15
Jan
2011
I’ve written this to maybe help some people make the decision on whether to buy a Mac or PC. It’s a raging debate, and what I found on the web didn’t help me decide. They were mainly one sided, this point of view is from a someone using windows for 16 years, and switching to Mac for 2 weeks. I use computers for surfing the net, image editing, web design, music and programming.
I committed to a second hand Powermac G5 because I was feed up with windows constantly crashing on me, at work and at home. I’d tried re-installing windows for the millionth time and only days afterwards my fresh XP install started playing up. Admittedly it could have been the machine itself on it’s last legs, though when I had installed my first copy of Ubuntu recently, (on the same hard drive) it was running very sweet, with no problems at all. Ubuntu’s speed was impressive (interface ugly) but the effort it required to get essential programs such as Chrome and the Adode Creative Suite to run, was a major turn off for me. I just don’t have the time to go through all that - even with the help of W.I.N.E, so I plumped for a Mac.
The first introduction to the Mac was the new keyboard and mighty mouse I had just purchased. First of all the short cables didn’t help, and the fact that the keyboard isn’t that ergonomically friendly didn’t endear me either. Yes it looks kinda cool, it’s solid and robust, but the tactile response of the keys and the position give little feedback, but perhaps it is just familiarity at this stage.
This mouse is undeniably very well made, and the roller ball exquisite. Yes it’s got one button, and yes initially I was vexed at the loss of using the right button for the contextual menus. I do spend quite a bit of time using the keyboard, so having my finger near the control button isn’t unnatural, but it’s more relaxing to have the controls available with two fingers on the same hand. Apple most probably have designed this because it’s easier for the user to associate one click with an action, it’s a more natural mapping, you click, only one thing happens, it keeps the interface consistent. Donald Norman has a book called The Design of Everyday Things which I recommend reading, if your interested in user experience in general or for the web. Someone made a very good point about the confusion a new user would have getting the right and left click confused in technical support situations, something I’m all too familiar with in IT support roles of past. It’s not easy to explain to someone the use of the right mouse button compared to the left. I’m getting used to these new interfaces, and soon I’ll feel right at home I guess, but it’s not about this! It’s about the absolute joy of the lighting quick responsive and extremely well thought out OS.
There are a lot of things that Windows doesn’t do, I’ve purchased programs to cover some of these shortcomings, and been frustrated if I can’t find any. You can imagine my blossoming love affair, when getting familiar with the steely grey outlook of the Mac OS, when I realised all these little things are thoughtfully included. It takes the all to often miserable experiance of using a PC into a pleasure, which I’ve unjustly been missing for so long. There are so many little details have been thought about, just looking at the native programs like Mail, Calendar, iTunes, Timemachine (backup), iDisk (online storage), sticky notes, make me feel like Apple care more, I find these programs much more helpful than the junk Windows and Manufacturers like Dell often supply. I’m not current with what Win 7 provides at this time, but Vista fell short of anything useful. The system preferences also seem to be better thought out; I played with Vista for sometime before I could figure out how to do things that I used to do on XP. I spent a lot less time, trying to do those things on the Mac OS, which proves that the interface is a lot more intuitive and user friendly. The others nice little touches are things like space and expose, where you can save desktop layouts with certain apps, and put the cursor into the corners to shrink the windows or see the desktop.
Installing programs is quite refreshing. I can just remove them and the disappear in a puff, it’s really quick and really easy and tends to deal with simple drag and drop rather than steps and file paths.
The search facility by the way, is how it’s meant to be done - I find this indispensable on windows, and coming over to the Mac I’m please to find that this is done so simply, it’s very effective, though I’m yet to delve into how powerful this is. Can I search by Size? I cannot see this?
The interface does take some getting used to, it’s minimalist for sure, seems to be a running theme with Apple. So at first, I missed all the options which are normally laid bare above each of the application’s windows. Apple doesn’t like this, and tends to have a tool bar consistently across the top of the screen, which changes depending on the application you are using. This keeps things clean, most apps don’t seem to have the instant recognizable design, it’s just grey mostly, I do miss the splashes of colour. I also don’t like to have to travel all the way to the menu bar each time, but it does give me a little more screen space and less clutter. Again I think Apple is building an OS that is consistent and conforms to certain usability traits, so all actions behave similarly.
The dock at the bottom is an vast improvement over the Windows Taskbar and Start Menu in my opinion. Everything I will ever need will fit in the dock easily, shrinking slightly with each addition, no more truncated words, just simple instantly recognizable symbols; this also save space on the desktop especially on widescreen Macs, which are most likely the case these days.
Font’s are a really sticky point. Windows likes to fix fonts to a pixel grid which makes them crisp, but loses out on the real representation of the font. Apple likes them to be more accurate at the sacrifice of them being more blurred, which is great for print reproducing and art work, hence the Macs dominance in the graphics design department. They really can blur a lot when the font sizes get small and when I’m programming I didn’t like this, but strangely after a while, I adjusted to this and started to appreciate the true representation of the font on the Mac. It’s does give a screen full of text a less sharp appearance, and for day to day things that could give some people with poor sight problems, but they can always make the font bigger. When screen resolutions pick up I think this will be a big advantage for Apple, the iPhone has already started to prove this with it’s retina display.
I’ve just purchased creative suite CS3 so I’ll see how that goes, I was going to get Dreamweaver too, but I’ve been blown away by the great text editor TextMate, which is streets ahead, which quite surprised me. Same goes for the setup of a server which chris coyier demostrates in a first look screencast. MAMP was less painful than it’s WAMP counterpart.
It’s strange, as an owner of a Mac, I feel part of an elite club, kind of like driving a motorbike and getting a knowing nod when you pass another motorcyclist. I’m sure not many others feel like this and no doubt I’ll try to excitedly make a conversation with someone when I see they are using one, just to be responded with ‘it’s just a computer’ and I’ll quickly change subject onto more ‘interesting things’. But I’ve been wanting to move over for so long it’s kind of a big thing for me and I do spend so much time on PC’s *sorry Beckie* that it’s a big deal. Right now this Mac is running like Usain Bolt, I’ve not yet been introduced to mister egg timer, which I’ve become so familiar with over the years. I’ve heard it looks like a little circle rainbow, I’ll let you know when I see it. Until then I’ll just look forwarding to working on a PC again and not have that anticipation of using crtl-alt-delete, which I’m surprised are not the most worn away buttons on my old black keyboard.
(1) Comments
test commment
Simon Norton