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OK, so today I took the Mac Mini for the first real test drive. I had to trade my nice big 19″ LCD to a co-worker for a 17″ model that would actually work with the stupid thing, (my standard VGA monitor wouldn’t work with my mac mini) so that’s one strike against it. (hopefully, my eyes will adjust eventually)
Thankfully, it works with the USB functionality of my KVM switch, (which suprised me) so that kept me free from the annoyance of having to use an extra keyboard and mouse. I spent a fair bit of time importing files and such, and trying to get a hang of the weird apple key combinations. The interface seemed reasonably responsive, but not as much as I would hope. (My Athlon 2400+ notebook with the same amount of RAM running XP Pro seems to perform about as well with multiple apps–and this is vs. a Core Duo 1.66 GHz) Minor annoyances included the horrible default key-repeat rate and the fact that you can’t Apple-Tab to windows that have been minimized.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about Safari, (and again, cross-browser testing was the main reason I got the Mini), so I took it for a test drive. I just couldn’t figure out how to get a new tab… it took me a lot of (some key)+t tests before I finally gave up and Googled “Safari tabbed browsing”, to find that it does exist. I poked around in the preferences, and found it disabled by default. Now that, my friend, is just plain stupid, and not as user-friendly as I expected from Mr. OSX.
Widgets–they’re completely useless to me at this point, though I suppose I might pick them up sometime. Expose–overrated. If I could Alt-Tab my way into the email I’m composing instead of having to squint at 10 open windows to find it, I would much prefer to do that. As it is, Apple-Tab is an inferior replica of Alt-Tab functionality. (And what the heck is up with Finder always hanging around there? I don’t want to see that every time I’m tabbing around!) Spotlight–now this is genuinely cool. I like it. It would not sell me on OSX though alone, and so far it’s pretty much alone.
I hate the way the Home and End keys won’t take me to the beginning or end of a line. I hate the way that an Application will remain running (and using bits of my precious RAM–even if the are small) even after I close all my windows. And installing new applications isn’t any easier than doing it on a PC.
Score:
PC: 2
Mac: 0
Home and End keys are really only there for Windows functionality and ported apps.. To go to the start or end of a line you use Apple Left or Right arrow.
As for Expose use F9 to show all windows and F10 to show only windows of current app. It’s really not that difficult.
Apple Tab was never meant to be a replica of Alt Tab. It was only designed to cycle through apps. I have heard that Apple ~ is supposed to cycle through windows but I haven’t tried it and I’m not around my Mac Mini either. Either way Expose was meant to be the way to get the windows you want. That’s the difference between Macs and Windows. On Mac you tend to have numerous apps and windows open whereas on Windows you only have a few. If you only have a few then Alt Tab works well but if you have numerous ones open the it becomes counter productive.
I have to agree with Safari tabs being off by default being a pain.
I can’t understand what you’re on about with Application installs. Most is simply copying the application to whereever, although there are those that require an installer because they may copy files to places in the system. Sadly there is no uninstaller but most apps can just be moved to the Trashcan and emptied.
All in all you have to drop most of what you’ve learned from Windows when using the Mac and once you learn it you will understand why Apple did things the way they did.
I find it the other way, I keep trying to get Windows to do things Macs do but they can’t
Thanks for the input. Everyone always tells me that with Macs you tend to have numerous apps and windows open, and with Windows not so many, but I find that to be false. Even with only 512MB of ram on my old PC, I used to run 4-5 apps at a time, and if you’ve got more than that, you’re probably not using them.
It’s not too tough to get used to quick alt-tabbing to go directly to the window you want, and you can do it quickly without taking your fingers off the keyboard.
I’m committed to learning to use this Mac for stubbornness’ sake if for nothing else, and you may see the Mac review gradually come around, but it definitely hasn’t been the Nirvana that all those snobby Mac ads have painted it to be.