Recent switcher....

[Lotus11]

Hi all. About a year ago I decided to test the waters and bought a mini. I'm a long time windows guy and thought it would be interesting to give my perspective.

To keep it simple I am just going to give a like/dislike column.

Likes:
1. Stability
2. No viruses
3. f10 through f13!! (love that)
4. Most of the GUI (got some gripes there too)
5. spotlight

Dislikes:
1. Finder is VERY unfriendly.
2. GUI discrepancies, brushed metal etc...
3. non-lockable full screen windows (especially in Photoshop)
4. dashboad - would rather have widgets on desktop
5. Maybe just me, but keychains are difficult for me to wrap my brain around for some reason. (minor gripe)

All in all, I think os X IS better than XP overall, but I sure wish my little nitpicks could addressed in Leopard. I hope there is more eye candy in leopard too, i know thats kinda cheesy, but if Apple wants to win market share they are going to have to compete with Vista. Vista looks good, whats under the hood is another story. But that said, Joe bag of douhnuts doesn't know the difference, and they are going to be wowed by all of the things that M$ "invented" for thier new OS.

I sure hope Leopard takes a large step forward. Anyway, just wanted to share my .02 -sp

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I find it funny how many people note how they don't like the inconsistent Finder themes (brushed aluminum, iPhoto look). I never notice this. So odd cause you are by far not the only one with a problem with this.

As for the Finder, I would attribute that to the way you are used to working on Windows. And if not? You'll get used to it. Good for you for giving a Mac a shot. It's not perfect, but hey, what CPU is?

 

[Lotus11]

Yeah my gripes are not really that big. Im a graphic designer so I love the stability of the OS, but not having a full window lock feature in Photoshop really annoys me. Im always accidently clicking outside my doc, which throws the focus out of PS. grrr. All in all though, Im definately enjoying my Mac and am finding myself promoting it more and more to PC'eers.

 

[zero2dash]

3. f10 through f13!! (love that)

I use F9 the most myself, with F10 a close second (when dealing with several Adobe CS files at once). Microsoft did a butcher job of attempting to copy Expose in Vista, and they failed miserably. Their "copy" (I forget what they call it) is really slow and cpu-intensive, and since it "flips" the windows like a rolodex, you can't see what is actually *in* all of the windows at one time like you can with Expose. What a pity...it's bad enough they copy it, but even worse that they can't even copy it well.

Dislikes:
1. Finder is VERY unfriendly.

How is Finder unfriendly? Please elaborate.

3. non-lockable full screen windows (especially in Photoshop)

Somewhat irritating, but it doesn't bother me anymore. The palettes will snap to the screen edges; that's all I really care about.

All in all, I think os X IS better than XP overall, but I sure wish my little nitpicks could addressed in Leopard. I hope there is more eye candy in leopard too, i know thats kinda cheesy, but if Apple wants to win market share they are going to have to compete with Vista. Vista looks good, whats under the hood is another story. But that said, Joe bag of douhnuts doesn't know the difference, and they are going to be wowed by all of the things that M$ "invented" for thier new OS.

I sure hope Leopard takes a large step forward. Anyway, just wanted to share my .02 -sp

Apple isn't competing with Vista; they're competing with a) basement-priced Dells and b) reluctancy to change. OSX is years beyond anything Microsoft has or will come up with. With Boot Camp now a feasible solution, I think the market share will start shrinking; it's going to take *time*, but I think Apple is going to pick up a lot of new owners/users over the next year (myself included). I have been strictly Windows for about the last 10 years (used Macs in school, had a Power Mac 7100/80 for awhile, eventually got an eMachine back in the Win98 days and haven't had a Mac since then). I've been using OSX on a G5 at work everyday since March '05 and now I can't wait to buy a Mac Pro and ditch Windows.

I think Vista is seriously overrated. First of all, Microsoft is still dealing with security issues with their OS, and they will continue to do so. Vista addresses some of these issues, but UAP (the User Account Protection they implemented in Vista, which is basically a poor attempt at Authentication in OSX/*nix) is obtrusive and annoying. They've fallen flat on several promises (WinFS notably) and they have to deal with the majority of people who are happy enough with XP for the time being who won't want to upgrade. The people who *do* upgrade are going to most likely have to buy more memory and stronger video cards for their computers to be able to use Aero, which is another strike against Vista. I've used several Vista builds and I came away very disappointed. A lot of smoke and mirrors and empty promises and that's about it. I have two PCs at home (1 desktop and 1 laptop) running XP Pro and I have no problems with it. If anything, I'd go back to Windows 2000 before I went to something newer than XP.

Apple has a great chance right now to pick up some market share and I feel like they're going to do it.

Good for you though on being open-minded and trying out a Mac; I know my experience in OSX has made me decide to switch as well. I don't have any problems on my XP boxes; I keep them maintained/updated, I don't have spyware/virus infections, etc. But I enjoy using OSX (as funny as that sounds). It's excellent.

-my 2 cents

 

[decksnap]

I don't understand what you mean by 'non-lockable' full screen. In Photoshop if you hit this button it goes full screen and you can't click outside of it. Am I misunderstanding you?

 

[devilot]

Dislikes:

2. GUI discrepancies, brushed metal etc...

I and a few other MR-ers use Uno. I'm not too sure if it's a UB yet... but I like it. Very clean looking.

4. dashboad - would rather have widgets on desktop

As for that, enough people are bothered by that that there is a sticky (yes, it pays to read sometimes) here on MR: How-To: Keeping multiple dashboard widgets on the desktop.

Hope that helps.

 

[spriter]

2. GUI discrepancies, brushed metal etc...

Agreed. I've never liked the move from Aqua to Brushed
Metal and then the mixed bag that we have now. Thank heaven's for Uno.

EDIT: LOL, devilot beat me to it

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Im always accidently clicking outside my doc, which throws the focus out of PS.

Just hit "F" and it will give you fullscreen. Hit it twice and you get blackout borders. Although you might already know this. But I've used PS since version 3 and have no problems with it (then again I've used a Mac since I was 10).

 

[funkychunkz]

Likes:
3. f10 through f13!! (love that)

5. spotlight

Dislikes:
1. Finder is VERY unfriendly.
4. dashboad - would rather have widgets on desktop
5. Maybe just me, but keychains are difficult for me to wrap my brain around for some reason. (minor gripe)

I sure hope Leopard takes a large step forward.

What does f13 do??

I personally don't like spotlight, it's slow and kinda awkward to use. I like Quicksilver much more, and filefunder is waay faster (but doesn't do sophisticated meta tagging etc.).

I agree that the finder sucks, but I think that is going to be a main improvement for leopard. It should be more contextual, as is Windows. I HATE get info, and Windows makes sense when it comes to the functionality of windows explorer. I mean just compare contextual menus, the mac doesn't seem as useful anymore eh?

Keychains make sense if you know how it works (open up keychain app in utils), but I think that Safari's autofil sucks. I think apple needs to brush up on simple tasks, and the subtleties associated with them. Osx 10.5 should stand out in the Finder, Safari (useful features), spotlight (now that they have the idea out), compression, customization (save your users a couple bucks from shareware) and maintenance (disk defrag, not file, and automatic cache filtering).

 

[Lotus11]

Wow. Lots o' responses.

As far as finder goes, I guess Im just very used to IE. Finder seems 'bulky' for some reason. I can't quite put a finger on it, but it seems that it's not as easy to navigate. For example. I love os X spring loaded folders, so why cant I have a spring loaded back button? It would just make my life easier. What about 'cutting'? Where is that? List View seems overwhelming, like here is a whole crap load of files just willy-nilly. Can I group them by 'kind' here, or am I just not using the proper settings? Just small things like that would make such a difference to a lifelong Windows guy. I feel like I'm not as productive with it. I know thats kind of a lame answer, but thats just the way I feel.

One complaint that I forgot to mention that I hope can be resolved. Why cant I watch some streams/video on the net?! I get error -2048 or some such. Apple prides itself as a multimedia/creative platform, but yet I can't watch some things at all. I understand that it's a windows world, but surely their are codecs out there that should resolve this right? If anyone would be kind enough to help me out on this one I would appreciate it.

As for Quicksilver - jut downloaded it, so I can't comment on it yet, but plan to explore it in more depth. Is Pathfinder good? I've read rave reviews.

Yes, I know about Fullscreen in PS. Thats what i use, I just didn't HAVE to with windows. I understand that I dont have to use it with a mac either. Its just a matter of a paradigm shift with the floating window thing...

Also, just downloaded UNO. Thanks for the link! Mucho better.

As for F13 - I mapped the 'applications' setting to it, thats all.

Guys, I don't want to come off like a Windose whiner, because Im not. I really love my mini and OS X(need more POWERRRR though for my Adobe monstrosities), can't wait to get a Mac Pro - or whatever they decide to call it. Thanks for all the input and suggestions, and I look forward to exploring the Apple/mac world more. -sp

 

[steamboat26]

i like the ease of setting things up for your own needs. I made it so when i click the center button on my mouse, it does the same thing as F9, so cool! While i am prettty sure there is some complex way to do this in windows that involves a hack, i just love how easy it is to change things.

 

[Fukui]

One complaint that I forgot to mention that I hope can be resolved. Why cant I watch some streams/video on the net?! I get error -2048 or some such.

Is that with Windows Media Player? Try Flip4Mac. Its a WMV plugin so you can watch vmv in quicktime. Also VLC and Mplayer may be able to help you open some files. One thing you will be out of luck for now is DRM windows media, MS is not licensing that outside of windows ...