Picture taken by kurafire on Flickr

My first day with the new Mac has been problem free. Still smitten with the new MacBook Pro, I’m doing something I have not done in years, work from my bed! Day 1 of my new Mac life is focused on transitioning from my PC (which I will be using for very specific items). Throughout this process I am really surprised by the amount of useful utilities and programs on the Mac, a far cry from what’s available on Windows. One example is password management. In order to keep track of my passwords on Vista I use KeyPass, an amazing and secure open source program. Leopard comes integrated with a password utility called Keychain, which seems to be just as amazing. It provides all of the same functios but is integrated into the operating system (although Firefox doesn’t seem to play nice with it.)

My migration plan includes three external USB hard drives, each with a different purpose. When I connected one of the drives I was able to access it’s file, this made me very happy. Mac had no problem reading, identifying and playing the files. The stumbling block occurred when I tried to place files onto the hard drive. It seems while I can access files, I cannot add or remove files to the drive. I’m not sure if this is a protection scheme of Vista or some sort of other technical glitch, but a Google search in the next few days should help answer this question for me. Bummer!

The easy part of the day was installing Mac software. It’s a compmletely different process than in Windows, all I have to do is drag the appliction into the “Application” folder. No .dlls, registry’s, or complicaed daces. A majority of the applications I use are available for both Mac and PC and many are built on the Adobe Air platform which makes life easy. These programs are very specific programs that would have installed if I got a new PC (such as TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Flicker Uploadr, and MePing). The difference occur when I begin to replace software that comes with the computer. On Windows based platforms, I am replacing a lot of software that is integrated with Windows. So far on the Mac, I’ve only replaced Safari with Firefox (this is a personal preference.) Next, I needed to install productivity software. When I purchased the Mac, I got a copy of iWork ‘09, Apple’s version of Office. While installation was effortless and is completely compatible with Office files, much to my surprize.

Otherwise my first day with the Mac has been very eventful. I even made a video and posted it on YouTube. There are some slight frustrations, which really amount to me becoming acustomed to the one click mouse and some keyboard commands (much hasn’t changed from the old days of Mac), but I’m sure in a week or two it will all be second nature.