We bought a couple of Macs for the office. One of them went to me; I am migrating from an older Mac. Another person is migrating from a PC. I used the Migration Assistant to move all my data and applications from my old Powerbook to my new Mac Book Pro during the setup process. It was the easiest “move” I have ever done from one machine to another. It was like I showed up at my new house and they had adjusted the lights to just the right levels and plugged in everything.
In helping the person migrating from the PC, we used iChat’s wonderful screen sharing capabilities. The screen sharing is just amazingly powerful in its simplicity and ease of use. We are able to effectively communicate about the challenges by so easily sharing the same space … a common.
This drive for a common also allowed me to easily “move” myself and all my settings; I barely skipped a beat, for to admire some of the new tools. However, a small challenge was encountered while helping the other employee configure Mail. She asked where she could click to check for new mail. I did not immediately notice the [get mail] button because it was in a different place in her default configuration; my Mail had the buttons arranged in the same way they had been arranged in my version of Mail 2 on the old Mac. She had the default configuration for Mail 3. It took a second, but I knew it was there. In this scenario, my common got in the way because it differed from the base common. Ponder the following questions,
- Are customization capabilities a matter of providing choices or simply a result of bad design?
- Am I better served by a limited set of options, or a limitless set?
I guess part of the answer lies with how easy it is for me to do the most basic things. This is part of the reason why I am once again impressed by the quality, performance and attention to detail found in Apple products. Why should I accept a long, difficult migration as just part of life when getting a new machine? Plug and play moves via the Migration Assistant.
To change the arrangement of the buttons on Mail3 to their default configuration,
- Select View > Customize Toolbar …
- Drag the default set into the toolbar
