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Moving to Mac Made Easy
Jaguar777 writes "According to an article on CNET, Apple has a new weapon in its campaign to woo PC users: a $59 piece of software that makes the switch to Macintosh easier.
Detto Technologies has started selling Move2Mac, a combination of software and a custom USB cable that helps PC users move many of their files, settings and even background pictures to a new Mac running Mac OS X 10.2. Sounds nice. Is there anything like this in the works for the penguin masses?" Detto has had software to move settings from one PC to another; Apple requested them to make it to move from a PC to a Mac, and will carry it in their retail stores.
Now, get me one for linux that also includes a good windows emulator. But, more to the point, the problem has never been ease of use or cusomisibility, but a lack of specilized software that has hurt both mac and linux as a desktop OS. Just getting the neat wallpapers over wolnt convert many people. Still, a step in the direction of instant easy access to all data.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
If I were Apple (which I am not) I'd have this bundled with 10.2 and promote the living daylights out of it. This is the type of tool that PC users have been waiting for. This is one of those rare software applications that would be worth it's weight in gold to the OS company to take under it's corporate wing.
If i've spent £1000+ on a uberPC with everything, I dont want to have to switch hardware to run MacOS. Apple will never seduce Windows users while their investment in hardware cannot be transported over.
We all know that M$ is an evil monopoly but I think the reason why they're a monopoly is because Apple refused to compete with microsoft on the commodity PC platform. For years microsoft had no decent rival on platform that brought computing to the masses. OS2? I was a joke at best. Apple had (and has) decent software, but until they grow some balls and decide to play with the big boys.
We see the effect and penetration that Linux is developing on the desktop in the Red Hat and SuSe form, and that is fighting against the established monopoly. This proves that there is, and probably always has been, a market for a real alternative to Windows for existing windows users, but which has been left sadly vacant for years. Had Apple decided to stop making hardware and just sold software, perhaps we would not be in the trouble we are now in regarding MS vs DOJ etc.
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Microsoft may be evil, but Apple could be accused of having done nothing to stop it, when perhaps they were the only ones who could have.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Ah, but ease-of-use products like this are exactly the type of thing that sells.
Sure, you could duplicate it with a crossover cable, a shell script or two, and an ftp server, but that's not the point. The point is that something like this appeals to the broad segment of the computer-using population that is incapable of generating such a setup themselves, and is equally unlikely to find the freeware equivalent on the web which we'll imagine is named 'desKtopKopier' or 'Klone' or the totally descriptive 'Imperiator'.
I'm pretty damn good at creating search queries, and I still have a hell of a time finding simple little applications online of this sort - the kind of thing that I could create myself, but would rather save myself the time.
Marketting money is great fun. Not so sure about the name 'Move2Mac', either, but whatever.
You'd almost think a 'net company would know
If you are writing custom scripts to do stuff like connect to servers automatically on bootup, then you are not in the majority of users who dont know how to move their stuff over from one computer to another, and are not one of the people being targeted with this product.
judging by the posts so far most of you are missing the point here: this isn't aimed at those of us who could cope with the (ahem) complexities of copying files onto a CDR, it's aimed at Mr. and Mrs. Joe User - people who just want their computer to work, but bought a Windozer first time 'round.
These people are Apple's target audience with the whole Switch campaign (of which this gizmo is a devlopment). Chances are that if you're the kind of user who can do this for yourself (and lets face it copying files ain't rocket science) you'll already have made the switch (assuming you're not a: happy with what you've got and/or b: convinced that the hardware is too expensive... but I'm not going *there*)
They drop the priced 50%, they go from generally decent profits and occasional losses to big losses all the time. Sales would go up, but not fast enough to get them out of the rut they were in during the Amelio days -- they were selling lots of machines and had a viable long-term stragegy, but people didn't buy Macs because quarter after quarter of red ink had Wall Street convinced that Apple was going out of business soon and so a Mac purchase would be wasted money.
Also, a lot of the price premium you pay goes into R&D (vs. the "Windows tax" you pay when you buy a new PC from just about any major maker, which goes straight into Microsoft's PR and legal departments.) The reason Apple's software is "insanely great" -- and their hardware, if not i.g., is pretty damn good -- is because they spend the time and money (especially the money) to do things right.
Yes, yes, Linux has accomplished great things with a largely open, low-cost development model. But there are a few viable ways to develop great software -- open source is one (although it's worth noting that an awful lot of Linux goodness comes from paid developers) and real corporate R&D is another; perhaps the best model is what Apple's doing, which is combining the two. The MS way, which involves a complete lack of real R&D and a team of developers which seems dedicated mostly to ripping off other people's work, is not one of these ways.
Before you write this off as mindless anti-MS, pro-Apple propaganda, consider this: I was one of the very few who did switch from PC to Mac during the Amelio years. I did so because I realized just how bad MS software (which I'd been using for years) was getting, and I decided that I didn't mind paying a few more bucks if it got me a computer that did what I wanted it to, when I wanted it to, with a minimum of fuss. And I've never regretted that decision.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I'm not quite sure what you're driving at, but both versions of Office interpolate very well. I have never, ever sent a Word document to a colleague that he could not open, even when I use extremely advanced features, and similarly have never had any problem opening any Word document (except that an embedded WMA file would not play for obvious reasons). Ditto for Excel and PowerPoint, and again, even for very complex documents.
I don't know, but based on the marketing speech, there is not much "intelligence" in this software. The reason why it sounds easy, safe and secure for the Joe Average, is probably the fact that it is marketed as a software created just for this "single task" and it is therefore much more easy to buy and understand it.
Yes, the software is definitely for Joe Average. However, that is what sells. Things that are simple and easy and don't require any intelligence on the part of the user. That is why Linux has such a hard time being adopted by the AOL population-- they're not L33T or anywhere close to it.
For instance, I had to explain to my mother-in-law the other day what a web browser was as opposed to "AOL". She just couldn't understand the concept that AOL provides the internet connection and that she could use any "browser" that she wanted (something wasn't showing up right on a site she was using so I told her to try it with IE). The thing was, she didn't WANT to know anything outside her AOL sandbox. All she wanted was for her "pictures to work". On that same note, I think this mac switch software is ingenius! If it weren't for the high price of Mac's, it may be the "silver bullet".
Not to be condescending to them, but considering your average Mac user (and Apple) put a much higher priority on asthetics and usability than, say, a Linux user, this is a big deal feature. I'm a network / PC support consultant. Whenever I migrate a user to a new PC, the rule is this: the less tech savy the user, the more important Windows dressing like screen savers and background photos are to them. It's a major comfort issue for them. I think that your typical switcher is going to be one of the people that's less technical than a Windows user NOT making the switch, so things like background photos are a big deal in keeping the new computer comfortable and nonthreatening. It's pretty smart of them to have that feature in the migration software.
Chris
it's all about the comfort level. Apple is trying to make the users that they're moving feel as if nothing really has changed visually... it's still "their" computer. Once they are visually comforted, they'll start using it, and hopefully notice how things work better/faster...
makes complete sense to me
The clones did not lower the cost of Macs to Apple -- only to consumers. Apple was paying R&D expenses for the cloners -- nearly 100% of the software R&D was paid for by Apple.
The idea was that the existence of cheaper clones would bring over Wintel converts and expand the Macintosh marketplace. Instead of capturing market share from the Wintel world, the clones were cannibalizing Apple's own markets.
So Apple was in the position of subsidizing (via software R&D and product direction) the cloners, only to lose revenue to them. Apple and the cloners cannot both survive in such a scenario.
While it would have been nice for Apple to have been able to support a clone market segment (I bought a very nice Power Computing box that still works today), it just didn't work out.
And I don't mean to portray this as an entirely civil business decision -- the manner in which Apple backed out of their stated position of supporting a clone market for Macs was pretty slimy. But in hindsight it was necessary to save the company.
Macs have a lot of problems (the most significant of which will hopefully be solved by getting away from Motorola cpus) to go with their strengths, but the existence of a clone market never helps strengthen a company. Look at what happened to IBM in the PC business. If IBM did not have other product lines to carry their perennially money-losing PC business, there would be no Thinkpads today.
I think those might be the two most important, but clearly they can't be the single most important ;-)
I agree that fear is an important factor because too many people are terrified to click on some button on a computer because it might mess up or they don't really know what it will do. Because of this, they will never do anything unless they are babysat.
The main reason that I never learned to be afraid of computers is because back when I was 7 years old my dad actually encouraged me to enter the autoexec.bat and remove the remark line before the command to load the mouse driver. Then I started noticing these lines about emm386.exe and reading those readme.txt that came with shareware and finding out about memory management.
I think that once a person in afraid of computers, it is very hard to make them un-afraid of them. I have been working on my mother for some years now and she is finally coming into her own with realising that you need a generalised knowledge of how things work, not a specific knowledge of every button, keystroke, etc., to be able to understand the machine.
I would have totally agreed with all you people saying that Macs are too expensive, before I actually used one. I now own an iBook (along with my WinXP and FreeBSD boxen - it plays nicely on the network) and am considering getting a tiBook soon. After using a Mac for a few months, you realize that what's true with almost everything in life is true with computers: You get what you pay for.
Regardless of how much cheaper/faster/beiger/etc that PCs are, I've yet to meet one person who genuinely enjoyed using one as much as people who use Macs, which I think is the point most people are missing. Sure my iBook is more expensive, slower, has a smaller screen, etc, than my desktop or my schoolmates with Windows or Linux laptops, but, they're the ones always huddled around my screen and coming to use my laptop to do things because they prefer it. That's the point.
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Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
Why do so few companies copy Epic Games' lead with UT and give consumers all OSes for the price of one? After all, you've already paid for the code and it would be perfectly legal for you to use it in an emulator. Any pirating-prevention schemes that were developed for each OS should still work with combined media.
The only reason I can think of to sell different OS versions seperately is to finance the cost of porting. But Adobe can't use that excuse as they already have a huge market for both sides.
Question: Since you have a license for the software, would you be breaking any laws by pirating the version for the other OS?