A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Finding my way around Finder (continued)
The folder structure under OS X is probably the one thing that has taken me the longest to get used to - mostly because I've been such a heavy DOS/Windows user that I still feel too foreign with anything other than C:\Windows or Program Files. It's a shame, and even after years of using *nix boxes at school, it's still something with which I'm not totally comfortable. Because of that, I continue to feel that the folder structure under OS X is quite disorganized, but there is also another reason why I don't feel as in touch with the location of all the files under OS X as I'd like to be - and it comes down to how applications are installed.
Installing (and conversely, uninstalling) applications under OS X is quite possibly the most disconnected feeling that the OS gave me, while at the same time, it was pleasantly easy. How could installing an application possibly be made any easier than it already is? Well, to install an application, you simply drag the application's installer to any folder on your hard drive and it's "installed". Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive, but the fact that you are separated from that process, it really made me feel like I wasn't in control of my system. On the flip side, installing and uninstalling applications couldn't be easier. There are no full screen installers to deal with; just drag and drop, and get back to work while the application installs. The fact that I don't know where everything is being copied contributes to my feelings of file system disconnect. Then again, maybe I'm being a bit too philosophical about my OSes. Update: A number of people have written to provide some clarity to this statement. It is not the actual installation that copies files everywhere, in fact the installation is quite contained with all files remaining in a single folder. It's the process of running an application that will copy preferences over to your Preferences folder. The paragraph above as it stands does apply to Microsoft Office 2004 but not the vast majority of OS X applications, this isn't the only way in which Office 2004 differs from the rest of the applications for OS X. I apologize for the confusion.
The information about files and folders is also a bit more customizable under OS X. Highlight the file or folder on which you want details and hit Command-I, or you can just right click and go to "Get Info". From here, you can change everything from file permissions to what program opens the file or files of that type. You can add comments to any file or folder as well. As is the case with most other OS X dialog boxes, everything occurs in real time. Just hit Command-W or click the red button to close the window.
One thing that may take some getting used to is the positioning of the close button on all windows in OS X - it's at the top left corner instead of the top right. The minimize button is next to it, followed by something other than the maximize button. In fact, there's no way to maximize a window quickly in OS X (I'll get to why in a bit); instead, the green button to the right of the minimize button is sort of a fit-to-content button. Clicking the green button will resize the window both horizontally and vertically to fit the contents of the window the best, which is especially useful when browsing web pages or really viewing any content where you're trying to maximize screen real estate. The fundamental difference between OS X and Windows is how applications and windows are handled. What OS X has going for it is uniformity between applications and windows; for example, the keyboard shortcut for the preferences dialog in any OS X application is Command and the "," key. So, regardless of what application you're in, the same keystroke combination will have the same expected effect - pretty useful.
The uniformity really extends far beyond keyboard shortcuts as I was alluding to before - a menubar always exists at the top of your screen in OS X, regardless of what application you're in. Thus, you always have a File, Edit, View, Window and Help menu regardless of what you're doing. It looks like Apple's reasoning behind this is to avoid confusing users, but to a Windows native, it can be very foreign.
The biggest complaint that I both had and levied against was that it always seemed like you had more applications opened than what you wanted. In Windows, once all of the windows of an application were closed, the application itself was usually exited. Under OS X, until you actually quit the application, regardless of how many or how few windows of it that are still open, the application remains running. Thanks to an extremely aggressive caching engine and an extremely robust/stable OS core, I ended up actually preferring it when I had the majority of my frequently used applications open. This approach ends up using quite a bit of memory, but I found that there's no slowdown if you have the memory to handle the open applications. If not, you can always close the applications that you don't want running - Command-Q is the keyboard shortcut; it's the same in any OS X application (Command-W just closes the foreground window).
The benefit of leaving applications running even when you're not using them is that when you do need to use them or open a file with one of them, the response time is instantaneous - as opposed to waiting for an application to load. Of course, you can do the same thing in Windows, but for some reason stability and performance seemed to remain unchanged under OS X, whereas I almost always ran into an issue with Windows - whether it was having too many windows open or too many programs running.
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victorpanlilio - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
Correction: In my post (#104) I listed "Bruce Forno" -- it should read "Richard Forno" in case people wish to verify in Googlevictorpanlilio - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
WaltC wrote: "as far as "going and learning" about the Mac is concerned, I know all I care to know" -- which can be another way of saying, "I prefer to wallow in my current abysmal state of ignorance". OK Walt, I'll tweak your nose a bit -- the people listed below prefer MacOS X over WinXP:Tim Berners-Lee -- invented the web
James Gosling -- invented Java (used to build his own PCs)
Tim Bray -- co-invented XML
Bruce Forno -- past CISO*, Network Solutions
Bruce Schneier -- CTO**, Counterpane
Richard Clarke -- past CISO, US Govt
Bill Joy -- co-founder and past CTO, Sun Microsystems
Tim O'Reilly -- CEO, O'Reilly and Associates
You can easily confirm the above through Google.
*CISO = Chief Information Security Officer
**CTO = Chief Technology Officer
Bill Gates' own home PCs were recently hit with malware:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5393208.html
Hmmm...
If the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft can't even maintain the security on his own personal machines, what can we expect of people who are running IE on pre-SP2 WinXP?
At home, I have a Dell PowerEdge server I use for testing Win2K3 Enterprise, but I run OS X 10.3.5 on an 800MHz iBook G4 and a 4-yr old G4/400; the small company I currently work for runs Win2K3 and OpenBSD, and we're testing MacOS X Server 10.3.
Try to be more open-minded and curious about things you don't know much about. Young children evince this quality in spades, until arrogant adults ruin it for them. Whatever shortcomings or gaps Anand's article may have, so long as he wishes to continue educating himself, he is to be commended. If the subsequent discussions in this forum could proceed in a spirit of learning rather than descend into declarations of omniscience, we might all benefit from the interchange. Tim Berners-Lee envisions the web as a place where learning can take place for everyone. It'd be great, I think, if we took him up on it.
ocelotwreak - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
Dear Anand Lal Shimpi,Just wanted to send some kudos to you for a very well written and objective review of the state-of-the-Mac. I am a long time Mac user (as well as Windows, Linux, Solaris, Irix, MVS, and others for over 35 years), and have to admit I love the Mac. I use a 17" PowerBook for everything from writing huge Office documents to editing video using Final Cut Pro.
You did an excellent job of pointing out the good with the warts. I concur with your dislikes, although I use MS Office on the Mac almost exclusively because I can get more done faster on the Mac than I can using Office on XP. I write 1000 page reports for a living, and I would shoot myself trying to get it done using Office on XP, which in comparison I find to be a totally psychotic experience!
I concur that Mail is the weakest OS-X application, and also suffer the most crashes there, usually importing big Word attachments to emails. You missed the "fast user switching" option on Exposé, which is a real jaw-dropper the first time you show it to Windows (and Mac) folk. Also, try click-drag an image off your web page, Function F9 to tile all the windows, hover the dragged image over the window you want to go to, watch it automatically zoom to foreground, and then drop it into the now active app where you want it to end up, is another stunning productivity accelerator. (That requires more complexity to describe it than to just intuitively do it!)
Keep up the good work! Regards,
-Walter Cooke
brichpmr - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
I admin XP all day long, #99, and I can tell you that context menu functions on OSX are easily the equal of XP. Aside from that, I generally replace whatever mouse comes with the PC too..By the way, a very nice shareware app on OSX, Fruit Menu, offers a large number of additional configurable context options for the right mouse button...check this kind of stuff out...it's very cool.
WaltC - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
#100....Heh...;) Thank you for commenting on my ignorance, but it appears to me you completely missed the point I was making about the one button mouse.First, the point was the same one Anand made, that what ships from Apple is not "the Microsoft 5-button Intellimouse optical" mouse, but a one-button mouse, instead.
Second, thanks for educating me in that just like in WinXP, the "right mouse button" under OS X brings up a context menu of choices. So, apparently what you are saying is that OS X is exactly the same as WinXP in that regard, which I certainly did not know...;) Thank you for this information. My point was only that Anand did not specify in his article what it was that pressing the right mouse button under OS X did. Thank you for filling in that info...;) Was I also wrong in thinking that OS X provides a keypress & mouse button combo to bring up the OS X context menu you have assured me exists?
Heh....;) Seriously, as far as "going and learning" about the Mac is concerned, I know all I care to know. But thanks anyway for the suggestion!
brichpmr - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
#99, your post confirms that you need to go get educated about Macs...the sheer ignorance is staggering. Just one example....the Microsoft 5-button Intellimouse optical I use on Mac and PC platforms has the same functionality on both. Go learn, then come back...WaltC - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
(Clipped from my comments in another forum)If you ask me, the article boils down to Anand desperately trying to rationalize his $3k 2GHz G5 purchase so that he can avoid hitting himself over the head with a baseball bat while cursing his own stupidity and asking himself "What was I thinking?"...;)
Salient points to me were these:
*While he mentions replacing the one-button mouse that Apple has locked itself into on the grounds that Steve Jobs is convinced Mac users are too challenged mentally to cope with the prospect of plural mouse buttons, he never actually makes any mention of what benefit, if any, he got from using a mouse with more than one button under OS X--not surprising, since OS X is written to support the standard shipping Mac hardware configuration. But as Anand most clearly specified a preference for keyboard controls anyway, it's a bit of a wonder to me why he bothered to replace the mouse at all. I think I read something awhile back about being able to use a key press plus the mono mouse button to duplicate the function of the second mouse button under OS X, but Anand doesn't bother to tell us what that function might be under OS X, unfortunately, if he knows, of course.
*Talks about "replacing things" like the shipping ram and the 3d-card in his $3k G5 Mac, but doesn't bother to add the increased costs into the $3k price he repeats constantly throughout, nor does he tell us how much his two Cinema monitors added to the price (unless I missed that.)
Adding in these costs would--what?--double the $3k price he mentions? What really mystifies me about the way the article is written is what might've prompted Anand to think that a 64mb, 4-pixel-per-clock 3d-card and 256mbs of ram per cpu would have been sufficient in the first place. I mean, if he had stated that he was unable to purchase the Mac from Apple direct with any greater hardware specs than what he got, then fine. But he doesn't say anything like that as I recall. Obviously he would not be content with those specs in his x86 box, so why would he be surprised they weren't enough for his G5 box?
That is one of my pet peeves with this "impression" article as Anand has written it--he constantly states "$3k" throughout when the true cost of the system he's running is far, far higher. Like I say, though, it's probably just a part of his subconscious rationalization as to not wanting to face what his Mac G5 system *really* cost him...;)
*He talks consistently about the "8GB" limit to memory in the G5 box, but *unless I am mistaken* that's a bit misleading as the limit is actually 4GBs--for each cpu--so with 8 gigs installed the actual limit is still 4GBs.
*Would have been nice to see him examine his other shipping hardware config, apart from this barebones description:
Dual 2GHz 0.13-micron G5 CPUs
512MB CAS3 DDR400 SDRAM
160GB SATA HDD
ATI Radeon 9600 (64MB)
...as to things like HD brand & performance, the brand of SATA controller on the motherboard, etc. He doesn't seem to want to get anymore specific about component identification and subsystem performance than Apple itself wants to get, and I have to say that bothers me.
*The last point he makes is pretty much a clincher for me, though, in that he's honest about the G5 box simply not being able to take the place of his x86 box on several levels. So now, in addition to adding more ram per cpu and a decent middle of the road 3d card, along with his preference for twin Cinema displays, we also have to add the cost of a decent x86 box into the mix--and so we're actually talking maybe 2.5x the original $3k price Anand keeps repeating through the article (even though his system is now around $2400, the $3k range being reserved for Apple's so far no-show 2.5GHz G5 boxes--at least "no-show" from what I've read recently.)
*A very minor point, certainly, but Anand should know that M$ is constantly criticized for building in too much functionality into its OS's, on the grounds that M$ is doing so to run other software companies out of business (a criticism I do not personally agree with.) Yet, when Apple does things like build in a whole lot of functionality into its OS, including its own browser, why it's just a "cool, wonderful thing"...;) In fairness to Apple, though, Apple has to do it since the platform cannot support enough independent developers to do it, unlike is the case for M$. Still, the double standard there is always amusing to read...;)
*Last minor nitpick. I can tell Anand has been deeply engrossed within the online Mac community's propaganda mill, simply because he keeps talking about "DOS" and difficulties with x86 peripherals and drivers circa 1995 and earlier. I've had some experience myself with the Mac online community and know that many of them are locked into a perpetual loop which pretends that all that is x86-Windows is no different now than it was in 1995. These people frequently get stuck in delusionary time warps in which the only thing that has changed in the last decade is Apple, and its a bit sad to see that some of that prejudice is rubbing off on Anand--who, frankly, should know better than to allow it to influence him in the slightest--primarily because such assumptions about x86 hardware and software simply are not true.
In summary, I agree with Anand's opening statements as to how "hard" it was for him to write this article, as for someone in his position as a medium-profile, computer-hardware Internet pundit, it must be really embarrassing to admit he got snookered by Apple's marketing claims to the extent that he actually shelled out $3k+ of his personal pocket money just to discover what he should already have known, that buying a Mac wasn't at all going to allow him to retire his x86-Windows box, for a number of compelling reasons. An expensive lesson to learn, certainly. I hope he'll do another article later called "After 6 months with a Mac," as I wouldn't be surprised to learn he'd sold it or donated it to charity by then...;)
gankaku - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
#96 "I think that applies to servers too you know. If dmr9748 can spend peanuts to run a Linux server on 400MHz processors with 512MB memory to do what he needs done why does he even need to consider a Xeon or G5 Xserve?"Of course that's true. But the argument cuts both ways. Some time ago, I ran a web and mail server off a used iMac (400 MHz, with 320 MB RAM) that easily saturated a partial T1. The iMac cost about $600 Canadian. I took the server down awhile ago, but the iMac still chugs along happily, folding proteins for the betterment of humanity. :-)
saszmidt - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
Good article! Thanks!One point though. You have interesting ideas of what constitutes reliable uptime. Several months is not a good value, though better than weeks. The only reason any unice box should go down is due to hardware failure. I don't care how many years later, it should still run.
Anything else is a poorly built machine.
Getting better uptime with XP than Linux just shows you either had poor hardware or did not know how to build a proper Linux server.
Linux servers I build never crash. True, you can have some app that eats up all memory and eventually it will die. But that's not O/S related, that's just poorly written s/w. Linux deals with crashing apps much better than windows does any time of the day.
Only getting a Linux box to run for months is indicative of not knowing your stuff. I.e. you did not put the same amount of effort into learning about it as you did with a windows box.
You have s/w under Linux which will check for memory leaks, so that's not a valid excuse.
http://www.thefreecountry.com/sourcecode/debugging...
Too many goofy windows admins try to build Linux boxes and then say goofy things like "pretty reliable - it ran for several months". Only because thats a WINDOWS standard.
kitsura - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
I think you're missing the point its not a direct price to performance comparison."I would rather blows 1 dollar on ebay to get a Tandy 1000 with word perfect 1.5 before I spend 2400 dollars on a machine that does exactly the same thing with the processing power to do more but is limitted by its impact on the computer market."
I think that applies to servers too you know. If dmr9748 can spend peanuts to run a Linux server on 400MHz processors with 512MB memory to do what he needs done why does he even need to consider a Xeon or G5 Xserve?