A bit of background. I’ve used PeeCees for years. I bought my first “real” computer after giving my Commodore 64 away in 1989. I ran DOS, every version of Windows up to XP, and for a short time OS/2 and Linux.
In the beginning, before I got a 386, home computers were for the hobbyist. While the latter two operating systems were generally more solid and robust than Microsoft’s offerings, they came with a catch - they suffered from limited application support.
Back then, in the PC world, you had two choices. You could either spend your time in the very solid OS/2 or Linux environment and pick from the few productivity applications or use Windows and spend your time repairing a faulty OS. Basically, no matter what the choice, you’d spent more time screwing around with hardware and software than you would getting work done.
So, when I recently got involved in a small business, I knew we had to make some smart choices early on. So we switched to non-Vista, or rather, the MAC.
Enough history. So I didn’t know what to expect when switching to the MAC. I’ll certainly write more about the switch here in the future, but for now, here’s a few little things that I’ve noticed - things that have made my life a little easier.
Ten Simple Things that are better with my MAC than they were with my PC
- 10. The MAC will actually sleep when I close the lid, and wake up when I open it. Also, it’ll consume practically no battery power when it’s closed for an extended time. The PC took several minutes to sleep, almost as long to wake up, and eventually drained the battery even when the lid was closed.
- 09. When I exit a program, it’s gone. Either thru “Dock > right click > Quit” or “Apple Logo > Force Quit > name”, when I need something closed right off, it’s history. The PC would have things hanging around for god knows how long.
- 08. When I “Click Pause Click” on a file name in my file manager, just the name (before the “dot”) is highlighted for editing. The PC highlights the whole thing - I want to edit the file name, not the extension.
- 07. The MAC will always - Always - connect to the available wireless networks in the correct order. The PCs, both the Toshiba and the Sony, but more often the Sony, will constantly get confused about this.
- 06. The included MAC web browser, Safari, is very fast and very light on system resources. I can have dozens of tabs or windows open in Safari at a time. IE, in either version and by contrast, is unstable, a security nightmare and a bit of a system hog when the web browsing gets busy.
- 05. The MAC, since day one and without any intervention on my part, has natively viewed / previewed camera RAW files.
- 04. The MAC, since day one and without any intervention on my part, has natively viewed / previewed / saved PDF files. I don’t even need Acrobat to create them - any program that can print can do it.
- 03. The built in MAC search, Spotlight, is fast and actually useful. How about this for a concept - if you’re looking for something, just start typing and let the computer do the leg work. No dancing dogs or stupid questions before you start looking for a file.
- 02. Two finger scroll. The MAC trackpad is still not as intuitive as a mouse, but it is far better than a conventional trackpad.
- 01. No pop-ups. Be it in the OS, on the web, whatever. Finally, the applications are not always getting in my way.
- 00. I don’t have to reboot once a day to get everything working again. I know first hand what they mean by “it just works”.
Oops. That’s Eleven, off-the-top-of-my-head.