30 Days with Mac OS X @ [H]

[[H]EMI_426]

I will throw in Expose is the best application switching feature I've ever used. Nuff said.

I dislike Expose...I'm used to the way Windows (and WindowMaker) do things. I like using one key combination to move between all the windows for all my apps.

App- and window-switching is another gripe of mine about OS X in general. You don't switch windows with OS X's command-tab, you switch applications, then you get to switch windows within that application using another set of keys (command-`). On top of that, command-` only lets you switch to the next window in window-creation order, whereas WIndows' alt-tab lets you switch in most-recent-first order. If I have five terms open in terminal.app and I'm on term four, yet I want to get to term three, I have to go through six, one, two and finally three. Of course, I could use command-left/rightarrow (and I do), but those are inconsistently used between different applications, even by Apple. I thought Apple was supposed to be consistent about this kind of stuff. Third-party apps are very inconsistent about it on OS X, while they're very consistent on Windows. Hrmmm...

Why do I care about keyboard window-switching? Cause that's what I'm used to. I hate reaching for the mouse just to switch to another window. I want to do it quickly and efficiently. I'd really like to be able to switch between two windows spawned by the same application using the same keyboard command. With WIndows I can; with OS X there's no guarantees.

 

[BrndNtrl]

At the High End, Apple competes VERY well on price/performance. This is not in dispute. At the low end, Apple SUCKS for Price/Performance.

That I will give you- however, I'm not sure I'd give you the firewire or the larger single hard drive as being a big benefit for the 2500 dollar unit. The 3 year warranty is too attractive.

As far as Expose, to each his own. I can see people liking the benefits of both, but visual app switching by the click of a mouse button I personally love.

 

[AxeBlade]

Oh, for games, you can easily dual boot into Window's, etc. and you can do ANYTHING a PCer can, be it games or what not?
QUOTE]

For $2000 or more dollars I can buy a PC that will not need to be upgraded for a while. As for dual booting; a PC can do everything a Mac can, plus you can have more than one window open at a time. As for the Xeon processor; you can take your PC and overclock a Core2 Duo much higher than the out of the box Xeon. Can a Mac Overclock @ all.
I can see that for Music and Video the Mac is shows its good side. The rest of the Mac is overpriced and targeting a slim margin of the market, I am not part of that market as are a majority of the people out there.

 

[Arch]

Its a shame that most of the complains I read in this article, and those posted by folks here, are not a fault of the OS, but rather, the folks not knowing how to use it. Applications are not complicated to "install." There's no "installation", you just drag the file wherever you want, it doesn't HAVE to go in Applications. It can go on your desktop. Heck, many of them can run directly from the disk image itself.

Lack of freeware? I think just about every app I have on this system (mac pro 2.66) is freeware. Cyberduck for FTP (which is excellent), Adium for IM (which is FAAAAR better than gaim or pidgin), gimp.app for image editing, neooffice, textwrangler (best text editor on any platform, ever). Maybe its not a problem of what's available, its a problem with knowing where to look for it?

Sorry, but the entire tone of the article read like someone who was bent because OS X isn't exactly like Windows. It's not, and that's a great thing.

 

[t00thless]

Great article. My mac is collecting dust because I had many of the same frustrations.

 

[muddocktor]

I for one found the article to be pretty well done, if a little rambling at times, and very informative. I have no experience with the OSX operating system or any Mac machine but it isn't for lack of trying to find an affordable option recently. While the Mac Pro is fully competitive in it's class of machine in pricing, not many of Apple's other choices are, IMO.

I recently was shopping for a new laptop for work usage primarily. Since I work on drilling rigs offshore, extreme light weight is not a main criteria, but for me screen size is. So that had me looking at 17 inch screen models and the only Apple choice with a 17 inch screen is a MacBook Pro. And the options offered for configuring it are extremely limited by Apple, with only the 2.33 GHz T7600 being offered and no way to save a couple hundred bucks by choosing a T7400 or T7200. By the time I dressed out a 17 inch MBP and added 3 years of Applecare the price tag was well over $3000. So I went looking for alternatives and built basically the same machine from Dell with the E1705 model. The Dell build was with a T7400 (2.16 GHz) processor instead of the 2.33 GHz T7600 because Dell didn't offer the T7600 in the E1705 line, but other specs of the E1705 build were of superior performance to the Apple components. The Dell offered the GeForce Go 7900 GS video subsystem in place of the rather anemic X1600 of the MBP and the screen resolution is 1900 X 1200 on the E1705 versus 1600 X 1050 on the MBP. After dressing the E1705 out with the same amount of ram (2 X 1GB of DDR2-667) and same size and speed hard drives (100 GB 7200 rpm SATA), bluetooth and equipping the E1705 with 3 years complete coverage and accidental damage coverage along with 3 years of free LoJack coverage, the Dell ended up costing a little over $2300 delivered to my door, tax included. And while I would have loved to try out the supposedly "superior" user experience of OSX, I wasn't about to pony up and extra $800-900 to do it, since this all comes out of my pocket and not some corporate fund. As for buying one of their desktop solutions, I have no need for the power of a Mac Pro and it's dual processors and the iMac and Mac Mini are basically unupgradeable pieces of crap in my opinion, with no way to put any decent graphics card in them or even another hard drive except externally. There is a very big hole in Apple's computer offerings with either an all in one for the mid grade offering, miniaturized piece of crap for their lower end or the only configurable machine they make and it starts way up at over $2000.

OK, that takes care of high end laptop pricing: Apple loses by a bunch. Let's price out what you can get for the entry level price of a Mac Mini, which is $599. I just browsed over to Dell's site and started configuring a Dimension 521, I ended up configuring the machine with an X2 3800, 2 GB of DDR2-667, the default 160 GB hard drive, the default integrated graphics, a DVD burner, 56k modem, Windows XP Home and 1 year of in-home warrantee, all for $529 before shipping and tax. With that kind of hardware available from a major oem for that price, it makes a mockery of the wimpy offering that Apple serves up as their entry level machine and it is also a system that can actually be easily upgraded to a bigger hard drive, a pci-e graphics card or whatever else suits you, unlike the Mini. So again, Apple loses big-time. And in the same price range as the Mini. So it looks to me that if you want to legally play with OSX, in the great majority of the cases Apple sticks you with inferior components for the price you pay.

I would love to legally play with OSX as I have a buddy of mine who is a Mac lover and I hear him talking about how he likes OSX, but I would rather install into my own build instead of buying a prebuilt, non-upradeable unit. And I think that with the release of Vista, Apple is missing a golden opportunity to gain much OS market share by not enabling OSX to be installed on non-Apple hardware. After all, if the market share of OSX goes up, then software development interest will naturally go up too.

 

[4cmd3]

1. registration and "keep your clothes on during install" comments

iirc, you can quit the Registration app that fires up on install.

You might be able to choose Quit from the menu bar, or just use Command-Q.


2. you don't need 3rd party widget to monitor CPU usage...

there's a tool right under Applications/Utilities to do this...
you can even customize the icon in the dock (right click) to show whatever type of graph you want.


PS. t00thless, I'll take that Mac off your hands!

 

[Techx]

ive previously had no experience with macs but we recently got a imac 24" at work, i agree with the article in regards to the interface and basic functionality, but getting it to work well with windows networks is not a lot of fun and requires changes to your w2k3 servers to get them recognized by the mac, and getting them to join a domain isn't all that simple either, considering that it's a windows world you'd think apple would do a better job at implementing their tools to connect to microsoft networks

 

[DaLurker]

After many frustrating attempts, I finally got OSX86 (10.4.8 kernel) running natively. I ended up building a PC with "OSX friendly" hardware.

After the initial dazzle of the pretty graphics and snappy performance wore off, I realized I saved a TON of money by not buying one to try it out.

I can't believe how limited I was in what what programs were available and how terribly convoluted the interface was.

Trying to browse a network share was a nightmare. Shortcuts to shares dissappear off the desktop. Creating a temporary text file was a chore and installing programs like Yahoo messenger was confusing. (Why do I have to drag messenger into the apps folder? Shouldn't that happen automatically? Why is there an icon of a drive of my desktop called Yahoo Messenger that has to be ejected? WTF?)

I realize that MAC OS is different, but I made the mistake of assuming everything would just make sense like their marketing implies.

Stability? See what happens to MAC OS when you are browsing a share and the other computer loses its network connection.....

Sorry but this is just your unfamiliarity with the OS Talking. Shortcuts to shares get disconnected when you system sleeps. You have to reconnect. This I'll admit is a bit of a pain in the ass. Also it handles dropped network shares very very badly, something I hate as well.

Secondly.. creating a temp txt is easy, why was it so difficult? Just open up textedit, cmd+n, type, cmd+s. Done.

Lastly.. installing I find is much more intuitive than Windows. It just happens we've been conditioned by using wizard installers. When you install Yahoo Messager, you load a Disk Image with the application. You then drag the executable to the application folder and unload the disk image. The disk image is no longer needed. Imagine, Yahoo Messenger is just ONE file. On windows when you do a wizard install, it copies over a plethora of files into your Program Files folder (or whever you set it to), then it writes a bunch of stuff into your registry. Now if you inadvertantly delete something from within that folder, the program may not work.

On Mac OS x, you'll never run into that problem. If you want to unsinstall Yahoo, just drag it into the trash. No need to run an uninstall wizard that removes registry settings and the same set of files you installed.

I've used windows since Windows 95 and I recently switched to Mac OS X (about 6 months ago) as my main OS and I was very happy with the decision. I must admit there was a bit of a learning curve (I didn't know how to install and application at first either) but the experience has helped me discover the subtle differences in the OSes and that WIndows is not ideal in many circumstances. That isn't to say OS X is perfect but I think it does many more things "right".

 

[Serpico]

I don't think their software matters. The biggest problem is that the starting price for a regular desktop box is $2,499.00 and with that you only get a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT video card. So your choice is a couple of pathetic little toy computers or something insanely priced. Unless you're totally in love with Steve Jobs, those just aren't acceptable choices for most people.

Not true at all. While their low end mini desktops truly do suck, the iMacs are great machines. YES they are all-in-ones but their specs are excellent. I never thought I'd say "iMacs are great" but I have been very impressed with them since they got Core2Duos.

As for Mac Pros, they are heavy duty workstations that are aimed at that market. You can't use machines like this in your argument unless you are also willing to include similar offerings by HP. Hell, I'm a big PC gamer and even I think that a desktop like that with Quad Xeons is overkill (especially on the pocketbook).

I really do feel that Apple needs a midrange headless desktop that is not a mini, or at least seriously boost the specs on them. Until then I am totally fine recommending iMacs, Macbooks, and Macbook Pros to people. I myself will be replacing my ancient G4 Final Cut Pro desktop with an iMac later this year to run Final Cut Studio 2 on.

 

[ebernet]

I dislike Expose...I'm used to the way Windows (and WindowMaker) do things. I like using one key combination to move between all the windows for all my apps.

App- and window-switching is another gripe of mine about OS X in general. You don't switch windows with OS X's command-tab, you switch applications, then you get to switch windows within that application using another set of keys (command-`). On top of that, command-` only lets you switch to the next window in window-creation order, whereas WIndows' alt-tab lets you switch in most-recent-first order. If I have five terms open in terminal.app and I'm on term four, yet I want to get to term three, I have to go through six, one, two and finally three. Of course, I could use command-left/rightarrow (and I do), but those are inconsistently used between different applications, even by Apple. I thought Apple was supposed to be consistent about this kind of stuff. Third-party apps are very inconsistent about it on OS X, while they're very consistent on Windows. Hrmmm...

Why do I care about keyboard window-switching? Cause that's what I'm used to. I hate reaching for the mouse just to switch to another window. I want to do it quickly and efficiently. I'd really like to be able to switch between two windows spawned by the same application using the same keyboard command. With WIndows I can; with OS X there's no guarantees.

I tis really easy to have a keystroke for expose and then use the arrows to switch between windows, and a different keystroke (if you want) for just windows within the current app. I find expose to be my preferred method between all platforms.

My favorite feature though is, set the upper right to be an "expose corner". Drag a selection from one app to the top right corner (with the mouse of course), all the windows appear, drag it back over the window you want to drag to, wait, the window will flash and then become the focus, drag the selection into where in the window you want. the EASIEST way on any platform to drag and drop between apps/windows with limited screen real estate.

 

[ebernet]

That I will give you- however, I'm not sure I'd give you the firewire or the larger single hard drive as being a big benefit for the 2500 dollar unit. The 3 year warranty is too attractive.

As far as Expose, to each his own. I can see people liking the benefits of both, but visual app switching by the click of a mouse button I personally love.

Fast FireWire 800 on the system bus with power is a sweet feature. So is 96/24 audio (I am an audio taper with a BUNCH of external drives and a BUNCH of optical audio gear). I guess the problem is Apple includes all those features, and so you pay a little more for it. I am lucky that I WANT all those features (even the dual gigabit ethernet - use it as my gateway machine in the house…)

All in all we agree - at the high end, Apple is very competitive and makes nice boxes. Now if they'd only make a damn $600 tower that was not 5X5X2 and instead had 3 PCI slots and Desktop hard drives. I would buy a couple of them TOMORROW. Get rid of that damn mini - give me a real computer without the mouse keyboard and screen....

 

[Serpico]

Firstly, I think you should define "regular desktop". The Mac Pro is not the $399 Dell Dimension Father's Day special, nor is it in any way akin to what others offer at lower prices. The name itself is actually quite fitting of its primary intended use: pro. The baseline Mac Pro configuration is a two dual core procs and fully buffered memory, with the option for two quad core procs. For most professionals (those being the intended target for the Mac Pro), the video card factor isn't terribly relevant. An 8800 GTX won't give me more tracks in Pro Tools, won't speed up rendering in Final Cut, and won't improve Photoshop, Illustrator or Dreamweaver performance one iota. These are the applications intended to be used on the Mac Pro -- not STALKER, Oblivion, or whatever else you may be into.

Secondly, the software does matter, because there are thousands upon thousands of applications that cannot be run on anything but a Mac (unless you like taking illegal routes). When you buy a Mac, you get Mac OS: no ifs, ands or buts. Try running Final Cut Studio 2, Logic, Bias, GarageBand and dozens of other Mac-only applications on a PC running Windows. Then, use BootCamp to easily and legally install Windows on your Mac, and run all of those Windows applications you love too. Or, grab a copy of Parallels, and run Windows and Mac OS (and Linux, if you wish) at the same time. Can any other "regular desktop" achieve such a feat? Certainly, there are comparable applications on the Windows side, but you can't take the "the software doesn't matter" stance, because that's an irrevocable factor. Your computer is useless without software.

The Mac mini is a bit of a toy, no doubt, but the iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro are certainly not. What exactly is toyish about Core 2 procs across the board? Does a slow video card instantly make an otherwise powerful computer into a toy? Aren't purpose-built gaming PCs more of a toy than say, an iMac, given their intended usage (playing games)?

A computer purpose-built for gaming is my idea of a toy computer.

Post of the day here.

 

[[H]EMI_426]

I tis really easy to have a keystroke for expose and then use the arrows to switch between windows, and a different keystroke (if you want) for just windows within the current app. I find expose to be my preferred method between all platforms.

My favorite feature though is, set the upper right to be an "expose corner". Drag a selection from one app to the top right corner (with the mouse of course), all the windows appear, drag it back over the window you want to drag to, wait, the window will flash and then become the focus, drag the selection into where in the window you want. the EASIEST way on any platform to drag and drop between apps/windows with limited screen real estate.

Expose is slow. When I just want to switch between two windows of the same app, I don't want to wait for it to scale the app windows down, arrow around to one, then wait for them to scale up again. It's dumb. Give me a fast, simple way to switch apps that doesn't require me to move my hands from the home row or to do more than one keyboard command. Maybe it's just me, but I like to get work done, not get work done more slowly while looking good doing it.

I'm griping about what turns me off about Macs and why I don't think they're good for me---and trust me, many have tried to persuade me otherwise---not asking for a fix. I've been using Macs at work for a year and a half now and I'm still happy to come home to my FreeBSD and Windows machines every evening.

Why would I want to grab the mouse to switch windows? It should be a simple, one-shot keyboard command away. No way in hell am I setting up a "hot corner" for expose.

 

[Deleted member 134608]

Sorry but this is just your unfamiliarity with the OS Talking. Shortcuts to shares get disconnected when you system sleeps. You have to reconnect. This I'll admit is a bit of a pain in the ass. Also it handles dropped network shares very very badly, something I hate as well.

Secondly.. creating a temp txt is easy, why was it so difficult? Just open up textedit, cmd+n, type, cmd+s. Done.

Lastly.. installing I find is much more intuitive than Windows. It just happens we've been conditioned by using wizard installers. When you install Yahoo Messager, you load a Disk Image with the application. You then drag the executable to the application folder and unload the disk image. The disk image is no longer needed. Imagine, Yahoo Messenger is just ONE file. On windows when you do a wizard install, it copies over a plethora of files into your Program Files folder (or whever you set it to), then it writes a bunch of stuff into your registry. Now if you inadvertantly delete something from within that folder, the program may not work.

On Mac OS x, you'll never run into that problem. If you want to unsinstall Yahoo, just drag it into the trash. No need to run an uninstall wizard that removes registry settings and the same set of files you installed.

I've used windows since Windows 95 and I recently switched to Mac OS X (about 6 months ago) as my main OS and I was very happy with the decision. I must admit there was a bit of a learning curve (I didn't know how to install and application at first either) but the experience has helped me discover the subtle differences in the OSes and that WIndows is not ideal in many circumstances. That isn't to say OS X is perfect but I think it does many more things "right".

I wasn't looking for a prettier Windows. I was looking for something easy and that made sense.

What does a totally computer illiterate user expect? I mean someone who doesn't even know Windows?

Since I work in a computer retail store I'll tell you...

They expect the computer to do everything for them, with as little input as possible. There should be no stupid click and drag into a folder to install something. There should be no image file left behind. Eject?? These are conventions established by techno geeks, not psycologists.

Programs should know where they go and just install, leaving nothing but an icon to click so it can be used or removed. Anything else is unnatural, overly complicated and confusing. It needs to make sense and just work. I know Windows isn't like this, and expected much more of this from Apple.

As much as you say I'm looking at this from a Windows perspective, try re-reading your reply about creating a text file and installing something from the perspective of a completely new user. Then tell me why thats so easy and makes sense. (Which is what Apple is right?)

EDIT: I didn't hate everything btw. I love Yahoo in MAC OS. It's nice, clean, simple and easy. If the install was like that, I wouldn't have been turned off.

 

[ebernet]

Why would I want to grab the mouse to switch windows? It should be a simple, one-shot keyboard command away. No way in hell am I setting up a "hot corner" for expose.

That hot corner is for drag and drop between apps, something which is woefully underused/unimplemented on all other platforms. That might be why you are not used to it.....
I was all about the keystrokes when just switching windows. I never noticed a speed issue - but I do notice a major speed boost for seeing the windows. You can turn off the animation and have them pop into place immediately with a bunch of freeware tweakers

 

[Nasty_Savage]

ive previously had no experience with macs but we recently got a imac 24" at work, i agree with the article in regards to the interface and basic functionality, but getting it to work well with windows networks is not a lot of fun and requires changes to your w2k3 servers to get them recognized by the mac, and getting them to join a domain isn't all that simple either, considering that it's a windows world you'd think apple would do a better job at implementing their tools to connect to microsoft networks

Took me a grand total of 2 hours starting from scratch. Joins AD and mounts the home drive with no problems. All it needs is proper active directory setup on the client and a minor registry tweak on the servers.

 

[MrGuvernment]

i was a new apple / osx user in dec 2006, with in 4 days of owning my mac book i knew how to do almost everything in the artcile says they cant or had trouble with, and i have been a windows user straight and soley for the last....... 13 years.

I think you could sit the same type of people down in front of windows / linux and OSX and they would have the same problems on all of them

Now sit down people who have a learning curve or can problem solve in front of each OS, and they will figure out what they need.

With in those 4 days of simple searchin on google, not anything hard, i knew the diff shortcuts to use, copy, paste and such, i had paralells installed, with in 10 days i had XP running under bootcamp.......

All it takes for most people is a little guidance or to ask some questions, those who dont are the ones who always blame the OS for it being so crappy cause they want to be spoon fed everything.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I couldn't read your whole article because, being a Mac head, I got turned off pretty fast. Two hours to install the OS? I have a PowerBook 1.5ghz which isn't nearly as fast as either of the machines you used and it has 512MB of ram. It takes me less than 30 minutes to install the OS. I skipped to your conclusion and completely disagreed with you thoughts on freeware. There's plenty of it and NeoOffice.org is a great writing application. Why it's not completely fair to say your biased because I didn't read the entire article, just reading the first section and the last page left me with that feeling.

did you uncheck all of the options? a base install of the OS only, no extras is about 20-30mins on my macbook, but toss in ilife and all the other "default" install stuff and it is almost 2 hours to do it.

 

[ND40oz]

Took me a grand total of 2 hours starting from scratch. Joins AD and mounts the home drive with no problems. All it needs is proper active directory setup on the client and a minor registry tweak on the servers.

Too bad it only takes 2 minutes on Windows box...

I hate installing programs on my mini, it just isn't intuitive (except office 2k4, that installed just fine, go figure). I still don't have fire fox working correctly because it's too much of a pain in the ass to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong. The only thing my mini is good for is syncing the iPod, that's one of the reasons I bought it and it works fine for it. But, the damn thing always drops it's wireless connection even though I put up a second access point to make sure it always had excellent signal. Because of this, the F@H SMP client has yet to complete a work unit, since it relies on a network connection. All I want it to do is fold and transfer music to my wifes iPod and it can only do one of these correctly.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

That was the intitial install, subsequently all i need to do is set up active directory parameters on each workstation which takes the same amount of time to connect a windows machine to the domain. Microsoft designs their products to work with their products, as does Apple. But its not a game breaker by any means as you can connect a Windows box to an Apple server and vice versa. Out of the box though, they are not designed to work with their competitor's products.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I also want a screen shot program as good or better than PrintKey that I use on Windows. And I want more keyboards available to offer more buttons, maybe an iPod station (but that would have to have more power, as I can't plug an iPod in the back of an Apple keyboard and have it work now).

My wife has an Epson CX3200. Getting a fax from its scanner took a lot of research, and she still calls me up to go over the steps.

She has already ordered an upgrade to Parallels to run more of her old games. I suspect she won't need a better games video card, as she isn't into leading edge games - but we don't know. I don't know how hard it would be to upgrade her iMac video card, but I bet it's expensive if it is possible at all. (I am not adding to my savings from my allowance very quickly during golf season - but I am saving for a Mac Pro).

We could install Parallels with a W95 disk and a WXP upgrade. Apparently we can't do that with the boot disk program.

I think it's pointless to complain about not having Word for free. If your business is writing, then you should look at commercial writing programs.

We haven't touched half of iHome, not having a clue. It was a pain that iPhoto didn't recognize the subdirectory structure of our photos we had in Windows. My iPod won't recognize it either, and that's worse.

I haven't figured out how to make permament connections to Windows machines in the house, nor how to write and run programs similar to the .bat files that synchronize the most recent photos in my two Windows machines - to include her Mac. I might have to learn AppleScript to do this, and it's too hard to get my wife off the computer long enough.

 

[InorganicMatter]

I will throw in Expose is the best application switching feature I've ever used. Nuff said.

I think you mean "Expose, like all application switchers, should die a horrible death." The only good application switcher ever made is the no-nonsense one in Windows 2000, everything since then is useless animated fluff that hinders more than it helps.

i was a new apple / osx user in dec 2006, with in 4 days of owning my mac book i knew how to do almost everything in the artcile says they cant or had trouble with, and i have been a windows user straight and soley for the last....... 13 years.

I think you could sit the same type of people down in front of windows / linux and OSX and they would have the same problems on all of them

Now sit down people who have a learning curve or can problem solve in front of each OS, and they will figure out what they need.

With in those 4 days of simple searchin on google, not anything hard, i knew the diff shortcuts to use, copy, paste and such, i had paralells installed, with in 10 days i had XP running under bootcamp.......

All it takes for most people is a little guidance or to ask some questions, those who dont are the ones who always blame the OS for it being so crappy cause they want to be spoon fed everything.

Yes, but you already knew another OS. OSes are like foreign languages - once you learn your first one, all the others are easy. It's just a simple matter of "mapping" functions from one OS to another in your brain. I consider myself a "super-elite" Windows user, and as such I learned Linux just screwing around with it a few hours a day once I decided to actually learn it.

 

[Howard Brazee]

What is the purpose of an application switcher? I don't notice any difficulty of switching applications without one.

 

[rameeti]

For a professional writer to be thinking that he should be using a shareware or opensource word processor application speaks volumes about the author's lack of priorities.

BTW, I've never bothered to look at NeoOffice but when I downloaded it and attempted to use it, I found no difficulty at all with italization. Everything I tried worked as it should. No wonder it has received a significant fan base. But the author of this review apparently did not even try to figure how what the problem was but instead continually put the Mac down due to the lack of a freeware word processing program.

Complaining about the lack of sufficient memory when he purchases a $600 computer is another over the top flaw in his logic. How many $600 computer's is he likely to be happy with as shipped? Not many I would imagine. If he was not capable of recognizing that the Mini came with 512MB OR 1 MB of memory as a purchasing option, then due diligence was not done and the cheapest computer that Apple makes should not be dissed for not having the memory that he wanted while he threw multiple applications at it. The cheapest computer should only be expected to be able to do email, word processing, photo collection, mp3 collection and playing, etc and then not necessarily all at once. This is the way so many people actually work and that is what the computer was designed for. Those that don't have significant needs.

I don't understand this statement: "The problems with the Mac Mini are compounded by the Mac philosophy of not quitting a program – not to mention unloading it from memory - until you expressly tell it to." Are there Windows programs that will quit when you don't expressly tell them to? I'd rather that I can ask the computer to Exit (on Windows) or Quit (on the Mac). Doing so has always quit the program I was using just fine. If I want to close a window, clicking the Close box also has worked just fine. And the problem is ...?

"... the OS does get very finicky when it doesn't get enough RAM to run." And what OS doesn't get finicky when they don't get enough RAM? What a silly statement.

When the author writes: "I'm not sure what caused it, but somehow my USB external hard drive ceased to work at one point and was rendered useless on all OS platforms. After running a few apps and commands, perhaps due to some degree of simultaneousness, something caused it to start working again. This was unsettling and unpleasant, but there was no data loss." it is clear to me that he has formatted the drive as a Unix drive. I've worked with hundreds of Mac users and I've yet to ever find that someone walked into this hole except when they've chosen to muck with the default settings and in fact did choose to format as a Unix drive. Those that think they know what they are doing all too often don't.

"The only non-compact form factor that Apple offers is the very expensive Mac Pro line." Huh? How about the iMac? You can swap out drives and add memory without a lot of experience.

"If the company has sole province over how the OS should run on a limited set of hardware, you’d think that it would know when 512MB of RAM isn’t enough." They do know that 512MB is not enough for some people. But it is enough for others. You chose 512MB. Apple did not ship this computer to you to review. You chose it. You get what you choose.

"we couldn't get a hold of a decent word processor and had to do the bulk of our note-taking in a WordPad-like application." Again the author apparently mucked up the install because Italization worked exactly as it should for me.

"It means that to use Mac OS X, you need to spend at least $600 on a new computer, and more for a computer that actually runs well." As this review was supposed to be done with the perspective of a user that was considering his options of upgrading to Vista or other OSs, it would seem that the $200 - $300 cost of vista plus the upgrades of memory or video cards to truly take advantage of Vista could approach the $600 that he got for a new computer with all the apps included. Adding a bit of memory and he would have had little to complain about with the weakest computer that Apple makes.

"Unfortunately, the “good” freeware seems to only be available/fully functional on Windows and Linux." Unfortunately, the "good" reviewers only know how to do a simple installation on the platforms that they already know how to use. Too bad he can't look before he buys, install properly or ask questions when he fails, and not expect something for nothing.

 

[Deleted member 134608]

It would have been nice to hear from a bunch of other MAC newbs to see if they feel the same as the author, as opposed to experienced MAC users failing to understand where he is coming from, but whatever.

I'm done with this thread.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Did his old Mac OS quit applications the same way? Windows users are used to clicking on the application window to quit an application, and tend to leave applications open using Mac OS-X. And lots of people don't like using menus nor Apple-Q and the like at all.

Now if he had criticized the GUI for not having Quit buttons on the windows, I can see that he has a point. But criticizing it for using memory when he didn't quit applications is something different.

 

[Justintoxicated]

I was considering getting an I-Book at one point, but apples are and always will be too expensive, if it was not for the I-pod I doubt they would still be in business. I used to hate apple, however I no longer do. I just realize I am too elite to use one. However I'm starting to hate MS more than Apple for for the same reasons I disliked apple software.

I have allot of friends that really like Mac's but none of them play games.

My Landlord bought a Mac and it is not able to run the games her son wants to play. When she got her computer a year after I put together the opteron rig in my computer, her setup was STILL more expensive and much slower (Yea I overclock but PC's allow you to easily do this!) Although I am loving the 24" scene on hers! The screen makes this computer...

One sales pitch that got her was that there are NO drivers. I tried to explain to her that there are still drivers. I don't think I was able to get her to understand why having to update drivers is not a bad thing, and why NOT having any drivers (if that were the case) would be a bad thing. Like for their video card for example. i think it is sneaky and wrong how Mac advertises this to people.

Whats next an I-Car? Guaranteed to last 200k miles? I would imagine that if everyone drove the SAME car and had the same limited hardware on it that cars would have fewer issues as well. However the commute to work would be very dull. Basicaly the way I see is that apple will take your money and limit the software you can run so there are less issues, where as PC's will take your money and you can do with them as you please. It is the infinite possibilities that result in possible incompatabilities in the PC world. In the mac world there are less issues because there are less possible choices for you to choose from.

Now I'm not one to bash on peoples decisions simply because my opinions differ. To her the computer is extremely fast but coming from a really old Pentium 3 Laptop (My Celeron old 300a ran faster than this thing) I can see why. So in the end she is happy with her purchase and the computer seems to be doing the things they mostly want it to. I'm going to help her son put together a gaming rig since this is one thing that the MAC has horrible support for.

Although this is not a critique of the article I can understand what the author is trying to say...I would agree that the people apple markets to buy their systems would likely not know that 512mb of memory is not enough, or not understand what the differences really are. They are marketing to people who don't want to have to worry about these things, they want their computers to "just work". Right now you can get 2GB of memory over 512 for like $60, so why even have the option when people are already paying top dollar to purchase a MAC?

Finally I must say, you’re not going to find good deals on a Mac laptop like you will in the Hot Deals forum and the $700 laptop for sale in there. Sure you can compare them to Dell's and they are still more, but when deals liekt he $700 laptop come around it's VERY hard to justify the cost of a comparable Mac.

So they don't make a free screen capture program like "allscreen 95 pro" for a Mac? Awww that sucks, been using it to write documentation for years.

 

[GreNME]

I'm sure my experiences probably don't match up 100% to yours - and the 30 days series, is, by it's nature, subjective, though I tried to be thorough.

Well, at least you're admitting it now.

Seriously, I don't see how this article or the other two add anything new, refreshing, or insightful to the tons of articles out there already playing operating systems against each other for readers. I won't even get into the formatting-- I've accepted that the [H] is first and foremost, and always shall be a gamer enthusiast site above all else. But who is the intended audience? It's too niched for beginners, too scattered for middle-level folks who would be looking for specifics, and experienced people are going to poke a million holes in the errors.

Back in late '04 I corresponded with Al Fasoldt-- a guy who is crazy about Macs-- over (an article of his about) the whole SP2 thing with XP, and I have to say that I am reminded of the same type of fallacies in technical evaluation. I'm sure, like Mr. Fasoldt, that you are nice and friendly guys who mean well, but I'm just not seeing how this article is going to be helpful in any way toward understanding the Mac OS, just the same as previous "30 Days" articles were unhelpful to their respective platforms. Stating the equivalent of "I know you Mac guys aren't going to like this, but..." in your article is inviting knee-jerk responses.

And before you delete this post, Odoe or MajorDomo, please answer me something: since I assume you're ostensibly deleting this for being off-topic for the OS forum, why is this thread here in the first place? It is not really discussing an OS, just self-promoting and begging for more Diggs.

By the way, I'm a mostly Win guy who has worked with Linux for years and thinks OS X is a damned fine OS. The only thing keeping me from owning a Mac is that Dell gives me better bang-for-buck packages at this time (but it's on my to-do list).

 

[illgiveumorality]

I only really have two thoughts on this article-
The quality of handbrake can be adjusted.
What did you need to configure on your logitech precision 2?

The article was alright, there was something funky about it, but I guess that's simply because I have always been content with my mac.

 

[TheTyrant]

it was a good read, he was a bit bias. But on a side note. I have the keys to Brian's apartment here in austin. I still need to return them to him. sorry brian

 

[ebernet]

I only really have two thoughts on this article-
The quality of handbrake can be adjusted.
What did you need to configure on your logitech precision 2?

The article was alright, there was something funky about it, but I guess that's simply because I have always been content with my mac.

Exactly....
I have the Logitech Dual Action Gamepad USB... It came with no Mac drivers, and a CD of drivers for windows. The thing is, it is a standard HID compliant joystick device - and since the Mac has generic HID compliant drivers for games, any game should work fine with it. As I said before, what makes it different than windows is you don't get 3 pointless dialogs that you pluggd the mouse in, it just works. Did you try to play a game with it Brian?

 

[defstef]

I also want a screen shot program as good or better than PrintKey that I use on Windows.

Take a look at the keyboard shortcuts presented in the System Preferences App, under Keyboard & Mouse> Keyboard Shortcuts tab. There you are presented with a number of options: Cmd-Shift-3 saves the screen as a file, Cmd-Opt-Shift-3 saves screen to clipboard, Cmd-Shift-4 saves selection as a file, Cmd-Opt-Shift-4 saves selection to clipboard. I think that qualifies as 'better' than PrintScreen.

When I resize a window, the files don't re-sort to fill it - which makes a widescreen kind of pointless.

This can be turned on, when in icon view, by choosing View Options (Cmd-j), and selecting 'Keep arranged by -Name/Date Modified/Date Created/Size/Kind/Label' (which allows for more flexibility in sorting than Windows, plus note that you can add your own label into the ordering criteria), but there are plenty of reasons why you might not want to have them resort. For instance, if your workflow involves choosing a number of files from a folder that contains a lot of them, one at a time (a pretty realistic workflow), if the position of the icons keeps changing during re-sorting, it becomes harder to keep an eye on the files you want. Obviously this is just an example, but I can see why Apple would leave it to the user to make a choice of how things are sorted.

In addition to ciparis' suggestion of column view, the same Cmd-j View Options mentioned above can be used to turn on image preview in the icons themselves, and you can also resize them and order them as detailed above.

am a total MAC n00b, and having to find and change settings for some rudimentary functionality is ridiculous. I am sick of the "all you had to do is click here, here and here or why didn't you install blah blah..." comments.

As you are a total Mac n00b, you should be prepared to have to learn new things, and ask questions. Have a look at MacOSXHints, or just search for your own answers. Seek, and ye shall find!

I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people make when working with a Mac the first time, is to assume that because some things that work on Windows don't work the same way (by the same keyboard shortcut, or whatever), there isn't a way of doing it. Many long-time Windows users act as though they were born knowing alt-tab, or alt-F4, or Ctrl-S etc., when in reality they either were told, or spent a lot of time figuring things out for themselves by trial and error.

Rameeti's post is superb, btw.

Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Eject

 

[Howard Brazee]

PrintKey 2000 can do all of the above. But when I print a window, I don't have to size it, I don't have to find my graphic, open it, print it, then delete it.

Admittedly, the default Mac method is a bit easier to capture something that is neither a window nor the full screen.

Also, I had to put the instructions on the wall, as there is nothing intuitive about the keystrokes needed. With PrintKey, it can use the "Print Screen" key, keystrokes of my choice, or I can click on its icon in the right part of the task bar.

Lots of things are easier on the Mac. Some things are more difficult. In this case, I had to get a third party utility to make screen printing easy on Windows, but I found the product that did it. I haven't found an equivalent for Macs yet.

The procedure to fax from my wife's all-in-one printer is much more complicated on her iMac than it is on her Windows laptop. There is no comparison.

 

[nray]

I agree with the person who is questioning the value of the 30-day eval as a form of review. I think it would be better if the person doing the evaluating had a "wingman" so to speak, someone who is a real expert on whatever platform they're evaluating and can provide tips, pointers, and background information that can help a person really get the underlying functionality in 30 days. Then the final views expressed might have some solid value because they were able to wrap their head around more in less time.

Really learning an operating system is like learning a language, because it is a visual language, with it's own nouns, verbs, and sentence structures and rules playing out in the particular graphical constructs of that experience. A person simply can't be fluent in 30 days. You might as well run a series of articles, "30 Days With French", "30 Days with Romanian" and then talk about how 'good' each language is compared to English and whether you're going to switch or not based on your experiences with some self-learning tapes and reading some current literature in each language.

 

[Deleted member 134608]

Take a look at the keyboard shortcuts presented in the System Preferences App, under Keyboard & Mouse> Keyboard Shortcuts tab. There you are presented with a number of options: Cmd-Shift-3 saves the screen as a file, Cmd-Opt-Shift-3 saves screen to clipboard, Cmd-Shift-4 saves selection as a file, Cmd-Opt-Shift-4 saves selection to clipboard. I think that qualifies as 'better' than PrintScreen.



This can be turned on, when in icon view, by choosing View Options (Cmd-j), and selecting 'Keep arranged by -Name/Date Modified/Date Created/Size/Kind/Label' (which allows for more flexibility in sorting than Windows, plus note that you can add your own label into the ordering criteria), but there are plenty of reasons why you might not want to have them resort. For instance, if your workflow involves choosing a number of files from a folder that contains a lot of them, one at a time (a pretty realistic workflow), if the position of the icons keeps changing during re-sorting, it becomes harder to keep an eye on the files you want. Obviously this is just an example, but I can see why Apple would leave it to the user to make a choice of how things are sorted.

In addition to ciparis' suggestion of column view, the same Cmd-j View Options mentioned above can be used to turn on image preview in the icons themselves, and you can also resize them and order them as detailed above.


As you are a total Mac n00b, you should be prepared to have to learn new things, and ask questions. Have a look at MacOSXHints, or just search for your own answers. Seek, and ye shall find!

I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people make when working with a Mac the first time, is to assume that because some things that work on Windows don't work the same way (by the same keyboard shortcut, or whatever), there isn't a way of doing it. Many long-time Windows users act as though they were born knowing alt-tab, or alt-F4, or Ctrl-S etc., when in reality they either were told, or spent a lot of time figuring things out for themselves by trial and error.

Rameeti's post is superb, btw.

Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Eject

I said I was done with this thread, and more specifically because of people like you.

I CAN figure it out with time, questions, playing around and reading. In fact, I did. One of the things I did was enable the dev mode for the widgets, so I could have them on my desktop where I could actually make use of them.

I used to write software and save it to a cassette with a VIC-20 for chr1st's sake - when I was 5 years old. I've built PCs from 286s to Core 2s. I've replaced gas tanks, sensors, fuel pumps, alternators, starters, installed remote starters, stereos, amps and speakers in cars and jeeps. Modified an '82 1100 gas tank to fit my '79 GS1000, along with the rust removal, body work and paint. Installed dozens of satellite dishes, PA systems, pre-wired homes and commercial buildings for built-in home theater and/or background music systems - that was my part time job in grade 8. Did audio systems for banks and bars when I was 15. I've recapped (dozens of) motherboards. Replaced power connectors and FL invertors on laptops. Framed walls. Installed drywall. Installed lighting, ballasts, outlets......... etc etc etc etc

By myself, with little to no instructions.

I dropped out half-way through a Bachelor of CompSci degree because my GPS was 4.0 and I was bored of not being challenged. Being in the top 10 out of 240 students was easy, even though I missed half my classes (slept through the other ones) and never opened my books.

MAC OS is marketed as something that is very easy, just works and makes sense. Apparently that is all total BS.

I SHOULDN'T NEED TO SPEND MORE THAN A FEW MINUTES LEARNING. I SHOULDN'T NEED TO READ WEBSITES AND ASK EXPERTS!!!! I SURE AS HELL SHOULDN'T HAVE TO ENABLE BASIC FEATURES.

And I shouldn't have to yell to get people to understand what I am saying.

GET THE FRICKEN POINT YET?

 

[maq1988]

I first used OS X back as Cheetah on G3 iMacs, I loved it, I finally bought an iBook and used OS X as a major OS for the majority of the time. I was a n00b at it, but I asked questions and began to learn things.

OS X is a good operating system (in the right application). People make the mistake of buying a Mac to game on, it just won't cut it like a PC running Windows, then complain. I actually quite like not having to "quit" applications when I close the window, I can have iTunes running without the window open or minimized, I can have Mail running without the window cluttering the desktop or dock.

Pet hate on Windows, and I wish Vista just didn't have it, the notifications, Yes, Windows I know I've just unplugged the network cable, and yes I know I've plugged in my USB pen drive.

I've installed OS X plenty of times, it's easier than Windows, infact I thought my Vista install had crashed, but it was doing something, for 20 minutes (before it even started copying files). You just have to cut out the crap if you don't want it.

I couldn't see it in the article, but FireWire Targetdisk mode, a lot of people don't know it's there. It has been a life saver at times, even the fact that I can take out the drive of a Quad Core G5 and drop it into a Dual G4 PowerMac and boot it back up with no hassle is great, (Mail server died (G5) just dumped the disks in an old G4, Mail server back running in 10 minutes). I've never been able to do that with Windows.

OS X 10.4 Tiger is more or less Apple's XP SP2, I can run Tiger quite happily on a 450MHz G3, I don't even want to try putting XP SP2 on an old 450MHz box.

I prefer Mac OS X, I know the Mac Mini isn't the greatest of machines, the MacBook is a whole lot better in areas. But a Mac Mini is aimed at people who watch a DVD, play some music, want to check e-mail and the news online. If you want to do video encoding or major gritty CPU hungry work, get an iMac or fork out for a MacPro. The Mac Mini is not a Pro machine, and so will not hold up as well if treated like one.

There are plenty of Freeware apps for the Mac (see others posts). Carbon Copy Cloner is a great application, easy BOOTABLE backups of the entire system.

Apple has slipped a bit in desktops, the iPhone has taken great resources away from Leopard (the next major OS) and Mac development. I have problems with Mac OS X, things I wish it could do, things I wish it didn't (Finder and network browsing is a major one).

To really give something a go, you need to throw yourself in and you may need help at times. There's nothing wrong with asking for help.

You did an okay job [H] and Brian, you missed some vital things out I think, and I do believe there is a bias agains't Apple on this board. (But there is of Windows and Linux too).

My opinion, pick the right tool for the job. You just have to find out which one is right.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I think you mean "Expose, like all application switchers, should die a horrible death." The only good application switcher ever made is the no-nonsense one in Windows 2000, everything since then is useless animated fluff that hinders more than it helps.



Yes, but you already knew another OS. OSes are like foreign languages - once you learn your first one, all the others are easy. It's just a simple matter of "mapping" functions from one OS to another in your brain. I consider myself a "super-elite" Windows user, and as such I learned Linux just screwing around with it a few hours a day once I decided to actually learn it.

To a degree yes, the issue is being so used to one things then having to change, i have tried recently with linux becuase everytime i do i get frustrated and give up

but FYI , i soley use Vista on my macbook now, mainly because at the time PhotoShop ran like crap, but now that CS3 is out, i could consider going back, but i just dont have the cash to dish out for cs3 when cs2 is fine and runs great on windows :d

 

[Brian Boyko]

it was a good read, he was a bit bias. But on a side note. I have the keys to Brian's apartment here in austin. I still need to return them to him. sorry brian

Yes, you do! I'm moving out this weekend! I thought you had already returned them!

Just drop them off in the office. If you don't remember where that is, I'll PM you my cellphone number.

Muy, Muy Importante!

 

[DaLurker]

I think as a long times window users, you don't get the right to say anymore which OS is easier to pick up than the other. Sure Mac OS X is marketed as being easier, and in a lot of ways I think it is but the reality is MORE people have had exposure to Windows and thus the traversal to use Mac OS X will inadvertantly be "difficult". I do believe if you sit down a person who has not used EITHER os, then Mac OS X would be easier for them to pick up.

I said I was done with this thread, and more specifically because of people like you.

I CAN figure it out with time, questions, playing around and reading. In fact, I did. One of the things I did was enable the dev mode for the widgets, so I could have them on my desktop where I could actually make use of them.

I used to write software and save it to a cassette with a VIC-20 for chr1st's sake - when I was 5 years old. I've built PCs from 286s to Core 2s. I've replaced gas tanks, sensors, fuel pumps, alternators, starters, installed remote starters, stereos, amps and speakers in cars and jeeps. Modified an '82 1100 gas tank to fit my '79 GS1000, along with the rust removal, body work and paint. Installed dozens of satellite dishes, PA systems, pre-wired homes and commercial buildings for built-in home theater and/or background music systems - that was my part time job in grade 8. Did audio systems for banks and bars when I was 15. I've recapped (dozens of) motherboards. Replaced power connectors and FL invertors on laptops. Framed walls. Installed drywall. Installed lighting, ballasts, outlets......... etc etc etc etc

By myself, with little to no instructions.

I dropped out half-way through a Bachelor of CompSci degree because my GPS was 4.0 and I was bored of not being challenged. Being in the top 10 out of 240 students was easy, even though I missed half my classes (slept through the other ones) and never opened my books.

MAC OS is marketed as something that is very easy, just works and makes sense. Apparently that is all total BS.

I SHOULDN'T NEED TO SPEND MORE THAN A FEW MINUTES LEARNING. I SHOULDN'T NEED TO READ WEBSITES AND ASK EXPERTS!!!! I SURE AS HELL SHOULDN'T HAVE TO ENABLE BASIC FEATURES.

And I shouldn't have to yell to get people to understand what I am saying.

GET THE FRICKEN POINT YET?