OS X

Having been a PC user for many years (way too many my dad had a 286 based machine!), I finally succumbed to try out a mac.

After turning on - about 30 seconds in I’m logged in and connecting to my wireless network. Another 20 seconds and I’m connected and online.

From a cold start to up and running in less than a minute - absolutely amazed. Normally my laptop or desktop PC could take at least 3 minutes with lots of optimising. Even a fast new machine takes about 2 minutes.

Now for ease of use. Getting used to the way OSX (the Mac’s Operating system) took a couple of minutes of clicking and poking around. I brought copy of a Leopard Users Guide as well and after reading that for a couple of hours everything else made sense. Mail - 10 minutes and it was done. No need for a Virus checker, disk optimiser, page defragmenter or anything else for that matter to optimise the thing!

The most useful thing I’ve found is pressing Cmd-Spacebar to bring up spotlight. Spotlight is  like the search box at the bottom of vista but way better. You type in what you’re looking for as keywords and spotlight lists the obvious candidates (both filename and inside the files too)

Want to run a specific program without finding it in a menu, in a disk location or finding its icon on the desktop?… type the first few letters of the program into spotlight and there it is - hit Enter and it runs the application.

Want to find a particular web page you’ve visited or document you editied - spotlight; start typing and there’s a 90% chance you’ll find it, even with the most vague keywords.

The next big thing about the mac is I don’t need to reboot it to install applications. In fact it doesn’t need rebooting almost ever - no locked drivers, no blue screens. This is lovely a stable machine.

(The only unstable thing I’ve had problems with is the soundgarden audio drivers freezing up - but then I was recording skype, recording a screencast, sending my screen via myview and accessing a web based application ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!!)

Applications. So things look a little different - but nice. You get iLife included (Audio and Video Editing, Web editing and the like) but add in the iWork package for a simple price and you’ve got powerpoint beating presentations, a spreadsheet and Page layout too.

Lots of Opensource and Freeware available once you start looking.

Also there’s an in-built apache server, just a few tweaks and installs of mysql and its ready for a complete web development environment.

Install the Developer tools off the DVD provided and you’re all set for java/php/ruby/python/C/C++/Objective-C development. A few more downloads and you can add in Postgresql, Mysql, AJAX and a raft of other tools.

For Graphics GIMP works, Inkscape works, Blender3d works.. It all just gets on with it and works. Fab.

To sum up. I love my iMac because its a very stable environment, with great graphics, great sound, easy setup, minimal maintenance and highly productive machine.

The two things that might stop people switching are 1) Cost - still a bit more than the same spec PC 2) Office applications - even though Office is available it looks and acts differently to PC version in several ways.

For a developer its a dream machine. For a graphic artist or designer its a dream machine. For a musician its a dream machine! Hold on what do I do??? Developer/Graphic Arts/Musician.