Apple v. Windows

Yes, this is an age old debate, I know. And really, I don't care what you use. Use whatever works for you. There are definitely situations in which one is better than another for doing some particular thing. But I'm a Apple person. I have a MacBook Pro. I have an iPhone. I want an iPad (someday!). So yeah, I'm going to suggest the Apple products over an alternative.

But I wasn't always a Mac user! (gasp!)

I used to not even like Apple products! (Shocker, I know!)

But I've been totally converted.

So... why? Why do I think Apple Products are superior? Well, there are a ton of reasons, but since this is my blog about teaching, I'll start with a story about school today.

We'll call this, "One More Reason I Hate Windows."

My work email is through Office 365. So yeah, it's Outlook Web Mail. Online. It's actually pretty good. Before I discovered my love for Apple, I had a love for all things Google. And I still like Google (hello Blogger), but my Mac love has replaced some of my Google love. But, I digress.

My work email. Yes, back to the topic. Over the weekend sometime, Microsoft decided to upgrade our email server. You see, Microsoft has two forms of email. There's Outlook Live (@outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com), and then there's Outlook through Office 365. What's the difference? Well, Outlook Live is free to anyone. They've been advertising it like crazy lately and it seems pretty good. But my email NEVER looked like those commercials. :( Up until today, I went to live.outlook.com and I would log into my email. Well today when I tried to do that, BIG FAT ERROR MESSAGE.

Being the tech savvy person that I am, I was able to read the error message, realize that I needed office 365, google it, find the new login page, and login. No big deal. But to some of the less tech savvy teachers, they just thought our email was lost forever. Or temporarily down. Or something. I had it bookmarked, so I just needed to change my bookmark, then no big deal. But most of the teachers in our district go to the school district's webpage and then find the link to their email via the "for staff" menu. Our tech guy at school changed the link pretty quickly, but he had NO WARNING from Microsoft that this was going to happen, so he couldn't do anything until angry mobs began to scream at this morning (okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that dramatic, but I imagine it was close).

So now you're probably asking yourself, "if it's fixed now and wasn't really a big deal, why is she being so dramatic about this?"

Yeah, it's fixed. Yes, our email is PRETTY MUCH the same. Supposedly it's even an upgrade. But I'm still further annoyed. Why? Well about a month or two ago, I discovered SkyDrive. It's Microsoft's version of dropbox. And you know what, I actually like it. Yeah, I know. Again with the crazy talk from the self-proclaimed Mac girl. But here's the thing. For my school files, which are pretty much all Word documents or PowerPoint presentations, it's the most seamless thing to use. No worries about file types and I can edit anywhere, even if I for some reason would find myself working on a computer that doesn't have Word. And here's the biggest thing...

Until today, there was a link to my SkyDrive right in my email. And today, yeah, it's GONE.

Yes, I did find my documents. In a couple of places. But the convenience factor that got me using SkyDrive in the first place has been completely lost. So now I need a separate bookmark for SkyDrive. And I had to log in again because it's back over on the outlook live server that doesn't like my login for email. And now when I'm in SkyDrive and click on mail it doesn't work. So basically the whole point in using SkyDrive was to seamlessly put all of my school stuff together, and now it's a royal mess. And while my SkyDrive looks exactly like all those fancy Outlook commercials you've been seeing every time you watch Hulu, my "fancy" paid version of Outlook email doesn't have that great new look, nor does it have the seamless functionality they brag about.

Basically, Outlook sucks.

But it's what I have to use for school, so I use it, and in just 3 weeks I can just forget about Outlook for 2+ months!

We'll talk more about why I like Apple some other time since you're probably sick of this rant by now.