Mac OS X: Likes and Dislikes, From a PC User

Posted by Julio Angel Ortiz in Apple, Windows on Oct 27th, 2008 | View Comments

Hi, I’m a PC-Becoming-a-Mac. As a Windows user, I’ve found the interface for Mac OS easy to get accustomed to, and in fact, I like a few things better than on the Windows platform. But it works both ways, and as with any piece of technology, Mac OS has some idiosyncrasies that annoy me. Here’s the perspective of a Windows convert.

WHAT I LIKE

The Dock. I liked it on Windows with Rocket Dock, but it’s even better implemented (obviously) in Mac OS X due to the Taskbar not being intrusive. The Dock, particularly with the Stacks feature, is an intuitive UI marvel. It makes the Windows Taskbar feel like a Model T- sure, it’ll get you around, but never very quickly or smoothly. The Taskbar was a great design idea… in 1995. But the Dock proves its obsolescence.
Speed. Maybe it’s still relatively early days but Mac OS X runs consistently snappier than Windows. Granted, I’m not running anti-virus software or something like “Windows Defender” as I would on Vista. But even in regular operations, there isn’t a lag that would can lead to some annoying behavior (it feels like part of the time is spent getting Windows out of its own way). There isn’t any of that with Mac OS X.
Better security feature. I like the idea of Vista’s UAC. I hate (hate, hate, hate!) the implementation. Why, to copy a file, do I need to answer around three prompts? It’s like this for a number of operations. Even Microsoft has admitted they screwed up on this. Mac OS X’s solution? A password prompt when dealing with certain items (usually around system files). It’s easy and unintrusive (cue “Perfect Wife” joke… no, seriously, I don’t mean that…).
Time Machine. Wow. Time Machine is so good, it’s embarrassing that Microsoft doesn’t have an equivalent (no, Shadow Copy is not an equivalent, and neither is the Backup and Restore application). I’ve used Time Machine before on my HackBook and it’s amazing. Restore a full system in a short amount of time, with no hassle? Gee, that sounds like common sense.
Built-in text to speech. From Terminal, you can use commands to have the computer speak. It’s a fun, great feature, and I’m glad to see Apple include for accessibility by default.
Spotlight. Mac OS X’s Search feature is wicked fast and contains powerful options for searching for my data. Thus far, it feels faster than Vista’s Start / run box + Windows Search 4.0.
Application installs. Most of the time, it is a simple as dragging an icon to the Applications folder, and deleting them is as simple as deleting the icon (which is really a folder containing the program files). Where’s my Easy button?

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

Lack of Cut. Not that you can’t move files between folders, but clicking on a folder and selecting using COMMAND + X doesn’t work most of the time. From my online research, apparently Apple feels that “cutting” files is a confusing feature for users. Huh?
Pressing ENTER on a folder does not open it. Maybe this is a strange by-product of my HackBook, but highlight a folder and pressing ENTER does not open the folder. I have to double-click on the folder to do just that. Seems like an odd quirk.
No Blu-ray DVD support. Really?
This isn’t your father’s Tab. Why is it, if I am in Firefox, visiting a page that requires a sign-in and that has a checkbox to remember my login information, that I can tab through the text fields, but when I tab to highlight the checkbox, the focus in Firefox moves to the address bar? Is there some kind of hate for the web form checkbox?

As you can see, my complaints are minor. How about you? What’s been your experience in converting to Mac OS?