I am a computer geek, and that seems to put me in the very center of Mac OS X fandom. I suppose that's why, when I decided that I needed a new desktop computer, so many of my friends encouraged me to get a Mac. A Mac seemed like the ideal choice - I was getting a beautiful computer that will run most free software, and I was finally sticking it to Microsoft. What could be better? A new iMac would be the perfect system for me; it has a really nice LCD, a fairly good 1gHz G4 processor, and a spacious 80GB hard drive to store all my stuff (and then some!) So it was decided.. Several weeks later, I would cough up the gargantuan price of $1400 and bring home a beautiful new iMac, and would spend the next few years in computer bliss.
.. If only life was so simple.
I brought the system home, promptly upgraded to OS X 10.3 Panther (it came with Jaguar), and ran into problems almost immediately. The upgrade itself went without a hitch, and the computer booted up very quickly. However, I immediately realized that it lacked a printer port to plug in my Apollo P-2250 printer. No problem, I thought. I'll plug the printer into my Windows system in the other room, and print everything over the network. The other Windows XP system immediately recognized the printer, downloaded the drivers, and within a few seconds it was ready to go. That's when things started to go wrong - I couldn't figure out how to make OS X see that SMB-shared printer!
Ouch. Wasn't it supposed to "just work?" No problem, though; I can handle this. A quick Google search pulled up this guide for how to set up SMB printing on Panther. I carefully followed the instructions, only to realize that Panther included no drivers for this printer, nor any model similar to it. Another quick Google search revealed linuxprinting.org, a site containing countless printer drivers for use with linux, and OS X! I promptly installed the drivers, and tried to print.. Nothing. Not one to give up so easily, I kept at it. After another hour of researching through the web and trying to input the smb:// location in several different ways, I was finally able to make it print.
If only every hardware issue could be solved so easily. The next difficultly was with trying to setup my scanner, a Visioneer 8700. It had a USB interface, so I should just plug it in and it'll work, right? Except it didn't - and this time, there were no free drivers from the Linux community to be had. None, none at all. After several failed attempts, I concluded that there was absolutely no way to use my scanner with OS X. Oh, well..
Those were my two main difficulties, though I suppose I can't conclude a discussion of Apple hardware without mentioning the one-button mouse. The thing looked cute, but got more annoying every time I had to reach for the Ctrl key to activate a "right-click" function. OS X had clearly been designed to avoid the need for those, but other applications (including Apple's own Safari browser) were not. By this point, you might be wondering why I didn't simply buy a two-button mouse; the point is that I shouldn't have to. Having spent $1400 on a new Mac, I didn't think I would have to buy *even more* more stuff to give it the functionality that my $600 windows system (the one the Mac was bought to replace) had in the first place. I feel this is a reasonable expectation, and it's one that the iMac didn't meet.
After booting up Panther for the first time, I quickly saw just how great of an Operating System it was - and that is a belief that is still with me today. It's beautiful and very enjoyable to use, but more on that later. The software side was also swamped by problems; mostly deficiencies in the amount of available (and pre-installed) software, and the quality of that software.
The first thing I realized is what wasn't included, but should have been: a good word processor, and a good CD burning tool. I feel that both are essential, and Panther's built-in tools here were simply not good enough. The built-in word processor is called AppleWorks, and it feels distinctly similar to a version of the same software that I used 8 years ago. Extremely basic features such as on-the-fly spell checking are missing, and any functionality above basic text editing, such as the creation of presentations, is confusing and difficult to use. Apple clearly has the means to improve this program, yet it hasn't seriously touched it in years, and that confuses me. I needed something more than this, so I would have to pay $360 for Microsoft Office X (or $200 to get Word X by itself).
A good CD burning program is also needed. Panther itself provides basic functionality for burning data CDs, and most media players (including iTunes) will happily burn Audio CDs for you; that only leaves the burning of ISO images to disk, and the mounting of ISO images as virtual drives. Jaguar had a hidden utility called Disk Copy that would do this, but in Panther, this program is oddly missing. The replacement, called Disk Utility, doesn't contain all of these features. If I want a good CD burner, I will have to pay $85 for Roxio Toast 6 Titanium.
Next up is the web browser. Because IE is a joke on both Mac and Windows, let's talk about Apple's own offering, Safari. On Windows, I was an Opera user; this amazing browser gave me many unique features that I simply couldn't live without; these included an extremely customizable interface, completely configurable keyboard shortcuts, and mouse gestures (that's the biggie!). Safari, on the other hand, lacks all of this. Neither its interface nor its commands can be customized to suit my tastes, it lacks flexible interface tools, and there are no mouse gestures. Someone coming over from IE would probably see Safari as a big gain; for an Opera user like myself, it's a huge step backwards. At this point, the observant reader would point out that there is an Opera 6 available for Mac. However, this program is also very much out of date, and doesn't have most of the advanced features of Opera 7 for Windows.
Speaking of the web, I consider Proxomitron, my ad blocker, to be a key part of my web browsing experience. When using the JD5000 custom filter set, it will filter banner ads, flash ads, text ads and other annoyances so effectively that I'll be able to surf for months without encountering a single one. When I hopped in front of my new iMac, this is one of the first things I had to get; I'd been so spoiled by the ad-less surfing experience that I couldn't enjoy the web as much without it. As I learned, the closest thing available for OS X is an ad blocker called Privoxy. The concept is essentially the same as with Proxomitron, but the filters it uses turned out to be greatly inferior. They only blocked the most common ad servers, and I would still encounter a variety of banner ads almost every day. Coming from the Proxomitron, this was simply unacceptable.
It was probably at this time that I felt like chatting with my friends, and realized that no IRC client was included. No problem, there should be plenty of good, free IRC clients for the Mac.. right? The first client I discovered was Conversation, which was free, but far too primitive for my tastes. As far as I could tell, it had few advanced features and no scripting support - a far cry from the fully scriptable mIRC that I'd been using on Windows. My search continued, leading me to the somewhat better Snak. This client was 30-day shareware, with a $20 registration fee (argh, even more money needed..). At least this one looked like an IRC client should, and contained basic scripting - though this was still nothing compared to what mIRC offers. X-Chat Aqua, a OS X clone of the popular Linux IRC client, is also available. This one appears to be highly scriptable, and is a good choice, though it's interface isn't quite up to what mIRC can offer. Open Source to the rescue, I suppose.
I enjoy coding in PHP and Perl as well as writing web pages, so the need for a good programmers' text editor is obvious. In Windows, UltraEdit gives me the features and flexibility I need; everything I would expect for speeding up scripting tasks is present in this program. It's important to mention that Panther includes the new XCode; although I'm sure that it's handy for Java and C developers, it just wasn't aimed at the scripting languages I will be using, or at scripting in general for that matter. BBEdit is said to be the best programmers' text editor for the Mac, but it turned out to be a far cry from what I was used to. It lacks many of the more advanced features that make UltraEdit so useful, and the way it puts each opened file in a separate window makes it difficult to quickly switch between multiple files. Also, the lack of standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing was quite annoying. In Windows, I can use these to quickly jump around words, paragraphs, etc. to save time, but with BBEdit I was forever reaching for the mouse. Also, with 10-or-so individual scripts open in their own separate windows, it becomes extremely difficult to quickly switch to a particular script, whereas UltraEdit's tab bar makes the same task very easy. Overall, all of these deficiencies contribute to a slower and less enjoyable scripting experience.
jEdit was another noteworthy programmers' editor for Linux and OS X; although it addresses most (but not all) of my complaints regarding BBEdit, it is written in Java. On my 1 gHz iMac, this made it much too slow to be used for regular scripting tasks; the load time was unacceptable, and there was a noticeable delay while typing.
To wrap up my list of gripes about software, I will mention iTunes. Being a happy iPod owner, using a music manager that was designed with the iPod in mind was very nice; however, the program's other deficiencies were too great. I was coming from the extremely flexible Media Center 9 of the Windows world, and had grown used to its many unique features. Media Center 9 turned out to be far more flexible than iTunes in how it organizes music, how files are named, what formats are supported, what portable players are supported, etc, etc, etc. In switching to iTunes, I had to give up these countless features and get nothing new in return. Once again, I was quite disappointed.
Despite the numerous problems I encountered, my experience with OS X was not all bad; far from it, in fact. For starters, the computer itself was quite beautiful and, as it turned out, surprisingly quiet. The adjustable LCD was very convenient, and the keyboard was a joy to type on. The system appeared to contain a single fan, which only ran some of the time. When it was on, it sounded a lot like a laptop fan would; it was much quieter than most PC fans. When the fan was off, the system was completely and totally quiet.
OS X itself was no-doubt the neatest Operating System I'd ever seen. The Aqua interface is truly beautiful, as is the new Expose feature. The new Finder was also a joy to work with; files and folders can be arranged in three convenient ways, and the find-as-you-type search bar will search your filesystem with amazing speed. The included Personal Information Manager software (iCal and the Address Book) is very flexible and incredibly easy to use; the way it integrates with other applications (like Mail.app) is very handy.
Some of the included software was indeed better than anything found on Windows. The way iChat displays conversations with photographs and speech bubbles is quite amazing, as is the speed with which Preview displays PDF files.
Mail.app is probably the most inspired application of the bunch. In the day when all Windows email clients are basically copying each other, this one was a joy to have. Its powerful but easy-to-configure sorting rules were very nice, and the built-in spam filter never made a single mistake in 4 weeks, despite the fact that I get over 100 spams per day. Mail.app's integration with the system-wide Address Book is also noteworthy, as is the built-in encryption/signing of emails. Overall, this is much better than any email client that I have dealt with in Windows.
Is it possible that I am simply not in Apple's target market? I suppose so - for instance, built-in applications like iMovie, iPhoto, and GarageBand had absolutely no appeal to me. In any case, the numerous hardware and software problems and annoyances made the system too much of a pain to use, and I ended up returning it. Despite it's many good points, the disappointments were simply too much for the large price I paid.
Will I ever try a Mac again? Perhaps, but not anytime soon.