It's been over a month: and I'm still using a Mac.
I spent my Spring Break using nothing but PCs, and although I had been using PCs all throughout my 1-month Macdate period my break was the first time that I had used nothing but PCs for an entire week. It was necessary for me to move back to exclusive PC usage for a bit in order to truly confirm what I had felt about OS X; I needed to make sure that I wasn't simply being blinded by something new.
The first thing I realized when moving back to a PC was that having a single application open that takes up the entire screen is a mental blessing and a productivity curse. For example, right now I'm typing this blog in a text editor window under OS X surrounded by and overlapping at least 8 other windows - on this monitor alone. The majority of those windows have a decent amount of text in them and it can get a bit draining staring at everything at once (it's also too cumbersome to minimize every window individually). In a situation like this one, a single maximized application is much easier to focus on. I found myself enjoying running Word and writing a document more under Windows XP, as long as I wasn't trying to do anything else.
Once I got to doing some more serious work, then I began to really miss OS X. Case in point: using any application where multiple windows are open. I missed Exposé like you would not believe. For whatever reason I didn't miss Exposé much when I was at school on my laptop (although I did consciously hit F10 a few times just to bring back good memories), but without my daily fix of Exposé I was going stir crazy. I had a handful of IE windows open on the PC I was using and searching through all of them to find the one I wanted was so painful. I ALT-TABBED and held ALT down forever as I tried to remember which browser window I wanted. Granted a tabbed browser like Firefox would alleviate some of those issues but unfortunately not all apps are tabbed and there are a lot of cases where I use both tabs and multiple windows to be efficient.
The next conclusion I came to was that as nice as the Apple keyboard looks, I still prefer a good MS Natural keyboard. Although I know you can remap the Windows keys to Apple keys it would be nice to have something better directly from Apple. As far as input devices go, Apple just seems to have gotten it very wrong with the G5. The single button mouse receives so much criticism it can't possibly be helping Apple; I was talking to someone the other day who completely opposed getting an Apple out of the principle that their machines come by default with no more than a single button mouse. It seems like a silly reason to rule out an entire platform, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people are turned off by it. While Apply couldn't get away with a single-key keyboard, the keyboard is definitely form-over-function and thus I'm not a big fan of it. Plus, white isn't the best color for a heavily used keyboard.
I'm not a fan of the organization (or lack thereof) of folders under OS X, or maybe it's just that I'm not familiar enough with the directory structure of OS X yet to feel at home. I find myself putting far too much important stuff on the desktop and not enough elsewhere, mostly because I don't know where I really want to put it. I find that the Save dialog boxes are too small, only showing me a handful of folders at a time as opposed to what I'm used to under Windows.
I just can't seem to bring myself to use Firefox; it's a great browser but the keyboard shortcuts are different from all my other OS X apps and there are more page rendering issues with Firefox that I've noticed than with Safari. I was hoping that the latest OS X update (10.3.3) would bring me a faster Safari but my wishes weren't granted as Safari still renders pages entirely too slowly. What's also annoying is that the auto-complete of URLs that you all taught me doesn't always seem to work instantaneously. Just typing anandtech and hitting enter will usually just tack on a www. and a .com around the word but sometimes it sits there and contemplates what it is doing before taking any action. I'm a performance nut and a big part of having a fast system is making sure that everything is as responsive as possible, this one little thing irks me beyond belief. Oh and I'd like a faster rendering Safari anytime now :)
The more I have to use Adobe Reader the more I really, really appreciate Apple's Preview. I was talking to a die-hard PC user friend of mine today and even he was envious watching me use Preview instead of Reader for my PDF browsing. I do wish there was a way to be in a directory with images and have Preview flip through the images for me without having to highlight them all and open them that way. I used to use ACDSee to do this back before Windows XP had it built in, but it would be nice to have under OS X as well (unless there's some way I'm not considering).
I have yet to find a ftp client that fulfills all of my needs. The only remaining requirement that would seal the deal for my comfort with any OS X ftp client: implicit SFTP support (Port 990). I have yet to find a (good) client that supports implicit SFTP. I have found a couple, but they either crash a lot or they look like they were developed for Mac OS back in the 80s. Any recommendations?
During my Macless period I did use an iMac for a very brief period; for basic email and browsing the iMac was fine, but then again I didn't try to really push the system hard at all. Just today I was stuck using a G4 1GHz on campus and that was an extremely painful experience. The system was using OS X 10.2 and thus didn't have a lot of the features I was used to, not to mention that the default web browser was IE (IE for the Mac is *horrible*). The system had 512MB of RAM but it was slow as a dog (granted it wasn't as sluggish as some of the old Willamette based Pentium 4s (1.7GHz) that were sitting around the lab I was in) but it was horrendous. The system had Adobe Reader set to view PDFs (not Preview) and Safari would crash if you tried to run it, which brings up an interesting point: if I had never used a Mac and that was my first experience, I would never ever touch one of these things. The OS was also configured much differently than my copy of 10.3.3 is configured, for example Command + Tab didn't bring up a Windows-like bar of all the applications open, instead it just highlighted applications in the Dock. If Apple is to ever get back above the 2% market share they are at right now, even the worst systems out there in the public need to be configured much better than this one was. It's not Apple's fault, rather the fault of sysadmins for these labs, but maybe Apple's success isn't at the top of their priority list.
Multitasking on the G4 was a joke compared to the G5, although the minimize animations were surprisingly smooth, switching between Adobe Reader and MS Word sometimes took at least a full second before the application I switched to actually appeared on the screen. Again, if that were my first experience with a Mac, I would've vowed against ever touching the platform. It was quite satisfying to be able to hop on the G4 and be just as comfortable as I am under Windows, which is something I've never been able to do in the past. If anything, the fact that this experiment has enabled me to do just that is extremely rewarding. I used to have no problem if the only open computer in a computer lab happened to be a Mac, I would just remain frustrated while using it, but now I can feel oddly at home with the situation - while criticizing the lab systems for much more than just being a Mac.
Someone once asked if I felt any more secure knowing that there were no viruses or OS exploits that I needed to worry about while using OS X. It definitely feels nice, but I'm not getting too comfortable - if the Apple market expands, we'll definitely have OS X's fair share of destructive programs.
Given that I've used the G5 for more than a month now, what are some things I'm still getting used to?
1) Page up and Page Down don't actually take your cursor up/down a page, they just scroll. This is quite useful, but I'm not used to it yet. Command + Up/Down does the same thing Page Up/Down does in Windows.
2) I would be used to home/end not functioning the same way they do in Windows, except for the extremely annoying fact that they do work like they do in Windows while using any MS Office application for OS X. I'm not normally a critic of Microsoft (I tend to like their products), but damn you Microsoft for not complying in an environment that's not your own.
3) Not being able to hit Windowskey + R to be my starting point for navigating my hard drive. Yes, I know, install LaunchBar; I will...soon.
4) iCal - I just can't bring myself to use it.
But honestly, that's about it. Frightened? I'm not, I like being proficient with another OS/platform. And I have enough other PCs in the house to handle my gaming or any sort of tweaking needs I have to fulfill. The G5 will most likely remain my AT-Work machine.
What's next? There's a lot more, but I've made a few definite decisions:
1) I'm keeping the G5. (cmon, as "cool" as it is to jump on the AppleSucks bandwagon, when have I ever come off as a fanboy?)
2) There will be an AT Mac section.
3) I will continue this blog, although I'm not certain what direction it will take - it may eventually get moved (at least the Macdates) to the AT Mac section.
I apologize for the delay in the Macdate, and for those of you who are bored by my ramblings I apologize for the length. As I mentioned at the beginning of this experiment, there will be an article summarizing all of this (and more). When will it be published? Most likely after the new site launches and I actually have some time to put a good amount of effort into it. School is over (and I mean *over*) for me after May 11th, but hopefully I'll have some time before then to get this thing polished and out.
That's it for now, more Macdates later.
I spent my Spring Break using nothing but PCs, and although I had been using PCs all throughout my 1-month Macdate period my break was the first time that I had used nothing but PCs for an entire week. It was necessary for me to move back to exclusive PC usage for a bit in order to truly confirm what I had felt about OS X; I needed to make sure that I wasn't simply being blinded by something new.
The first thing I realized when moving back to a PC was that having a single application open that takes up the entire screen is a mental blessing and a productivity curse. For example, right now I'm typing this blog in a text editor window under OS X surrounded by and overlapping at least 8 other windows - on this monitor alone. The majority of those windows have a decent amount of text in them and it can get a bit draining staring at everything at once (it's also too cumbersome to minimize every window individually). In a situation like this one, a single maximized application is much easier to focus on. I found myself enjoying running Word and writing a document more under Windows XP, as long as I wasn't trying to do anything else.
Once I got to doing some more serious work, then I began to really miss OS X. Case in point: using any application where multiple windows are open. I missed Exposé like you would not believe. For whatever reason I didn't miss Exposé much when I was at school on my laptop (although I did consciously hit F10 a few times just to bring back good memories), but without my daily fix of Exposé I was going stir crazy. I had a handful of IE windows open on the PC I was using and searching through all of them to find the one I wanted was so painful. I ALT-TABBED and held ALT down forever as I tried to remember which browser window I wanted. Granted a tabbed browser like Firefox would alleviate some of those issues but unfortunately not all apps are tabbed and there are a lot of cases where I use both tabs and multiple windows to be efficient.
The next conclusion I came to was that as nice as the Apple keyboard looks, I still prefer a good MS Natural keyboard. Although I know you can remap the Windows keys to Apple keys it would be nice to have something better directly from Apple. As far as input devices go, Apple just seems to have gotten it very wrong with the G5. The single button mouse receives so much criticism it can't possibly be helping Apple; I was talking to someone the other day who completely opposed getting an Apple out of the principle that their machines come by default with no more than a single button mouse. It seems like a silly reason to rule out an entire platform, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people are turned off by it. While Apply couldn't get away with a single-key keyboard, the keyboard is definitely form-over-function and thus I'm not a big fan of it. Plus, white isn't the best color for a heavily used keyboard.
I'm not a fan of the organization (or lack thereof) of folders under OS X, or maybe it's just that I'm not familiar enough with the directory structure of OS X yet to feel at home. I find myself putting far too much important stuff on the desktop and not enough elsewhere, mostly because I don't know where I really want to put it. I find that the Save dialog boxes are too small, only showing me a handful of folders at a time as opposed to what I'm used to under Windows.
I just can't seem to bring myself to use Firefox; it's a great browser but the keyboard shortcuts are different from all my other OS X apps and there are more page rendering issues with Firefox that I've noticed than with Safari. I was hoping that the latest OS X update (10.3.3) would bring me a faster Safari but my wishes weren't granted as Safari still renders pages entirely too slowly. What's also annoying is that the auto-complete of URLs that you all taught me doesn't always seem to work instantaneously. Just typing anandtech and hitting enter will usually just tack on a www. and a .com around the word but sometimes it sits there and contemplates what it is doing before taking any action. I'm a performance nut and a big part of having a fast system is making sure that everything is as responsive as possible, this one little thing irks me beyond belief. Oh and I'd like a faster rendering Safari anytime now :)
The more I have to use Adobe Reader the more I really, really appreciate Apple's Preview. I was talking to a die-hard PC user friend of mine today and even he was envious watching me use Preview instead of Reader for my PDF browsing. I do wish there was a way to be in a directory with images and have Preview flip through the images for me without having to highlight them all and open them that way. I used to use ACDSee to do this back before Windows XP had it built in, but it would be nice to have under OS X as well (unless there's some way I'm not considering).
I have yet to find a ftp client that fulfills all of my needs. The only remaining requirement that would seal the deal for my comfort with any OS X ftp client: implicit SFTP support (Port 990). I have yet to find a (good) client that supports implicit SFTP. I have found a couple, but they either crash a lot or they look like they were developed for Mac OS back in the 80s. Any recommendations?
During my Macless period I did use an iMac for a very brief period; for basic email and browsing the iMac was fine, but then again I didn't try to really push the system hard at all. Just today I was stuck using a G4 1GHz on campus and that was an extremely painful experience. The system was using OS X 10.2 and thus didn't have a lot of the features I was used to, not to mention that the default web browser was IE (IE for the Mac is *horrible*). The system had 512MB of RAM but it was slow as a dog (granted it wasn't as sluggish as some of the old Willamette based Pentium 4s (1.7GHz) that were sitting around the lab I was in) but it was horrendous. The system had Adobe Reader set to view PDFs (not Preview) and Safari would crash if you tried to run it, which brings up an interesting point: if I had never used a Mac and that was my first experience, I would never ever touch one of these things. The OS was also configured much differently than my copy of 10.3.3 is configured, for example Command + Tab didn't bring up a Windows-like bar of all the applications open, instead it just highlighted applications in the Dock. If Apple is to ever get back above the 2% market share they are at right now, even the worst systems out there in the public need to be configured much better than this one was. It's not Apple's fault, rather the fault of sysadmins for these labs, but maybe Apple's success isn't at the top of their priority list.
Multitasking on the G4 was a joke compared to the G5, although the minimize animations were surprisingly smooth, switching between Adobe Reader and MS Word sometimes took at least a full second before the application I switched to actually appeared on the screen. Again, if that were my first experience with a Mac, I would've vowed against ever touching the platform. It was quite satisfying to be able to hop on the G4 and be just as comfortable as I am under Windows, which is something I've never been able to do in the past. If anything, the fact that this experiment has enabled me to do just that is extremely rewarding. I used to have no problem if the only open computer in a computer lab happened to be a Mac, I would just remain frustrated while using it, but now I can feel oddly at home with the situation - while criticizing the lab systems for much more than just being a Mac.
Someone once asked if I felt any more secure knowing that there were no viruses or OS exploits that I needed to worry about while using OS X. It definitely feels nice, but I'm not getting too comfortable - if the Apple market expands, we'll definitely have OS X's fair share of destructive programs.
Given that I've used the G5 for more than a month now, what are some things I'm still getting used to?
1) Page up and Page Down don't actually take your cursor up/down a page, they just scroll. This is quite useful, but I'm not used to it yet. Command + Up/Down does the same thing Page Up/Down does in Windows.
2) I would be used to home/end not functioning the same way they do in Windows, except for the extremely annoying fact that they do work like they do in Windows while using any MS Office application for OS X. I'm not normally a critic of Microsoft (I tend to like their products), but damn you Microsoft for not complying in an environment that's not your own.
3) Not being able to hit Windowskey + R to be my starting point for navigating my hard drive. Yes, I know, install LaunchBar; I will...soon.
4) iCal - I just can't bring myself to use it.
But honestly, that's about it. Frightened? I'm not, I like being proficient with another OS/platform. And I have enough other PCs in the house to handle my gaming or any sort of tweaking needs I have to fulfill. The G5 will most likely remain my AT-Work machine.
What's next? There's a lot more, but I've made a few definite decisions:
1) I'm keeping the G5. (cmon, as "cool" as it is to jump on the AppleSucks bandwagon, when have I ever come off as a fanboy?)
2) There will be an AT Mac section.
3) I will continue this blog, although I'm not certain what direction it will take - it may eventually get moved (at least the Macdates) to the AT Mac section.
I apologize for the delay in the Macdate, and for those of you who are bored by my ramblings I apologize for the length. As I mentioned at the beginning of this experiment, there will be an article summarizing all of this (and more). When will it be published? Most likely after the new site launches and I actually have some time to put a good amount of effort into it. School is over (and I mean *over*) for me after May 11th, but hopefully I'll have some time before then to get this thing polished and out.
That's it for now, more Macdates later.
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M. T. MacPhee - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
I have been experimenting with an old, slow (400MHz G3) under 10.3.3, and no matter what I do, I can't fool the URL entry mechanism in Safari. As others have pointed out, something was amiss with the Lab machine you were using.As you pointed out, this is a huge problem for Apple - anyone using that machine without knowing any better would write off the company in a moment. IF a Windows machine were acting similarly, the same user would simply look for another machine. I have no solution. I do have a corollary, though. If I had a nickel (well, make it a Loonie) for every time I heard someone say "I used Macs in Grade 8, and they can't do anything like what I can do on my PC today.", I could get a replacement DVD-ROM drive.
One wise fellow said earlier "Funny critters, humans.".
M. T. MacPhee - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Just to weigh in on the one-button mouse issue....That the Mac ships with a one-button mouse forces developers to write programs so that they work for one-button mice. Every contextual menu item is therefore available non-contextually.
In Windows, as far as I can tell (or the IT folks at work can tell), there are many contextual menus items which are only available in context. Unfortunately, it is sometimes very difficult to find the context that made sense to the programmer.
I have four such issues on my computer at work (a Dell), and zero such issues on my Mac.
It is the Zen of the one-button mouse.
Further, I switch back and forth between a two-button plus scroll wheel mouse at work and a one button mouse at home. I never think "Gee, if I only had more buttons and a wheel...". I have noticed that a lot of users of PCs who appreciate multi-button mice equip their computers with n-button mice from the after-market. For some reason, however, it would be wrong to do the same thing for a Mac (i.e. purchase an after-market n-button mouse).
Strange critters, humans.
Mike
PS Thanks for taking the time to try Macs. I think your comments were fair, and if Apple is smart, they will be reading the weblog to see how they can improve the interface for converts, and what they should add. I think that a valuable website would be a Mac and OS X Tip of the Day. Just one thing a day - a key stroke combo, an obscure command, a technique to help things along. It is very easy to overlook these things now that printed manuals have disappeared. One a day means that when a good one comes along you can practice, and make it your own.
Damien Sorresso - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
On the OS X directory structure ...At the system level, there are the following directories.
/Applications
Apps go here.
/Library
Stuff in here applies to every user on the system (i.e. dropping a screen saver into /Library/ScreenSavers will make it available to everyone).
/System
Much like /Library, but generally reserved for Apple's use. Contains most of the core system.
/Users
All the user home directories on your system.
In your home directory (/Users/anand or, or whatever your short user name is) ...
~/Documents
Your documents go here. Equivalent to "My Documents" on Windows.
~/Library
Stuff in here applies to just you (i.e. dropping a screen saver into ~/Library/ScreenSavers will make it available only to you). This is also where your preferences for individual applications are stored (in ~/Library/Preferences, to be specific), along with a host of other things, like caches, Mail.app stores, and the like.
~/Movies
Your movies go here. Equivalent to "My Movies" on Windows.
~/Music
Your music goes here. Equivalent to "My Music" on Windows.
~/Pictures
Your pictures go here. Equivalent to "My Pictures" on Windows.
~/Public
This is your public folder. If you turn Apple's file sharing on, this folder will become available to any guest user logging in. It also contains a drop box for uploads.
OS X's default directories helped me organize my stuff in a very logical, consistent manner. I'd highly recommend taking advantage of them.
Eve - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Your blog has been an interesting insight into the mind-set of a PC user, thanks. I've never understood why PC users put up with Windows ever since, years ago, looking at Windows '95 and thinking:Ugh, There must be something better out there than this! It appears to have been written by corporate bean counters with subjugation in mind - all these mean, dowdy, sharp corners and dull greys. Its vulgar insults: 'You have performed an illegal operation' -walk down to your local branch of the Business Software Alliance & turn yourself in (Microsoft appear always to have believed the law was theirs to invent). 'You will not enjoy your computer: you will get on with your work' - is what its GUI hissed.
Now XP has tried to learn from Apple & brightened up a little (with the awkwardness of an alien trying to go unnoticed in a crowd) it has the feel of the Babayaga's house - covered in sweeties to tempt the little children in... its malevolent corporate heart beat muffled, for all but the wary, by the incessant drone of fans. Still, from my point of view (incredulity that PC users would put up with the patching, repairing & defending of Heath Robinson machines, the functionality of which appears permanently wobbling on a tight-rope) it has been fascinating, and generous of you, to be offered an insight.
I had thought of the mind-set of the PC user as being somewhere between Stockholm syndrome sufferer & '70s British motorcycle user (user being a euphemism for someone with a fetish for grease & a front garden covered in scrap metal). While the image is too vivid to have been entirely dispelled your experiment has convinced me that there is, within the gloom of that despond, intelligent life on the dark side. Ahoy there...
Anonymous - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
i look forward to your continued use and commentary, especially on shareware items (like launchbar) which potentially enhance productivity/user experience. thank you for the experiment.Rosyna - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
re: slow context switches.My guess is that 10.2 mac in the lab (really 10.2.0?) was slow on context switches because someone was running a huge app in the background or something else about it was more screwed up that it had to page out and page in all the time. Remember, OS X guarantees 4gigs to each application and doesn't bother to check if you have the HD space for it. That is, mallocs will never fail.
Then again it was acrobat and word ;) Preview on Jaguar was just as slow as reader. One thing you can definitely say about OS X, Apple makes huge changes between each version. Whether it be 10.x or 10.x.x.
Good article and the other problems you mention I believe you will get very use to after a while because of their consistency. They may be huge problems but they exist in *every* app.
dtravis - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Anand, thanks for doing this with the G5. It really helped me a lot with my new Mac and I think opened the eyes of many. I like both formats but prefer the Mac for doing a lot of stuff. I agree with you on all your points about OSX. Can't wait for the Mac section of Anandtech.Again, thanks.
...Dennis
DerekWilson - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Since I can read Anand's mind ...He doesn't really mean SFTP (SSH2 FTP) ...
What he really wants is FTP over SSL/TLS using implicit encryption ... It's hard enough to find good windows support for that :-)
Randy Decker - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Page up and page down take me to the same place as command Page up and command page down on my G5 except that the page scrolls to the same spot. Not sure what you mean by your comment. Anyway, love to read your column. Cheers.Anonymous - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Once you get used to it, OS X's directory organization is extremely logical. Besides which, I don't see how it could be worse than Windows' directory organization (if it really has one).But thanks for your thoughts. You should attend WWDC in June, meet some Mac developers.