Before I start, bear this mind:

When I say slow, it’s because my PC is fast. AMD Athlon64 3200 2Ghz, 1gb RAM. The graphics card also is fast. I have an off-the-shelf mac mini and I am comparing my machine to that because I am comparing my experience. Before you say that is unfair, a mac user would compare their tricked-out machine to an off-the-shelf PC. So what I say is how I find. I don’t care for side-by-side comparisons because I’m not a review site.

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Just under 2 weeks and the last week at 12+ hours a day has been all mac.

It’s slower than I thought. 512MB ram and having only a few apps open is slow. This could mean that the default memory is too low – something often thrown at Windows. According to someone at the Apple forums the pagein/pageout numbers are important (they may not be but the guy saying this had the credits) and mine indicate I need more memory. That I shall get.

I find the lack of confirmations annoying. If I successfully change something I am not told about it. Nothing happens. I would like to be told that the computer knows I have changed something and not have to wait to test it.

The resizing of application boxes. I put the cursor over the ribbed area at the corner – and it looks no different. I get no clue that I have indeed got it right until I move. And if I haven’t then it’s annoying.

Finder icon. I cannot be the only one who dislikes it there. Yes I know it can be hacked away but then so can a lot of Windows stuff.

Open source / freeware. There doesn’t seem to be as much. Maybe I just don’t know the places to look. And it’s not a case of “What do you need”, it’s because I like to poke around, see what works better, what works differently or just try things.

Apple keyboard. Apple Home and End keys on an Apple keyboard attached to an Apple Mac. And they don’t work. What’s with that then? Very odd.

Apple keyboard. Feels very nice to type on.

Expose. Nice. As are hot corners.

Firefox. It feels clunkier at the moment. That could be a memory thing. (And yes it and all other apps are Intel).

Firefox. In Windows I click once in the address bar and the whole address is highlighted. I can then type or copy easily. In the version of Firefox I have, that does not happen. I have to crtl-a. Or a new tab which is just 1 click. That’s annoying. It could just be my FF though.

Middle-click. Fundamental. That said, I went back to my PC today for a few things and I forgot about the programmed middle button and went to press the apple key. In fact I did all mac shortcuts.

This one really annoys me. A complaint that is thrown at Windows time and time again is that when programs are uninstalled they leave information behind. When I tried Ubuntu I found that if you deleted gFTP it left hidden information behind. And now I find that if I remove a program that it too might leave files behind. Cyberduck adds to the keychain. I know it gives you the option but when you remove it wouldn’t you expect it to also remove the keychain changes it had made? If it does not then it is as guilty as Windows and Ubuntu. It is really annoying when users of another OS claim theirs is so much better when it actually behaves the same. The “users should know” argument doesn’t work here – the system behaviour defaults to leaving information inside the machine. I also removed Firefox to install an optimised build. I dragged the application to trash as it says on the mozilla site. I install the new app. And I have the same theme, the same plugins. Data is left around – just like on Windows.

Supplied software. I don’t use anything supplied with a PC so I’m not going to compare. Doesn’t matter how good you think it is – or it may actually be – if I don’t use it it does not get counted. I won’t use iWhatever.

Speaking of which – iTunes. Horrible. Winamp beats the hell out of that piece of music-moving, product-selling, drm-loving monstrosity. If there was one reason why the mac could never be my main machine, it’s iTunes.

The default fonts look nicer in OS X. The default system appearance of blue, brushed steel and rounded corners (and yes I have graphite in use) – I prefer the Zune look on the PC.

The scrollbars are narrower. Not by much but when windows are not maximised that couple of pixels means more precision is needed.

Mighty Mouse. Just say No.

Uptime. Comparable to my PC.

Reboots. So far, worse than my PC. Reboot for a mouse driver?

Transition – easy. Foxmarks and Newsgator were okay, I’d set my emails to IMAP beforehand. And as I use no proprietary software the change there was not difficult.

sudo. I like sudo.

Program launches are s.l.o.w. It really is click-wait. I’m getting used to it but my preference is for click-work. Want an example of how picky I am? Notepad on the PC opened too slow for me. I like fast. We shall see what 1gb does.

So do I feel free now I can use a Mac? No. As I said before I’m trading the devil Microsoft for the Cult of Apple. They both have their downsides. Neither is better for me as an end-user. What I want to do is be able to turn a machine on and get it do as I want.
Can the mac do what I want? Yes it can.
Has it increased my productivity? No. The only thing that increased my productivity was dual monitors.
Does it feel better on the mac? No – just different (see above).
Will I stay with the mac? I will probably continue to use two machines. One work task I do cripples the mac at present but the PC is cool with it – so that job stays on the PC. (It doesn’t matter what it is, just accept that I’m not lying)
Will I use the mac as the principal work machine? Probably yes – but only because I can play games on the PC at the same time. NWN on the PC, work on the mac. (the Big Bang Games are pretty crap to say the least. The Othello clone is weak). Actually, in the end I will use the machine that is right at that moment. At present I can work much faster on the PC because it actually does work faster. Maybe that will change with the memory.
I need to look more at Synergy. I would like the mac to be the server not the client (the master not the slave…)

Do I love the mac? No.
Do I like the mac? Yes I do.
Am I surprised by it? Not really, it’s different.
Do I want to keep digging around and trying different programs? Yes.

What I want to see is how it performs with enough memory. That I do look forward to. But my observations are valid (because they can’t be otherwise).

Windows / OS X / Linux. Regardless of where the code comes from it means nothing to me. As a user I don’t care about whether the code was created in the Microsoft or Apple companies. I have no blind loyalty to either. Open source code is just as unfathomable as any other code. The fact it (Open Source) has been peer-reviewed and is open to scrutiny means nothing too – if any code does what I want I am happy and if it does not then I am still locked into a system I cannot change regardless of which camp it has come from. To a coder or a zealot from all 3 camps there will always be reasons that their OS is the better OS. I’m lucky I’ve got two here to use and compare but I’m not about be be seduced by a white box with rounded corners compared to the black box.

All OS’s are tools – and it’s not what you’ve got it’s what you do with it that determines the results you get.

In case I’m giving the impression that I don’t like the machine, I do. I do like it. I still like F9. I’m liking digging around and seeing what goes where. It just seems odd in some ways compared to other machines I have used / owned. So I’m blogging it. That’s what blogs are for I think.

And the font on this optimised build is different again.

There is something wrong with my mini. A restarted mini takes 24 seconds to launch an extension-free Firefox. Thunderbird then takes 16 seconds, NNW takes 10. I await advice from the Apple forums…. it shouldn’t be this slow. (and please don’t say memory. The answer here is not memory.)

Maybe it’s just this white mac kb but having Home and End not work is bad enough but putting the Help button next to the damn Delete key is nonsense. If this was a Windows machine I’d google the registry key to kill it. But then it’s just going to be this kb given the styling so a wireless one will beckon. Hopefully a logitech one.
I’m okay with # now but @ seems to catch me every time.

Note to mx revo users – middle-click appears impossible. Tab Mix Plus options did the trick.
Note to self – remember that a Logitech mouse config never crashed on my PC once. It did it several times on the trot here. Really it did. Peculiar message along the lines of “What you were doing just exploded into fragments – but don’t worry the rest of the machine is perfectly lovely”. Which certainly beats “Explorer.exe has a problem and needs to crash”.

Biggest hurdle to overcome: Looking top right not bottom right for the time. Must get statusbar clock. (Done. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/52/ is essential. For me anyway. You need to open install.rdf and bump the version number.)