The new Mac
by Josh Staiger
I received my PowerBook on Tuesday. It is...beautiful.
It's been nearly five years since I've used a Mac as my main computer. A lot has changes, and a lot has stayed the same - which is good on both accounts.
Unfortunately, I've been so busy that I've had very little time to play with it, but here are some of my impressions so far:
Firstly, the hardware design is very nice. I would say that from a purely utilitarian standpoint it is about on par with an IBM ThinkPad T40, but, of course much, much sexier.
Over the first few days I went through the panic of suddenly having the keys on my keyboard positioned in the wrong place, no second mouse button, my usual keyboard shortcuts no longer working (or doing funny things), having to specifically quit applications instead of just hitting the little X button. Argh. It's fairly disorienting at first, and I never thought that I would have to readjust myself back to the Mac paradigm (the top menubar with disparate windows, for instance, as opposed to the one monolithic window paradigm for Windows). However, at some point things just click...and now the machine is a pure pleasure to use.
My initial impression is that on average, Mac software is about 25% nicer than corresponding Windows software. This goes for everything from the operating system to little utilities (such as LaunchBar, which totally kicks ass). The machine just feels so much more responsive to me, and not because it's faster (in fact, I've noticed a slight lag here and there), but because the software seems to anticipate what I want to do so much better. It's beautiful to experience such good design. I really like the different perspective. It gives me ideas for things I would like to incorporate into my own work.
On a side note, I think that many lifetime Windows users are unable or unwilling to get past the momentary disorientation I felt. It is quite annoying at first, and if I didn't know any better I would conclude that Macs were terrible as well. Unfortunately they never get to appreciate the other side when things actually click.
I think I can forgive the average person for this. They just want to read their email.
However, I have much more trouble forgiving a software developer for this same fault (and sadly there are still quite a few out there who possess it). In order to do good work, I think that it is key to look at things from a different point of view. That is one of the things that I think is really cool about the Mac. It's different from the operating system, all the way up through the development APIs to the end user applications. It's like a species that got stranded on it's own island back in 1984 and since has evolved its own development culture.
In other words, it's like visiting another country. A lot of people will go to a place like Europe and come back god-blessing America all over the place. While for others...when you visit Europe, it changes you. The latter are the more interesting people to know.
Sorry, the Mac has a tendency to make me get philosophical ;)