What apps to get after transitioning to a Mac

After leaving the world of finance a few years ago to start Subset, I mailed my Lenovo Thinkpad back to my work. I haven't used a Windows PC since, and I thought it was time to reflect on what it was like switching from Windows to Mac, from the perspective of someone who used Windows thoroughly during their time on Wall St.

It was a love hate relationship. Sometimes Windows worked great. I loved Excel. I was pretty quick with the keyboard shortcuts, and the dropbox file sync sort of worked. Other times it was like a jet engine on my lap. And I had to remember to shut it off religiously every night otherwise it would start randomly breaking.

But now that I was free to choose whatever laptop I wanted, I waited for the new Apple Silicon Macbook Pro to drop. And I have never been so happy with a laptop in my life. It was a massive step change in computer performance.

But transitioning off of Windows took a bit of work to get the computer setup in a way that mirrored some of my favorite features of Windows but in a Mac native way. Here's what I have to say about trying to use two of my most used apps on a Mac (Outlook and Excel).

Finding an Outlook replacement

On my PC, I loved using Outlook, which had my emails, a todo list, and a calendar all in one place. On a Mac, Outlook wasn't quite the same. The next best thing was Google Calendar and Gmail, but this was still two apps and I had to be on the browser to use it. I tried all the alternatives. I was so used to using Outlook, which has its own issues on Windows, but the habit of having both calendar and mail on your desktop, a few CMD+Tabs away was hard to break. I hated losing my mail in a million chrome tabs, and I wanted to see my calendar quickly when texting people my availability. I quickly gave up on Apple Mail and Apple Calendar, as the Google integration felt really weak, and the sync between that and iCloud kept confusing me.

The app I settled on was Notion Calendar fka Cron since they launched. And on the mail side, I've been loving Mimestream. The one simple functionality I required from mail is, if I hit the delete key, it should archive the mail. I haven't been able to set that up with Gmail, so Mimestream has been the winner. Very curious to see how Notion Mail stacks up when it does launch. Perhaps it will combine Notion Calendar and be a good 1:1 replacement for Outlook on PC.

Finding an Excel replacement

This was such a hard task. Using Apple numbers (the default Mac Spreadsheet app) was a rough experience. It would open things in a way I could never figure out what was happening. And the formula editor was impossible to work with. Not to mention I was never able to get collaboration running.

So then, I just tried Mac Excel. The app itself was missing many of the shortcuts that I loved on Excel PC and was quite expensive for personal use. The other thing was that it installed with like 8 other applications like Microsoft Access, each 500MB, and an auto-updater that was so incredibly annoying. I ended up installing and uninstalling Excel multiple times.

Google sheets wasn't so bad initially, but I really missed having an app on my computer that I could just double click my file and open up the spreadsheet, as a spreadsheet. Sheets made me upload the CSV and then import it. I also wanted to press CMD TAB and get to my spreadsheet. Too many steps, and too annoying.

This was a big part of the reason for starting Subset. How can I get a spreadsheet experience on a mac similar enough to Windows but without having to purchase the Office Suite. I really needed the shortcut keys, and I really wanted realtime collaboration, so we built both of those into Subset.

The benefits of Mac

Despite these two main hiccups, there are endless benefits that I've found in using a Mac. iMessage on your desktop is amazing. FaceTime, Maps, Notes, Find My Friends are all equally amazing. Every app just worked and hardly ever crashed. My computer felt faster and everything just looked better on my Retina display. Simple things like autofilling a MFA code from my iMessage into Safari just made life much easier.

I also was able to find several apps that were actually better on Mac than on PC. Generally here is what I've been using on the Mac.

Messaging: Mimestream, iMessage, Slack (I used to use Outlook and Teams)

Calendar: Notion Calendar (I used to use Outlook)

Presentations: Stopped making ppts and use figma / pitch and other web apps

Spreadsheets: Subset (I used to use Excel

Notes: Apple notes or Notion (I used to use One Note)

Browser: Safari or Arc (I used to use Chrome)

Misc: vscode, fig, raycast

Other mac apps I can't live without

Raycast is an amazing replacement for finder + a command bar. It is an all around utility tool.

Magnets is a must have if you have a lot of screen space (this feature was default on Windows).

Getting to use Notion as our company's primary documentation center instead of google docs or drive has been a very nice change. Leaving Teams behind was also an amazing side benefit, but I'm not that excited about Slack. Still waiting on a handful of other potential replacements to ship.