12 Month Windows

I will start this by simply saying that for many years I used Microsoft's Entourage software on the Mac as my primary email, calendar and contact application. While it didn't have all the features of Outlook, I also wasn't completely aware of what I was missing since I'd not really used Outlook by that point in my life. Entourage was discontinued after the Office for Mac 2008 release. It was replaced with Outlook for Mac. It was around that time that I switched from Entourage to the Apple Mail, Calendar and Contacts system that came baked into the OS. I never really liked it as much as I liked using Entourage since everything was kept in separate containers. Sure, the various applications could talk to each other, but if I wanted to go through my contact list in any meaningful way I had to open my Contacts application instead of just checking out contacts within the software. It was also around this time that I began using Outlook quite heavily in my professional li...

I've been a user of Apple's iWork suite for quite some time. Because Pages wasn't as feature rich as MS Word, I actually preferred it over the feature rich MS suite. Pages did everything I needed it to do as a writer and made creating basic page layout documents a snap. But today I realized that in Pages 5 they stripped out something I used heavily in my work life: Mail Merge. I have a ton of documents setup to use Mail Merge from various sources. Every year I would simply update the sources and hit merge. Done. I starred agape at the notice that said "Mail Merge is not supported. Your Merge fields have been turned into plain text." How could one of the basic features of any word processor be stripped out of their productivity suite? Have they really just given up to the point of no longer caring? Have they reached the levels of hubris that Microsoft reached in the 1990s? Is Steve Jobs rolling over in his grave? I don't know the answer to that - his ...

After a hiatus, I think I'm coming back to this blog. I am still fascinated by what Windows has to offer as it tweaks and tries to perfect the Windows 8/8.1 experience. While I am still primarily a Mac OS X user, I have installed the latest version of Windows 8.1 Pro on my 15" Retina MacBook Pro. Since the original inception of my failed experiment, there are still the nuggets of gold that I saw as potential, and initially loved, about Windows 8/8.1. Now that I'm using it more as a Desktop and less like a Tablet, I have a new perspective on how it functions for millions of people, and it's not half bad. Coupled with the release of the new Surface Pro (3) and you're looking at something that is actually appealing as a Laptop/Tablet hybrid with the power of an ultra book and the portability of a tablet. Many people note that when they compared the new Surface Pro on a scale, it was to a 13" MacBook Air and not an iPad. I think those people are missing the ...