Switched to Mac - 4 things I miss
I am now full time on a mac. Generally I love it. It’s simply a better OS that Windows XP. I have never worked on Vista, so I can’t comment.
However, Chris Selland got me thinking about some of the things I have noticed during the switch. There are four things that bug me about my Mac.
- Google will not release Picasa for the Mac. Picasa is significantly better than iPhoto. First, the “I’m feeling lucky” button does a much better job of making pictures look good. Second, Picasa has an easy to use photo organization tool. iPhoto is random mess of “your last 25 rolls”.
- On a Mac, you can’t delete a range of cells in Excel by simply hitting the delete button. This is just plain weird. Hitting delete forces you into editing the cell you are currently in, not the whole range. I have had to add a CTRL-B hot key mapped to clear contents to replace what was a simple way of deleting. If Apple comes out with a spreadsheet that is halfway as good as Keynote or Pages, then this will no longer be an issue in my life.
- iCal gives this weird error whenever someone sends you an invite from Google Mail. There is something about not having the correct email address in the “me” entry on your address book. This bug is supposedly going to be fixed in the next version.
- I found that Mircosoft Windows Live Writer was a better blogging tool than Ecto. There are two reasons. First, Live Writer has some cool graphics features to render shadows, etc. Second, Ecto adds a bunch of span formatting that messes up my posts, while Live Writer doesn’t.
This list is not near enough to convince me to switch back. Given the choice, I am much happier with OS/X.
I am too a switcher and got my MB Pro late last year. I love it and running Vista using parallels shows me why I am glad I switched.
I miss those same things and the one I would like to add is the ease in which you can cut files and paste them instead of copying them to another drive and having to delete them after the fact. That is annoying.
-Steve
Thanks Rod - just to clarify I was just using iPhoto/Picasa as an example. Overall what I don’t like about the Mac is the lack of third-party applications - as well as hardware. (I just traded in my iPod for a Toshiba Gigabeat).
I had thought that third-party application support for the Mac was supposedly going to get better but I don’t see it happening. And obviously Mr. Jobs doesn’t want any hardware competition.
If you’re happy with Safari, iLife and an iPod, then the Mac is a fine platform, but if you want alternatives it’s frustrating. I prefer Windows as a platform because it supports a much broader ecosystem - even though I use very few Microsoft applications outside of Office.
I am one of the unfortunate many who’s preference is OSX but who must use a PC for work. As a matter of perspective I could publish volumes on what I wish I had on my PC, starting with a UNIX-like subsystem and secure shell.
Glad to hear of another happy convert though! The more people in the business world who have conversion success stories the more likely it is that we may all someday have the Mac option.
Isn’t it nice not to have any viruses?
There are a few ways to improve iPhoto. 1: scrap it. Use Picture Arena instead. (it’s made by the same developer as Remote Buddy - another must have OSX application). OR… 2: Use Keyword Manager for iPhoto (http://www.bullstorm.se)
Good luck!
Rob
Here’s another switcher. I’ve switched over nine months ago and I will never look back :-)
Regarding your questions:
1) Picasa is great, but after you start using iPhoto, you will find it definitely fantastic. It’s just a matter of practise.
2) Can’t help.
3) It shouldn’t be a bug. If you receive an invitation to a meeting and your collegue used your gmail address but in your iCal your contact details don’t contain your gmail address as your primary email address, it doesn’t work. I agree that iCal can handle this much better, anyway you have to deal with it :-)
4) Ecto is fantastic. Again, there are many ways to customize it.
I will never switch back. OSX is far better than Windows.
found this article trying to solve some things I miss about XP as I try out OS X. So far I’m not too fond of the default user-window interaction, like scroll bars, resize grabs, close (only with that tiny red button so far. I’d like to be able to double click a window titlebar to close it and have those other controls on both right and left and resize grabs on all edges.
@ Steve Fisher
“I miss those same things and the one I would like to add is the ease in which you can cut files and paste them instead of copying them to another drive and having to delete them after the fact. That is annoying.
-Steve”
This is equally easy in Windows. Just saying. Right click, drag, drop, select move from small popup.