One month In – How’s the experience
In a way I feel sorry for my other machines, they are getting used for Tagging Mp3′s, grabbing updates for the WoW Server and that about sum’s them up as the iMac is fast becoming the main machine of choice to do everything I need to do on a computer these days. I suppose this in itself is proof enough that if you Switch to OS X from Windows or Linux, it does everything you want to do as well if not better then on Windows.
My Normal path is to throw as much as possible on a machine as I try and find out what applications are good and what best to be avoided and eventually come up with a known list – normally at this point I would wipe the machine and start again, make a clean image and use Ghost to make up to date Image for easy restore should it all go wrong. I am running Mac OS X 10.5.2 Build 9C16 which was almost a CD in size itself, no major problems as of yet.
Skinning it up
Armed with Candy Bar, I can change the Icons and the Dock to suit my taste, I have chosen a Ice theme for the Dock and a Snazzy Aqua type Icons Set. I have added various items to the bar at the top such as iStats, Mail notification and iTunes info. My wallpaper is on a rotating set of various 1920×1200 I got from InterfaceLift.
I am in two minds about the Dock as an Application Launcher or to have it hidden or not – To explain, I have a MenuBar Item to quickly access al the applications and spotlight can find the application just by typing in the name. I have switched to “on display” (i.e. not hidden) and put all the application, grouped by type, I guess I will get used to one way or another and go from there.
Is the mac really that good?
If we ignore the normal rants of people saying that mac’s do not crash compared to Windows (My Windows Xp and Vista are solid as a rock), the general OS itself does a lot of small things that you soon start to get used to and are missing from Windows. The Scroll wheel in whatever window you are over at the time makes a lot of sense – in Windows you have to select the application before this happens. The Spell Checker working in ANY application is a god send to me, Space is very useful and allows for more productive time while on the computer
What drives any computer though is the applications and this is were I found the mac to be 100% amazing, Colloquy is probably the best and most versatile IRC CLient goig, it can support a wide range of Scripting (Javascript, AppleScript, F-Script) and can be customised to whatever look you feel is best and what is amazing – this is 100% free application, beating mIRC which costs money. CamTwist is a in-line camera application which beats the hell out of SuperwebCam (Free), Webcammax (Paid for product) and others on the PC.
StereoMix
If your into Video Streaming, then you may require to put out the audio from a Game, iTunes or whatever, on Windows, you Select “What you hear” or “SteroMix” and whatever is playing, will stream out – on the Mac, this was not forth coming and seemed impossible. I found an application call Sounflowerbed which allow re-routing of Audio – here is a Screenshot.
Took a Bit of understanding what to do but after reading the page, it finally became a bit clearer, you select in Sound options Sunflower (2CH) and in the application you select the Same – and now instead of your voice, it plays the current iTunes for example.
