Podcast 277 : Jumping Ship! I’m Now a Mac User!

by | Feb 28, 2011 | Gear, Podcast, Review | 19 comments

Firstly, I really need to apologize for the hiatus since the last Podcast episode was released on January 25, over a month ago. I know that some of you have probably been concerned that I’d given up altogether, but that certainly isn’t the case. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know that I have been up to Hokkaido on a reconnaissance trip for a possible new tour in 2012, where we’d visit landscape locations and travel along the west coast up to the northern most tip of Hokkaido, visiting fishing villages and the like. I’ll be doing a Podcast on the resulting images and new locations found very soon, so stay tuned for that if you are interested.

I had hoped to get a quick episode out in the four days that I was back from Hokkaido, before I left for my Winter Wonderland Workshop, but unfortunately I put my back out towards the end of my reconnaissance trip, and ended up spending most of my four days just trying to get better! Anyway, I was fine for my Workshop from Februrary 13 to 24, and it was the best ever. I’ll also be reporting on this very soon too.

My plan right now is to try and push as many Podcasts out in the next two weeks as possible, as I will be leaving for another month after that, for my Antarctica Expedition with David Burren. I believe there are still a few places left on this tour too, so although there’s not much time left to arrange it, do take a look at the LuminOdyssey Web site at luminodyssey.com if you’d like to join us. Also note that today we’ve announced details of a shorter trip with an early return option, for those that are interested but couldn’t make a full month to do so. The shorter option is just two weeks, and you can find details here: http://luminodyssey.com/ant2011a

MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro

Anyway, on to today’s episode – I know I’m going to upset some Windows users with this, but believe me, I have used and loved Windows for more than 15 years, so I’m going to try to make this as objective as possible, but I have decided to jump ship to Mac. I bought a MacBook Pro in January and have spent the last six weeks or so using it as my main machine, and getting used to it. Today I’m going to tell you why I have made this decision and let you know what I like about my new Mac.

Firstly, let’s get the tough bit out of the way quickly. Here are my reasons for leaving Windows.

Slow Boot!

Probably the most frustrating thing from a productivity perspective is the slow startup of my Windows machines – I have a 2.66GHz quad core CPU and 8GB of RAM in my old main computer, and when I first loaded Windows 7 it was like a rocket. Much better than Vista, although Vista also ran very fast for a while after a clean installation of the OS, but therein lies the main problem. It’s great for a while, but then as you load your production software, your Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite software, and all of the other applications that you need to actually use your computer, it starts to slow down.

Sure, my new MacBook Pro boots much slower too now that I have these applications installed. When I first got it, it turned on in 11 seconds from cold to having a usable desktop. Now that takes just over 40 seconds from a cold boot. My Windows machine took almost a minute to boot when it was just installed, and although I don’t recall exactly how long, it took probably around two minutes to boot as I installed my applications. The bigger problem though is that despite the fact that all I did was continue to use it, in the months following that clean install, it got gradually slower and slower. I am no sloth with a PC, and I know how to keep them tweaked for optimal performance, but still, it really became such a drag as I continued to use it.

This was the same for my main Windows machine and my Dual-Core Notebook PC. It got so bad that I literally had to go upstairs to my office and turn my Windows machine on before breakfast, just so that I could use it more quickly after breakfast as I started my workday.

To compound this problem, the hibernation function of my Windows machines broke after I installed Windows 7 and I was never able to fix it on my main PC. This means that whenever I turned off my PC, I had to totally shut it down. Had I been returning from hibernation, this would have been much quicker, but that just wasn’t possible.

No Native 16 Bit Printing on Windows

Another big factor for me was that there is no native 16bit printing on Windows. Since buying my Canon imagePROGRAF iPF6350 large format printer, with the ability to print in 16bit, I have been forced to use Photoshop for printing in 16bit, because Canon only produced a print plug-in with 16bit output for Photoshop, and there’s nothing for Lightroom. Furthermore, the plug-in only works with 32bit Photoshop, so I wasn’t even able to print from 64bit Photoshop, which introduces further restrictions on the size of the files you can create and print.

In Lightroom, I can save print presets that include paper size, margin sizes and my printer profiles etc. In Photoshop I have to set this up afresh every time I change my settings. I could have printed in 8bit from Lightroom on my Windows machine, but that is really dumbing down my printer, and I don’t want to do that. Lightroom on the Mac on the other hand, has 16bit printing built-in, because the Mac OS supports 16bit printing natively, and Adobe simply tap into that, totally solving the problem.

No Sleep for USB Hard Disks

Another thing that had become a bit of a bugbear for me was that Windows will not put external USB hard disks to sleep. I have a couple of external hard drives that I wanted to make use of, but when I plugged them into my Windows machine they were spun-up all the time, until I turned them off. This puts way too much stress on the external hard drives, and I really wouldn’t like to trust my data on a drive that is spun up all the time the computer is turned on, even though I do make regular backups. I tried my external USB drives on my Mac Mini though, and it puts them to sleep when they are not in use, which is exactly what I wanted Windows to do, but it won’t do this.

The Dilemma

One of the reasons that I didn’t switch to Mac earlier was actually similar to the reason why most people stick with the same camera system. With a camera system, we generally have a large investment in lenses, which make it impractical to change bodies, which can be thought of as the platform or at least the base of the ‘system’.

With Windows, I’ve got a lot of small application that I have invested in, which all mount up to a fair amount, but by far the largest investment in software for me is the Adobe CS5 Master Collection. I figured that buying a brand new license of the Master Collection at almost $2,400 was just too much, but then I did a bit of research online and found that Adobe will allow you to switch platforms, if you complete an online digital signature process promising to uninstall the software on the platform you have, and destroy the media, and not resell it etc. The process as far as I’m aware, totally invalidates the license numbers that you originally bought, so really, don’t do this if you intend to try to cheat the system. I don’t think it will work.

Because I actually bought my CS5 Master Collection from B&H, but I don’t have a US Adobe Store account, it was really complicated to switch. I spent a total of about six hours on the phone, and although I came across or probably created some very confused individuals, all but one of them were very patient and professional, and we got the switch done. All it cost me was $6 in postage fees for them to send me the Mac version, and they even put a 2011 table calendar in the box, which I’d have paid $6 for anyway, so all in all I’m incredibly happy with Adobe’s handling of the switch and their flexibility.

Reasons for Liking My New MacBook Pro

Let’s move on now to talk about some of the reasons why I’m really enjoying my new MacBook Pro. Some of these are simply a retort to the problems that I was having with Windows, but others are things that I was not aware of until I switched, and I’m pleasantly surprised by.

Fast Boot and Wake-up

As I mentioned earlier, even now my Mac has all of my production software installed, it still boots in around 40 seconds from a cold start. The other thing that I was really looking forward to though, and was not disappointed with, is that when I’m done with my Mac, I simply close the lid, and this puts it into a very low level sleep mode in just a few seconds. You can leave it like this for a few days if necessary, but then when you want to use it again, you just open the lid, and the desktop is there, instantly. There’s no waiting for the BIOS to run checks, no time for the data to be read in from the hard disk, nothing. It’s just on, waiting to be used. This is the biggest frustration fixed right there.

Multi-Touch “Magic” Trackpad

I am really enjoying the Multi-Touch Trackpad on the MacBook Pro. So much so, I actually bought the stand-alone “Magic” Trackpad instead of a mouse for when I’m using my Mac at my desk. It takes a bit of getting used to, and I believe that this technology is not just Apple specific, but it’s certainly new to me. Basically there are things like being able to swipe with two fingers to scroll horizontally or vertically, three finger swipes move you back and forward in browsers or through thumbnails in Lightroom. Four finger swipes switch you between applications and you can even pinch to zoom or rotate images etc. in some applications. Lightroom for one responds to zoom-in and zoom-out pinch actions.

MBP Workspace

Slick Multiscreen Management

The OS management of multiple screens is very slick. Even if you leave application windows on a second screen, the OS brings them back to the main screen when you unplug the second screen, so there’s no need to plug the second screen back in to find your applications, like I used to have to do in Windows. I’ve not had to use it yet, but there’s also a button in the display properties to “gather windows”, which I imagine you need to use if the automatic gathering of windows doesn’t work.

Problems No More

Of course, being able to print in 16bit directly from Lightroom is bliss, and I am also now using my external hard drives without worrying about them being spun-up all the time. Now, when I’m not accessing data on these external drives, I’m very happy to see them spin-down and go to sleep, saving energy and wear and tear on the disks.

What Don’t I Like About My New Mac?

OK, so what don’t I like about my new Mac? It’s ironic, but the worst part about my new Mac so far is Microsoft Office. Yes, as I needed to work with Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, I decided to buy Microsoft Office for the Mac. I could have managed with some Apple software, but I could not find a good way to migrate all of my Outlook mail from Windows to the Apple Mail application. I found an application that supposedly converts Windows Outlook databases to mbox files for import into Apple Mail, but this failed to export large chunks of my mail database files, and pretty much all of my Japanese mail was corrupted in the export, basically leaving me without a solution.

MS Outlook for Mac is a Piece of Crap!

Unfortunately though, Outlook for the Mac is a big piece of crap. Microsoft should be seriously ashamed of this app. You think they’d invest more R&D dollars into this app than most of the other stuff they work on, trying to win over the Mac users, but I guess they figure that the only people that need their applications on Mac are people like me that they’ve already lost anyway. They didn’t bother to try to get any kind of functionality parity between the two platforms. The Mac version feels like something that a bunch of students threw together on the weekend over beer and pizza. I found a number of ways to crash it without fail, within a few days of starting to use it. It really is abysmal.

Now I’m actually only using Outlook on the Mac to access my mail Archives, which I could not import into Apple Mail. I’m using Apple Mail as my default mail client now, and I’ve set up my mail accounts as IMAP, so that everything I do in Mail gets picked up by Outlook when I do have to open it. Once I can figure out how to import my old Windows Outlook mail into Apple Mail, I’ll remove Outlook from the system.

MS Word for Mac is Much Better

Word is actually a lot better. Microsoft obviously thinks they have a chance of winning some customers with this one, and I must admit, I do like the functionality of Word, even on the Mac. There are some critical problems too though. Sometimes, and I’ve still to figure out when or why, but command C and V don’t copy and paste all the time. When it’s not available, even the shortcut keys don’t appear in the Edit menu, and this is a real pain.

Excel works but is very clunky. You also can’t do the final paste of a cell with the enter key and you can’t paste the same data to multiple cells at the same time, like you can in Windows. PowerPoint isn’t all that bad either, although I haven’t really used it all that much yet, but for what I have done with it, it seems OK.

Other Idiosyncrasies, but Generally Great!

Other than that though, I really can’t think of anything that I don’t like about the Mac. There are things that took a bit of getting used to. The print dialogs for example are very different to Windows. You have to use a pull down in the middle of the dialog to switch between the Page Layout and other dialogs for example, but once I figured out what I had to do, it’s really not a big deal. Also, the printer drivers have an option to simply use the last settings used again, and this seems to work between applications too, which is really useful.

Most Applications Available…

Most of the applications that I relied on in Windows are available for Mac too. Dropbox and Evernote for example, both have Mac Clients. FileZilla, my favorite FTP client, and SplashID, that I use to save all my passwords are also available, and of course Firefox is available for the Mac, so I was able to sync all of my passwords and bookmarks from Windows using Firefox Sync.

ProShow Producer, the application that I use on Windows to make photo and video slideshows is not available for the Mac, which I knew, but is still a little disappointing. I would really like to keep all of my applications on one platform and not have to start windows for anything like this, but my Internet Banking also requires Windows, so it seems my Windows machines will not be retired for a while yet. I imagine I’ll end up using some sort of virtual Windows solutions at some point, but for now, I’ll keep my Windows boxes handy.

Everything External

Another thing that has taken a bit of getting used to, but more because I’ve moved from a desktop to a laptop as my main machine, is that I only have 500GB internal storage on the MacBook Pro. Although that’s enough for a few week’s of heavy wildlife shooting, it means that I can’t keep a copy of all of my image archive and documents on the machine all the time.

I’ve now set it up so that my archives are on those external USB drives which now sleep when not being accessed, and I have bare drives that I drop into an external bay to make a second backup to. These second backups will be my off-site backups as soon as I figure out where to do that, now that I don’t have the office from my old day-job to put the disks in.

I might just post them back to my brother in the UK for now, and always keep a second and third copy of the current year in my bag when travelling. Then, at the end of 2011, I will buy two more large drives, backup all of my photos and data to them, and send a fresh copy back to my brother. This will probably be cheaper than signing up for a dedicated service, but that would mean of course that I’d need a third copy locally to protect against multiple drive failures, but I need to figure this stuff out anyway. The biggest thing is that I have to connect drives to see my archives now, and that’s new for me, but I’m getting used to it.

Life Changing

When I first got my iPad, I found that it was giving me more time with my wife, because I started to be able to do so much more, like reading magazines and mail, right there from the sofa, next to my wife, rather than having to go upstairs to my studio office. This has continued now that I have a laptop powerful enough to do everything that I want, again, right there next to her, or at least in the living room, sitting at our dining table. I had a Windows laptop too, but because of the start-up times, there was a greater hurdle to actually picking it up and using it. Now that this hurdle is gone, I can literally do pretty much anything I want, anywhere I want. It’s still necessary to put myself in my studio when I need some block time, but I’m able to be downstairs with my wife so much more now than before, which is really nice.

Beautiful Design

Conclusion

In conclusion, although I am in some ways sad to move away from Windows as my main platform, I’m really happy with my decision to move to Mac fulltime. Like the iPhone and iPad, there’s something about Apple Hardware and the Apple experience that sets it apart from others. In some areas, there are quantifiable benefits, but in others, it simply feels better. Now, I’d better sign off for today before I start to sound too much like the Mac Fan-Boy that I never wanted to become.


Podcast show-notes:

Transcript and Images: https://mbp.ac/277

Mar 2011 Antarctica Expedition: http://luminodyssey.com/march2011/

Details of new 2 week option: http://luminodyssey.com/ant2011a

Music created and produced by UniqueTracks.


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19 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Friedl

    For about $80 you can get a copy of VMware Fusion (or Parallels) and load a copy of Windows on it and run your Office stuff. If you’ve got an old Windows install disk for a copy of Windows you’re not actually running anymore, you can install it to the VM in Fusion (or Parallels). I run it on my MacBook pro to test IE, Lightroom, etc. on Windows and it’s just dandy.

    Reply
  2. Lem

    Another great podcast. I enjoyed this one more than most, if that’s possible, primarily because I also switched to Mac recently and haven’t looked back at all.

    A couple comments/questions, if you don’t mind:

    1) Which MacBook Pro did you purchase? I’m assuming the 17 inch, and am very curious about what options/customization you decided on.

    2) I have to disagree about your final concern in the podcast about this episode not being photography related – it is totally photography relevant. Our computers and software are literally our digital darkrooms and deserve attention in their own right.

    Keep up the great work and great podcasts!

    Reply
  3. Paul Henman

    So MBP is now using a MBP 🙂

    I bought a MacBook Pro last year and love it – I’ve used Windows and Linux for many years but when I finally added an OS X laptop I’ve almost stopped using the others.

    I bought Parallels with my MBP and use it occasionally (pretty much only for website testing with Internet Explorer) but it can add all my Windows programs to my Mac’s applications.

    As for remote backups, I use Backblaze for my photos but if you’re sending your files to your brother in the UK then you might want to check out Crash Plan (http://www.crashplan.com/) because it lets you backup to a remote drive (e.g. on your brother’s LAN) over the internet, for free. I’ve only tested it locally (inside my own LAN) but it could be worth a look. Your only constraint would be the internet connection speed & bandwidth caps at each end.

    Thanks for the great podcasts. Cheers!

    Reply
  4. Forrest Tanaka

    As you know, I switched from Mac to Windows in frustration around 1999 or so, then from Windows to Mac in frustration a couple years later, though I still use Windows for website testing with Parallels. I think your analysis is spot on.

    My frustration with MS products on Mac (except Excel which I think is really super on Windows and Mac) led me to use iWork Pages and Keynote which are both really great and reasonable. And as long as you don’t get too tricky with formats and transitions, export to Word and Powerpoint really well.

    Maybe Windows has this (I never print on Windows), but I was recently very impressed when I took my Mac to someone else’s home and needed to print. From the Print dialog, it downloaded the right driver for their printer, and I was able to print to it in a couple minutes.

    Reply
  5. Gary Nelson

    Hi Martin

    Welcome to the club. I also changed about 3 years ago from PC to Mac. Although I have to use PC for work which is really frustrating!!!

    Do I see a Mac Mini in one of your Photos?

    Cheers

    Gary
    UK

    Reply
  6. Martin Bailey

    Thanks for all the comments folks!

    Jeffrey, I’ll probably do that at some point. For now, I still have a couple of Windows machine lying around that I can use when necessary. I will need to load both on my Mac if I need Windows while traveling, so that I only have to take one laptop. I’ll look into these solutions more then I imagine. Thanks!

    Lem, I bought the 17″ with the i7 chip, matte screen, 500GB 7200rpm HD and 8GB of RAM.

    Yes, I agree about our choice of computer heavily influencing our digital workflow. That’s kind of what I was trying to say for the reason that I went ahead and put this out there as well.

    Paul, I have been using Backblaze on my PC for a few years now, but my ISP (like many others) choke the bandwidth when they see a lot of data going to one place, so it takes forever to complete a backup. I actually completed a back up quite a while ago, but then lost it when I upgraded to Windows 7 and had to start again. Backblaze, the last time I checked at least, does not have the ability to migrate a backup set to a new computer, which really throws a spanner in the works for me. I might load it to my Mac and do a small backup set, or just backup from my Mac Mini which I can pretty much leave on all the time, but I’ll think about that one.

    The same problem would probably get me if I tried to backup to a PC at my brother’s place too, but before that, a bigger problem is that my brother only has a a laptop and he doesn’t leave it on all the time. I’ll probably need to buy something that could be plugged in all the time, and it would get complicated. I’ll figure something out though. Thanks for your advice anyway. 🙂

    Forrest, yes, I recall your migration track. I will probably try Pages and Keynote at some point, but for now, Word and Powerpoint are in my tool bag. It’s Outlook that really annoyed me. It really is a piece of crap, no matter how much better it became with 2011. For one, not being able to automatically move mail to various folders without selecting them and running the rules is just dumb. The fact that it crashes every time you try to run rules against IMAP folders is even dumber. Usually, if software developers can’t get something to work, they disable it, but I guess there was not enough beer and pizza to get the MS students to go the extra mile on this one. 🙂

    Gary, thanks! And yes, that’s a Mac Mini on my desk. I’ve actually been using a Mac Mini for almost five years now, but to date, I’ve only used it once a week to record my Podcast, as it was necessary to make Enhanced Podcasts. I’m actually on my second Mac Mini, and I really like it. I’ve started to use it more now though, so that I can keep my external hard drives hooked up and on the network, rather than having to keep going to my desk if I just need to look at something quickly. I like the fact that it’s quiet, and sleeps when not being used, but will wake up when I need it, even over the network.

    Cheers all, and thanks again for the comments!

    Martin.

    Reply
  7. Bruce Raymond

    A free alternative to Parallels is Sun’s Virtual Box, a freebie available from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Installation is easy if you read and follow the documentation and instructions. It supports Windows of most varieties (not sure about Win 95) as well as other OS such as Linux as well.

    I’ve been using it for software development while collaborating with other programmers who are working on Windows machines and have found it 100% reliable. My only grouch is that it retains control over any USB port it uses (except the one for the mouse) until Virtual Box is closed down, so sharing a printer is not possible once Virtual Box has used it. [I’m using a MacPro 2.8 GHz quad core with 6 Gb RAM.]

    Reply
  8. Stefan

    Finaly Martin! Welcome to the club. I jumped about 8 years ago after having to reinstall Windoz the third time in one year because it corrupted itself. I first swithed to Linux and two years ago to Mac. I have never looked back!

    You would have spent your money better on the iWork suite. My recommendation is switch altogether to native Mac software. There is generally a Mac equivalent for anything available on Windows. Just a heads up: your next OS upgrade will cost you a whopping $45. Windoz 7 upgrade costs you AU$500 today.

    Btw, thanks for the Podcast. It’s great. Wish i could go with you on the Antarctic trip 🙂

    Reply
  9. Martin Bailey

    Thanks for the additional virtualization option Bruce! I think I’d pass anything that tied up my USB ports, but I’m sure it’s worth keeping in mind when I need something. Especially as it’s free!

    Stefan, thanks for the welcome and best wishes! 🙂

    I know I should have gone for the iWork suite, but I didn’t like the fact that it said that it can Save Word and Powerpoint documents, rather than work with them totally natively. Maybe it can, but I didn’t like the marketing blurb.

    Apart from Outlook I’m happy enough with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. And apart from when I need my mail archives, I don’t open Outlook now, so I’m almost good.

    Yes, I’ll be pleased to only have to pay a relatively small amount for upgrades too. 🙂

    Reply
  10. David White

    Hi Martin

    Congratulations on moving to Mac!

    A few additions to the above feedback:

    1. You can actually dual boot on your MacBook Pro using Apples free BootCamp software and simply start up as a PC windows 7 at full speed! Best of both worlds. Works for me.

    2. You can test your websites from the Mac (on Windows browsers) using free IEtester software.

    3. The Matt screen was the right good move – my glossy 17″ is not ideal for photo editing in that images have too much contrast.

    Your note on moving the CS licence over means I can now afford to move my workstation PC over to a big iMac, so thank you!

    Thanks for all the podcasts – on episode 4 I bought my first digital SLR, by episode 277 I am a working photographer. Podcast accelerated learning.

    Reply
  11. Steve Morton

    Hi Martin
    Just started to listen to your podcast again after a break due to difficult personal circumstances here.

    Great to see you are now using a Mac, I’ve also moved across, with no regrets.

    For back ups I use Time Machine. You might consider using a Drobo box for your time machine back ups. It’s very easy to set up and easy to retrieve files back again.

    Like others have said Parallels is a good way to run Windows Apps on a Mac.

    I switched my Outlook Mail to my iMac, by moving the archive back in to my Gmail imap inbox, then sync the Mac to the in-box. (Might take a while!!) Then archive them on the Mac. But as you are only likely to do this once… then it’s not too bad a solution.

    I also moved all of my iTunes music across from XP to the Mac whilst retaining all of the ratings and play lists etc.
    Regards
    Steve

    Reply
  12. Kyle BUltman

    Hey Martin,
    You likely already know this, but replacing your laptop hard drive with a good solid sate drive would drastically decrease your boot times and load times of your applications. It would also speed up disk intensive actions in photoshop and lightroom, assuming that cache is located on the ssd. If load times are that important to you it might be worth looking into if you haven’t already. There is an added bonus to ssd’s that your data is protected in the even you drop your laptop because there is no fragile spinning disk.

    Reply
  13. Rafael Rios

    Hi Martin!

    I am a subscriber of you great podcast, and this is my first comment in your blog.
    When I listened to this chapter a couple of comments/sugestion came to my mind that I would like to share

    * External Hard Drives: It all depends on how do you use them, but it is a lot of worse if them spin on and off “all the time” than letting them on all the time. Parking heads and starting to spin is a hard work for the drive.

    * Mail: May be, you would like to try Thunderbird [1], you can import mail from Outlook. For me, one of the best things of Thunderbird is that mail is stored in folders on disk, this way I have migrated from windows to linux serveral times with zero problems. Also backup all my mail is very easy. I use several computers on my daily basis (work, home, laptop, …), and I use to port some mail folders between them only copying the folders to a pendrive.

    * VirtualBox: I use severals virtual machines on my linux computer at work to run windows and other OS. Yes, I am a system admin. Is a good sugestion from Bruce. Give it a try. You can attach/detach USB devices from virtual machines with a mouse click on the USB icon at status bar on the virtual machine, even you can create filters to indicate which devices will attach automatically, by default no one will attach to your virtual machines.

    [1] http://www.mozillamessaging.com/es-ES/thunderbird/

    Reply
  14. Al Woodcock

    Congratulations on your new Mac.

    I use Time Machine and SuperDuper! as back ups to two different external hard drives. The latter gives me a complete copy of my main drive so that if the original crashes I can just go to the clone and reboot to repair or immediately get on with my work, granted up to a day old. Also consider off site backup using CrashPlan or other program.

    For very helpful Mac how to ebooks, I like the Take Control series with many titles. Link to home page http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/?pt=TB-TAGLINE

    Al

    Reply
  15. Alvinus

    Hey Martin:

    I am only now reading this! What took you so long to move to mac. Anyway welcome to the club. When will you try out Aperture? 😉

    Reply
  16. John

    Hi Martin,

    Thanks for the podcast. I also switched to Mac recently and am enjoying the experience (27 inch screen for one thing!).

    Perhaps it was just a typo but copying and pasting involves Command C and V, not P which is used as a short for access to printing. Could this be causing the problem in Word?

    I just read your blog about your health issue and wish you all the very best in overcoming it.

    All the best.
    John

    Reply
  17. Martin Bailey

    Aah, yes, that’s a typo John. Word is still flaky in this area. I was using it this week, and twice when I launched it, the hotkeys didn’t work, and then once they did. Peice of crap! 🙂

    Thanks for the well wishes too! I really appreciate it.

    Cheers,
    Martin.

    Reply
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