I've always had a vague distaste for Macs. No particular reason, honestly, just been using a Microsoft OS since DOS. But I'm doing some contract work on a web app for someone, and some issues were popping up only on Firefox/Mac. So last week I picked up a previous-generation 13" Macbook from our local Apple store for $999 for testing purposes. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like Mac OS X after using it for a few days. I really like the Dock, which lets me close the iTunes window but still have my music playing, and which also lets me quickly see what stuff I have running and switch around. I absolutely love Spaces, which is their virtual desktop implementation. My wife's first language is Spanish, and I loved how easy it was to turn all of her applications' language to Spanish in one easy system-wide configuration change. However, there are a bunch of things that annoy me, and some that would genuinely stop me from switching to Mac. In decreasing order of importance to me: * No Visual Studio. I write software for a living, and Visual Studio is just frickin' awesome. * No good Hamachi client. I use Hamachi everywhere to make every computer I use regularly appear to be on a LAN, regardless of physical location, with no configuration whatsoever. * Can't tether my Touch Pro easily. I have to use the Bluetooth method, which is quite a hassle, very slow (35KB/sec vs. 120KB/sec using USB), and drains both batteries faster than USB by far. * Much more limited selection of games available than on PC (no Steam client, AFAIK). * Keyboard layout is weird, and will take some getting used to. No page up/down or home/end keys on my Macbook. Only has a backspace key (labeled Delete), no delete key in the Windows sense. * No Google Chrome (yet). I really, really like Google Chrome. * Mouse acceleration curve sucks horribly. Any other PC users out there try out a Mac lately? Impressions?

I'm a Mac user who bought his first Mac (a MacBook Pro) two years ago, then switched from WinXP to Mac as his prime platform with the purchase of an iMac last year. So I've already switched, but recently.

I like my Mac as a working platform over WinXP because it's got a good fusion of different domains. Because of Mac's legacy it's got a lot of good artistic and creativity tools, but because of the latest OS's BSD roots it's got Unix flavoured terminals for under-the-hood stuff. I like the default Mac way of doing things where the OS generally hides in the background letting you do your thing. I don't find myself doing as much system administration as I needed to with Windows XP.

The main downside is not having all those cool Microsoft developer apps, but I didn't really get into them while on Windows XP. This is probably because I've spent most of my time programming in an academic environment as an undergraduate or a grad student, where I'd typically use Unix or Linux, so I'd use very spartan IDEs anyway (I used Watcom's IDE for years after they shut down).

For your specific points: already mentioned the lack of Visual Studio, can't comment on Hamachi, or Touch Pro. You'll get used to the keyboard if you use apps developed for Macs. Never used Google Chrome. I don't notice the mouse acceleration curve that much as most of the time I need to fling it all the way to the edge anyway, but I do agree it sucks there isn't an option to configure it. And yes, the lack of games may be an issue, but a) it's getting better these days, b) I don't need that many distractions on my work computer and c) the hole in the Mac game market is the whole reason I wanted to get a Mac in the first place, so I could develop Mac games.

Personally, I've used every version of Mac OS X starting from 10.2 Jaguar onwards, and hated nearly every minute of it. I spent an entire summer using nothing but Panther at home. The Dock is worthless, the window system is awkward and inconvenient on a good day, and Expose/Spaces just make it a little less utterly miserable to work on the machine. I've found that OSX is vastly more RAM hungry than practically anything else I've ever seen; if I ever have to use a computer running OSX with 512 MB of memory again, I think I might just give up and learn to draw.

I hate their font rendering, too. Windows, I have the option of ClearType (which works very well in Vista, not always so well in XP), or basic smoothed text. Both are crisp and beautiful, especially ClearType when it's working. OSX has, as far as I can tell, just one setting: blurry goddamn mess. They make their otherwise incredible 30 inch studio monitors just terrible to use with that damn font engine.

And then their peripherals, good lord. Their mice are uniformly bad, from the very first ones in the 80s right to the Mighty Mouse, and the keyboards are severely hit or miss. At least on a workstation you can replace the outer bits with some nice Logitech or Microsoft equipment; laptops have no such luck. (And the touchpads might have even been alright if it weren't for Jobs et al's complete refusal to add that second button.) Oh, and at least when I was working on my Panther system, I had a Microsoft Wireless mouse and I installed a third party mouse driver because the curve was so utterly wrong that it was unusable.

To each his own, I guess. I'm not judging Mac users. I'm just saying that if I never have to do serious work on a Mac again, it'll still be too soon.

lol! The best review I've read in a while...

Quote:
if I ever have to use a computer running OSX with 512 MB of memory again, I think I might just give up and learn to draw.

priceless.

Quote: Original post by BeanDog
Any other PC users out there try out a Mac lately? Impressions?

I'm Linux user and I tried out mac previous summer (and still have it for testing).
I had pretty much favourable opinion about macs before actually having one.
After, my impression: its total merda d'artista
Even though, as Linux user, I am tolerant to crappy user interfaces and lack of some software, I found OS X to be far worse than what I could tolerate. Nothing that you want to customize (font rendering, mouse curve, etc.) can be. Apple keyboard was total shit too, registering single keypress as double keypress every 100..200 keypresses or so, on average. (*not* a software glitch. Happens the same if I plug it into pc). I tried mighty mouse at shop. A promising runner up for worst mouse design and usability award. Crappy manufacturing too, scroll-ball was making whiny noise. Tolerable defect for 3euro mouse, not tolerable for 30euro.

Quote: Original post by Promit
I hate their font rendering, too. Windows, I have the option of ClearType (which works very well in Vista, not always so well in XP), or basic smoothed text. Both are crisp and beautiful, especially ClearType when it's working. OSX has, as far as I can tell, just one setting: blurry goddamn mess. They make their otherwise incredible 30 inch studio monitors just terrible to use with that damn font engine.

The most ironic part is, Apple holds patent on interpreter for font hinting data in TTF format (i.e. for making fonts look OK on display). Linux distros can't ship with font hinting enabled, and you have to go through some hops to violate Apple's patent.
What could be less innovative than holding patent on something, not implementing it yourself but instead using it solely to prevent others from implementing it?

Keyboard Page Up and Page Down on a notebook are: Fn + Up Arrow, Fn + Down Arrow, Home and End are Fn + Left Arrow and Fn + Right Arrow respectively. For some reason on keyboards from late 2007, they removed the text from the arrow keys to indicate that they had that feature. Similarly, Fn + Delete does what you would expect a delete on a Windows keyboard to do.

With regards to the second mouse button on the trackpad, the late 2008 model aluminium notebooks all support this by clicking on the right hand side of the trackpad. Since about the last of the PPC notebooks, you've been able to enable an option to do a secondary click by resting two fingers on the trackpad and clicking the button. I've been using this method so long now it's second nature.

As for their peripherals, I've never really had a problem with them. I'm not a huge fan of the mighty mouse, but we've had one (and only one) on our late '07 iMac and it's still going strong. I wouldn't buy one for a machine that didn't come with one though. :)

Maybe it's because when I grew up the first 2 computers in my family were an Apple ][c and a Mac Performa ... but for years I've been a PC owner with respect for macs. Something which ... apparently ... is sacrilegious.
I have to admit, I was caught off guard by the lashing I got the first few times I stumbled into an internet discussion and commented that Macs really weren't as bad as every there seemed to think they were.

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Anyways, I haven't owned a Mac since I was a kid, but ended up using them at work and at school and I immediately liked OSX.

I don't see myself buying a mac anytime soon for a variety of reasons ... but that doesn't stop me from respecting that they've got a really good product.

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My favorite things in OSX ... um it's been a few months ... I think its like the F11 and/or F12 keys?
All of the open windows get instantly and smoothly tiled across the screen -- you simply click the one you want and it comes to front ... all others return to their previous positions. I LOVE THAT :D

And then the other key slides all the windows off the edge of the desktop then easily returns them when you want them back.
And their implementation of widgets (or whatever) was around years before Vista's sidebar ... and Apple's implementation of those is still a hell of a lot better IMO.

edit: Oh, and like the OP, I too love the dock - Its like they took common operations from the task manager, the context menu, and my programs from the start menu, and actually put them all together in a convenient place.
I prefer to have it hidden and pop up when I brush the bottom of the desktop.

Quote: Original post by brent_w
My favorite things in OSX ... um it's been a few months ... I think its like the F11 and/or F12 keys?

That's officially my new signature.

Quote: Original post by owl

Quote: Original post by brent_w
My favorite things in OSX ... um it's been a few months ... I think its like the F11 and/or F12 keys?

That's officially my new signature.

Haha. Ok.
At least I think it's those two keys ... ;-p