Personal Productive Canvas: how to join Windows and Mac?
In the first quarter of 2020 I had a dilemma to solve: how can I join Windows and Mac to do my work? If you are curious on how I got this dilemma, let me explain it properly.
I acquired a Mac Mini in 2013 to research about graphic design and ways to make videos. It was a try to replace Windows and improve the quality of my work but I didn’t find a good match to Word and Microsoft tools. In 2014, during a research to find ways to improve my productivity, I found OutSystems and there wasn’t any available version for Mac. I had Quicken and other tools that I was using at that time that weren’t compatible with Mac. So, I decided to abandon Mac and work only with Windows.
In 2017 my feeling to work with Mac still was present and I bought a QNAP server because, according to the supplier, it handles Mac and Windows files. Sweet Illusion. I couldn’t open the same Word file in my Windows laptop and Mac mini but at least I didn’t have the hard disk limitation of my laptop to save all my files. In 2019 I initiated a project that used Sketch and due the use of Windows, the web designer enabled Zeppelin to the team. The wish to use Mac still was bothering me and I decided to use Personal Productivity Canvas (PPC) as a framework to address it properly.
Personal Productive Canvas: An Agile Approach book is available at Amazon(click here for more details) and details how each part of PPC works. In a general way, Stronger layer presents all important benefits and focuses in “do the things right” and reaps always the best benefits in advance. Faster layer is related to the “do things right” enabling planning, repository and performing what was prioritized in the Strategy layer.
Usually Stronger and Faster layers are complex enough to deal with a lot of problems from knowledge workers in companies. Better approach focuses in perspectives that help an individual to higher his or her productivity. Continuous Improvement & Tools pilar focuses in ways to highlight where an individual can increase his productivity on his or her personal aspect, differently from Management Systems that is focused in the continuous improvement of process and tools to deliver quickly a task. Learning focuses in ways to structure to acquire and create a concise knowledge and Leisure and Health worries on how a person must adapt him or herself to have a good work/life balance.
As the dilemma presented in the beginning of this article is not related to the management systems, I will put my wish to solve it in the Continuous Improvement and Tools pilar. As every month I manage all options I have in the Stronger layer, I had to wait the best time to put a specific task in a goal to initiate my work to address my dilemma and the result of my work is explained below by topics.
Upgrade of Mac Mini: an upgrade of memory from 4 GB to 16 GB (You can buy it at Megamac for £ 80.00, at the time of this article) would be enough to run VirtualBox machines once I had 1TB of HD. Once the processing speed improved a lot, I bought Sketch to improve the design of my web pages using the OutSystems UI sketch files. However, I created multiple virtual machines (one for development, another for leisure, research of tools, etc) and I realized that I had to install, Word — for instance, on different virtual machines to work on my files. When I run 2 virtual machines at the same time my HD was suffering to keep up all.
Sync of Files: my QNAP server being used partialy in another country with a not high speed broadband didn’t help me and the absence of backup files disturbed me. When I subscribed Microsoft 365, I could open my files in virtual machines and my Mac. I had only to enable Cloud Drive Sync into QNAP to enable the update of files in both directions(QNAP server and OneDrive).
Poor performance and software duplication: poor performance and duplication of software in virtual machines still was a pendency. Parallels is the solution that fits to me. It manages every software independently of operational systems. I can open Word files in Windows performing the Word installed in my Mac environment. Parallels detected automatically my leisure virtual machine when I wanted to download a file via uTorrent. Parallels optimize the use of memory and I can use 2 virtual machines at the same time. However, even after this optimization I felt that the performance wasn’t good.
Ports constraints: my 5200 rpm hd was suffering to handle the high demand and a research signalized that SSD could be the answer when I checked the ports available in my old Mac. It has a Thunderbolt 1 port without power delivery that is not a good option to connect an external hd. USB 3.0 ports at 5 Gbps becomes the constraint to use a SSD. A research to find a faster technology took me to Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe — An explanatory video is available here). Only to give you a hint about the difference in performance, a SSD sata performs a transfer rate of 600 MB/s while NVMe does the same job at a rate of 3 GB/s. For my surprise my old Mac already supported NVMe and I could boot my Mac with my new device. At Amazon you can buy the case and NVMe of 500 GB for £ 154.00.
In summary, I spent about £ 230.00 to upgraded my Mac Mini from 4GB of memory and 1TB of storage to 16 GB of memory and 1.5TB of storage. A new Macbook Air is, at the time of writing this article, £ 999.00 with 8 GB of memory and 256 GB SSD storage. I already solved my problem of files availability using redundancy to update files (I can use my server and/or cloud to update my files at the same time because they are synchronised). I can install software only once and use it in any virtual machine because all virtual machines are interlinked into my Mac and all my files can be used independently of my operational system.
I already developed the Plus software to support me to use PPC (Yes, I am the author of Personal Productivity Canvas) and I am happy with all results that I got. My next challenge is to find tools to work remotely. It is not being easy because I need to finish the scope of my requirements, but I already know the way on how to get there. And you?
