So if you follow me on twitter like you should, you might have seen me get rather excited when I was told that my offer on the Mac had been accepted. I picked it up yesterday, and what better way to kick start this blog then with it. It’s a G5 iMac from late 2005 with 150GB Hard Drive, 2GB Ram and a 17inch screen. It’s by no means recent, but it’s still a very usable machine. I have yet to have any problems with it. It is quicker than my Windows Laptop, which is just 8 months old.
So here is my list of what I’ve found better and what I’ve struggled with.
The Good:
- Speed - as I mentioned it’s so quick considering it’s 3 years old.
- The Dock, The Top Bar, The Desktop - it just feels like this is the way computers should work. This is how apps should run. It just works.
- The Screen. It might only be 17inches, whereas before I had two monitors together on Windows, but I don’t need as much space. Textmate, when I’m coding, takes up less than 1/4 of the screen.
- Start Up time + shut down time is miles quicker, and when returning from Sleep it takes 5 seconds and it’s ready. (If that)
- The Mouse. Don’t ask me why, but I really like the Apple mice. I know some people do not, but I’m not one of them. It’s brilliant. [I’m saving up for a wireless keyboard & mighty mouse).
- There may be more apps on Windows but the quality of Mac apps are superb. Textmate, Coda and BBEdit are all superb editors, whereas NetNewsWire is an absolutely stunning RSS reader which I’m so so impressed with.
- Expose - Hitting F12 or the side button on my mouse takes me to expose, which is a stunning application. So easy to navigate between apps in one click.
The bits I’m not used to yet:
- The @ and ” are the wrong way round - although I have to admit the Mac way, having ” above the ’ makes more sense. I guess eventually this will become a habit for me.
- Similarly, the hash key is Alt+3. Why? This is very annoying, but again I presume I will get used to it over time #####
- Whereas on Windows it’s Control+{key} on Mac it’s Command+{key}. Which is fine, except they are in different places!
So you can see the things that I am not used to are all just little keyboard shortcuts.
I used to hate people who said “Windows sucks” point blank, no argument. I think I’ve become one of them!
Although, I had someone yesterday say to me Macs are crap, and refused to at least accept my opinion. Muppet!
