Leaving OS X and apple

andyscott

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Well I think its about time.

I have been forced by work to move to the evil windows and thinking about doing so with my personal IT.

So I have a few questions.

I use OS X because it all syncs free.

I need a solution to calendar app (well iCloud really for notes, calendar etc etc) :) and also I gather emails from gmail can be synced on phone desktop etc?

My new setup will be
work laptop
Desktop i7 PC
Windows tablet.

any tips.
 
Neil_g is right andyscott. I use both OS X and Windows (various versions of each OS), and both with Google Docs (gmail, calendar and docs). There is no need to standardise on one platform as it is so easy to mix. Google does the synchronisation. Just make sure you use the same account login user from each machine you use, whether you are on a Windows machine, an Apple device or a phone.

Remember that iCloud can also work for you, in that you can log into iCloud from a web browser on any device.

Suggest you try both and see which suits your manner of working better.
 
I still sync with iCloud and outlook.com. Google doesn't like my name and always seems to mess it up with pre and post titles included.

I switched earlier in the year and went to a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I really love that little device. Great replacement for my MacBook Air.
 
Incidentally one of the reasons I ditched the apple ecosystem was icloud got so unreliable for file sync. Onedrive is very good and lots of free storage if you take all the right options (turn on photo backup etc)
 
I still sync with iCloud and outlook.com. Google doesn't like my name and always seems to mess it up with pre and post titles included.

I switched earlier in the year and went to a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I really love that little device. Great replacement for my MacBook Air.

I did the same haven't missed the bulk of a MB Pro 15
 
Can I share my none apple calendars with an iphone user? Like my other half?
 
I love my MacBook Pro 13 retina, but I also use many windows PCs for edit work, I have no problems with either, Dropbox is great for chucking files from Android, windows and Mac OS.
 
Hehe. I really don't understand why people seem to think that if you use a PC at work, you have to have one at home. I worked for a company that forced me to use a PC for several years - returning home to my Mac made me appreciate it even more! What's more, I never had an issue sharing files between the two. If it were something PC specific, I just used Parallels Desktop.
 
Another vote for GMail and the Google Apps suite - Everything I have is now on Google Drive, I use Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Slides etc) exclusively - have not touched Word etc for well over two years now, Calendar, Keep (notes) etc all work effortlessly across all my devices. Whether I'm on my Mac, my phone, my tablet, my chromebook, or on a borrowed PC at the office, it's all there, 100% of the time.

There is no 'syncing' as it were to worry about it (well there is a little bit that takes care of itself for off line working) as usually you're working live on a single cloud hosted copy of your documents. 'Hand-off' is great - and by that I mean you can work on the same documents on as may devices as you like simultaneously - start on a Mac, edit on a phone, update on your home PC or tablet while sitting in front on telly, review on phone on the way to work etc. It matters not, and you'll never have any issues around versions etc. Collaboration with others obviously works the same way.

I'm a bit of a convert (as you might guess); I presume you can do the same with Office 365 etc, but don't know the details behind that, but it is certainly a little less device agnostic when compared to the Google offering at the moment (the trade off being you do get access to the 'full fat' versions of the office tools on the PC).

For me - the total device agnostic approach is the way. My wife just swapped from a Mac to a PC, and there was literally nothing to think about, not even the data migration aspects, it's all there on Google drive ready to go. Same when she swapped from a IOS phone to an android one. For your general office stuff (email, calendar, notes, docs, sheets, presentations, etc)- use Google (or Office 365), and pick the device that works best for you for the tools that are more device heavy (gaming? perhaps PC, CAD - workstation, well - anything really). There are native apps for the Google suite for most phones - these are excellent and allow off-line working, there's the stupidly cheap chromebook if you want an laptop experience, and for everywhere else, there's the Chrome browser.
 
I use Windows for some of my work (client specific) and a Mac for everything else. Which in most respects is great. No constant battle with non compatible hardware, no antivirus to worry about, a system that just works. I keep everything off board on HDDs which don't have any difficulty being plugged to either Mac or Windows so long as they are configured and formatted correctly at the outset.

Cloud working is not feasible due to abysmal broadband speeds and mobile signal when I am away from the metropolis.

What I do find objectionable is that Apple have become so uncaring and unhelpful, if it falls outside very defined parameters.

Look how utterly crap their connectors are for all their devices. I have even had a laptop charger badly overheat and scorch the surface it was on, but Apple were not interested. It was my fault apparently. How?

All my iphone leads and iPad leads have failed over time at the point where the cable enters the plug. Do Apple care? Do they hell.

It's a simple fundamental to ensure the cable is manufactured to a satisfactory standard to take some wear and tear. I have never had a MS based cable fail in the way that Apple ones do.

When I tried a Surface Pro 3, Apple started to look like it had missed the boat with its head in the sand attitude about certain fundamentals.

So on the basis of Apple (don't) Care, my next everyday device is likely to be the Surface Pro 4.
 
Think carefully what you are wishing for. I have just finished cleaning works PC from viruses infestation. You would have thought MS would move their runtime libraries over to stable and secure UNIX core by now yet they are still beating the same old dead horse.
 
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