Comparing Windows to Mac OS
Since buying my first Mac 2½ years ago I've had a fair bit of flack to throw at it. It's never seemed fair though to assess the Mac's merits based on my experience with a bottom-o-range 12" iBook and 256MB of RAM. If I'm going to contrast this with my desktop Windows machine, with its gig of RAM and 21" CRT, I should really compare like for like.
Well, I am writing this on the Mac Mini with 512MB of RAM and on the same 21" monitor. This is what I imagine the "Mac experience" is supposed to feel like. And I love it!
Not only is the system a lot quicker now it's also a lot more tactile. I have a Mac keyboard - an experience in itself - and I'm using a (Microsoft!) mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel (which acts as the middle button when depressed). One of my major gripes with Mac OS has been the amount mouse work needed to do things I normally use the keyboard for on Windows. This is still true but I'm finding it easier now I have a full-sized keyboard and mouse. Macs normally come with one-buttoned mice. Not good for somebody like me who relies on his ability to right-click. If you buy a Mac, change the mouse!
I am also writing this on the latest version of Mac OS X - Tiger. Not a massive difference but there are some nice subtle changes that I like.
Getting hold of Tiger has been a pain. As I mentioned last Friday the Mini came with Panther, despite their assurance I'd get Tiger. I called and they said they'd send out Tiger for free, which they did, kind of.
What Apple actually sent me was an upgrade DVD. Not what I wanted! I tend to re-install an OS more often that most. Especially one I am getting to know through my errors. When I do this I don't want to install an old OS and then mess about wasting my time upgrading it. I've mailed Apple about this but am yet to receive a reply.
Not only was it not the disc I expected, it wasn't as free as I was expecting. I got an email invoice this morning for the upgrade fee of £10.20p minus £10.19p. So they've billed my credit card (without my permission) for 1 pence. Not normally an issue but it's annoying as it's a company card, meaning more paperwork come the end of the year. Needless to say they'll be hearing from me about this.
Anyway, grumbling aside, I love using my new Mac. I can easily just sit here and play with expose. Sometimes I just sit back and look at the screen in admiration. I love good design and it doesn't come much better than this. The whole package of hardware/software leaves little room for improvement. You can't say that of the Windows/PC world.
Will I be switching? No. I'd love to but it's just not feasible. Right now the number one reason is Domino Designer. Although I will be doing a lot of switching between the dual inputs of the monitor and the two sets of keyboard/mouse now on my desk. Switching back to Windows is now something I don't like doing. Maybe one day I'll just switch to Windows whenever I need to use some "legacy" application. If you want an anology: Mac OS is like having a Bentley - you still need a run-around that you use most of the time for the daily chores.
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Same here... I love the mini and now only use Windows for Domino related work. If I really get ambitious I may try setting up R6 Designer on the Citrix server at work so that I can use it on the Mac. Even my wife is now using the mini, except for a newsletter that she refuses to migrate from MS Publisher. In short, once you go Mac, you don't go back.
Same here. I started with a MacMini when it came out and bought a 15" PowerBook about a month ago. I use the PB as my main machine and the only time I use my old Windows Laptop is for Domino Designer.
After working on the Mac, going back to Windows is an excercise in pain...
* Where's Quicksilver
* Where's the integrated spelling checker in all text fields
* Where's ...
But somethings gotta pay the bills...
I have a 17" Powerbook G4 with 1 gig of RAM and have been Domino Designer (R6.5) using Virtual PC 7.
Because the PC is being emulated it runs windows and domino about as fast as a 600mhz pentium II windows computer.
I'm impressed at how well Virtual PC 7 works, connects to the internet and runs windows software.
I want to try setting up a domino server using Virtual PC, but have not taken the time to do so yet....
My last post comes from a perspective of one that just really, really hates Windows, and my problem as with all Notes people... is Domino Designer. Any other development tool I could ever possibly want to run should run on OSX just fine just, especially now that everything seems to be moving to Eclipse.
See my story here: {Link}
I agree Bob, but I can't sympathise too much. It looks like you're on the cutting edge there so you have to expect a certain amount of trouble. Personally I have very few issues with Windows and honestly can't remember the last time it crashed. I don't love it as such, but I certainly don't dislike it either. At the moment I just prefer Mac OS. And who wouldn't.
As someone who is moving towards Linux (or should I say, away from Windows), I understand completely.
Linux also has a Windows emulation (though it's probably more accurate to say that it is an emulation of API's and NOT the OS), Wine.
The commercial versions, Crossover Office, and WineX are sweet and work at almost native speeds. WineX is primarily for games, but Crossover Office does Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and YES! the whole Notes/Designer/Admin suite aplomb, again at just about equivilent speeds.
I mention this because WINE is starting to make some headway in the OSX universe (what with the similarities in core kernel). In fact, since so much software is easily ported between OSX and the various Linii, I'd wager that unless Longhorn is a mind blowing success, Microsoft will lose ~ %25 of its market share in 5 years as it's competition can cross pollinate, and the recent trends in the software market is toward open standards.
More toys to play with. :)
My $.02
Sam
Wel, I also bought myself a Mac in Feb and must say I love it. Everything just works as I expect it to. I do have a few minor issues with the keyboard (the @ key was moved on the German keyboard) and the whole "let the application decide which keys to assign" thing is a bit of a pain eg. I get < and > keys in Notes but not in the other applications :o(
All in all I am very happy though.
Am REALLY missing Domino Designer as that is the only thing I'm using my PC for now.
Ursus
Holy crap - I've had a revelation. Since I don't develop solely in Domino anymore (if at all) I don't need to hang onto my PC like a floating piece of flotsam at sea. Except for games... so far there is still no comparison, even with emulators.
I'm a religous man, but no fanatic. Good scientific method shows me that, through careful reasearch, 99.99% of people who convert are happy with the experience. (there's that one guy who created the video on his mac about how madening it was to edit video on a Mac, spoofing the "I'm a real person who swtiched over and love it" add campaign from several years ago) Instead of making my own boxes, I might as well save myself the pain and agony and just get the mac, under protest. Nobody changes easily. ;-)
Jake,
Agreed... XP Pro has been really solid for me for a few years now. I can't remember my last BSOD... really solid. It's just that when you are stuck in front of a computer all day, I'd much rather the elegance of OSX.
My real problem has to do with the fact that when something DOES go wrong, as in my case, it goes REALLY wrong. All I did was install a new operating system... WHY would I ever need to do a low level format to reinstall the old operating system I had? Then, why all the trouble to get the stupid thing to see that I have a 160GB hard drive and not 138GB?
Derek,
Glad to see your comment on the experience with running Designer on VPC 7 for Mac. A couple years ago I tried VPC 6 on a Powerbook with decent specs at the time, and it was unusable to me because of the speed. Like you, all I wanted was to run Designer, test the Windows browsers, and maybe run Domino; I never got close to trying Domino because of the performance. Having read some VPC 6 reviews, I didn't expect much snap, and I sure didn't get it.
With the supposed performance improvements in VPC 7 and newer hardware, I may be interested again. I'm curious about how you arrived at your PII 600MHz comparison specs, whether that's what the emulated Windows showed in System Properties, and if it seemed accurately reflected by the observed performance.
Also, seems like there is not a downloadable trial for VPC, which is a shame because this is something I'd want to see run on a specific machine before committing the $.
Jerry. The great thing about the Mini is that you can try a Mac for cheap and see if you like it. If not (which is unlikely) you can always sell it on.
I just bought a Mac Mini this weekend and I love it. I use Windows at work and Linux at home. OpenOffice on Linux wasn't really cutting it for my wife who has to write papers for school. I wanted to get an iPod, and using it with Linux is out of the question, so I bought the Mac Mini. I wanted to get the Mini right after it came out, but I wanted to wait for Tiger to come out first. I wish the Mini supported CoreImage so I can see all the cool eye candy (those ripples in the widget view F12), but everything else works great.
ctrl-F2, is the key you are looking for. You can then use the scroll wheel if you really need that windows menu-like feel.
I've been a mac fanatic for years, but am proud to admit that windows has contributed some lovely ideas (alt-tab -> opt-tab, for example)
Since leaving my job as a Domino Developer, my PC hardly gets used, even for games. Look around, most decent games are on mac now too! (Half-life 2 excepted)
I've been enjoying the VPC6 & VPC7 comments. When I first started with Notes v2.1, the only machine I had was a Mac Quadra with VPC - probably about version 1.5. It was SLOW but I learned enough about Notes in 3 months to get my first Notes consulting gig.
The key was to sight verify your syntax before saving.
Since that time, Notes has been "velly velly good to me"!
To join the "me too" set of posts. I am in the process of selling my 1 year old Dell laptop so I can buy a 15" Powerbook. I did make the decision a year ago to go with the Dell vs the PB because of Domino Designer and Websphere Studio but it turns out I haven't done any Domino/Websphere stuff on the laptop anyway, it's all been done on my desktop or at work.
I'll still keep Windows on the desktop for my games and stuff, but there's no longer any reason not to have a shiny PB for my web development (which is currently in Python) and couch surfing in front of the TV!
If I was going to replace my desktop it'd have to be with a PowerMac, not a Mac Mini (or iMac). However, I don't have a problem spending AU$4,000 on a laptop but I do have a problem spending the same on a desktop :)
As you know, I have an iBook - a slightly more advanced version of yours - which now has 10.3 on it.
When I first bought it I rarely used it, but I was in Australia for three months and it was the only machine I took with me. I got a wordprocessor for it (Mellel, really like it) and various other apps (IM client), and so on.
I now like writing on the iBook more than my PC to be honest. I must admit, it happens to be all I use it for, but then other than for playing games, writing is the other thing I do.
I'd develop my website a bit on it but Coldfusion doesn't like too much. Oh, I also have an image converter program so I often work with images on the iBook.
Really like the machine, but I'm not sure I could drop the PC completely. I was never a firm believer in the mythical 'it just feels better' marketing crap - but it worked out true for me.
I made the switch last fall.... and love it... I use citrix for designer & admin client but everything else I can do on my mac... I have both a PC & G5 on my work desktop and go back and forth all day long... but for home use I am using a 17" powerbook for all but gaming... While games do exist for the mac I just find they run better on my pc...
My biggest complaint is with Notes on the Mac. Losts of problems many more crashes... I brought this up a lotusphere and they said up... not as much testing goes on.. My G5 is a daul processor model and it seems like there are lots more problem on them then the single processor ones... Until recently Lotus did not have any dauls in the QA lab so very little testing was done (as per a conversation at lotusphere). Right now with 10.4 and 6.5.4 the compacter crashes every day at noon... I fixed it by renaming in compacter so it does not run... now it is not soo bad...It would also be nice if the sametime intagration was ported to the mac client but I hear that is comming...
So other then that I realy like my macs...
Jake,
Have you thought about leaving your PC live on your network and trying the following?
I've never tried a remote connect from the Mac but it works great from my windows laptop.
{Link}
RDP connections from the Mac work fine. Indeed, while in Australia I downloaded a free graphical interface to the IPSEC VPN software inside MacOS 10.x and got a secure connection to works computers in the UK and I then used the RDP client for the Mac to work on the machines.
Sorted.
Hey Jake, thought you'd like to see this.
{Link}