“It was about a year ago that, after a decade or so of Windows on my client and Unix/Linux on my servers, I bought a TiBook and got into OS X. I am only rarely tempted to go back. It’s worth it, I think, to look back over the past year,” writes Tim Bray in his pseudo weblog, “ongoing,” in an article about his first year after switching to Mac OS X entitled, “iYear.”
Bray continues, “The aesthetics [of Mac OS X] are infinitely better than Windows, which seems to get more cartoonish and overexcited with each successive release. Aesthetics are important, I spend hours per day looking at this real estate and it should look good by default. I’m just not prepared, any more, to live without anti-aliasing and adjustable transparency and shadowing and all the little things that leave the eye a little more rested at the end of the day.”
“The apps are really a mixed bag. Safari, iTunes, the DVD player, and iChat are fine pieces of software. Mail.app (Just Doesn’t Work), iCal (slow and loses data), and iSync (insanely slow) are horrible. I don’t understand why you’d want iPhoto. iMovie and the Address Book are good enough to use but don’t leave you with a warm glow. This is a better batting average than most software companies,” Bray writes.
Bray looks at Mac OS X’s “Pain Points,” which he lists as “UI inconsistency,” “Apple’s one-button mouse,” “Finder,” and “keyboard shortcuts.”
Bray concludes, “If you’re a design weenie and live in the Photoshop/Dreamweaver space, a Mac is probably the best bet if only for cultural reasons. If you’re music-centric, it would appear that Apple is pretty well the place to be right now… And if you’re a person who spends a lot of time doing server-side work on boxes where the OS’s name ends in ?x,? well it’s a no-brainer, you’d be nuts not to get a Mac.”
Full article here.
He doesn’t understand why we would want iPhoto? I admit that I don’t understand that a bit. iPhoto has done nothing but improve and is a basic program for me. Is the suggestion that it does not compare to Photoshop? I don’t know, but I don’t get that at all. And to also suggest that one of the recognized best pieces of free software–iMovie–is also not good enough leaves me gasping in amazement (even though it may still need a tweak or two). He can certainly upgrade to FCP Express, but I have seen iMovie single handedly bring people to the Mac. Nice that he is positive about the Mac, but those negative opinions, I would suggest, are held by a small minority of Mac users.
I agree with you, HG. iPhoto, while a bit slow at times, is ok. It certainly is one of the attractive apps that Windows users see. In my experience, however, the number one program that every Windows user I’ve ever spoken with likes about the Mac is iMovie. Why? Because they all have DV cams and hate to use them on a PC. Bottom line. iMovie is better than anything in the PC world.
When I show them I can block pop-ups, do tabbing, and fast rendering, Safari would be the next app I hear most about.
I am a convert. I converted from UNIX, though, so I was an easy sell.
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