After 20+ years of using a PC I bought my first Apple Mac recently. I’ve had an iPhone for several years and wanted to enjoy the seamless sync between iPhone and laptop. The sync between my iPhone and the PC was cumbersome and sometimes unwieldy. You’d end up with duplicate names in the directory or missing calendar events. So I took the plunge and bought the MacPro. Now I feel like I’m trying to learn a new language.
For decades I used MS Outlook for our business communications. Now with my Mac I’m using Apple mail and calendar imbedded software which communicate flawlessly with my iPhone and that was the goal right? Yes!
I’ve signed onto the iCloud with a big back up plan. Everything is talking with one another the iPhone the iPad the mac. Its all very nice and so easy. My calendar is all synced up and my contacts list is all nice and neat.
But MS Outlook is a much more powerful and useful program than Apple Mail and Calendar. I long for the flexibility and usefulness of Outlook. The Apple programs are very functional and work perfectly but there are many situations where they lack.
For instance, there is no way to set a reminder on apple mail. If I want to remind myself to check back on a certain email and reply later, Apple mail doesn’t have this basic function. I still haven’t figured a work around other than the flag everything red and then keep going back to look at my flags.
I’m sending out all these emails with incorrect small case letters because Apple Mail doesn’t spell check for small case letters for some reason? All my “i” come out as small case and incorrect.
MS Outlook and Apple calendar do not talk between each other very well. Meeting announcements and invitations sometimes do not show up in my Apple mail Apple calendar. The meeting function in apple Calendar is primitive compared to outlook. There are virtually no options and the functionality is limited. So for a work around, I’m now running a parallel Outlook program on my mac and I invite myself to my own meetings using the Gmail address.
And why am I getting birthday announcements on my calendar for people I only causally know?
And why is it so hard to add a new contact to my contact list? In outlook it was simple – pointer to email address and click to add. Apple – its like three steps plus I have to manually add the contact information.
It hasn’t been as simple and seamless as one would hope. Thinking about taking the plunge and leaving your corporate PC for the mac? Unless your entire office is Mac then you’ll be occasionally the odd man out.
So I took my dear brother’s advice and googled “why do my “ I’s “ come out small case when using Apple mail and here is the reply I got:
because Apple has most of its products, phones tablets and software that start with small letters despite being proper nouns, in Apple’s world it’s normal to use small letters for proper nouns and start sentences with small letters.
You will have to get used to the shift button and get a bit slow on your typing. after some time you’ll get used to it.
Dead end!
I spent 2 hours trying to set reminders in apple mail. There was some reference to dragging your email into the reminder app. But I haven’t figured that out yet. I see other individuals are having the same problem with that same outcome – There is no solution other than start running MS Outlook. OMG
Update! May 3, 2016
Ok, so now some positive news. There are many things to enjoy about the mac. I like the hand gestures to control your screen. The battery life is exceptional.
I’m getting a hang of it now after a month+. The calendar sync works marvelously. I place a new event in my iphone and it automatically appears on my computer.
Last week I had a link’s conference which is basically microsoft’s online meeting console. Of course it wouldn’t run on my macbook. I downloaded MS Silverlight which is required to run the web meeting software but it wouldn’t work so I had to fall back and use my PC for this customer meeting. I think I need some additional software or app to run the Linc meeting software.
I had to down load Flash software here too. I’m glad apple allowed flash to run on Mac’s.
The whole on line meeting thing is still chaos. With my macbook online meetings are unreliable and hard to use and in no way near as good as PC.
What are photo albums and are they of any benefit? Who knows? I can’t seem to figure them out. I’ve tried to set up an album but to no use.
I figured out file name tags and they are handy since I’m not good at filing things, if I give items a tag then they make them easier to find via the finder app.
Now for some really good news – With the help of my dear brother (my personal apple tech support) I’ve figured out the reminder for emails. I can now move my email into the reminder panel and put a date on it to follow up, hurray!
Update! May 26, 2016
After some more messing around I’ve got the online meeting services such as Microsoft Lync and Cisco WebEx working on my Mac. That was an important function that I needed to resolve.
I’ve got the email reminder working too
Everything is coming together now and I’m feeling better about the Mac.
The contact manager is not too good or powerful when compared to Outlook but we’ll have to live with that.
The mac battery life is amazing. It will run all day on a charge.
Update! October 2017
OMG – Apple is terrible at basic business communication. iMail or whatever they call it is terrible. iContact – equally miserable
Every file save or search is an endless moras of key strokes and mouse clicks – about as intuitive as a root canal.
Let’s talk about WINMAIL.DAT
Or Outlook meetings that disappear
Back to the email reminder – what took one click on Outlook takes like 3 minutes and five clicks and mouse tracks to set up a basic reminder. UGH
What are all these lines on the side of my emails which I copy and paste effortlessly on Outlook and now struggle to even work on Apple iMail
Oh yea, I forgot. Entire mailboxes that disappear on Apple iMail. Where did they go?
