With the advent of the Iphone and Ipads, the Macintosh platform has grown in popularity. Many business owners now appreciate the intuitive operating system, as compared to its Windows counterpart, and want to make the switch. This raises a number of questions with regard to hardware requirements, software compatibility and functionality.
The first thing to take into consideration is that it would require a complete hardware change as Macintosh operating system needs to work on a mac machine. Apples have always been more expensive than their PC rivals so one needs to weigh up the cost of not just the current hardware, but future upgrades. Leasing is also an option so you can upgrade models at any stage. The specifications need to be defined as you will not need as much processing power for general office work as would be the case for video editing. There is also the issue of what to do with your redundant PC’s as they will not keep their re-sale value.
MAC equivalent software
Next question is whether your current software has a mac equivalent? Most programs for business are based on a windows environment so they simply won’t run on OSX. This is not so much of a drama these days as you can now run a “virtual windows” machine on a Mac desktop and instantly swap between the two environments. Companies such as VMware provide a relatively inexpensive solution for people who need both operating systems on one machine. The only thing to watch is how to define which environment your external networks, drives or USB connections will recognise.
For those who don’t wish to use windows at all, then substitute software would need to be found and data migrated across to the new Mac program. Emails from Outlook into Imail is not so much a problem as you can export a backup of all your emails then import that into a mac email client of your choice. You need to be careful that all the text and attachments are exported at the same time as the process sometimes does not always produce 100% results.
Microsoft for MACs
Microsoft offers their own version of office for Mac but there are issues. For users of excel the Macintosh version operates in a very different way. The extensions of xls or xlsx (depending on your version of excel) are not the same in a mac environment. These files may not instantly be transferable and need to be upgraded to that environment. There are also some annoying features such as the formula bar keeps disappearing and you need to reset it in the “view” setting. In office 2007 the whole macro VBA section had been removed and has only been reinstated in Office 2011. Also some software upgrades of office for Mac have been known to crash the whole computer, so extra care needs to taken before accepting that option.
Basically office is built in a windows environment with its own directory structures. The Macintosh version had to be reprogrammed to the Mac platform to mimic the functions that people are familiar with. Once you get beneath the skin there are some areas at the back end that are distinctly different. There are obviously Macintosh substitutes for office type programs, such as numbers and they make work fine for most users, but they have not developed some of the more advanced features that a full windows office version provides.
Malcolm Ford has been involved with business for over 25 years. For the last five years he has been involved in implementing Enterprise software and designed customised financial tools for medium sized businesses.
