{"id":7433,"date":"2015-06-11T09:40:33","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T08:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=7433"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:46:13","slug":"how-mac-and-i-are-getting-along-an-interim-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2015\/06\/11\/how-mac-and-i-are-getting-along-an-interim-report\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mac and I are getting along &#8211; an interim report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/blog\/2015\/05\/28\/shutting-the-windows-moving-to-a-mac\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mentioned<\/a> that I was planning &#8211; or at least seriously considering &#8211; moving from Windows to Mac as my primary computing platform. I immediately received some very positive responses from guys who have already made the move and were keen to share their enthusiasm. I thought that this might be a good time for an interim report on my progress.<\/p>\n<p>When my wife asked me what I thought of the MacBook Pro after I had been using it for a while, I used a word which she did not believe she had ever heard me utter before. Suffice it to say, in summary, I will quote a well-known vendor of fine food: \u201cI\u2019m lovin\u2019 it\u201d &#8230;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As planned, I have been using the MacBook Pro as my main computer for a couple of weeks now, learning as I go and addressing problems as they arise. Here are some of the issues that I have dealt with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I need to work with MS Office documents and the advice, that I got from everyone, was to get Office for Mac. So, I took out a subscription to Office 365 and I have to say that it works like a charm. My only challenge is that I am used to Office 2007 and this is a newer version and a few things have changed. I have to accept progress.<\/li>\n<li>There are various ways that I might access my work email and calendar, but, given that I have Office, Outlook seemed to be simplest and it was. I required the VPN set up and found that I could simply download the client from the company intranet and, when I had a little trouble setting it up, I got some great help from out IT support folks. [Working at Mentor Graphics has its benefits and IT Support is one of them!]<\/li>\n<li>I installed the Mac Evernote client and it works beautifully. It is very similar to the Windows program, with just a few little differences. The key thing is that it appears to be [fingers cross!] very solid and stable. So far, no random crashes or hangs.<\/li>\n<li>I had some difficulty finding a project management program to replace MS Project. I wanted something simple and cheap. I just want to maintain a Gantt diagram and export the numbers. I found an app called Plan It, which works, but has a slight clunkiness. A mark against it is that I emailed the developer with a query and quite a few days have elapsed with no reply. I may need to revisit this area.<\/li>\n<li>For years, I have used CanoScan LiDE 60 flatbed scanner, which is an unfortunate casualty. I found that it is not supported using recent versions of OS X [or recent Windows for that matter &#8211; they stopped at 7]. This is no big deal, as I do most scanning nowadays using an app on my iPhone, which is fast and convenient.<\/li>\n<li>Laptops have always been a challenge to me &#8211; I feel very cramped with the small screen. Given a nice clear, high resolution display [and the retina display on the MacBook Pro is amazing], I can get by. I then discovered Spaces [I would call them Workspaces or virtual desktops], which effectively make the screen bigger. The implementation is very intuitive &#8211; in fact I stumbled on it and then had to read up on what I had found. I have used systems that implement multiple desktops on Windows, but they never seem to cut it. Apple have it nailed. This left a tiny problem: how do I put two documents neatly side by side on the screen? On Windows 7, there is a facility to do just this. I found an app called Magnet that does the job. [If I understand correctly from the reports, the next version of OS X addresses this matter.]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2015\/06\/IMG_3472-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-7435\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2015\/06\/IMG_3472-2-520x540.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_3472-2\" width=\"250\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a>There are still some unknowns and things that I do not yet understand or do not know how to achieve, but I am enjoying the learning process. The bottom line is that the computer just @$\u00a7*ing works. If it happens to be fun to, that is a bonus.<\/p>\n<p>I bit the bullet and ordered my iMac as I am adequately convinced that this is the way forward. The machine has a 27 inch 5K screen, 16GB memory and a 3TB fusion drive [mix of hard drive and solid state]. I was aiming to be as future proof as possible without ridiculous overkill. Hopefully this will fit the bill. I anticipate delivery in a few days, but because of business travel and some upcoming vacation, it will be sitting in its box for a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<p>BTW, the word Libby was surprised to hear was \u201cawesome\u201d &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/colinwalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6579\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_walls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6583\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/colinwalls.author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6591\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/facebook.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/116301748426290440139\/posts?hl=en%3Fhl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6587\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/google.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/ColinWalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6595\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/slideshare.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"41\" height=\"41\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6599\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2014\/01\/wordpress.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently mentioned that I was planning &#8211; or at least seriously considering &#8211; moving from Windows to Mac as&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[368,616,302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apple","tag-mac","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10373,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433\/revisions\/10373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7433"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7433"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=7433"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}