Goodbye Windows, hello Mac
Submitted by Dave on Sat, 2008-04-26 16:53.
Technology
The die is cast. Really, it was cast when Microsoft released Vista, though I did not know it at the time. It wasn't long before I started reading about Vista, and negative impressions began to form. (Of course, I was already having second thoughts about continuing to do business with Microsoft; see here and here.) Some time after that, I saw Vista, and the negative impressions were reinforced. Later, my parents purchased computers running Vista, and in the course of helping them with their computer issues, I was forced to actually use it. My negative impressions were confirmed -- expanded, really. Windows XP was an improvement over Windows 2000, but Vista is headed in the wrong direction. It is too different, too clunky, less stable, and it seems to be trying to do things that the Mac has been doing -- better -- for years. If Microsoft wanted to make it this different, they needed to make it better, not worse. I was able to live with Windows XP, but not Vista.
So, I am faced with a decision about the OS my family is to use going forward. If Windows is out, then I need to consider the Mac and Linux. I am quite comfortable with Linux, and it would probably be adequate for most of my family's computing needs. (Thankfully, my wife is very flexible about her computing environment and is willing to learn new things, which I appreciate. Of course, my son, two years old as of this writing, doesn't really care as long as he is allowed to "type letters.") However, Linux is not a good fit for me because as a home user, I am primarily interested in multimedia processing. I am an amateur photographer, and I do a great deal of photo processing. I also enjoy producing DVDs from home movies, and I occasionally do audio processing. Except for the audio processing (for which I use audacity), the application support that I need just isn't there for Linux. So, while it is fine for server apps (I have a Linux machine running a Samba server at home), it isn't sufficient for my desktop.
So, my choice is made rather simple: the Mac. Apple computers excel at multimedia support, something that Microsoft is has just started emphasizing in the past few years. The photo processing applications that I use (Photoshop Elements, Bibble 4, Phase One Capture One, Noise Ninja) are all available for the Mac. My favorite audio processing app (audacity) also runs on MacOs. The application that I use for video processing (Sony Vegas Movie Studio) is not available, but MacOs ships with a movie/DVD producing package that may be adequate for my needs. If not, there are other options, including Final Cut Express from Apple. Clearly, my multimedia needs will be satisfied with the Mac platform.
So, what about the other stuff? I am a long-time Windows user, and there are many applications that I depend on. I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey from Mozilla. I occasionally make use of the Microsoft Office suite. I have a Palm handheld, so I need the ability to sync with the Mac. As I mentioned earlier, I also run a home network with a Samba fileserver. Before committing to the Mac, I need to be sure that I have all of this covered -- or, at least, that I understand what I would be giving up.
I won't know for sure until I actually get there, but it doesn't look as though I will be giving up all that much. MacOs supports all of the Mozilla apps that I use, as well as Camino, a browser geared for the Mac. MS Office is available for the Mac, but I will most likely avoid purchasing it (kinda pricey) in favor of OpenOffice or possibly NeoOffice. The Palm Desktop runs on MacOs, and MacOs supports the Samba filesystem just fine. I suspect that there will be a few apps here and there for which substitutes can't be found, but my major bases are covered.
The obvious downside of the Mac is cost. Aside from the fact that I will be re-purchasing software packages that I already own for Windows, Apple hardware just isn't cheap. However, the difference isn't as much as might be expected when compared feature-by-feature. Apple computers come with a lot of standard features that are add-ons for Windows-based systems. You pay a lot, but you also get a lot.
Of course, I expect there will be an upside to getting a Mac. Like anyone else, I have experienced stability issues with Windows issues. XP is the most stable Windows OS yet, but even XP crashes. (I reboot my system at work due to a problem at least once a week.) One of the main tag lines that you hear about MacOs is, "it just works," and I am looking forward to discovering whether that is true. Another upside of the Mac is its security. How many times have you heard someone complain about their antivirus application -- what a hog it has become, how much it slows down the system. I am looking forward to avoiding (or at least reducing) such concerns. While the Mac is still susceptible to spyware and hackers, it is largely immune to viruses. (In fact, it is not immune, but no virus targeting the Mac has ever been detected "in the wild," or spread successfully on its own.) It will be nice to be allow my computing resources to actually compute, rather than fight off potential attacks.
So, my Mac is on order. I went for the Mac Pro, deciding on the standard configuration except that I only got one quad-core processor. (The standard system now comes with two, for eight CPU cores. I figure I can live with just the four.) I have been reading up on Leopard (the latest rev of MacOS X) as well as a number of tutorials on making the transition from Windows to MacOS. When it arrives, I plan to to dive in and start learning about my new system. I'm excited about the change, and I am ready.
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First Impressions
As I pulled the Mac Pro out of the box, my first thought was, "It's shiny." Granted, that doesn't mean very much, except that Apple clearly wants to differentiate its products visually, so that you can see at a glance whether a given machine is from Apple or not. They succeeded; no one would mistake the Mac Pro for any sort of PC. The fit and finish of the case is excellent, though I would expect nothing less from Apple.
So, I hooked it up, plugged everything in, and turned it on. The first things that you actually touch are the keyboard and mouse. Now, I happen to know that there are people who are not picky about the layout and feel of their keyboard. Those people will have no problem with this keyboard. Not being one of them, the main question I have about the "aluminum" keyboard is, what were they thinking? I don't doubt that it is functional, but its feel is far too different from what I am accustomed to -- even if I didn't use an ergonomic keyboard, which I do. The Mac keyboard provides a couple of features that you can't get anywhere else, like a power button for the computer. On the other hand, I can reach the actual power button on the computer without moving in my chair, so that's not worth a whole lot to me. Given that my current keyboard works just fine with the Mac and gives me everything I need, I see no reason to switch.
The mouse is a different story. Being a long-time user of Logitech mice, the cordless Mighty Mouse that I got with my Mac is also very different from what I am used to. However, it has the very interesting feature of being able to scroll both vertically and horizontally, or universally if you configure it for that. After using it for a few minutes, I hooked up a Logitech mouse and got it going. (The older generation of Logitech mice have MacOSX drivers; the newer ones don't. Fortunately, the ones I have are supported.) However, the jury is still out on the Mighty Mouse. I couldn't get the Logitech mouse configured to my satisfaction (still working on that), and the Mac is quite happy for me to have both mice connected, so I may try both for a while. The Mighty Mouse has an on-off switch (a nice touch for a cordless mouse), so I don't have to worry about using the batteries if I'm not actually using the mouse.
Once I got through the welcome and registration screens and actually started running the system, one of the first things I noticed was its quickness. By that I don't mean "fast" in the sense that we usually use it when describing computers (i.e., raw processing power). I mean when you interact with the computer, the action you are directing occurs immediately. On Windows, even on a lightly loaded system, there is often a time lag when doing simple things like restoring a minimized window, or switching tabs in Firefox. I don't know if this will manifest on the Mac; I certainly didn't do anything to really tax the system. But its responsiveness contrasted with Windows enough for me to notice, which I find significant.
I had already done a good bit of research on MacOSX and how it looks to a Windows user. It served me well. I was able to negotiate software installation (Logitech mouse drivers, Firefox), network configuration, and accessing my network Samba share without much difficulty. (OK, getting to the Samba share was a bit tough, but that was due to a configuration issue on the Linux server, and not with the Mac at all.) I played a few MP3s in iTunes, and they sounded great. It has some sort of "sound enhancement" trickery happening, which I have yet to explore, but the sound I got was just fine.
Wanting to explore the multimedia capabilities further, I played a couple of DVDs with the Mac. I have the ability to play DVDs on my Windows machine, but it has a problem with fullscreen mode. The picture will periodically lag behind the sound, and then jerk to catch up. Happily, this issue did not appear on the Mac -- the sound and the picture were in sync. Unfortunately, the picture quality that I got was not good at all. I don't think this is the fault of the Mac, exactly -- I imagine it is faithfully (and mercilessly) reproducing the source material. I was using DVDs that were originally shot with TV resolution (480 raster lines if I'm not mistaken). Displaying them full-screen means upping the resolution to 1600 lines, and I am using an LCD monitor, which reveals a lot of detail. This recipe is not likely to produce a pristine image. I haven't tested with a Hollywood film, which will have more raster lines to work with; also, the LCD monitor is new, and there may be some issues with it that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Mac.
I have yet to do any "real work," by which I mean photo or video processing, on my new Mac. In fact, I can't do photo processing yet, because I need to calibrate the monitor. (Having looked at some of my pictures, it is clear that the colors are off.) I have ordered a calibration package (the one I have now is Windows-only), but it hasn't arrived. So, I haven't seen what the quad-core processor can really do just yet.
Now for a few gripes. I haven't found a way to enable global hotkeys for iTunes. This was a nice feature of Winamp -- I could set up hotkeys to control the player, and they would work regardless of whether the player had keyboard focus. Of course, iTunes provides the ability to control the player from the keyboard, but only when the player has focus. I found an app that claims to be able to do this, but I haven't had a chance to try it out.
Speaking of keyboard focus, I prefer to use pointer focus. This is where you don't have to click on a window to give it keyboard focus; you just hover the mouse over the window. It gives you the ability to type in windows that aren't raised, which I find valuable. I discovered pointer focus years ago when using X Windows on Unix systems, and I have been using the "TweakUI" utility for many years to do the same thing on Windows. Unfortunately, MacOS doesn't support it natively, and there doesn't seem to be a good way to enable it. I found one application that claims to do it, but it's commercial software. I guess I'll have to decide how much that feature is worth to me.
I have a few other gripes. I can't seem to disable mouse acceleration, which I find highly annoying. Getting used the "Command" key (the Windows key on non-Mac keyboards) rather than the "control" key is strange. The Mac driver for my printer does not acknowledge that it has a duplex feeder, so it disables double-sided printing. When Firefox asks me what to do about a cookie, the cookie dialog doesn't respond to the keyboard, so I have to use the mouse to deal with the dialog. (On Windows, I can just tab to whatever button I want and hit space to press it.) The Mighty Mouse takes a long time (close to a minute) to connect when you switch it on. All in all, though, these are relatively minor things, which I imagine I'll learn to live with (assuming I can't find workarounds).
I am just getting started with this thing, and there is a lot to learn. Even using familiar software, like Firefox, is different on the Mac -- and I am going to need to learn to use a great deal of software that is unfamiliar. I don't expect to become an expert in one day, regardless of how much I'd like to. But I do expect to become an expert, in time.