Across from the dark side…
I switch to a mac about 6 weeks, ago. Here’s my thoughts about the pro’s and cons of my experience.
Pro’s
- Fast boot / reboot times – No more waiting 2-3 minutes to boot up!
- Better memory management – I run my firefox with 15 open tabs and zillon of applications and it handles it fine. (Memory usage for dashboard is a little scary)
- Front row – Brilliant when traveling
- iPhoto – nice integration with front row
- Keynote is awesome. Runs rings around powerpoint
- Parallels is great. Boots faster than my old laptop !
Con’s
- No being able to tab into application windows. eg If I am writing an email, if I tab away I can’t tab back to the open email.
- File copying. Copying files deletes directories then copies files rather than replacing the files. Got bitten by this big time.
- iPhoto not having real picture resizing built in
- Finder not having a thumbnail browse..
I’m really glad that I have switched. I’ll wait a bit before I install Leopard.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:50 am
Finder not having a thumbnail browse..
Leopard is your friend. I thought coverflow in Finder was a gimmick but after running with it for a few days is awesome. Better than a thumbnail you can view movies, Keynotes, PDF, etc. right from within finder. Supercool.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:03 am
I think you’ll find solutions to almost all of your cons over time, John. But here are a few solutions to your cons to fast-forward that process.
No being able to tab into application window:
– Use Apple + Tab between for switching between apps then F10 for switch between windows inside an application (like your email example)
File copying:
– You’ll get used to it 😉
iPhoto not having real picture resizing built in:
– You don’t usually use iPhoto for such tasks, but I would suggest looking at automator. Automator can add a resize image menu item when you right mouse click on an image that will allow you to resize an image from finder if you set it up correctly.
Finder not having a thumbnail browse:
– What Glen said 🙂 Coverflow and quickview rules… also on Tiger you can actually view with thumbnails anyway. See this screenshot here: http://www.habibbijan.com/images/screenshots/osx_thumbnails.jpg
November 1st, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Apple + ~ also works for switching between windows inside a single application (e.g. between emails within mail.app).
There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts which are more-or-less undocumented (as far as I can tell).
For example…
Try Option + 8 when typing text to insert a nicely formatted bullet point.
Or, Shift + F5 for an auto-complete option.
Once you start to learn a few of these you can become again the power user you used to be on Windows.
🙂
November 1st, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Thanks for the tips. Its help ease my frustration of adjusting to a mac.