onscreen to show the current day, or how beautifully the screen renders graphics.
Then, just when all is forgiven, it will betray me like a deceitful lover: iTunes will refuse to play audio CDs for no reason, forcing me to shut down and restart; Safari (the web browser that ships with iMacs) will crash repeatedly and odd error messages will creep up telling me I haven't ejected my external drive when I have.
Now I'd expect these kinds of problems with a PC but what gets me is that iMacs have a reputation for being stable. I'm beginning to wonder why.
Having said all that, I do nonetheless enjoy using my iMac more than my old PC. Aside from it being the only thing that looks good in my apartment, it has some great features such as Time Machine, which automatically backs up my iMac every hour without my even noticing it.
Nevertheless, even though I'm rapidly becoming an Apple fanatic, I still believe the company should make it easier for PC users to convert or, at the very least, change its marketing slogan to "It just works - most of the time."
Converting from PC to Mac - How Tos - Laptops - Digital Life - smh.com.au
