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!