3 posts tagged “osx”

I have used Macs consistently for about 5 years, and exclusively for about 3. I say exclusive with some reservations - any time I've spent on a Windows machine in the last few years has been spent either at work (where I have no choice) or in order to play games (which are sadly underrepresented in the Mac universe). I do everything else on my iMac or my iBook before it.

Here are the reasons:

1) The macintosh operating system was created by artists. Windows was created by engineers. This results in a simpler, more intuitive workspace.

2) There was a time in my life when tinkering with the internal organs of a computer made me happy. Then, I started to care more about actually getting things done. It's a cleche, but Apples just work. For example, in order to uninstall a program from my Mac, I drag its icon from the Applications folder and drop it into the trash. I don't have the time or the inclination to watch my computer chunk and chunder through dialogue boxes and progress bars just to uninstall the shareware program whose demo time has expired.

3) It runs Windows really well. I can still play my games.

4) It has a little camera and a little microphone built-in.

5) There are some damn fine programs available for the Mac, giving functionality and integration to your system that I just haven't found in Windows. Here are my top six:

- Quicksilver. To quote the developer's description, this program is "a unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data." This does not even begin to describe the miraculous functionality you can get from it. It basically allows me to control every aspect of my computer just by typing keystrokes. To send an email to somebody, I press the hotkey, type the person's last name (or part of it, as it has a very intelligent auto-complete) and it gives me a little icon for that person's contact information in my Address Book, hit tab, type the letters "co" (for "compose), and hit enter. Up pops a blank email with that person's email as the primary receiver. By using similarly simple and obvious key combinations, I can add more recipients, write a subject, attach one or many files and even write the whole email just within Quicksilver and I never have to take my hands off the keyboard.

Also, I can search any website that has a search function without actually going to that website. And I can access my Firefox and Safari bookmarks even if those programs aren't currently open. It's really, really powerful.

I can say much, much more about Quicksilver, but you should just watch some videos.

- Textexpander. I blog a lot, and blogs usually have links in them. Instead of typing the acrobatic keystrokes necessary to make this frequently-used html code, I simply type "llink" into any text box anywhere on my Mac, and it takes the link I copied to the clipboard, lays out the code, and puts the cursor between the "a" tags, right where I need it. It can do this with any block of text you type. You assign any flag text you like, and anytime you type that text, it replaces it with the text you have previously written for that trigger.

Or, instead of trying to imagine what my hamfisted description describes, you can watch a video of it at work.

- Transmission + TVShows. This power combo still blows my mind. Transmission is just a simple, bare-bones, pretty-looking bittorrent client. I tell TVShows what shows I want to watch. As soon as those shows are available on various Bittorrent directories, it grabs the link and sticks it into Transmission, which immediately begins downloading them. If I'm not home to watch Heroes, for example, it'll be downloaded and ready to watch by the time I get home - usually within a half an hour of it airing. It's like Tivo without the Tivo.

- iLife. All new Macs come with this power suite of creative programs. It includes iPhoto, which organizes your pictures just like iTunes does, with powerful functionality and built-in editing capabilities. I use iMovie to edit the movies I make. Though I have no talent for it, I occasionally dabble in the little- but-powerful music/sound studio called Garage Band. And for making simple websites with lots of neat functionality, I use iWeb.

On a related note, the stuff built into OS X itself is pretty rad. No need to download a separate program - it has pdf capabilities all by itself, and anything you can print you can instead save as a pdf. Also, hold down a few keystrokes, and you can take a screenshot of all or a selected part of the screen. And changing the big, pretty icons (or small, pretty icons, if you prefer) is really easy, using copy/paste functions. And with some small, rare exceptions, you can drag an item from any application and stick it in any other application. If I want to add a photo to a website I'm working on, I grab it from iPhoto and drop it right onto the page.

Also, Macs now come with Front Row, which is a media center that I can control with the little remote control that came with my Mac. Lying in bed, or sitting within visual range of my computer, I can display every piece of media on it, from the photos to the music to the movies. Example: A couple of friends and I looked through the pictures I took at a recent outing as I controlled the display of all of those photographs on my beautiful 20" widescreen from the comfort of my bed.

- Teleport. I just discovered this one. It lets me put my iBook right next to my iMac and control it with my desktop computer's keyboard and mouse. All I do is drag the mouse pointer across a predetermined edge of screen (which I assign), and I'm instantly controlling the iBook. It's like having two displays, except one of the displays is a fully-functioning computer. Installing it is really easy, too - all you do is install it on both of the computers you want to control, click a couple of boxes in the preference pane, and it just works.

- Adium. It's simply the best chat client ever, and it's only available for the Mac. It seamlessly combines all of the major chat protocols into one unified interface - I use it for MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk and AIM. It's also completely customizable. Oh, and it's totally free, too.

It's also worth noting the programs I don't have to run, like memory-hogging antivirus suites and the aforementioned Acrobat Reader.

Every program listed above is free, except TextExpander (which I will happily purchase when the demo ends).

I don't know if this surprisingly long lecture is going to convince you to ditch your Windows machine for a Mac, but I hope it will. Macs are slightly more expensive (and the gap is shrinking), but they're worth it.

I am going to say it again, though I've said it many times before: if Microsoft made a device or piece of software that was superior to the comparable products I already use, I would gladly Switch back.

I'm not blindly loyal to Apple. I will not defend everything they do, and I will not ignore the defects of their products, nor will I deny the even remote possibility that another company could do what Apple does and do it better. It's possible.

Using a Macintosh is unlike any other computer experience. Windows is a bland, kit-bashed conglomeration of popup dialogue bubbles and eldritch system settings.

For instance, I was using Becky's laptop last night, trying to show some folks a brilliant YouTube, but was constantly interrupted by the wireless networking protocol that kept telling me, in languid detail, that a new WAN network was available, over and over again, like the annoying urchin who pulls at one's coattails, while the goddamn thing was connected to Becky's LAN. It was already on the internet via a physical cable - the WAN settings were utterly unimportant to what I was doing, yet the computer didn't know it, didn't care or simply had it out for me.

Windows is a TV with bunny ears and bad reception. Every time you want to watch a different station, you have to adjust the antenna in just the right way, except you don't know which position you need until you've found it. Using an Apple computer is like watching cable.

See, everything just works. Manipulating the underpinnings of the operating system is not a part of daily use. My Mac quietly chugs away in the background, taking care of all the little things that I have to do by hand on my Windows machine.

For instance, I took a photograph of my freshly-painted door. I want to use that picture as my desktop background.

I plug my camera into my Mac. It boots up iPhoto, asks me if I want to import all of the photos, and then just does it. I go to my System Settings, chose Desktop, and it has a list of my iPhoto images (with thumbnails!) right there in the goddamn dialogue. I don't have to browse through folders in order to find it. It's right there. See, my Mac anticipates what I want to do, and tries its best to accomplish those tasks with minimal effort by me.

This experience also applies to using my iPod. I plug it in, and it does everything else. I unplug it, take it with me, and I listen to it. Sure, I have to define certain parameters, but that's because I have a 3-year old iPod, and all of my stuff won't fit on it.

I also have an older iMic. I didn't have to install any drivers. I just plugged the thing in, my Mac automatically recognized it, and I could use it.

This is why Apple products are superior to Windows products - not because of some divine favor of the gods, or Steve Jobs casting magical spells in his basement, but because everything in the Apple suite of products is manufactured and programmed to work seamlessly together.

Windows is a victim of its own ubiquity.

Because Windows has such massive market domination, it has to work with everything. It is bloated by a library of drivers that most users, individually, won't use. It is a workman OS, forced by its success to be everything to everybody, from gamers to accountants. Because Microsoft is a software company, it has to make sure its OS can run on pretty much any hardware setup it is likely to come into contact with.

Windows is incredibly flexible. It doesn't always work, and it has vast, insurmountable usability issues, but it'll run on anything and will (if not natively) support any hardware you plug into it. Hell, It even runs on Apple hardware.

Apple, on the other hand, is a systems company.

They have total control over the hardware and software that they produce. Each of these departments talk to each other and know what the other is doing. Part of the reason why Mac programs work so well together is because the developers know exactly what kind of hardware setup will be running their software.

For instance, there are devices that do exactly what the iPod does (plus things that the iPod doesn't do), and usually for less money. But if you're using a Macintosh, the iPod is the absolute best MP3 player - it's part of the Apple System. It's made to operate seamlessly with the OS.

This is also the source of my major complaint against Apple: it doesn't play well with my peripherals.

Windows has to. Also, device manufacturers market specifically for the PC crowd, since that's where their sales will be.

I have used many printers from many manufacturers, and none of them were natively supported by my iBook. I have always had to do the Driver Shuffle, searching through Epson's or HP's support websites. In some extreme cases, I've had to use Gutenprint in order to get the damn thing to work.

My scanner doesn't even support Apple computers, an oversight I won't make again.

See, I know the strengths and weaknesses of the products I use. None of them are perfect. Each one does what it was meant to do. I prefer Apple, because I'm past the point in my life where cajoling the OS into doing my bidding was fun.

I love my iBook, and I love OS X. Let me be clear, before you read the stuff below.

I'm only running Panther at the moment, and waiting for Leopard to come out before I upgrade. This is my little review of the features they're adding to Leopard, most of which I won't ever use.

Time Machine: Ok, it looks cool, but I'm not sure how useful it would be to me, personally. WIth bigger and bigger hard drives, I don't delete much, and I don't ever delete something I want to keep. But then again, losing a few big projects to hard drive crashes or errors back in the old Wordperfect 5.1 days taught me the lesson of Frequent Back-Ups. Also, it seems to have the potential to be a privacy nightmare - there are some things you want to be deleted forever.

New Dashboard Thingies: So you can make your own widgets (which is sweet) and you can grab websites and stick them in it as widgets (which is not so sweet). I mean, sure, it's cool that you can do it, but I have this thing called a web browser that lets me look at websites. I can tell if one of my favorite websites is updated when, you know, I visit it. And, to be fair, Windows had this functionality ages ago, and it was lame when they did it, too.

New Apple Mail Stuff: I don't use POP3 email anymore, with Gmail's brilliant execution of the email experience, so I don't use Mail anyway. You can now have stationary and letterheads in your emails, which is always lame - I'm all for no-frills, text-only emails. It also has a Notes functionality, which Google's Notebook already does.

iChat: I have an IM account with four services, all of which I use frequently, and so I haven't used iChat much at all - instead, I like Adium, which is highly customizable and seemlessly integrates all of my accounts into one program. iChat has virtual backgrounds for video chats (which looks like about ten minutes worth of fun, and hardly a very useful addition to the program) and collaboration capabilities, but you need to be chatting with someone else who's also using iChat. With Apple's market share as it is (though getting bigger, thankfully), it won't be that useful for me.

Spaces: This is a fantastic addition to the OS, and one I'm very happy to see migrate over from Windows XP - you have four separate desktops, each with its own content that you can define - say, one desktop with only IM windows, and one with only browser windows. It saves the hassle of mucking about with deep-nested windows and hitting Apple-H all the time. A+.

There are some other small changes, like better, more streamlined Spotlight options (which is sweet) and some accessibility things that I'm sure some folks will find pretty useful.