Mac Moment

by CHRIS RIVARD :: OCT 27, 2006 :: COMMENTS (4)

I have been using this great little OS X app for the last few weeks called Overflow from Stunt Software. It’s a utility that lives in the dock and allows you to organize applications and folders into categories.

The benefit is that it allows me to organize my apps by the task at hand. For instance, when I get to the office in the morning, I open Overflow and tab to the Productivity category and open Mail, Daylite and Adium (not quite a productivity app, but I’m usually pretty chatty after my morning coffee.)

It’s been about seven months since I powered down my Thinkpad and moved operations over to the 12” PowerBook. I had longed for a PowerBook for years, but couldn’t bring myself to drop all of my productivity applications on the PC and try to find comparable tools on the Mac. When I found out that there may not be another 12” PowerBook, I pulled the trigger and placed the order.

When I began using the PowerBook, it was difficult to consider the Mac a viable platform for everything that I needed to do. I knew in theory that were comparable applications, but I wasn't sure of the time to get to full speed using them. When I first got the PowerBook, I was working in Visio, using Outlook for PIM (with SugarCRM syc.) and then surfing the web in Safari on the PowerBook.

The application that I was most concerned with was a CRM tool. I used SugarCRM for quite a while and even changed email clients from Thunderbird to Outlook to take advantage of the synchronization plug-in for Sugar. In looking around for a Mac based CRM, I found Daylite, which has been a wonderful app for scheduling, contacts, pipeline and task management. We lost the web accessiblity of Sugar, but gained a tool with which everyone in the office can collaborate – on Macs.

It is definitely a leap to move away from the PC and buy into the cult of Mac, but after a very short period of time spent getting up to speed getting comfortable with the new applications, the elegance and simplicity of the Mac world is well worth it.

And finally, the portability of the 12" PowerBook cannot be beat. Case in point – I was recently at a meeting where there was some confusion about a logo that was emailed to the group, the PC user kept saying, "Well, I have the email, but we're at such a small table, I don't want to break out my big, clunky laptop* and power up to show you." Without a second thought, I grabbed the PowerBook, opened Mail, searched for the message and spun the screen around to show the logo to the group. It was a Mac moment! Steve, if you're reading... I could really use a 12" Core Duo MacBook Pro... pretty please...?

* Emphasis added for effect ;-)

tags: APPLE, DESIGN, MICROSOFT

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