Microsoft has some catching up to do... BIG time.
Written: Aug 22 '05 (Updated Aug 24 '05)
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Pros: It's not windows, it's BEAUTIFUL, and holy intuitive interface, Batman!
Cons: It's not windows, so less programs. By, like, a thousandfold. Takes a bit of re-learning.
The Bottom Line: Fantastic. Amazing. SWITCH NOW. The only thing I fear... is when Macs switch to Intel architecture. Until then though, wow. Try a Mac today.
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| groxx's Full Review: Apple Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Full Version (M9639Z/A) |
I just got this OS on a laptop, which I got for college. This is also my first time using a Mac (so, this is my "Mac experience", not just 10.4). And, above all, I'm IMPRESSED.
It took a bit of work to learn, but I'm pretty geek-literate, and I learn fast. The biggest thing to learn is just how the whole OS organizes, and different filenames. Beyond that, you can find just about anything if you poke around a bit, it's easy to find ANYTHING. The LONGEST thing to learn was getting used to a one-button mouse, but after a week of occasional use, I'm comfortable with it.
And now on to functions, included stuff, and wotwot.
First, I'm in love with the Dashboard. One button (F12), and whatever you use commonly can be displayed. I can FINALLY check multiple gmail accounts without having to use different programs on Windows, and it does it flawlessly, and quickly. I've got weather, a wifi scanner, and system stats up currently, among a few 3rd party ones. Awesome beyond belief, infinitely useful, I hope they keep this forever. I'm hooked, and I expect Microsoft to blatantly rip it off pretty soon, though it'll undoubtably be a poor imitation.
Expose is fantastic, though I wish there was a way of totally turning off the animations. They're lightning-fast and don't take much computing power, but still... I guess I'm a hardcore computer-minimalist. My system tray in my PC has only 3 items... one is AVG, the other two are just controls. This is after putting well over 100 gigs of media, games, and programs of all kinds.
But, this is about the Mac, so continuing...
I use F9 very often. In part because I've got a max resolution of 1024x768, in part because I CAN. No need to minimize windows here, just hit F9 and there it is. Got a dozen windows? No problem, hold the mouse over the mini-window and it'll show the title of it so you can find them easier. It SCREAMS of flawless design.
F10, which spreads out all the windows of a single program, I don't use much. I can see the use... but I don't use it. A perfect addition though, one that some people would miss if it wasn't included.
F11 shoves everything off the screen, giving you access to the desktop. Wow, like "hide all windows", right? Press it again, and they come BACK in the same places. Windows ain't got that. I've used it a few times, and I've been thankful I could then.
The Dock, combined with Spotlight, make a pretty good replacement for the start bar. But, I still miss the speed of a well organized start bar... which I have. The advantage is that you can find ANYTHING really quickly without even trying... the disadvantage is that you've got very limited space in the Dock, and searches *gasp* take time. Less than a second (which is VERY impressive), but...
Again though, the Dock is very intuitively built in, with almost anything you'd want to do to it easily obvious. I can't tell the difference between the two zooming methods (scale/genie)... but I turned them off after a while. Watching my CPU spike to 50% doesn't make me happy. Speaking of which, I LOVE the floating-CPU-usage window with the Activity Monitor.
Safari is very similar to Firefox... though I've had a few problems with it. It has troubles with some websites (for example, ones with embedded files or... odder code), but overall is very good. One thing I LOVE is that it's borderless... unless there are scroll bars, the page sits there on your screen without anything on the edges. Beautiful. No idiotically-useless grey outline. I know where my window is, thank you very much, I don't need you to SHOW me where it extends to. It's crashed a grand total of 8 times so far... in about a month (update: it's now up to 10 in one month, and it's starting to annoy me. This is like having Windows ME all over again...). Not bad, but not good either. I'll keep using it for a while, but I'm going back to Firefox until I see some advantage. Of which I currently see none.
The Mail app... I really don't use. Why bother, when you have a Gmail checker in the Dashboard? It checks faster, and I'm online enough (and don't get tons of emails) that it's not even a WHIM to have them stored on the computer. But, I've always done this. I haven't even set it up... so, in regards to the review, N/A. WEBMAIL FOREVER!!!
iChat has given me a few problems. It works flawlessly with AIM, unlike many 3rd party chatting programs... but it's crashed on me, and when transferring an image it doesn't tell you when it's done. The way of displaying the chats is... glitzy, I guess. It's fancy, but overly so, and it detracts from its usability. I'd recommend going with Fire: http://fire.sourceforge.net/ It's got a few better options in my opinion. iChat is heavily integrated into OSX, but... eh, I can handle the few times I need it by myself just fine. An overall good program, and I've heard good things about it, but I just plain don't like it.
iPhoto = teh shiz. It recognizes cameras quick, transfers with a single click, and has nice organization features. It seems to be lacking in some option areas... but overall very good for coming with the OS. It's the only photo-browsing app I use. Editing... well, stick to something else. It has the basics, but nothing more.
iTunes... well, it's almost great... but annoying at times. I've got an iPod, so of course I use it... but some of the little things annoy the heck out of me. Such as requiring auto-syncing to download your ratings... organization also leaves something to be desired (though I'm not sure what quite yet), though almost anything can be accomplished with the ID3 tags, and it has a pretty good way of modifying those. The equalizer is... ho-hum. And, worst of all, you CAN'T send your equalizer settings to the iPod (I'm REALLY disappointed by this... I don't like ANY of the iPod's equalizer settings, but I like a small bass boost).
The BIGGEST disappointment is UTTER lack of support for Ogg Vorbis. MOST OF MY MUSIC IS OGG VORBIS. I love it, it's SO much better than MP3...
Ripping so far has been... well, a nightmare. It's easy, but... read on. It works for MP3 perfectly, though a bit slower than CDex (for Windows, my usual choice, and I still go back to it because it's better), but AIFF, AAC, and WAV ripping all have NEVER worked correctly. WAV takes... ugh, longer than the CD takes to play to rip it. Seriously. Maybe it's just me, but that IS NOT GOOD. AAC and AIFF both take even longer (the progress bar sits at 0.4x to 0.6x speed, sometimes worse... that's SLOWER than playing it, by the way), and frequently have audio glitches. It COULD just be this version, or this computer, or something, but it's ticking me off to no end. I rip everything (EVERYTHING) on my PC now (gee... like did before...), and transfer over the network. And a Mac laptop has a little gem in this area (see bottom).
The long and the short of it: it plays music, but not Ogg Vorbis. USE SOMETHING ELSE TO RIP MUSIC. Other than that, it's pretty good.
The Address book leaves a LOT to be desired. This is one big flop by my view. There is very little actual customization you can do to the "cards", aside from what's built in, and that isn't much. It backs up on the iPod, it uses the standard electronic-business-card format... but, for lack of a better word, it sucks. I don't know of a better one, but I'm sure it exists (I haven't even looked, I don't use it enough). Go, find that better one, and ditch this one.
As for iCal... my life is boring, I've got nothing to put in it, and I doubt I'd put anything in it even if I was doing something every minute of every day. I don't use calendars, and I haven't poked around this one much. From what I've seen, though, it's quite good, and it's got a nifty feature allowing you to publish your calendar, and subscribe to others. This is an EXCELLENT idea for a calendar, and very useful, props to Apple.
Slightly off the beaten path is the Terminal. Ahhh... so nice. It's the Unix terminal you always wanted. Perhaps best of all, you can copy/paste in it, unlike Window's CMD by default (which always irritated me, until I found a way around it). I've found a few fun tricks (setting the screensaver AS the background, for example. Downloading hundreds/thousands of sequential files in a row with a simple command, for another), and a few very useful ones. I'm not a Unix geek though... so I'm not sure what all I CAN do yet. But, I'm going to college for a Computer Science major, so I'm sure I'll learn there (if I don't before). I still use Window's CMD for TONS of things, because it's so much quicker. Why go through folders and tabs and windows-within-windows to do something, when you can type in a single command to do the exact same thing, if not better? (I'm particularly reminded of the ipconfig command)
The OS as a whole shouts "clean, useful, and powerful" with flair and a good set of lungs. After using it for just long enough to get used to it, Windows seems phenominally clunky and more complicated than it needs to be. Everything is so integrated, you wonder why Windows is so popular in the first place. I'm still looking around for more "advanced" tweaks and twonks, and I've found a few... but they're almost hidden from you. To me, a computer geek, that's annoying, maybe even to the point of frustration (if some options/capabilities don't exist). To most people, that's PERFECT. You actually have to TRY to screw it up to any decent degree.
Animations are EVERYWHERE. In Windows, I turn them off because they annoy the heck out of me. On this, they're so quick, clean, and unobtrusive that I actually LIKE them. I never thought I'd say something like that. My typical habit is to strip my OS down to nothingness, because otherwise it gets in my face. OSX has been mind-blowingly perfect in this respect. I'll even risk life and limb to say this: In my opinion, this OS has THE best style/function/simplicity of ANY other OS. I keep finding things I like at every turn.
Now, you must excuse me while a hoarde of angry PC users swarms my door.
And, one thing I was ECSTATIC to find out about. Ever tried to make a network by plugging two computers together with an Ethernet cable? Yeah... it doesn't work, you need a crossover cable at the very least. But... that's an extra cable to carry around! AGH!
*insert theme music* Mac to the rescue!!! If a Mac laptop is at one end (or both), it'll WORK. It'll reconfigure the network card to switch sending and receiving wires (the usual problem if you don't have a crossover cable). A couple days before I found this out, I was saying to my brother that it'd be a nice thing to have... it eliminates the need to have another type of wire that can only be used for one thing. My only question was "can the hardware actually DO it? Can ANY hardware do it?". Well, it was answered. This is a big score for Macs in my book... fixing problems before you have them. And it keeps happening.
w00t
(got suggestions? things missing? SPEAK UP, I'll stick em in)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
groxx
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Location: Wisconsin, USA
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Me, geek, like to play games and fix computers. Uggah.
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