Many of my customers at Paradyne have Apple Mac devices in their environments.
While we know that Office 365 and many Microsoft solutions “work” with Mac devices – the experience can sometimes be frustrating for those users.
As we progress in our technological world it is becoming quite clear that what works best is to choose a walled garden and live within it.
What does this mean?
Google people work best with a Chromebook (or at least Chrome as their browser), an Android-powered phone and tablet, powered by Google Apps.
Apple people work best with a MacBook / iMac with an iPad, and iPhone and iCloud.
Microsoft people work best with Windows 8 as their desktop/laptop/tablet, and Windows Phone.
The problem with this picture is that while a Google person can largely exist within their ecosystem without venturing out, an Apple person cannot as while the company has a “cloud” offering – it is aimed at consumers and has no business functionality.
So for the next month I am conducting an experiment – living in a Mac world connected to a Microsoft cloud. This means I will be using both a MacBook Pro and iPhone 4S as my primary devices – leaving my beloved Surface Pro and Nokia Lumia 920 to gather dust, only to be turned on in case of emergency.
In the first hour I managed to get my MacBook Pro running, installed Office for Mac 2011 and Lync for Mac 2011 from Office 365.
The Office experience was relatively good to get Outlook connected, however Lync required manual configuration and then proceeded to take 4 minutes to sign in.
So far this has been somewhat acceptable as I am able to now use Exchange Online and Lync Online without issue, as well as CRM Online via the Safari web browser.
What was very hard to deal with was the lack of OneNote application. While available for Windows 8, Windows Phone, Android and iOS – there is no application for the Mac. This will be quite a problem for me being a heavy OneNote user – especially as I use it both from SkyDrive and SharePoint Online.
I will be posting my adventures over the next month, featuring the good, the bad, and the things that make me want to cry. Stay tuned!
Discover more from Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP
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Perhaps use OneNote Web App?
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps-help/introduction-to-onenote-web-app-HA010378339.aspx
I did, but unfortunately that doesn’t work when I’m offline – like flying.
I too swapped my home PC to an iMac 27″ after not being able to find a better piece of hardware for working with my photos. I took the opportunity to go native OSX for everything after working as a windows sysadmin and manager for 20 years.
I must say OSX has taken some getting used to, but once I have, I would say both Windows and OSX are similar in capabilities – each with slightly different strengths. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it.
I also use an iPhone & iPad, and run windows at work (and citrix to it from my Macbook air) and find it all to work seemlessly.
Although, I have been using evernote since I bought an iPad 1 when they were first released. I won’t sift to OneNote until there is a native Mac version…
Good luck!
JP