mockriot

My Mac

I’m hesitant to call myself a “Mac convert” — I used Macs when I was film school at Ithaca College and was the “support guy” in the Mac lab at the Unversity of Rhode Island, plus I have not developed any sort of fanboyism or brand loyalty to Apple.  I did, however, recently purchase my first Mac.  I early September I bought a Macbook (a plain vanilla white one with an extra gig of RAM, a couple of weeks before the refresh).  Now that its been a couple of months I thought I’d put a few impressions down on paper.

I am willing to admit that I really like the Macbook — I am not willing to say I am a Mac users for life.  I fully intend to check out Windows 7 for my next laptop, and from reading early reports I’m pretty excited about it.

Things I love about my Mac

1. It wakes up from sleep mode almost instantly.  Vista and XP — not so much.  Coming from the PC world I am used to having to wait 30-60 seconds for my PC to rebuild the desktop from saved data and then about 15 seconds to connect to wifi.  With my Mac, as soon as I open it, it wakes up from sleep mode in an instant, and connects to the nearest wifi network in just a few seconds more.
2. Spaces. I only just found out about this feature, which I guess comes from Linux.  I haven’t had a chance to use it too much, but what I have done has been very useful.
3. Hot corners.  As nice as alt+tab (er cmd+tab) is for switching windows, I am finding that the show and hide windows hot corners are great.  Use them all the time and miss them when on Windows.
4. Battery life and wifi.  This isn’t Mac specific, but compared to the Sony laptop I was using, my new MacBook has a much better time getting (and staying) connected to weak conference wifi and has awesome battery life (about 3.5h on average — compared to 1.5h on the Sony).  That was a godsend at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York in September.
5. Cool software.  There is definitely some cool Mac only software (like Scrivener and Textmate) that Windows users miss out on.
6. MagSafe power connector.  That really is quite nice.
7. Two finger scroll.  Also really cool.  And I am guessing that the multi-touch on the new Mac laptops is also pretty awesome, but I haven’t had the chance to duck into the local Apple store to check it out (the mall is really crowded this time of year and no fun to be in).

Things that I don’t like so much about my Mac

1. No Start button. There’s no easy access to all your applications on the Mac.  The dock gets cluttered really quickly if you add too much to it, and accessing the Apps folder isn’t quick.  Yeah, I guess I could add an icon for the Apps folder to the Dock — but that’s messy.  The Start menu is very handy and easy to miss when you don’t have one.
2. Dock gets in the way. I find myself accidentally clicking on icons on the doc and opening programs I don’t mean to open all the time.  Maybe this is a learning curve thing — just training my brain not to click on that side of the screen until I am sure what I am clicking on — but that doesn’t happen when you launch programs from the Start menu.  I didn’t happen with the Quick Launch bar either, since windows never occupied the same space as the task bar, as they can with the Dock.  The same accidental activation thing happens with hot corners as well — thankfully, their use out weighs that annoyance.
3. Can only resize windows from the corner.  Really, that gets annoying, though it’s a very minor issue.
4. Not enough cool software.  Yeah, there are some great Mac-only programs I wish I had on windows, but also some great Windows only programs I wish I had on Mac.  I still haven’t found a feed reader to replace FeedDemon (NetNewsWire sucks, trust me).  Right now I am using Vienna, but it’s not as good.  I have Parallels installed, and it is okay for occasional use, but was too much of a pain in the ass to get working (i.e., getting links in FeedDemon on Windows to open in Firefox on Mac consistently, or getting images saved in a graphics editor on Windows to appear on the desktop on Mac).
5. On the topic of software, Word 2008 on Mac is nowhere near as nice as Word 2007 on Windows. And Excel is barely usable.  Good thing I have a couple of Windows machines and Office on all my computers.
6. Hovering the mouse over images doesn’t give information about them.  Another minor one, but something I do miss from Windows.
7. No true Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn keys on the MacBook = stupid.
8. Case scratches if you look at it funny.  Seriously, what are these things made of, butter?  I guess this has been fixed with the newer aluminum model, but my previous generation MacBook was covered in scratches almost as soon as I got it home.
9. Less of a minor deal: one button is not as good as two buttons.  Why can’t Apple learn that?  I miss my right button.  Two fingers + click is not the same thing.  Cmd + click is not the same as middle click.   They’re usable, and I am used to them, but it’s not the same, and not as good.
10. Lack of “Show Desktop” button.  The hot corners thing to hide windows is, as I said, awesome.  But it just slides the windows off to the side. Sometimes I want to minimize all windows, so then I can easily maximize a single window and interact with it and the desktop (like drag files between a folder and the desktop).  I haven’t found an easy way to minimize all windows on a Mac (and without grouping on the Dock as there is on the taskbar, I am not sure I would always want to!).  Instead, the best solution I have found is to use Spaces and open another desktop and just open the windows I need over there.

There are are probably other pros/cons that I am just not thinking of right now, but that’s a quick list.

Suffice it to say: I am happy with my new Mac, but certainly not a “convert” yet. :)