Having switched myself from Windows to the Mac around 18 months ago and being very happy about it (except for business where I switched back to XP), when my wife’s DELL notebook had to be re-purposed, it was no question that she would switch to the Mac as well.
Before the switch, she was a not overly happy, but generally satisfied Windows XP user (email in Thunderbird, browsing with IE and some Firefox, lots of Word, some Excel). As the CSO (Chief Support Officer) of our household, I was unhappy, because I hated “getting the call” and also the generally poor remote diagnosis capabilities that more often than not prevented me from fixing Windows remotely. Therefore, as an added benefit of the switch, supporting her would become much easier for me, even when I was traveling or at the office.
About two months ago, we switched and she got a sparkling new iMac. While at it, I switched her from Thunderbird to Apple’s mail.app, but left her with Firefox and Safari as her two browsers and Office 2004 for text editing and spreadsheet use.
So far, the results have been mixed. The CSO is pretty happy — support requests have been down and onsite/offsite support is much easier to provide. However, the customer is decidedly unhappy and is becoming more agitated about the shortcomings of the Mac. Poor user-friendliness of mail.app is probably the main issue, so I’m thinking about switching her back to Thunderbird (which IMHO is much better than mail.app anyway). The lack of a task bar in the Mac, window overlap, esp. in Office, disappearing Office menu bars and automatic text and window sizing in all apps (or the lack/poor implementation thereof), esp. in the Finder, are all issues that keep her getting more and more unhappy with her Mac.
So facing a situation where you have either a satisfied customer / unhappy CSO or a happy CSO / unhappy customer, I have my suspicions what the outcome of this development will be. Stay tuned as this saga unfolds…
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