I enjoyed reading this. I am also in the market for a new PC and have been considering the Mac. My father recenty purchased one after being a programmer on windows based PCs for years. I am a computer engineering student and have found myself wanting a windows alternative; more streamline and smoother running if you will. Just curious as to your opions on the performance as compared to that of a windows based PC.
Great article.
Does the Mac have a right mouse button?
I know that the old macs did not.
If not, how do you work with Excel?
Jeremy: From a general use performance comparison, my Mac (iBook G4 1.33GHz) is pretty darn speedy. General web browsing is very fast, as well as other general use. The only time comparison I can really make between my Mac and my Windows notebook is by running the same actions in Photoshop on the same photo. The Windows notebook is faster. I have a set of actions that take about 4 minutes to run on a RAW photo. The Windows notebook took 3:56 to run them. The Mac took 4:13. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that the new Intel Mac’s would be just as fast as the Windows notebook.
gbradley: Excellent point. The Mac notebooks do not have a right mouse button. If you are using just the notebooks trackpad, you need to hold down the ctrl key when you press the mouse button to emulate a right-mouse click. There are utilities out there that will activate the right-mouse click if you hold down the mouse button for about a second. I hated not having the right-mouse button at first, but have gotten used to it, and do not miss it too much now.
I just got a Mac to after years on the MS OS’s…I love it..it works like a you think a computer should work!! So Josh, I use your Convert program all the time…it’d be perfect for the Mac cause “it just works”!! Any chance you’ll develop Convert to work on my lovely Mac??
Hmmm…let’s think about this…
- Xcode, the programming tools for OS X, comes free with the OS.
- Objective-C is an extension to C, which is what I programmed Convert for Windows in.
- I get a few e-mails a week asking for an OS X version of Convert.
- It would be cool to do.
I’m not going to say “Yes,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
I also just added a Mac to our household network for my wife and daughter to use and so far its great. With the new Apple Mighty Mouse you can set it up with left and right buttons. I also agree with you about Finder. Its awful and makes me miss Window Explorer. I find the Mac (iMac w/ Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.33 Ghz) to be faster than my Dell and I’m even considering getting a Mac Pro for my own use. I don’t hate Windows but other than problems sharing the printer, OS X is a lot easier to work with.
To quote Dilbert.
Dilbert : “you’re one of those condescending Mac users”
Geek/hayseed : “Here’s a nickle kid, get yourself a better computer”.
As for possible solutions to the Finder issues, I’ve found Xfolders quite nice.
I’ve seen Xfolders, and it’s definitely good for true file management, but it’s a bit limited and clunky for general everyday use. I do like how Finder shows you previews of the file you are on.
On the other hand, Path Finder is another good replacement, but it’s got too many bells and whistles. And the $35 price tag doesn’t help either, especially when you are essentially paying for something that should come with OS X in the first place.
Josh, I enjoyed reading your article - I was a Windows user from about version 3 through to 2003… ehm that would be early versions of XP right?... I do agree with most points you brought up but as someone who used 12” and 15” powerbooks and then bought an Intel iMac that I’ve been using now for 7 months I believe the move to intel processors to be a flawed one - I have had many more freezes, and crashes and am sure that many things that work well on the PPC powerbook do not work as well on the intel machine.
As far as Finder goes I use Path Finder as someone mentioned above, although I really miss the dual-paned Windows Commander that I used to use on the PC (now Total Commander)
