Jeroen's ongoing switch blog.

I've had the Powerbook for a month now, and the partial switch has gone very well.

All the commercial software I use is available and easy to find. Adobe Photoshop, GoLive, InDesign, Microsoft Office, and an included development system.

The utilities that I use are also easy to find, CyberDuck (log) SFTP, SubEthaEdit, iStumbler, Mozilla (or Camino!) and also some never before seen utilities like Quicksilver (log), I do not know of an equivalent for Windows.

The include software (iLife and others) is mostly good. iPhoto is fairly useless. Preview is brilliant. iMovie is also good, Garageband I have not tried. iTunes I have used on Windows since it was released and is something I cannot live without now.

Mail, Safari, Xcode, all are very good but in need of another version to be perfect. OmniGraffle is handy, it means I do not miss Visio since I only used it to do some simple diagramming. GraphicConverter, I have not used it much, seems a capable graphics application, I can do all my basic pixel art in it.

I have had no hardware problems with the Powerbook itself, the screen is perfect, and there are no general 'case' issues either. It can get a little hot on the bottom, but so does my Thinkpad.

All hardware I own works perfectly with the Powerbook, Epson 2400 Perfection Scanner, Epson 830U Photo Printer, Olympus C3000Z 3MP Camera (3 1/2 years old), USB2 256MB memory key, external USB2 40GB hardrive, External 40GB Firewire harddrive, Logitech mice (MX900, MX310) and of course a Firewire video camera.

Anyway, the good and the bad (there is no ugly):

Good

Bad

Design. The Powerbook looks great. Packaging. Outer cardboard box lined with plastic, holding a quality black box with handle. Screen. The display on the 17" Powerbook is excellent, great brightness and colour representation. Large trackpad. Compared to my T40p which has a tiny trackpad. Battery indicator. The batter has a smal button with some LEDs indicating the level of charge left when pressed. Software installation. Installing software is a very painless activity. Keyboard backlight. A better option than IBM's Thinkpad light. Internet. Connecting to my Wireless and DSL router was seamless. Expose. After changing the Expose assigned keys it is actually very good. Calendar. Untick the categories you don't want to see. USB Mouse port switching. Unplug the mouse from one port and plug it into the other, it continues like nothing changed. Application switcher. Apple+TAB shows a great application switcher implementation. Force Quit. This is sadly still needed today. Application startup. This is almost instantaneous. Wireless link. The wireless on this laptop has not dropped out at all. Help. It solved every issue I've encountered. Printer connects flawlessly. No driver installations necessary. Scanner connects flawlessly. No driver installations or scanner applications needed. Jedi Knight 2 is smooth. This game runs very well with all features turned on, UT2004 runs very badly with all features turned down. Crowd gatherer. It is the center of attention everywhere. Easy Bluetooth connections. The Bluetooth setup panels are easy to use. Power adapter. Great design allows winding of cable. Overall user experience. MacOSX is nicer to use than WindowsXP. Powerbook design. There are so many design touches that make the Powerbook a very useable computer. Extra battery backup. Put the machine to sleep, remove the battery, re-insert the battery, wake the computer. No shutdown and startup required. Battery life. Battery life on the go is much better than expected for such a large laptop. Cyberduck. Free quality secure FTP capable FTP application. Xcode's FileMerge tool. Good file merge tool included with Xcode, and free! Omnigraffle. Apple has included a free Omnigraffle graphing application. Grab screenshots. Grab and the OS' keyboard shortcuts make a powerfull screenshot solution. Xcode class browser. Excellent tool, one of Xcode's killer features. Free IDE. Apple supplies a free IDE with every Mac: Xcode, and it's quite good. X11. Most UNIX software should be easily ported to the Mac. Helpful Mac owners. Just as with Linux, people who own Macs are very ready to help newcomers. Quicksilver. Apple/Command+Space and start typing! Execute programs, find files, easily. Folder Actions. These can greatly enhance the MacOSX Finder experience. Automate anything you like! Applescript. Use Applescript to automate anything, communicate with and between applications, manipulate your data.

Missing keys. There are no seperate Page Up/Down, Home/End or Del keys. Similar functionality is available by using the FN key with the arrow keys or backspace key. Single mouse button. There is only one large mouse button under the large trackpad. No hard disk LED. There is no hardware harddisk activity indicator. Safari. Yes it's fast, but it lacks a Mozilla-style sidebar. UT2004 Demo. The performance of this new release game demo is horrible. Networking. Not as simple as I was led to believe. Occasional crash. This happens on every system, but it's still bad. Force Quit. This should not be necessary today. iPhoto. This is much more basic than I thought. Not quite maximised. Sometimes confusing when clicking outside supposedly maximised applications. Squishy laptop. When the laptop is closed it is quite easy to squash the lid and base together, making it feel weak. Loud fan. Occasionally a loud fan turns on, doesn't sound smooth. Crowd gatherer. People look, people lust, probably makes my insurer anxious. No "Enemy Territory". This game is the flavour of 2004 at work. Dial-up problem. Could not dial into my Windows 2000 server at home. No included generic mobile phone modem script. I had to suffer for some time and then found one online. Adobe GoLive is slower. Adobe GoLive is slower when switching between preview, source and layout editing. No included sound recorder. This is unforgivabe, there is no included application to record so9und from the built-in microphone. Xcode not as polished as VS.NET. Visual Studio .NET is still the King of IDEs. Xcode needs another version to compete. Screen resolution. The screen resolution on the Powerbook's screen should be higher, 1600 wide and 1024 high would be nice. Not as many games. Windows has many more games available. "Far Cry", "Enemy Territory", "Counter-Strike", "Half-Life" and most likely there will be no "Half-Life 2".

As you can see, it's been mostly good! Some of the 'good' items are minor, and some of the 'bad' things are minor. I will soon be buying another Powerbook, it'll be a 15", 1.5GHz, Superdrive, 128MB ATI Radeon9700, 5400RPM 80GB drive, 1GB Monster Machine! It will also completely replace the T40p. The only WIndows (and Linux) machines will be an old desktop acting as a bit of a dialup and storage server and an IBM Thinkpad A31 (ATI7500/32,P4/1.6GHz,40GB,15") as another Linux/Windows test machine. Of course as the company grows there will be more hardware with MacOSX, Windows and Linux operating systems.

Software replacements when switching form Windows to Mac:

I will expand on this list in the future as I find more software replacements, I may also seperate this list as a "resource". I will also add to this list of applications that do not have a direct equivalent for under the other OS (Preview and iPhoto for example).

Windows	Mac OS X	Comment on Mac equivalent
Microsoft Office	Microsoft Office	No Access.
Adobe Photoshop	Adobe Photoshop	Same
Adobe InDesign	Adobe InDesign	Same
Adobe GoLive	Adobe GoLive	Same
Paint Shop Pro	Graphic Converter	I am just used to Paint Shop Pro, will take time to be comfortable.
Visual Studio .NET	Xcode	Visual Studio is the King, Xcode will pull in-line in a version or so...
Outlook Express	Mail	Mail is a capable replacement. On Windows I used Mozilla/Thundrbird.
iTunes	iTunes	Faster
FileZilla (or other FTP program)	CyberDuck	Very good and simple. There are many others for both platforms.
Notepad	TextEdit	It's a simple texteditor.
Internet Explorer	Internet Explorer	Not as good. Use Mozilla/Camino or Safari, they're very good.
Visio	Omnigraffle	The included version is not as good as Visio, the full "professional" should be similar.
Windows Movie Maker	iMovie	Better, but I have not been able to get my iMovie-imported footage to work in Windows.