Editorial: Apple MacBook Air: The Migration
February 20, 2008 at 01:21:00 AM, by John Birch
If you are a Windows user switching to Macintosh OS, you will find Satan resides in the migration.
The last week has been great and it's been a struggle.
The great part has been the weather in Fort Lauderdale, Florida has been superb. This is not the Fort Lauderdale of my misspent youth. Interestingly as I have grown older, Fort Lauderdale has changed with the times. If you are a college student, you are no longer welcome. If you are a baby boomer, with a fair amount of disposable income, "Come on Down!"
The struggle has been I am committed to doing everything on my MacBook Air and foreswearing Microsoft Windows. The MacBook Air works perfectly in it's native start up mode, but the reality is this is a Windows World, and Macintosh lives in that world. I can hear the Mac-Heads protesting now. Get real people.
Above: God is reflected in the details
The fact is, as elegant as MacBook Air is, it would be useless to me if I could not use decades of accumulated data from Windows applications. I intend for the below to save you hours of suffering if you too are seduced by the sublime physical and software architecture of the "Apple way."
OUTLOOK 2007: Outlook rules my life. I have contact and calendar enough to run a world class US Presidential campaign. When someone wants to know "who to call," they call me first (In fact Charles Thomas of ABc News just called me for a number for a story he's doing on the NIU Shootings. No Lie. I know, I am a media whore.) Consider me a regular 411. Want to know when something is happening? My calendar knows every birthday, anniversary, holiday, political event, and adult toy convention into perpetuity.
Transfering my Outlook Calendar to iCal was a breeze. Just export from Outlook to a CSV file and import into iCal. Done.
Not so with Outlook Contacts. Transferring to CSV or Tab Delimitted causes Apple Address Book to report not a valid file. Turns out this is such a problem that third parties sell Outlook to Apple data transfer packages. I didn't feel like blowing the dough for a one time data transfer. Thanks to AskDaveTaylor.com there is a simple solution. Note you will need a free Yahoo email account to use this procedure.
Of course I could have just synced my iPhone with the MacBook Air using iTunes and done the same thing in a flash, but this article assumes a straight transfer from Windows PC to Apple OS X.
Microsoft Office: This is a no brainer. Just download the free OpenOffice.Org and you are set, unless you have some truly exotic Office application to run. If you do see my advice on Windows emulation below.
iTunes: This is pretty easy. But have lots of DVD's handy. Open iTunes in Windows and choose to backup your iTunes to DVD's. In my case it took 11 DVD's to do this and used a ton of disk space on the MacBook. Since I only use a fraction of my iTunes on my iPhone most of my iTunes library (and it is almost all video) can be kept on an external HD Drive. Make sure you have one or your MacBook will become so full it will become the worlds most expensive iPod. In the process your iPod/iPhone will be reformatted to Mac, and have to be sync'd from scratch.
Windows Emulation: Sometimes you need to run a Windows Application. For instance the LaptopLogic propietary system for updating the site only works with Interrnet Explorer. So for the past week I have not posted a single article trying to figure out how to run Internet Explorer on a Macintosh. (Note: Microsoft stopped supporting Explorer for Macintosh in 2003.) I was stuck.
First I tried a $79 program called Parrallels. It works great and loaded Windows Vista in a seperate window. Really cool. BUT...it filled my MacBook Air drive to the vomit point. It had to go.
Second I decided just to set the Apple up to dual boot using the included Apple Boot Camp to install a copy of Windows XP. I almost did, but I am on the road and the first warning is to back up your Apple before proceeding. I chickened out. (Note: Both Parrallels and Boot Camp require a fully licensed copy of Windows to install. An upgrade version of Windows Vista was first used in Parallells, no go. You need the full version.)
In desperation I went nuts on google and found a program called CrossOver Mac that lets you run most Windows applications in a window. It does not even need a copy of Windows to work! This is the slickest solution and is so simple it is a no brainer. I am running Internet Explorer version 6.0 right now in a window on my Mac. CrossOver is $59.95 but you can try it free for 30 days. For those niggling migrations issues that remain seemingly insoluble, do yourself a favor. Don't beat your head on a wall. Spend the $60.
ABOVE: CrossOver running Microsoft Visio in an Apple OS X window.
At this point I am confident my MacBook Air will replace Windows in my life? But will it? I will report back in a few months and let you know.
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