Making the Transition from PC to Mac

So I switched. After working at Microsoft, and on the Windows Vista team, I switched from XP on my old machine straight to OS X, and escaped the Vista trainwreck all together. Over the last two weeks, I have dumped my old Dell laptop, and moved to a 15″ Macbook Pro. I’ve also moved from my Verizon 2000-era clamshell phone to the new 3G iPhone. (Which I will talk about in another post) This all cost well over $2500, and I have to admit, the high price tags heavily bias my opinions. Rationalization is a strong force… but if you’re happy, who cares why, right? The transition has not been easy. Despite what everyone tells you about Mac’s being super intuitive with their glossy glass-button interface and all… I’ve been a Windows user my entire life, and some old habits die hard. I could go on forever on this post, but let me break it down if I can. **What I like about the Macbook Pro and OS X (10.5.4)** - It just worked when I turned it on. Installation (pretty much putting in your name and password) was a breeze. It didn’t come loaded with 100 apps I will never use, and lots of shareware loaded on by the manufacturer. - In general, it’s been reliable, and things have just worked. - It’s got Unix built in! Back to my days of Bash from college. I always felt like the Cmd prompt on Windows was so hacky. I feel like the Unix terminal is actually really useful. - The hardware is supreme. Bright screen, nice keyboard, the multi-touch mouse is fantastic. - I like the fact that I can install and uninstall without worrying about piling up DLL crud that will slowly eat away at performance on my machine. Hmm… sounds like windows. - I never reboot. WOW! I can’t tell you how many months of my life I’ve spent looking at window boot screens. I have yet to reboot my back, from what I can remember, and this is with all the installs that I’ve been going through as a new user. Hell, I installed a virtual XP OS, and had to reboot IT within OS X a few times to get some simple things installed. - Spaces works pretty damn well, and I like the transitions and multiple work spaces. - Sleep-mode works! Call it what you want; Sleep mode, Stand-by, Hibernation… Windows has tried calling it all of these things, and it still never does what you expect it to. The Mac does. You close it, open it… it’s just there, right as you’d expect it to be. - All my external hardware worked on the first try. No digging into and trying to find drivers, etc. Awesome. - I installed VMware Fusion, and now have a Windows (XP Performance Edition, which is a hacked, stripped down version of XP) running inside my Mac OS X. Sweet. All the advantages of Windows apps, seemless and running natively on my Mac. - People ignore this, but the fact that using it is pleasurable goes a long way towards me putting up with the snags. **Snags I’ve hit on the Mac ** (100% of these are UI-related, and I’m hoping people get back to me on how to get around some of them) - Installing apps. So to install an app, it first shows it mounted as a drive, and then you have to drag the executable into ‘Applications’ in order to install it? That was super confusing for a Windows user. - Minimize/Maximize. Ah yes, the much talked about maximize button which does not work as it does on windows. So far, this was only a minor, minor snag, as I can resize the window the first time, and it remembers that size when I maximize it the next time. - Overlapping windows. I like that Windows puts all application windows within the App window. Mac lets windows float around the desktop, which is annoying because it’s often not clear which app is in focus. This is especially bad in an app like Photoshop, which has like 8 docked windows which I have to manage and move around separately, across my two screens. - Switching between windows. I used to use Alt-Tab all the time on Windows. On the Mac, it’s Cmd-Tab, which I’ve gotten used to. What I don’t like is that it’s Cmd-Tab to switch between Apps, but Ctrl-Tab to switch between windows within an app. This sucks. I have to think about what I’m really trying to go back to before hitting the shortcut. Also, in Firefox, if you have multiple tabs open, Ctrl-Tab switches between them. But what about switching to another Firefox window??? I’m still stuck on how to do this, and often end up with a second window (like pop-out window for an email I’m composing) being hidden, with no way to find it other than using the menu Window > Choose 2nd Firefox Window. Horrible. - Keyboard shortcuts in general. Holy crap! I have literally 6 pages (6 pages!) of shortcuts printed out, sitting on my desk right now. That’s a hell of a learning curve. And they are not intuitive either! There is no consistent reason why one shortcut uses Cmd, another uses Ctrl, another uses Alt/Option. This is horrible. For example a common shortcut I used to use was for [Switch to old window, copy, switch back, paste]. On Windows, this was simple [Hold Ctrl, hit Tab to switch, C to copy, Tab to switch back, the V to paste]. On the Mac, I have to do this awkward sequence of [Ctrl-Tab to switch (or Cmd-Tab if it's another app!), Cmd-C to copy, Another Ctrl-Tab or Cmd-Tab, then Cmd-V] I usually get all confused, paste it in the wrong spot, then have to resort to using the mouse. - Did I mention that Ctrl-Tab in Firefox is super sluggish? I’ve run into a whole host of bugs in Firefox 3.0 on the Mac. Sometimes, the Return button just stops working in the address bar and I can’t enter any URL’s manually. WTF? I have to close down the window and reopen a new one for it to start working again. It’s enough to make me seriously contemplate switching fully over to Safari. Plug-in’s be damned. - Lack of Delete button. This one’s also famous. They have a ‘Eject’ button at the top right of the keyboard, but no Delete. They have a Delete button, but it’s what Windows user call ‘Backspace.’ This is super frustrating, as to get a proper Delete (like to delete a file, or delete a line of text in front of the cursor) you have to hold down Function, which is in the opposite corner of the keyboard. Talk about awkward! That’s like reaching from Miami to Seattle! - Navigation buttons. Where are my home and end buttons? I figured out that Ctrl-Down Arrow is Page down, but I used to like using end to copy stuff from my cursor to the end of the line. Mac’s version is Cmd-Down or Up Arrow, which takes you to the end and beginning of the document. How often is that useful? - Single Menu Bar, even when I have dual screens. You know that handy Menu bar that holds all that is near and dear to you about an application? Well, if you’re running two screens (or more!) you can only have the menu bar show up on the primary screen. This means that if you have a Firefox window running on your external monitor, you have to mouse all the way over to the primary screen to get at any of the menu items. (or brave your way into the confusing world of Mac shortcuts). I’ve solved this by putting my external screen above my laptop, so I’m equidistant to the Menu bar, it just lies below my external monitor, on the top of my laptop screen. - Close an App versus close a Window. Okay, so I figured out that the little bubble on bottom of the dock means that a application is running. However, when I close out the last window of the application (like all the Firefox windows) why is Firefox still running? Oh, you have to either right click on the app the dock to quit, or switch to the windowless app, notice that the menu bar changes, and use it to quit. Yeah, that’s intuitive. So why switch? My Dell, after less than two years was overheating and spontaneously turning off, it’s DVD drive had stopped functioning nearly completely, and Windows was SO bogged down and slow, despite me staying on XP and installing more RAM. I overhauled the OS (delete, reinstall everything, start again) within the first year, and if I keep the machine now as a browser machine, I’ll have to do it again. Windows. Dell. Fail. You’ll notice that my gripes around the Mac are all about the User Interface. These largely are because I’m used to doing things on Windows for the last 20 years. Some I still believe are more efficient on Windows, but contrast that to my gripes around Windows/PC. There it’s slow performance, having to constantly fix things, reboot the machine, fix it again, reinstall something, some driver doesn’t work, some device is failing, etc. These are so much more annoying in my opinion. I can get over most UI snags, and find ways to work around the ones I can’t. However, the time I lose in fixing my Windows machine I never get back. (although it has, over the last decade, taught me a lot about how to fix Windows machines!). So I’m happy, but officially the jury is still out. I anticipate being much happier with this machine over the course of it’s 2 year lifespan (I replace my electronics around that often) than I was with my Dell, which I was happy with for about 4-6 months. Due to rationalization, I should be happy with my Mac for at least twice that long, since I paid twice as much for it. -->