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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.
and even background pictures
...
thats clearly a "must have" feature, take your background pictures with you whereever you go, from pc to mac, from mac to cellular, from cellular to the fridge door
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.
What about my mouse settings? Acceleration, double-click speed, button assignm...er, nevermind.
Is there anything like this in the works for the penguin masses?
Sure dude, It's called a brain...
As a long time Mac user, I recently convinced my wife to take the plunge and switch from W2K to a shiny new iBook. While she loves the form and function of the 'book, and she loves how all the apps work, migration of her data was a beee-otch! This software really wouldn't have done anything to resolve the big issues: moving calendars and email. I was able to to this through several machinations because I (huzzah!) am a trained IT professional (and I'm used to dealing with M$ making it as difficult as possible to move from PC-to-Mac). But if she had to do this on her own, or more-to-the-point, if all of the other mom-and-pop's out there who Apple is targeting with their "Switch" campaign had to do it alone, she would have booted the iBook across the room and gone back to her namby-pamby W2K box.
Apple really needs to address this: they've done a good job stating the case as to WHY a "switch" would be in user's interests: they damn sure need to make this process simple, bulletproof and COMPLETE, before they find a lot of people switching their sorry keisters back to Windows faster than you can say "Blue Screen of Death".
OK.
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
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.
Oh cmon, I'm tired of people complaining about how expensive Macs are. I'm a Marine, I earn below the minimum wage, in fact well below the poverty line. I take home $2012 each month after taxes. With that, I have to pay ~$1000 (USD - Yen rate fluctuates) plus food, gas, adsl etc and provide for my wife and 2 kids. Yet I can afford an ibook, and old PC, and just ordered an iMac for the wife. They are not that expensive, if you just manage your money and save for a while. I'm sure someone in the IT industry could do better than me ;)
I think you're mistaken on this. Yes, your hard-earned 1000 quid went into that box, but we both know it'll be obselete within a year (oh, quit moaning: it's true!). Computer buyers are becoming savvy enough to know this (I know, not ALL of them, but many of them). Therefore, I don't think it's a stretch that some people will think: "Hmm, I gotta blow a buttload of money on an item that'll last me about as long as an ice cream sandwich - how about I get one that does stuff better, looks better, and doesn't crash?" No, we're not talking about scads of people using this logic, but some do. Apple is beyond trying to win back substantial marketshare from WinTel (face it, they lost), but modest gains are suitable, and the types of users who might think this way are precisely the people Apple wants as a user community.
:)
I am certain Apple is happy to have an idiot like me pontificating about what THEY want.
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
Just hold tight until Wednesday. Apple is releasing new iBooks and TiBooks. The new iBooks will start at $999 and TiBooks at $2299. They'll both get quicker processors and in some cases larger harddrives. No Superdrives this time around so you might have to wait to burn DVDs.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
If apple had the sense god gave a marshmallow, it would make the migration software free.
> Is there anything like this in the works for the penguin masses?
Yes! It's called dual boot. Mount the windows partition, and everything is there!!
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*)
When Apple figure out how to get Windows apps working on MacOS (don't think it'll happen myself)
Connectix has already figured this out. Buy the Virtual PC 5 emulator for Mac OS.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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 used it when I got my laptop to copy all my mail, dialup, desktop settings to my laptop. It ended up catching all that crud I always forget. Laptop and desktop both have the same "feel" now at about 1/4 the time for a setup (win2k to WinXp.) No, it didn't copy games and applications, but it copied the settings for some if not most of the apps... I can't remember if it copied my PC Anywhere stuff but I think it did. It definately copied all my playlists and MP3's. Just tell it what you want moved or not then let it do its thing. (Downside: USB1 was slower than molasses in January.)
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
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".
'sok.
Just copy over the PST files to your Mac and run this:
Outlook 2001 for Mac
--NBVB
This utility does seem like it would help standard issue windows desktop users who have no real idea what they need to back up or move over to their Mac.
_ _
However, more than one person, pointed out the obvious. If Apple slashed its prices by say even $500 dollars on the big boy G4s and Powerbooks they would get a lot more converts. I can see paying a bit more for a mac but the laptop prices are just outrageous in my opinion. Not even comparing them to bargain basement priced PCs but to Dells for example and you have to sit back and scratch your head. They are good, sure. But are they that damn good?
Honestly, I am not trying to troll on this one.
What about a Macintosh Powerbook or a G4 makes them worth that much of an apple premium?
I want to see a Switcher price campaign.
_______________________________________________
ACK
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.
BMW is never going to have a large market share if they don't let customers buy the cars the way they want. They will just be a niche car company selling expensive cars to really arrogant, snotty people that think they are superior to everyone else. Plus I hear their owner likes to wear black all the time.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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.
If I were Apple, I'd sell this as a "free switcher kit" - free as in 100% rebate when purchased along with a new Mac. Apple does rebate programs like this all the time, so the support structures are already in place.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.