“There is a reason why I’m always that guy using one of the few Macs stranded away from the sea of PCs in the library. It’s not because Apple’s OS X is superior to Windows in terms of stability and speed, but more along the lines that OS X lets me be extremely productive with several key features. I am adept in utilizing each system to its potential, having used both for years on end. Macs just let me do more,” Paul Stamatiou blogs for his eponymous blog. “Here’s why.”
Why Stamatiou is more productive on a Mac:
• Exposé
• Dashboard
• Spotlight
• QuickSilver
Full article – in which the four bullet points above are explained – here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, what makes you more productive on a Mac than you are on that Windows box that force on you at work?
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Related articles:
Security expert sums up first month with Mac: ‘much safer, more secure, more productive than Wintel’ – June 02, 2005
Paul Stamatiou’s Specialties:
Systems – Windows 95-2000, (x64) XP, Server 2003, Mac OS 8.3-9, OS X, Linux (Fedora Core , Gentoo , Mandrake, Suse, Ubuntu 5.10, Knoppix STD)
Languages – XHTML, CSS
General Understanding – PHP, MySQL, VoiceXML, C, MatLab, Java, Ruby on Rails
Adobe – PhotoShop (4-9)
Macromedia – Dreamweaver, Fireworks
Novell – Netware, Zenworks 6.5 Desktop Management Client
Symantec – Corporate Antivirus, Ghost, Ghost Multicast Server 8.0
Other – phpMyAdmin, WordPress
I am more productive because I can just work on what I want. The OS is solid, never hiccups, and removes stupidity like virus/spyware worries and the ridiculous upkeep necessary to keep a Winbox alive.
Now, from someone who works on Windows his whole life (and still at work unfortunately) and has a Mac for home and home business use, I can say this. . . .Finder slows me down, and Apple has got to find a way to improve its mouse pointer speed/feel.
I live with Finder, but it’s not well designed.
The mouse perplexes me. The Windows mouse movement is so much smoother and allows more speed. I use MouseZoom to improve the speed on my Mac, but Apple should fix that in the OS and they should find a way for smoother mouse movement. A friend who bought a Mac says the same thing about the mouse. He can’t put his finger on why it’s annoying, but it just is.
Hope they remedy this sometime soon.
Ok, you wanna know the real reason why Macs are more productive? It’s because Mac users can’t access certain content which acts as a time waster.
I just tried to view a video of something over at Yahoo! (you know, that little internet company) and their video’s won’t play on my iMac.
Looking at the help:
Q. Will Yahoo! Video work on the Mac?
A. Yahoo! Video is currently not compatible with Macintosh computers.
WTF is this %$#@!!! ??????? Helllloooooo!!??? This is just a total crock.
These are the dirty little secrets Mac people don’t talk about… despite comments to the contrary, certain things “Just DON’T work”. Maybe Yahoo! video’s are a waste of time anyway, but still, I prefer to be able to judge for myself, not have the judgement thrust upon me in a sea of incompatibility.
Oh, and the alleged file format? Windows Media of course. F***ers.
I guess that’s how Microsoft controls things – they certainly don’t play fair – if you need any excuses as to why MS sucks, I guess that’s a big one. Maybe the DOJ should try doing something constructive and force MS to properly support OS X? At least Apple’s iPod/iTunes/Quicktime stuff is cross platform (well, except for Linux but they’ve got their own players/formats and seem happy enough.)
It certainly leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that a major internet company such as Yahoo! supports only Windows users. Worse, there are tons of other sites which are inaccessible due to the same reason (a certain lack of Windows Media or other support on OS X.)
This is just sloppy and very poor form from everyone involved. And I wish everyone would stop freaking lying about how wonderful Macs are. They are great without a doubt, but they also have a different set of problems, and incompatibility with certain internet content is one of them.
But that doesn’t make good fanyboy news does it?
(and now you know why my name is notatotalsucker.)
gforce, you’re right: Macs and Windows computers are just tools but tools can be better/worse for your workflow.
I use a Windows computer at work and a Mac at home. I’m very familiar with both platforms and know that there are a lot of big and little things that make me more productive on both platforms. Overall, i’m still more productive on a Mac.
honestly, I’ve been using Automator more and more. I never really thought I would be using it at all, but it has really, really saved me an unbelievable amount of time. Renaming, copying, changing formats, deleting- all menial tasks I can now have Automator do while I’m working on something else (like typing a comment on MDN hahah)
Once again, the old productivity line…No, as a former PC zombie and as someone who uses a PC at work and all Macs at home, the differences are real. Also, they are not merely superficial. The number of mouse clicks to get places in Windows far exceeds those in OS X. And creating a folder in Windows? Difficult. In OS X? Command-capital N. This is just the beginning. Use Windows much? Then you’ll notice the thousand tiny beguiling icons in use by every freaking program and all the secret right-mouse commands to get there. The programmers for OS X apps don’t do that to you. And as for hardware, if it’s stated that it runs on OS X, just about every time it does. It ain’t that way on a Windows box — I know — I’ve played with them all night trying to make them work. And that kind of experience is why I’m a Mac user today. My Mac boxes have not given me half the trouble that my Windows boxes have, due to superior hardware alone. I’m still as klutzy as I was then.
What makes me more productive on a Mac?
Some of these I use all the time; others are nice to have in a pinch:
The author’s 4 items plus…
Dictionary/Thesaurus: Application, Widget, In-context (via keyboard shortcut)
Check Spelling as You Type in Safari and other apps
FireWire Target Mode
Powered FireWire (to recharge the 2nd-gen iPod)
PDF creation (for free)
Easy wireless networking
Drag & Drop (in many different ways, including combining with Exposé)
Text Clippings
Disk drives (including USB flash) as names instead of letters
Carbon Copy Cloner (and bootable backups)
Encrypted Disk Images
No malware / no viruses
No anti-virus software using the processor and creating security breaches of its own
True multi-user setup (for allowing guests to use my computer and not worrying about my settings being messed up)
Archive & Install (I needed it once)
Hierarchical file lists (opening the enclosure triangle in front of folders in list view)
Backlit keyboard on PowerBook
Ease of typing foreign language characters
Screen / window captures
Proxy icon in title bar of documents & folders
Bonjour (mostly for printing)
Easy wireless internet sharing (comes in handy where 2 laptops are in the same hotel room and there’s only 1 ethernet wire)
Easy file sharing
Instant recognition of external video on a PowerBook
Monitor spanning
Custom icons (easy as copy & paste)
Sleep mode on a PowerBook (close the lid to go; open it and it’s on almost instantly. I never shut down except for system updates.)
FotoMagico
NoteTaker
RapidWeaver
NetNewsWire
iLife & iWork
Yahoo probably doesn’t support macs because mac users don’t use yahoo. It is too cluttered and busy. There’s nothing on yahoo that you can’t find a better version of somewhere else. Chatting is better with ichat/AIM. Search, mail and maps are better with Google. Product info and auctions are better at specialist websites and ebay. Random postings are better at Craigslist. Video is better at You Tube which works just fine with macs. I haven’t been to yahoo.com in literally months, possibly a year, and I don’t miss a damn thing about it.
notatotalsucker,
There isn’t much that happens directly over the internet that Macs aren’t compatible with. Said another way, unless businesses and website developers go out of their way to make sites incompatible with Macs and Linux, then there really is no such thing as Mac “incompatibility”.
Perspective is everything here. If Apple started making iTunes incompatible with Windows then what? Is Windows incompatible or is it still the Mac that’s incompatibile? Macs are far more “naturally” capable of accessing various types of data than most other OSes, notably Windows, especially with regard to content delivered over the internet. However, as you’ve already experienced, when website content providers paid enough backdoor $$ from MS) want to intentionally block certain OSes from their content, then it is obviously a technical possibility. Yahoo! went out of its way to block Mac users from its content – and it should be, and is probably illegal. Sadly, I don’t have the $$ to go after them, do you?
By the way, you can play most Media Player content with Flip4Mac, and you can get there by going to http://www.flip4mac.com.
notatotalsucker.. check this <a href=”http://www.flip4mac.com/”>flip4mac<>
it’s a free piece of software, letting you play WMV. works like a charm. fsck Y(ou) A(llways) H(ave) O(ther) O(ptions).
flip4mac
Flip4mac aint for Intels yet.
Notatotalsucker: You are a total sucker. You make the argument for it very succinctly.
SOMEBODY SHOULD PUT A VIDEO TO YOUTUBE ABOUT MAC PRODUCTIVITY!!!
Hi all, thanks for the advice re: flip4mac, and yea, I do already have that installed – these vids at Yahoo (and other places) still don’t work with that unfortunately.
In particular, certain news sites seem to be out of bounds to Macs for video, which is a bit of a bummer.
And I agree with Mr. Peabody, Macs are certainly far more compatible with everything else, than say Windows is. Why can’t we attach a Mac formatted iPod onto a PC?? (yes, this is another one of the small issues I have.) Oh yea, PCs don’t read Mac disks out of the box. Ugh! Foiled again. Same enemy too.
As a long time Mac user (since 1990) I know that overall you can get around things (mostly, but not always for free), however sometimes I do get annoyed.
That said, I have switched 99% to Macs, including for my day job, just so I can avoid the mentally challenging software produced by Microsoft. I’m over hacking these systems. Everytime I get near a PC these days my stress levels increase dramatically. It’s like an invisible force field surrounding them (hehe.) Unfortunately it appears that Microsoft’s long arm still affects us Mac users somewhat indirectly – and I’m sure they love every second of it.
Oh and thanks for the insult Macaday. You made my day.
Spotlight
iSync: Mac and Razr and Palm
iMovie
GraphicConverter
EASY networking
LONG uptime
command-m
Print to PDF
1. Exposè
2. Dock
3. Finder
Number one for me by far is Exposè. I tap the click wheel to switch between windows, and it’s infinitely more convenient than clicking on the name at the bottom of the screen in windows.
The dock and finder window are also an improvement over windows. Applications aren’t mixed with documents on the desktop, and I’m not clicking on tiny quick launch icons. The finder is much easier to access, and the feature where you can open a folder by holding an icon over it is very handy.
Shit just works.
And, Dashboard.
AppleScript. There is nothing like it on the PC (and yes, I know about VBScript). Multiplies productivity, preserves wrists, elbows and shoulders, and justifies raises.
I don’t find much use for Dashboard. I’m still not into using Exposé though I can imagine its utility; I’m just too used to always having one finger near the Option key for switching apps. Spotlight is awesome though.
I also use Keyboard Maestro to assign the keystrokes I need to make all those AppleScripts easier to invoke.
And Aliases. I get a lot of mileage out of them. And I find them more robust than Symbolic Links and Shortcuts.
Why am I more productive on a Mac? Because I enjoy working on my computer. You are simply more productive when you are a happy camper!
In Word for Mac, when I am editing large client documents (say 150 pages or more and in excess of 400 headings) on my 23″ Apple screen, I can have dsiplayed:
• Document Map (for quick navigation)
• Document in normal view
• Styles pallette open (for quick formatting)
However, for some strange reason, none of us can figure out, in Word for Windows, you can’t have this combination up at the same time. So you have to choose between the Doc Map or the Styles.
Hence, I always do editing consulting work at home if the client has PCs.
Expose : 15 windows all easy to find
Dashboard : Stickies, Weather and iStat are priceless
Finder : Easy to customize and find files and program
Spotlight : my secret way of finding and Application. Just type the first
three letters of the App and bam, there it is.
Let’s not even begin to tal about iLife. Just think obout what it would be like without it. Painful…
>And creating a folder in Windows? Difficult. In OS X? >Command-capital N.
Not being a PC Apologist, just pointing out something:
OS X: shift-command-n or control (right) click and select “New Folder”.
Windows: Right-click > New Folder. Don’t know the keyboard short cut, probably ALT-F something or another.
^^^^^ Difficult on either? – No.