Bought a new Mac. Wanted to duplicate the config on my old one. Figured it would be 16 hours of reinstalling, reconfiguring, etc.
Turned on the new Mac. It asked if I was migrating from an existing machine. I said Yes. It said “Copying…” Copying happened. Then the machine booted, completely configured, set up, and ready to go exactly as if it were the old machine.
With my last Windows system, it took literally three times as long just to reinstall the operating system than it took to completely migrate to a new Mac and copy 100Gb of iTunes, media files, data, and preferences.
I then spent a stressful four hours hunting frantically for some application that must surely have broken in the copying. Some preference that didn’t get transferred. Some critical system file that got overwritten.
Nope.
All that stress Microsoft had trained me to have, totally wasted. Apple did with a software team one tenth the size what Microsoft hasn’t managed for 15 years. (And don’t give me some crap line about how Microsoft has to support so many open architectures. They’ve deliberately ignored, adapted, and “extended” standards since 1993 precisely to insure consumers were forced to choose between compatibility and Microsoft software.)
The amazing thing is that I know many excellent software engineers who have gone to work for MSoft over the years. Really, really good people. Somehow, their genius hasn’t made it to the world of actual shipping software. All that talent, design ability, and skill made irrelevant and useless.
Now the question is: do I do a Get-it-Done Guy column about this? It really represents a HUGE efficiency gain, but I don’t want to provoke religious wars. Hmm…