system shock

[jazzfish]

I've been considering a number of lifestyleish changes for awhile now. I blame the hat. I've never thought of myself as a guy who wears a hat, and yet now I have one. (A black paper/straw trilby. I'm told it looks pretty decent.) The concept of wearing a hat is starting to grow on me.

Anyway, once I got a hat, other things started popping into my head. Some of them I'd been considering for awhile, some of them are brand-new. One was kind of shocking, honestly:

I'm thinking of going Mac.

Hear me out. There are a lot of things about Windows systems that I like but they mostly boil down to "I know how to get things done on Windows." My fingers know the keyboard shortcuts intuitively. When something goes wrong, I can find what I need to do to fix it; when something needs tweaking, I have a pretty good idea of where to look to tweak. Like with QWERTY, I accept that there's some inherent inefficiency in the system, but I'm not willing to switch because learning to overcome that inefficiency will take more time than the inefficiency itself.

But my next computer (coming in probably another year) is likely to be running Windows 7, with its ridiculous ribbon bars and general revamping of the user interface. Now, I've not actually used Win7, or Vista, for any length of time: just long enough to grumble at not being able to do things with the speed and finesse I'm used to. So I don't really know how much additional learning time there'll be, but there will definitely be some.

I don't game much anymore. Every so often I get inspired to pick up something oldish (Moonbase Commander is currently taunting me again), but mostly I satisfy my gaming urges elsewhere. For me the computer's for netsurfing and writing, in that order.

I know for a fact there are things that will minorly irritate me ("War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Backspace is delete.") and things that will irk me no end (learning the difference between option and apple, trying to right-click on things for a context menu). I understand that the interface, once you fully grok it, is an aesthetic triumph of form/function melding.

So tell me, o converts, and you who never knew another system: is this way for me? Or will it end in me throwing a thousand-dollar laptop through a window and rooting through sketchy websites for a copy of Windows XP?

(Things I am specifically not looking for: lengthy paeans to the awesomeness of the Way of Mac; diatribes about the horribilitude of Apple or Windows; exhortations to try Linux or any other OS.)

Comments

[chaobell]

I'm reasonably sure they actually do make a two-button McMouse, so there's that? :}

[jazzfish]

My sole experience with OSX was a dozen or so frustrating afternoons in the Virginia Tech theatre department's business office five years ago, trying to format press releases and such, using standard-issue hardware, so I am genuinely ignorant as to whether they do or not, or whether the second button actually does context-menu-y stuff.

However, it occurs to me that I do have a dealbreaker: they can have the best pointing device ever made when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

[vond.net]

Every USB mouse I've ever tried on a Mac has worked nicely. Also, PS/2 mice work on Macs through those PS2->USB adapters. You may only get basic functionality on the device by default if a Mac driver for the device doesn't exist, but there's a third-party app (http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/) that restores functionality to many multi-button/wheel devices on OS X.

[jazzfish]

It looks like there's even Intellipoint software for the Trackball Explorer for Mac as well, so there's that.

I'm pleased to see that Apple has embraced one genuine innovation (originally wrote "the one" but I'm not willing to stand behind that) from the Windows side and added context clicking.

[mikailborg]

My favorite Mac mouse ever was a Microsoft five-button mouse that was great for Voyager: Elite force and similar game. But it tumbled off the desk one two many times, and Microsoft doesn't make it anymore :(

[jazzfish]

That seems to be a running theme with Microsoft hardware. Grr.

[chaobell]

Oh shit son. I have one of those at work. I normally am not crazy about trackballs and prefer to use tablets for EVERYTHING, but I like that trackball.

Intarweb Boyfriend also had one. It died. He found one on eBay for like $300. This was several months ago. About every two or three weeks there's another burst of FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU from him about it.

[jazzfish]

I bought one when they still came in real boxes and fell deeply in the kind of love that's generally only lavished on inanimate objects when they buzz.

I bought a /second/ one for work a few years ago, when you could still get them for $150.

I have never felt as smug about any purchase as I do about those two, given the ridiculous prices they command these days.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Imo, Windows 7 is the best OS that MS has come out with to date--some really nice GUI improvements, and, I'm sure, some good backend changes as well.

I also like Mac OS X.* quite a bit--best OS that Apple has released, far superior to OS 9 or older.

In our house, we have an OS X desktop and Win7 laptop (Riss's), a Win7 desktop and XP laptop (mine), and an XP desktop (Tim's), all of which get regular use. :)

[jazzfish]

Hm, okay. I may have to give Win7 a shot. I really dislike the changes to the new version of Office, to the point that I want to throw things at it.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Well just because you get a PC doesn't mean you have to run office. My dad is a mac person, and to atone for buying a PC for the house, he installed open office on it and seems happy enough.

[jazzfish]

Ah, I was rather unclear. Work recently upgraded us all to whatever the latest version of MS Office is and I've had to fumble my way through that for a year or so. And the new Office is the only exposure I've had to MS's new design aesthetic. I've been using OpenOffice when I can (ie, at home) for ages now. It occasionally frustrates me but it crashes a lot less than I expect Word to.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm still using Office 2003, work-issue. :)

[mikailborg.livejournal.com]

The first thing I would point out is that when you buy a modern Mac, you don't have to abandon Windows. In fact, Mac hardware tends to run Windows better than many of the less-pricy PC laptops and desktops out there. Set up Boot Camp, or buy VMWare Fusion or Parallels, and have it all.

Starr is a budding Mac convert, mainly because of ease-of-maintenance issues. She is fine with Windows when it's working, which it isn't always on her Toshiba laptop; her next laptop will be a MacBook Pro with VMWare on it.

I'm currently using Windows XP every day at work and coming home to a Mac. I'm a conscientious objector in the platform wars. But I have the feeling that you might enjoy your Mac quite a lot, based on the needs you have outlined.

[jazzfish]

I'm reluctant to run Windows on top of the Mac just because there's really not that much I need that's Win-specific, and for what there is I can dig up the trusty crusty old laptop. If I'm going Mac I plan on fully /going/ Mac.

Mostly I want the interface to be invisible. I've put a lot of years into making Windows invisible to me, and I wouldn't even consider undoing that except that Microsoft seems to be intent on making it visible to me again anyway.

[mikailborg.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot. You won't have to unlearn right-click, either. Modern Apple mice have a right-click ability you can activate in the Control Panel, or you can do what I did and buy your favorite third-party mouse - they almost always work perfectly without any driver installs, and many have Mac software just in case.

On a Mac laptop, if you put two fingers down on the trackpad simultaneously and click with your thumb, the system decides it's a right-click. It may sound awkward, but I'm so used to doing it without thinking that I get frustrated on Windows laptops that don't support it. (Of course, they generally have an actual right-click button, so that's really my problem.)

[jazzfish]

Excellent. I won't have to give up the best damn pointing device ever made, then.

(And, woo multitouch! :)

[vond.net]

I think, if you have the money to buy a Mac, that you should. I find Mac OS to be a great "stay out of my way and let me work" OS, and I suspect you would too. The hardware is generally regarded as top-notch, so even if you can't adjust to OS X you can just buy a Windows 7 license and you've still got a very nice new machine to run it on.

That said, Windows 7 is nice, too. A lot of your complaints seem to be about Office 2007/2010, not Windows 7. A windows-based upgrade path might be to go to Windows 7 but use StarOffice, or Google Docs, or stick with an older Office version.

[jazzfish]

Buying a Mac and using it to run Windows exclusively seems fundamentally /wrong/, and yet not a horrible idea. I may do that depending on what some other financial variables look like.

Yeah, Office Whichever at work is really the only exposure I've had to the modern Microsoft design aesthetic, and I'm seriously not a fan. (At home I've been using OpenOffice since a hard drive crash sometime around 2004ish.)

[rbandrews]

Not a lengthy diatribe, I promise!

I haven't actually used Office in years, so I dunno about any changes there, but I use OS X and Windows 7 simultaneously all day long. Windows 7 did fix a lot of the stuff that irritated me about Windows, by introducing a Mac-like dock, but it also added a bunch of other irritating things like windows hiding or becoming large unpredictably based on how you move them around. It's idiotic and Expose is much better.

The pointing device thing won't be an issue at all, assuming it's USB. If you get one of the "Pro" keyboards it'll have a delete key too (dunno about Mac Office, but it forward-deletes just fine in Emacs). And the key that is labeled "delete" is in the location, and of the shape, of a backspace key, and does a backspace. So it's pretty much the same key.

Let's see, what else... Flash sucks, Firefox sucks even harder. Chrome is a good browser on the Mac though. Option and Apple (which is now "command", which I dislike) are the same as alt and ctrl. Option is even labeled "alt" on my work laptop.

Stuff you'll probably like: Expose, iTunes not sucking (apparently it does on Windows?), the laptop goes to sleep and wakes up instantly, so you just close it instead of rebooting, there's a real command prompt and copy/paste works on it (seriously, even Windows 7 still has that broken cmd shit).

Stuff you'll probably hate: having a laptop that looks exactly like every other laptop on the planet, the fact that as soon as you get used to it they'll release another one and you'll subconsciously start to think yours is old and sucky even though a week prior you loved it.

Oh yeah, and if you are annoyed by alt+tab working differently, then prepare to be annoyed. But, you can fix it with this.

In general, the Mac ecosystem is fewer apps, and they cost more, but they're much much better made. Companies tend to put more effort into making really elegant programs for OSX, compared to just throwing out random crap for Windows. It's that, more than any differences in the OSes themselves, that makes me prefer the Mac at this point. Although I do like that it's Unix, since I'm more used to Unix, I trust that I can fix it.

[vond.net]

Companies tend to put more effort into making really elegant programs for OSX

Not that I've written a lot of code for either platform recently, but isn't part of this because Apple designs their API's in ways that strongly encourage good design? Also they have the gumption to actually deprecate API's, unlike Microsoft, which is hell-bent on maintaining compatibility back to Windows 95 (and even to windows 3.1 in some cases). This is the kind of thing that led to that DLL loading vulnerability that just cropped up.

[rbandrews]

I haven't coded enough for both platforms to really say, but I like the idea. I do notice that a lot of Windows stuff, especially pre-.Net, tends to reinvent the wheel, whereas almost nothing made in Cocoa does. That's where I was coming from, with "Mac apps tend to be made better": everything fits with everything else because people tend to use the built-in libraries more. Whether that's because Windows APIs are incomplete, too hard to use, or what, I can't say.

[jazzfish]

That's pretty much what I was looking for, thank you.

The sucking of Firefox is annoying. And yeah, iTunes seems like a painfully slow resource-hog of a beast under Windows, at least on my trailing-edge laptop, so having that improve is okay. (Flash I don't particularly care about, except for maybe Youtube.)

Really it's relearning keyboard shortcuts and general OS behavior that's putting me off. I can adjust to different software behaving differently; it's a different /environment/ behaving differently that may frustrate me no end.

[rbandrews]

You're most welcome!

Flash tends to jump to 100% CPU instantly, videos freeze for no reason, the fan starts going. It's irritating, and Adobe shows no interest in fixing it. We can haz HTML5 video tag plz?

I'd also like to say, the issue about relearning shortcuts is drastically overstated. The shortcuts you use the most won't change; ctrl+c becomes command-c, but the command key is in the same place the ctrl key was, so meh. When I got my iBook in 2003, I spent under a week before I was getting things done faster than I ever had on Windows or Linux, and I had never used an OS X Mac outside the Math Emporium. Mostly, stuff either worked exactly like I expected it to, or exactly like I thought it should have worked the whole time.

A few annoying tricks, though: removing things from the menubar is command-drag, and this is hard to find anywhere. There's a magic incantation that I forget right now that makes the Dock not look 3D even when it's on the bottom (although put it on the side; you'll want the vertical space more). Either don't install Macports or don't install anything but Macports, but the third alternative leads to pain. These things I have learned...

Oh yeah, and if you're struck with a desire to learn Ruby (hey, I promised not to diatribe about Windows sucking, I never said anything about Perl), every single Rails contributor uses a Mac. All of 'em. It's the world standard Ruby platform.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I have been a mac person since the second mac-in-the-box SE (um... when I was maybe in 3rd grade?) and a mac laptop user since those came out, and grauwulf who has gone the pc building route previously got a macbook the last time he needed a computer as somewhat of a research project on why I liked the things so much. Anyway, he is a very complete convert, and absolutely loves the gestures stuff-- also he's plugged in a standard issue usb keyboard, so aside from the occasional trying to figure out what the option key maps to when I'm trying to tell him how to do an accent mark, he hasn't had much in the way of difficulty with keyboard mapping either. I suspect you would find a few differences, but a lot of the keyboard shortcuts are actually pretty similar.

One caveat-- I am very much not a fan of the tech staff in the Tysons apple store (the sales people I've talked to are fine, but the only times I took things in for the mac geniuses to look at I've had frustrating to extremely bad experiences-- both of these were with an older laptop, though.)

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Also, Scrivener. (watch the intro under "video tutorials") I've heard writers say they bought a mac for that alone.

[jazzfish]

Hmm. That's certainly promising signs, then. Thank you!

And, I've heard enough good things about Scrivener that I suspect it was somewhere in the back of my mind as a motivating factor as well.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I am not a good source on this one. I've never seen the appeal of apple products, don't like the interface, all that. But I find it interesting to note that Steve and Bill seem to have experienced an ego swap over the past few years.

[vond.livejournal.com]

An ad-hominem attack against computing platforms? Seriously?

And actually, I can't really make sense of it. Are you talking about Jobs and Gates? They've both been known since the 80's for having legendary egos, and even then neither of them holds a candle to Larry Ellison.

[jazzfish]

I really can't tell whether I don't like the interface because it's not what I'm used to, or whether I just plain don't like how it does things. I used to despise All Things Apple but the design of the iPhone is making me reconsider.

[plumbob78.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

I have a windows desktop PC and an aluminum unibody MacBook, and I almost always opt to use the Mac, unless it's right before I leave for work or right before I go to bed (because the desktop always stays on). If I ever get another desktop it will probably be a Mac. Like you, I don't game much anymore. I use my computer for the internet, the little writing I do, music, and photos. The Mac does all of these just great. And it's also a beautiful machine. That's what got me set on the MacBook to begin with. Only laptop keyboard I tried that didn't feel flimsy.

[jazzfish]

Hm, useful to know. Thanks!

Laptop keyboards are the devil. The two things I miss about my nigh-obsolete desktop are the kickass trackball and the IBM Model M keyboard.

[jameshroberts.livejournal.com]

I got one for the built-in Linux functionality. No more running Cygwin in order to force Windows into letting me do basic things like ssh, X forwarding, or shell scripting. Also I've gotten used to Linux commands and trying to do anything in DOS syntax just makes me want to hurt myself.

But that's not a feature you're interested in, so it's hardly a selling point for you. The battery life is nice. Touch-pad took some getting used to, but I like it now.

[jazzfish]

I grew up on DOS, so at this point the syntax is burned into my fingertips. (My knowledge of *nix basically stops at ls -al and rm -rf .)

And no matter what I'm looking forward to a battery life measured in hours rather than minutes.

[notmatt]

I think you'd probably be happy either way. Of course, I've never used Windows 7, so I can't really comment there. But then, I don't hate Vista as much as I'm apparently supposed to, either.

[antikate.livejournal.com]

If writing is one of your main activities, here is the #1, A+, super-duper reason to go Mac:

Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.html)

Best writing program EVER.

[jazzfish]

I've heard that! I suspect that Scrivener was in the back of my mind as a reason to make the switch in any case.

[playing-tragic.livejournal.com]

StoryMill is also an excellent writing program but I think Mariner puts out both Mac and Windows versions.

[candle.livejournal.com]

As the unbeliever:

1. I hatehatehate the trackpad == mouse button of the current MBPros.
2. I've had really lousy luck with Apple batteries - 4 MBPros in my care; 4 flat out dead (as in bulging, completely failed) batteries plus one negligible charge one. To their credit, they covered 3 of them with the extended warranty (unlike Dell), but the fact they're no longer user servicable means you're without your computer for several days).
3. I have a hard time switching between OS X quirks and Windows/Linux GUIs (that are close enough together to be the same to me at this point, at least compared to OS X). Because I _must_ work with Windows for work, I find it easiest to stick to that standard. If I could go 100% OS X, I might acclimate to it, but that's not an option.
4. OS X performance sucks compared to Windows or Linux. From what I gather, a lot of it has to do with memory management. What I do know is that I spend an awful lot of time staring a spinning beach balls or unresponsive systems doing the same thing that W2K shrugged off on similar hardware.
5. I don't need Steve Jobs to tell me how I WILL use my computer.
6. I like cheap - the computer I'm typing this on is 12.1 inches, lightweight, runs Windows 7, dual core, and cost me $340. That leaves me with more money for travel and lenses.

YMMV.

[jazzfish]

Thanks for the contrarian viewpoint; it's good to hear as well.

#3's a relevant point, since I'm pretty much stuck using Windows for work as well.
#4 isn't such a problem because a) I'm unlikely to do anything that requires anywhere near the full capabilities of a machine, and b) my current machine was trailing-edge when I bought it three years ago so anything new will seem blazingly fast.
And currently money is less of an object than it might be. Which is nice and I have no idea how long it'll last...

[playing-tragic.livejournal.com]

Late to the discussion. Other than an Amiga 500, I've solely owed Macs. I do use a Windows based machine at work. Computer systems have evolved (devolved?) into a sort of religion and it's difficult to have a friendly religious discussion between any two or more "true" believers. =)

Not a "geek" so can't speak knowledgeably on the different systems. But as a computer user, I have always feel intuitively more comfortable on a Mac. (The Windows ribbon bar and the circle thingy annoy me.) To turn an old sales slogan of theirs on its ear - Macs think like me. Though I will admit, there seem to be fewer differences between Windows and Mac today then in the late '80s and early '90s. But using a Mac has always been less frustrating for me.

The option/command (previously apple) keys don't fluster me at all when I move from work to home computing. They're close enough my fingers seem to auto adjust/adapt without any conscious thought or effort but then I'm even-handed so somethings may come easier to me than others? You can do right click thiings with a Mac mouse now. You just have to enable the function.

[jazzfish]

I've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of holy war going on in these comments. :) And I'm pretty sure that the ribbon-bar and circle thing are going to annoy me no end when I finally start having to use Windows 7.

It's good to hear that you can switch back and forth easily, since I'd almost certainly be doing that. At this point I'm pretty likely to be getting a new Macbook whenever the new ones come out (probably Oct/Nov), unless I talk myself out of it first.

(And I'll look into Storymill as well, thanks!)

[playing-tragic.livejournal.com]

It's funny how many friends/family members I have who scoff about Macs but they always, *always* want to play with mine. My nephew's roommate who would "never own an Apple" has something called a hackintosh - somehow he's running OSX on his pc. I know Macs can run Windows if you use some program but I've never bothered to to try it. Most docs and spreadsheets I've created in one or the other I've been able to easily convert files back and forth. (I do prefer iWorks to Office). - One caution about the Macbook Pros, they get super hot so make sure to keep it on a table or a lap desk.

I've been test driving a demo version of Scrivener. I really like the corkboard and brainstorming aspects of it but I also really like StoryMill's chapters/scenes manipulations, tags, & timeline. It does seem StoryMill has a steeper learning curve that Scrivener. If the two programs could be mashed together it would a seriously badass writing program. Right now, I'm thinking of purchasing Scrivener to use it for brainstorming, preliminary writing then moving over to StoryMill when getting down to the nitty gritty writing. Just trying to see if I can move things between the two programs easily first.