What is it about Apple products? How have they achieved such a lofty reputation and rabid following? Why don't people just view the products as over-priced, form-over-function devices? Are they really that much better? Well, here is my opinion (note, I said opinion).
I am currently typing this on a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5 and MS Office 2008 (although I'm using ScribeFire in Firefox to create this post...). I started a new job a few months ago and as an IT manager in a company where there are a significant number of Mac's in use (significant being less than 5%), I decided it was time to learn it so that I was prepared for the inevitable, "will it work on my Mac?" questions. So for the last week or so I've been upgrading it and playing with it a bit to figure out how it all works. As I started using it I really started to wonder if I was being seduced. So, hence these two (I suspect it will be two) posts. And with that disclaimer/intro out of the way, here it goes.
My very first computer (well my family's first) was an Apple II+. It was pretty fancy with a monochrome green monitor, 48k of RAM, a 360k single-sided floppy, and a 1200 baud modem. I seem to recall that it cost about $4,000.00 back in the day. It was really nothing special. It's design wasn't particularly cutting edge (not like the IIc which I coveted). I remember a conversation with a friend of mine where he told me that we should have gotten one of the new IBM PC's because they were going to be the way of the future for home computers. I really didn't know what he was talking about and as far as I was concerned the fact that there were way more games for the Apple meant it was all I was going to want.
Fast forward 20 some years and my, how things have changed. That was the last Apple computer I ever owned, even though I always wanted a Mac. I have been an iPod owner for about 5 years, but I still have my 5-year old iPod. It's all I need really, even though it has pathetic battery life and a somewhat dim monochrome display. On the computer front though it's been all "IBM". While I prefer Linux on my desktop there are just too many Microsoft apps that I need to survive in my world to use it 100% of the time (if only Evolution didn't suck so much I'd use Linux even more). So I have XP, Vista, and Linux machines at home and XP and Linux at work. Games for my kids? Windows XP is the only way to go (ironically opposite of my childhood). And now I've bravely waded into the Mac waters to see if I really need to have one of these things or if it is just all about the image.
So today it's software. Keep in mind these are pretty much first impressions, but I think they are as valid, if not more so, than comments from people who have been using the OS since it came out. To me, in order to be successful, this computer and OS have to pretty much be easy to use and to get up to speed. That's the Apple mantra isn't it? Everything just works. That being said, I've discovered that while everything might work, it doesn't always work the way I would expect and therefore is taking a fair bit of getting used to.
I started out by doing a version upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5. This machine is used for our internal support folks so it needed to have the latest version of the software. This was the source of my first big surprise; it took 3 hours from the time the upgrade started to the time I was done installing the latest batch of updates. That is about 3 times longer than upgrading a Linux desktop and about on par with a Windows upgrade. There were almost 400MB worth of updates after I did the upgrade. That's pretty hefty for an OS that's only been out for 6 months. So I played with it a bit and discovered that the person who had used it before me had removed a lot of the standard stuff and I decided to do a complete new install. This took much less time, about 2 hours, but would have been even faster if it hadn't taken 40 minutes to verify the DVD. That's closer to a typical Ubuntu install.
So what about the actual user experience? Well I'm a bit undecided at this point. I'm all for an uncluttered computer desktop and the long row of big application icons along the bottom doesn't do it for me. I need to go through and decide what I want there and what I don''t want before I pass judgment on it. I've made it pretty small, but it still steals a significant chunk of screen real estate. I may even try hiding it but I don't like to do that in Windows so I'm not so sure I want to do it on the Mac either. As a Windows user I'm also having a hard time with the fact that the menu items for applications are on the top menu bar rather than on the app window itself as well as the fact that when I click the 'x' on the window the application doesn't close. If I'm going to use another app I usually just open it, I don't get rid of the first one and then open the next. If I do that I'll just minimize it. For some reason I can minimize application windows in OS X as well; so why would I want to close it but still have it running when I can minimize it and quickly access it from the dock when I want it again? While it has a silly name, I also really miss the Start menu (or the application menu in Gnome). When there is an application that I want to run that isn't on the dock, it takes a lot of steps to get to the applications folder in finder.
I could nit-pick for a while but I won't. Partly because I'm sure I'll learn all the shortcuts (command+tab to sift through running apps is a new innovation in 10.5!? Windows has had that since 95) and so I'll see how the learning goes. The good? I think this is the best implementation of Linux for the desktop so far. I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my machines and while it is great, it is no OS X. And that is one of the reasons it interests me so much. As a Linux user this level of integration really has me impressed and the apps themselves have some pretty cool features. The fact that so many audio and video codecs have sketchy patents means that for an open source desktop like Ubuntu there is a lot of work required to have a/v work "out-of-the-box". OS X has it all there and that may be worth paying the money for the OS, unfortunately you have to run it on Apple's hardware but that is another post. The only app that I really think falls flat is Safari. It may be fast (although I haven' noticed it) it doesn't fit in from a look and feel point and it really doesn't come close to Firefox for expandability. Otherwise I'm enjoying playing with the other applications.
So, at this point the OS wouldn't convince me to switch, although (and this is the "is it seducing me" part of the article) I have to try Entourage because if it has good Exchange integration and doesn't crash all the time like Evolution, that might be the killer app to convince me. However, the problem there is that it is Microsoft. I suppose that is also why it is likely to work better than the open source alternative. I'll post more on the OS when I've gotten more comfortable, but up next will be the hardware.
I am currently typing this on a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5 and MS Office 2008 (although I'm using ScribeFire in Firefox to create this post...). I started a new job a few months ago and as an IT manager in a company where there are a significant number of Mac's in use (significant being less than 5%), I decided it was time to learn it so that I was prepared for the inevitable, "will it work on my Mac?" questions. So for the last week or so I've been upgrading it and playing with it a bit to figure out how it all works. As I started using it I really started to wonder if I was being seduced. So, hence these two (I suspect it will be two) posts. And with that disclaimer/intro out of the way, here it goes.
My very first computer (well my family's first) was an Apple II+. It was pretty fancy with a monochrome green monitor, 48k of RAM, a 360k single-sided floppy, and a 1200 baud modem. I seem to recall that it cost about $4,000.00 back in the day. It was really nothing special. It's design wasn't particularly cutting edge (not like the IIc which I coveted). I remember a conversation with a friend of mine where he told me that we should have gotten one of the new IBM PC's because they were going to be the way of the future for home computers. I really didn't know what he was talking about and as far as I was concerned the fact that there were way more games for the Apple meant it was all I was going to want.
Fast forward 20 some years and my, how things have changed. That was the last Apple computer I ever owned, even though I always wanted a Mac. I have been an iPod owner for about 5 years, but I still have my 5-year old iPod. It's all I need really, even though it has pathetic battery life and a somewhat dim monochrome display. On the computer front though it's been all "IBM". While I prefer Linux on my desktop there are just too many Microsoft apps that I need to survive in my world to use it 100% of the time (if only Evolution didn't suck so much I'd use Linux even more). So I have XP, Vista, and Linux machines at home and XP and Linux at work. Games for my kids? Windows XP is the only way to go (ironically opposite of my childhood). And now I've bravely waded into the Mac waters to see if I really need to have one of these things or if it is just all about the image.
So today it's software. Keep in mind these are pretty much first impressions, but I think they are as valid, if not more so, than comments from people who have been using the OS since it came out. To me, in order to be successful, this computer and OS have to pretty much be easy to use and to get up to speed. That's the Apple mantra isn't it? Everything just works. That being said, I've discovered that while everything might work, it doesn't always work the way I would expect and therefore is taking a fair bit of getting used to.
I started out by doing a version upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5. This machine is used for our internal support folks so it needed to have the latest version of the software. This was the source of my first big surprise; it took 3 hours from the time the upgrade started to the time I was done installing the latest batch of updates. That is about 3 times longer than upgrading a Linux desktop and about on par with a Windows upgrade. There were almost 400MB worth of updates after I did the upgrade. That's pretty hefty for an OS that's only been out for 6 months. So I played with it a bit and discovered that the person who had used it before me had removed a lot of the standard stuff and I decided to do a complete new install. This took much less time, about 2 hours, but would have been even faster if it hadn't taken 40 minutes to verify the DVD. That's closer to a typical Ubuntu install.
So what about the actual user experience? Well I'm a bit undecided at this point. I'm all for an uncluttered computer desktop and the long row of big application icons along the bottom doesn't do it for me. I need to go through and decide what I want there and what I don''t want before I pass judgment on it. I've made it pretty small, but it still steals a significant chunk of screen real estate. I may even try hiding it but I don't like to do that in Windows so I'm not so sure I want to do it on the Mac either. As a Windows user I'm also having a hard time with the fact that the menu items for applications are on the top menu bar rather than on the app window itself as well as the fact that when I click the 'x' on the window the application doesn't close. If I'm going to use another app I usually just open it, I don't get rid of the first one and then open the next. If I do that I'll just minimize it. For some reason I can minimize application windows in OS X as well; so why would I want to close it but still have it running when I can minimize it and quickly access it from the dock when I want it again? While it has a silly name, I also really miss the Start menu (or the application menu in Gnome). When there is an application that I want to run that isn't on the dock, it takes a lot of steps to get to the applications folder in finder.
I could nit-pick for a while but I won't. Partly because I'm sure I'll learn all the shortcuts (command+tab to sift through running apps is a new innovation in 10.5!? Windows has had that since 95) and so I'll see how the learning goes. The good? I think this is the best implementation of Linux for the desktop so far. I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my machines and while it is great, it is no OS X. And that is one of the reasons it interests me so much. As a Linux user this level of integration really has me impressed and the apps themselves have some pretty cool features. The fact that so many audio and video codecs have sketchy patents means that for an open source desktop like Ubuntu there is a lot of work required to have a/v work "out-of-the-box". OS X has it all there and that may be worth paying the money for the OS, unfortunately you have to run it on Apple's hardware but that is another post. The only app that I really think falls flat is Safari. It may be fast (although I haven' noticed it) it doesn't fit in from a look and feel point and it really doesn't come close to Firefox for expandability. Otherwise I'm enjoying playing with the other applications.
So, at this point the OS wouldn't convince me to switch, although (and this is the "is it seducing me" part of the article) I have to try Entourage because if it has good Exchange integration and doesn't crash all the time like Evolution, that might be the killer app to convince me. However, the problem there is that it is Microsoft. I suppose that is also why it is likely to work better than the open source alternative. I'll post more on the OS when I've gotten more comfortable, but up next will be the hardware.
