Moving to Mac Made Easy

Jaguar777 writes "According to an article on CNET, Apple has a new weapon in its campaign to woo PC users: a $59 piece of software that makes the switch to Macintosh easier. Detto Technologies has started selling Move2Mac, a combination of software and a custom USB cable that helps PC users move many of their files, settings and even background pictures to a new Mac running Mac OS X 10.2. Sounds nice. Is there anything like this in the works for the penguin masses?" Detto has had software to move settings from one PC to another; Apple requested them to make it to move from a PC to a Mac, and will carry it in their retail stores.

i've seen the pc version

[mitzman]

I used to work at Best Buy and we had the PC2PC cable that this article is talking about. It never worked. The cable is definitely a sham and a waste of money. It takes more time to set it up and pray that it works right than it does to just burn a couple of cd's of data. Oh and this cable doesn't copy programs over, just data files. So in my opinion, save yourself the money and buy something else.

Moving to a Mac

[catwh0re]

This software has actually been out for a while.

In addition to this software apple has the following guide on how to move common settings over to a mac should it not be intuitive already. Guide to Switching to a Mac [apple.com].

Linux has something similar

[IamTheRealMike]

I believe some distros, Lindows for instance, will offer to transfer your personal data when you stick in the CD before installation. I know one of them will copy across personal documents, email (settings and mail itself), bookmarks and so on.

This could be made a lot slicker however, for instance copying across chat program settings, proxy configuration and so on. I was going to suggest Wine integration, so your Windows apps appear in the Linux menus, but thinking about it Windows normally has so much garbage on it I wouldn't want that, and anyway Wine works better when apps are installed into it.

Nice idea from Apple, although methinks the real problem isn't transferring background pictures, the real problem for them is applications. Most windows users have 1 or 2 oddball apps that they simply MUST have, on top of all the usual suspects. I've met people who won't consider anything that doesn't run one particular brand of scrabble game for instance, and most Windows users often have hobbies or even jobs based around such things as well. When Apple figure out how to get Windows apps working on MacOS (don't think it'll happen myself) then this will be more than just a gimmick.

Re:Apple's next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh cmon, I'm tired of people complaining about how expensive Macs are. I'm a Marine, I earn below the minimum wage, in fact well below the poverty line. I take home $2012 each month after taxes. With that, I have to pay ~$1000 (USD - Yen rate fluctuates) plus food, gas, adsl etc and provide for my wife and 2 kids. Yet I can afford an ibook, and old PC, and just ordered an iMac for the wife. They are not that expensive, if you just manage your money and save for a while. I'm sure someone in the IT industry could do better than me ;)

Re:All my files?

[great om]

there is a version of microsoft's media player for OS X, I've used it to watch wmv.
it is supposed to work fine with wma too

Re:Passing To Penguin...

[Zigg]

Everything supports Joliet now. Even Mac OS X, which was a great sigh of relief to me when I upgraded my wife's machine.

Re:Apple's next step

[weez75]

Just hold tight until Wednesday. Apple is releasing new iBooks and TiBooks. The new iBooks will start at $999 and TiBooks at $2299. They'll both get quicker processors and in some cases larger harddrives. No Superdrives this time around so you might have to wait to burn DVDs.

Re:Apple's next step

[BlueGecko]

I want a Mac about the size of a SPARCclassic, with a fast 3D card, a dvd+burner and all the rest of the Apple goodness, but with no monitor. I've got my own perfectly good 17" sony. Why can't I get one of those!

You do know that any monitor can be used with a Mac, right? Even my PowerBook has VGA via an adaptor provided with the machine. Beyond that, if you cannot afford the current model you want, just buy a used one a generation back. You should be able to get a SuperDrive model for about $1300-$1400, which you're not going to convince me is that much more than a well-built equivalently priced PC.

A better move would be for Apple to sell cheaper Mac's - I can't afford an iBook and I don't want an iMac or an eMac:

iBooks start at $1199 and will be lowered to $999 tomorrow if the rumors are true. How much cheaper do you want, exactly?

I'd like to see it handle Outlook .pst files

[irishkev]

Good luck!

Pause...

I just checked and NOPE it won't migrate Outlook crap. I didn't think so. Those files are a nightmare.

From their faq.

Does Move2Mac migrate email?
Move2Mac will move and convert the address book and POP3 settings for Outlook Express on the PC to Mac OS X 10.2 Mail.

Outlook Express DOES NOT MEAN Outlook 2000!

It is actually pretty cool.

[stinkwinkerton]

I used it when I got my laptop to copy all my mail, dialup, desktop settings to my laptop. It ended up catching all that crud I always forget. Laptop and desktop both have the same "feel" now at about 1/4 the time for a setup (win2k to WinXp.) No, it didn't copy games and applications, but it copied the settings for some if not most of the apps... I can't remember if it copied my PC Anywhere stuff but I think it did. It definately copied all my playlists and MP3's. Just tell it what you want moved or not then let it do its thing. (Downside: USB1 was slower than molasses in January.)

Re:i've seen the pc version

[Pinky3]

Dell offers the Detto Intellimover when you buy a PC. I have used it twice, both times when migrating from older PC's without CD burners to a new PC. It worked well. The cable has a centronics parallel printer connection on both ends (there is now a usb version).

It also contains a drag and drop "ftp" program for moving things back and forth between the two computers, so you could use it to synch data on two machines that were not networked.

Finally, it moves program files as easily as you can move them from C to D on your own computer (which is why they recommend reinstalling).

Re:I'd like to see it handle Outlook .pst files

[nbvb]

'sok.

Just copy over the PST files to your Mac and run this:

Outlook 2001 for Mac [microsoft.com]

--NBVB

Good, But Can Help With Older PCs

[Spencerian]

My guess is that at least a third of all current PC users have systems with computers without USB ports or Windows 98 (the minimum Microsoft OS that supports USB). This product would be useless to them, since, before USB, there was practically no common interface options available between Macs and PCs. PCs had parallel and serial ports, and Macs before 1998 had SCSI and their DIN-8 serial ports (which are commonly used now for PS/2 style connectors on PCs).

Older PCs don't have CD burners, either. So, to get your data from an older PC, you'd need at least one of the following, in order of ease:

- An Ethernet card (connect by Windows file sharing between Mac, which all have Ethernet, and PC)
- Windows 98 or greater (if USB is available)
- A CD burner
- The Internet (e-mail some files in small amounts to yourself or a friend)

...even easier (and cheaper!)

[NTSwerver]

...assuming OS X has an ftp server:

ftp>ftp my_pc
ftp>cd C:\
ftp>tar -cvf my_shit.tar my_shit
ftp>bin
ftp>hash (i love hash marks, OK?)
ftp>lcd /usr/me
ftp>get my_shit.tar
....
ftp>bye
my_mac>cd /usr/me
my_mac>tar -xvf my_shit.tar

Moving Files to Free OSen?

[RAMMS+EIN]

``helps PC users move many of their files, settings and even background pictures to a new Mac running Mac OS X 10.2. Sounds nice. Is there anything like this in the works for the penguin masses?''
There's no need to. Linux and the *BSDs happily read your files from your DOS/Windows/OtherOS partitions.

<Offtopic> /. seems slow today...is this a result of the server move?
</Offtopic>

---
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken

Re:Partial Solution - Still Gripes

[Masem]

There was a writeup of the Move2Mac program in the latest MacAddict magazine, and it specifically mentions that it doesn't just do file transfers, it also tries to transfer as much as it reasonably can from Outlook, OE, or some of the other more popular Win mail clients into the Mac equivalent, as well as internet bookmarks and cookies. Handling the email/PIM information is probably much more important to most than making sure the background picture is still the same, and that's part of this M2M program's selling point.

Think again.

[cioxx]

Sonar now has Broadcast Wave support. Broadcast Wave support saves all of the timecode and edit information. Cubase SX (and Nuendo for sure) has support for it.

You can save the project in Broadcast Wave (or TLAudio), and open it directly in Cubase - everything will be placed in the right place without having to realign everything yourself.

And Cubase works better on a Mac than on a PC.

Was that easy enough for you?

Re:Running Microsoft Windows on Mac OS

[Saint Fnordius]

You misunderstand the PURPOSE of VirtualPC. It's good for slowly weaning you off of your Microsoft addiction, and getting you addicted to MacOS X applications instead.

The other purpose is to run those niggling little programs that the Accounting and IT trolls insist on installing. Let them plop into the VPC pseudocomputer, and leave them inactivated.

Virtual PC is a boon to Mac heads stuck with clueless, yet gullible IT departments like mine.

Made a quick comparison

[FeeDBaCK]

OK. I went to both Apple's site and Dell's site to make a quick comparison. Here is what I came up with.

Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/167MHz system bus
512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM - 1 DIMM
120GB Ultra ATA drive
Optical 1 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium dual-display w/128MB DDR
Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
Mac OS - U.S. English

Subtotal $3,320.00

Dell Precision Workstation 530:
Dual Intel Xeon Processor, 2.00GHz, 512K Cache
512MB PC800 ECC RDRAM (2 RIMMS)
Entry Level Quietkey Keyboard, PS/2, (No Hot Keys)
nVidia, Quadro4 700XGL, 64MB, VGA/DVI (dual monitor capable)
120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Intel PRO/1000 XT, Gigabit PCI NIC
16X, DVD-ROM and 48X CDRW with Decode Solution
3Yr Parts + Onsite Labor (Next Business Day)

Subtotal $2974

Now, I could not find the speed of the CDRW/DVD on the Mac anywhere. I also could not find any information on support. The Intel Gigabit NIC was a promotion, so it was free (and couldn't be removed) in the Dell. The Quadro4 is also a workstation OpenGL card, which is much more powerful than the GeForce4 Ti (which I am assuming is a 4600) and is more for professional use. So basically, buying from Dell, who tends to be a bit more expensive than most of the others, I can get a machine comparable to the Mac (I would argue that, but I am trying to appease the Mac fanatics), but with a Gigabit NIC, and 3-Year ONSITE warranty to boot? Where do I sign up? ...and for those of you that say "it just works" referring to the Mac, have you ever even opened a Dell machine? They are ready to go with no work from the IT staff other than plugging them in and setting up the Computer Name/Domain.

I personally want a G4 Tower. The price just doesn't justify buying one, though.

Re:USB??

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Well a lot of "Mom & Pop PC users" may not have USB either
All new macs have USB, though most have Ethernet also, an honest to goodness 10Base-T port (anyone else remember AAUI? lets make it harder to connect to Ethernet, but easier to connect my Mac to that 10Base-5 line that I run...). PCs of the last couple years are more likely to have USB than Ethernet. UHCI controllers are damn cheap, and have come standard on the motherboard of every PC I've seen in the last 3 years.

To use the (self ironic) Pearl Jam song title, "This is not for you". This is for folks who do not know that the image that is their desktop is a a bitmap and how to convert it to a mac image file and put it in a place to be used as the Mac desktop. This is for folks who don't know where their Windows desktop directory is and how to copy stuff to their mac home directory, where they also don't know its location. This is for folks who don't know what linefeeds are and how to convert them. (Hmm, just came over me, does OS X use classic Mac linefeeds, or UNIX style?) This is for folks who don't know where their bookmarks file is on IE and how to convert that over to their shiny new mac. Most importantly, this is for folks who don't care and don't really care to learn. They just want stuff done. By and large, the folks on Slashdot like doing stuff like this, and like learning. Anytime there comes a device that obviates the need for learning, they scratch their heads and wonder "why bother? I can do . . ." yes, you can do. But this is not for you.

Unfortunately the doc is light on the technical side. USB only allows one controller and one host, everything else is a passive device. I wonder how they get this stuff to work, my guess is the PC is the real controller, and the hardware fakes some stuff out to make the mac export its hard drive as a target device, and essentially copy stuff to the new drive. Anyone with more details?

More realistic comparison

[siskbc]

Now, let's do compare apples to apples. First, a dual 2.0 Xeon will beat the living crap out of pretty much anything, and is complete overkill for the desktop. It won't even help for games, really. It's more than fair to compare the high-end single-chip designs, like the 2.8, to dual-chip 1.25 Macs. I plugged in the same options you did, and got closer to $2300. So I would think that the difference is more than you state - a state of the art PC is $1000 cheaper than a comparable Mac.

Now, to be fair, Mac OS is the best all-around OS that I have ever seen. My next computer would be a mac if it weren't for the cost, which is even more dramatic on the low end (I can build a good, new PC for $750, double that for a good G4).

And for those of you who have said "save up," I don't want to! I would rather get more computing power for half the price with the Intel architecture. And, although it's a pain in the ass, I'll dual-boot windows and linux to get a decent OS between the two of them ;).

Honestly, Motorola is KILLING apple. Their growth curve is way behind intel...meaning, if apple used to have the processor lead, they don't now.