A lot has been said in the press about Vista vs OS X, with not all of it being flattering for poor old Vista.
I’ve run Vista RC1 for a little while and OS X for about 70 odd days, I’m not going to run a comparision, to be fair, I didn’t really get to use Vista very much due to its slow performance and lack of compatibility with my hardware, but I’ll tell you what I like about OS X.
Power Management
My experiences with Windows power management were always a bit on the dodgy side. I was a big fan of hibernation and thought I couldn’t live without it, but after a few days of the Mac approach, I think I’m over it.
Mac power management ‘just works’, sleep and return from sleep are snappy and reliable. Closing the lid IMMEDIATELY stops all sounds and the machine is almost instantly available upon opening the lid. With Windows I would often find myself with a computer that wouldn’t wake up to keyboard, and on more than one occasion I would hit the power button and find myself with a computer that would immediately wake up, and then go into hibernation!
Applications
There aren’t too many Mac apps to be honest, but there are viable equivalents for almost everything, what I do find is this:
- Mac apps are smaller in size to download
- Mac apps which integrate with the OS are faster and more reliable (Ever use a virtual desktop manager for Windows? Mac versions integrate much better)
- Mac apps start up and shutdown faster.
Cmd-Q in a Mac App is almost always causes an immediate shutdown, Windows apps I found would often churn and churn.
Wireless networking
After setting up my in-laws XP PC with a USB wireless network adapter and spending the better part of 4 hours configuring the network with various combinations of encryption etc I was about ready to kill something, the irony - no matter what the Windows PC was doing (not connecting, loosing its connection, not getting an IP address etc etc) my Mac laptop ‘just worked’. I have had the same experience with TWO other windows machines - Wireless networking is just a russian roulette.
Parallels
If you still need Windows, use this, it rocks.
I’ve used over the years Outlook, Groupwise, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora, Gmail, Hotmail etc etc. Mac OS Mail is now my favourite.
Why?
It seemlessly integrates my IMAP and POP mail accounds into a single consolidated view, it has fast searching and just enough features. It’s fast and it does what I want (and only what I want) perfectly!
Unix
Okay, I work alot with Unix at work and so I’m familiar with alot of unix utilities to do things, having it available under the hood is a real plus.
Unix tools also replace several external tools, I don’t need an external FTP tool, I have a decent command line ftp or even scp.
I don’t need a backup solution, I have rsync!
Instant action
No clicking ‘apply’, no restart after installation, no ‘Install wizards’ or worse ‘uninstall wizards’.
Have an app crash?
It happens quickly, no thrashing, no moaning, no report or dump. A quick death and an offer of a restart.
Have an app hang?
Just alt-tab to a new application, click apple and force quit.
Instant response, no un-killable applications, no long wait for task manager to start up.
Have the OS crash?
Well, I don’t know, its never happened so far!
Dashboard / Expose
I’ve quickly gotten use to Dashboard and Expose, it rocks
The little things
Separate volume controls for headphones and speakers, so I can have my speakers muted and my headphones loud - no sudden surprises when you pull the head phones out.
The battery has an external charge meter.
Two fingered scrolling with the track pad - a few minutes of using it and you’ll wonder why anybody could come up with a different way of working.
Instant response to ’soft buttons’ like the volume up and down keys and screen switching. My Windows computers used to take the physical volume up and down buttons as though the buttons were in China and the speakers on Mars, pressing mute or up or down would take seconds before a response would occur, not useful if music is blaring out.
The bad things…
Finder sucks.
No really, its total, total crap. I’ve never missed Windows Explorer’s file manager so much in my life!
Spotlight is a disappointment - its just not fast enough!
I.. Wow.
Your ‘review’ reads as totally biased to me…
I run primarily OS X these days, but a lot of the features you’ve described as ‘just working’ under OS X I’ve had not work.
I’ve had system stalls, un-killable applications (Including Finder) to the point I’ve had to bring up a terminal and manually nuke them, my soft buttons often respond fairly slowly and my machine habitually wakes from sleep only to immediately become unresponsive and then go back to sleep.
Running a Mac software update often requires a restart.
And some of your comparisons… ‘Mac software is just smaller and more reliable’ just sounds… Silly. Have you compared all equivalent apps under Vista nad OS X?
I’m sorry, I’m honestly not trolling and am happy to discuss this via email. I still like OS X, many of your points are valid. Sleep is generally quick, Expose is good, Dashboard is handy. But this is my second Mac Lappy and neither of them has been perfect.
I just want people to get a balanced view, which I’m not really equipped to give myself till apple release a set of Vista drivers for their hardware.
Anyway, take care. Enjoy whatever you enjoy, just try not to bag out the other in doing so. There’s enough wars over actual religion. =)
I’m a fan of OS X, but I must admit that Vista has impressed me as far as convenience and visuals are concerned. It’s a performance-hogger, though. I originally planned to make the shift next month, but my apprehensions regarding compatibility has been erased by the availability of Vista drivers on the Internet (I get mine from http://www.radarsync.com/vista). So far everything’s been great.