Duality, life as a Mac and Windows user

Thursday, August 28 2008 - ,

Before I left for TechEd Barcelona I picked up a new MacBook Pro. I was headed to Europe for 3 weeks, the first part of which was business and the second part vacation.

I presented and demoed on Windows XP using VMWare's Fusion (this works *flawlessly* BTW and seems to be faster than my Lenovo T60). I still use Windows XP for all my work related stuff, but I've pretty much committed everything else (photos, videos, etc.) to Apple.

After I got back, I headed down to the Apple store and picked up an iPhone and said goodbye to my trusty BlackBerry.

The move to the iPhone was the result of being a long time iPod user and then absolutely loving my MacBook experience. So far, the iPhone is really nice but disappointing in comparison to my BlackBerry for managing email. While the iPhone does have "Microsoft Exchange" support it's pretty weak (IMAP/SMTP only). Note the iPhone is awesome at web browsing, video, music, calendar, phone, and contacts. So while this is a bitter pill (giving up BlackBerry's email support) the tradeoffs were well worth it.

One of the first problems I ran into was syncing my Contacts and Calendar to the iPhone which required that my contacts and calendar be in Apple's "iCal" and "Address Book" applications since I was syncing the iPhone with the OS X. I read that you could sync if you were running Microsoft's Office for the Mac so I started doing some research.

I installed the trial of Office for the Mac. Yuck. All my friends and co-workers running Macs tell me that the next version of Office for the Mac due out in January is supposed to be incredible though. I can't wait.

Next, I went to the Apple store by my house (which was crazy busy). Surely someone there would know more and maybe even be able to help me. This is where the Apple people started to look dumb.

Me: I've got an iPhone and an MacBook Pro and I run Exchange at work and want to sync the iPhone to my Exchange Server.

Apple store: Why?

Me: (long explanation, ending in me trying various things like Office for the Mac)

Apple store: We don't recommend installing that company's [Microsoft] software. You'll get viruses. It's a huge target for attacks. If you want to buy it though you can by the Student Edition for $49.

Me: I'm not a student. Is this version different from the commercial version?

Apple store: Yes, one is professional one is not.

Me: So the commercial version is different?

Apple store: We really just recommend avoiding that company's software.

That was about it for me. I said thank you and left. It's pretty amazing to me that (a) I would be told some complete lies about Microsoft and (b) then told that I can buy the Student Edition. Note, they also didn't answer my original question either.

What's frustrating is that the 2 sales people I spoke with put their own personal politics/issues ahead of my actual problem. While frustrating it also makes Apple look bad.

So I was back to solving it myself... I found out that by installing Plaxo on OS X and Windows XP I could keep everything in sync (which is now working perfectly BTW).

I really do hope that Apple adds better support for Exchange in the iPhone. I also really hope that Apple starts encouraging a more open attitude at it's stores for people that use mixed environments like myself. I suspect this type of scenario is going to become more common in the coming years.

7 comment(s) so far

Rich Mercer wrote on Monday, November 26 2007

Well that sucks! I went to the Apple Store over here to buy my MacBook Pro and the guy was actually pretty cool. We were talking about running Windows/Office and he had a different attitude to the guys you spoke to.

ScottW and I have been talking about the iCal/Address book issue and haven't come up with an elegant solution yet. I'll have to check out Plaxo though.

http:// wrote on Monday, November 26 2007

Yes, I've had some WONDERFUL experiences and some not-so-wonderful experiences at the Apple Stores.

Yours was really wacky!

As for Exchange on the iPhone - I would guess that once the SDK is available in January, the phone will be a completely different device. I'm sure Exchange will function beautifully.

http:// wrote on Monday, November 26 2007

Have you tried http://www.markspace.com/ ? Worked well for me for Windows Mobile Sync and it looks like they've released a product for iPhone synchronization as well.

Al Pascual wrote on Monday, November 26 2007

Finally you got the iPhone!!

LTorres23 wrote on Monday, November 26 2007

Your experience at the Apple store has happened to me at their stores, at Best Buy, at Circuit City, Etc. I usually do my research on everything, and when I hit the stores, I get poor info, misleading info, lies, etc. Or they have no clue what I'm talking about. (One time I end up explaining the guy what was it about)

Plus, I'm pretty sure those Apple employees know a lot of iPods + iTunes... ready for the Holiday Season. What can we do...

So far the only reason I’ve hit the Genius Bar has been for hardware support, and I have no complaints.

Trent Foley wrote on Tuesday, November 27 2007

I have been using Plaxo to sync my google apps with my mac apps and it does work fairly well. I have run into a few quirks, such as my iCal calendar disappearing, but I have managed to find workarounds for them.

My newest favorite Mac app is OmniGraffle. You definitely need to give it a shot if you have any need for Visio like functionality on your Mac.

Jeff wrote on Tuesday, November 27 2007

The Apple Store experience can be pretty hit or miss, and if you need to get into a more enterprisey solution, i.e., something related to Exchange, forget it.

But all that said, I'm kind of surprised to hear you're using Exchange. I use Google Apps (just the e-mail and calendar) and I can't imagine ever going back to hosting my own solution. With Gmail now doing IMAP, support on the iPhone works extremely well for me. For the calendar I end up using the Web-based mobile version of the Google Calendar, but it works adequately enough for me. When I get back to the desktop, I like that I can do meeting invites with people not even on my domain, provided they're using Gmail or Google Apps themselves.

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