Life is grand

Mac OS X has an amazing ability to loosen the wallets of its users. In all my years of Windows computing I personally bought exactly one application; Winzip. And that purchase was more out of guilt for having used it for years and never paid. Funnily enough I switched to Mac OS X a short month after buying Winzip. Most of the other software I had installed was free or provided by a MSDN subscription.

In the few months I have had a Mac though I have bought TextMate, Omnigraffle, Photoshop, Fireworks and now Synergy.

The initial reaction to this is that Windows is better because “it has more free software for it and so you don’t need to pay” which is technically true. On another level though Mac OS X is better; The level of the computer as a productive tool and not an end in itself.

Synergy proves this out for me. It is a $5 utility app. that controls iTunes. I would never have paid for a Windows equivalent because nothing on Windows comes close to the quality of Synergy. It integrates so beautifully with the Mac OS X menu bar (and system-wide keyboard shortcuts) that after a few days of free use I realised it was worth more than $5.

Synergy feels like it is part of my daily Mac OS X experience. It is there when I need it, out of the way when I don’t and it works as if I had personally told the developer exactly what I wanted and he had gone and made it.

A lot of Mac OS X software is like this.

I can’t think of any Windows software like this. Maybe iTunes on Windows…

If I had read this post a few months ago, when I was still a Windows user, I would have scoffed at it. I would have said it was some air-headed Apple fanboy under the influence of Jobsian spells.

Now I think the reality is that Windows is the one casting spells on its users. Spells of illusion, of forgetfulness and of tolerance for poor quality. More to the point; Windows casts the spell of practicality which pervades enterprise thinking. It is the grey-suited men telling you what is good for you and you sucking it down for your rationalised life.

And before you say it; If I’m going to suck anything down I’d rather suck it down from a black pollo-neck wearing wizard who dares to dream.

Macs and Mac OS X are something you have to use to appreciate. It changes your computing experience, from the frustrating chore that is Windows where you spend more time dealing with a computer than with what you are trying to achieve. With Mac OS X I find I get more done and in a more pleasant manner. That is important, that I enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it.

I don’t expect Windows users to like hearing this or think it is even remotely true. It takes actual sit down time with a Mac and Mac OS X to have the spell lifted.

Remember, I was a Windows user for 14 years. I developed with Microsoft technologies, used Microsoft tools and thought Apple was a high-priced toy that had lost touch with reality. How things change.

Reading Joel’s long piece on the Windows Vista shutdown menu, which took 48 people a year to implement, had me thinking; the answer is pretty simple. It is three choices. Sleep, Restart and Shutdown. ala Mac OS X.

One benefit Mac users will often tout over Windows users is that of restarting after software updates. I thought his was true but frankly my Mac restarts after software updates about as much as my Windows installation did. Here you can see some basic bits getting updated and I have to restart afterwards. So don’t think there are no more restarts in OS X, there are plenty. However the restarts are a damned sight faster than Windows XP at least.

Also I thought I’d point out that all is solved by OS X, even world conflicts:

I’ve just encountered the first utterly daft Mac OS X feature. You cannot easily turn off the start-up chime/sound. In Windows it is simple to do but in OS X you have to use shell scripts, 3rd party apps or remember to mute your audio before you shut-down.

I don’t know about you but having your Mac chime in the middle of a quiet room is not pleasant.

The Mac Joy^TM continues as I spend a few hours pimping my Mac.

Spotlight is very useful but it takes one more key-stroke to launch an app than you’d want. First I tried LaunchBar which worked pretty well and then I tried Quicksilver which took it to another level. At its most basic it works like Spotlight but cuts out the extra key-press. But it does so much more. The Google plugin lets you search Google through Quicksilver, super fast. The clipboard plugin lets you record and manipulate the clipboard, through Quicksilver. You can quicksilver your entire iTunes database, copy files, append text to files and, well, pretty much anything all through the keyboard. It is the type of app. you have to try to really grok and then you’ll see how fast and efficient it makes everything you do. Quicksilver is free (albeit in beta with a future option to charge) unlike Launchbar. Spotlight is still useful for finding documents as it tends to index new files faster than Quicksilver.

Hardware wise the double-finger scrolling of the trackpad works really well. All trackpads need to do this.

Pimping further you’ll want Menufela which simply hides the main OSX menu, freeing up some space, and assigns a shortcut for showing and hiding it. Simple and handy. Then get Cleardock which removes the dock’s background making for a cleaner dock.

I am impressed with the quality of 3rd party apps out there. There are probably many other apps. I’ll be giving a try. One I did try that hasn’t survived is Growl. Good idea but it didn’t work seamlessly. Perhaps it is something to be integrated into OSX itself?

Since I do a lot of Ruby and CSS coding I need the # character a rather lot. It took me a few minutes to figure it out as it is not marked on the keyboard at all. All the chatter on the web says to use Alt+3 but that produces a £ character for me.

Shift+3 does the trick. Long live hash!

My MacBook Pro arrived a few hours ago and I have been bumbling along since. Mac OSX is a strange beast when you have spent 16 years using DOS/Windows systems. Thankfully I have a good friend on IM stepping me through bits of it. So far I have manged to freeze OSX twice (thanks to Front Row) and it has had to restart twice after downloading a bunch of updates. Strangely like Windows that. Haven’t had any virus or spyware installing itself though, refreshing after the terror that is connecting a fresh Windows XP install to the net. No maximised windows is very, very weird.

Mac OSX is super slick though. Expose has that refined edge the Windows Vista clone doesn’t. The way Front Row zooms in and out is something to behold. Super, super smooth on this hardware (2gig RAM, 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo etc. etc.) Love the little remote, hilarious controlling iTunes from across the room.

The whole DMG, installing applications thing was confusing at first but I’ve got the hang of it now. Leave my desktop alone damnit!

And the hardware. Oh man, the hardware. Even the packaging is beautiful. I don’t want to throw away the egg shell styrofoam or tuck the black box away in a cupboard next to my boring, carboard HP laptop box. The magnetic power connector is… you have to try it to believe it. Fiona let out a delighted laugh when she tried it and she isn’t even a nerd like me. Such a beautiful screen too, bright and clear, full of colour (not the glossy option). Keyboard works like a charm, typing away as if I’d been using it for years.

I did have hassles connecting to the office network over ethernet. My Windows HP laptop connects fine to it without any setup but the MacBook Pro refuses even when I enter in details manually. The IT guys say they have to allow it into the network but that seems strange to me when the HP laptop has no hassles. It is a Linux network by the way, not Windows.

Connecting to the net at home over WiFi was a doddle though.

Now onto getting Mac equivalent apps that I need, setting up Firefox with extensions, trying out TextMate and getting Ruby on Rails up and running along with Subversion and all that. Then I’ll give bootcamp and parallels a try as well as that new Windows-window-app thingy.

Should be a blast.

Oh, and Photobooth with the iSight is hilarious.

Someone needs to point out that with the switch to Intel and the ability to boot Windows, through Apple’s own BootCamp software, that there are in fact now 114007 viruses that can run on an Apple Mac.

They should qualify their advertising by saying Mac OSX, as in the OS and not just their hardware.

I got this ad in my email, sent by Apple.

(Apologies for being pedantic but if you are going to use shit advertising tactics like rubbishing other companies instead of showing off your own worth then you had better be rock solid in your message. Same with politics. Don’t go opening closets if you have skeletons in yours.)

UPDATE: I was just thinking about when the first Windows virus that looks for, and damages, OSX partitions will be released into the wild. Not unthinkable at all.

Just ordered one of these.

So all this recent switching from Mac to Linux has me wondering whether a switch from Windows to Mac is right for me. Maybe I too should jump Mac and head straight for Ubuntu from Windows. I’ve used Ubuntu a bit and was really impressed. That it is funded and started by a fellow South African just makes it better.

One point Cory makes is that you can get a small-form Lenovo ThinkPad T60p with a good deal more grunt for less than the MacBook or MacBook Pro I was thinking of getting. I love the design of the MacBook hardware itself rather than the Mac operating system but is it worth the extra pennies? The ThinkPad is a decent looking laptop too and apparently quite brilliant.

What do you reckon. Has Linux desktop’s time come in the form of Ubuntu and is a MacBook worth it?