Macintosh

When I first got the mac, I had loaded a lot of things on there and when it started to go wrong, I just assumed that I had some crap that was causing the problem, so I wiped the machine but choose to retain the user settings. Upon reboot I had everything more or less as I left it. After another month or so when the machine was getting real bad, i choose once again to wipe it but this time format the HD and start from scratch – this was we could not blame the programs or add-ins but we could point the finger at the OS.

One of the problems that was common was randomly on the Dock when you opened a folder which had Fan View it is supposted to spring open as so:

Now this could work for weeks on end but then one day it would go – the symptoms were the fan View would be corrupted and the Dock would be gone with just the Icons Floating on nothing.

I had spoken and posted about this to various mac users and they somehow never had this problem. As I suggested I did a complete wipe and only installed the programs I needed and made sure any hacks installed were limited to just what was required to make movies work etc. One thing I have always blamed – was iChat, how this could corrupt the Dock is anybody guess but it seemed to me that this always seemed to be the case. I am now running the latest 10.5.3 Beta to see if this fixes the problem – it is defiantly the OS that’s at fault no matter what the MacHeads say.

OS X Leopard Stacks View
Originally uploaded by antwanp

As a Avid PC User for most of my life, Apple seemed to me to be nothing special – after all, what can you do on an Apple that you cannot do on a PC? To answer this question is nothing but once you use an Apple on a daily Basis – you start to see the little things that make life easier.

Space’s for example allow Multi Screen and more productivity – Dual Screen never really worked for me so switching 4 x 24″ Screen (1920×1200) is really a godsend and less desktop space required for monitors.

Active Spell checker across any application is something that should be included on all Operating Systems not just Firefox on the PC. Simple Install of Applications by way of dragging and dropping – who needs the registry anyhow?

Widgets I have seen many Times, Vista chooses to have a Sidebar which is good as they are visible all the time but this takes up space on your desktop while Apple uses a button to show the widgets, after all yo do not wish to look at them all the time – they are just for Info.

A key to show all the apps running or even move them all out of the way or what about select some text and it speaks it – now thats handy for everybody and not just the Visually impaired. There is many more to name but all I can say is if you use a mac on a daily basis, it just works and well worth the buy.

Dashboard
Originally uploaded by Mauldor

A feature which I have not seen done properly on a PC is Dashboard, this allows you to press a Key (built into the Apple keyboard) and it makes the background transparent – showing your Widgets.

Why is this a good thing? You can see at a glance the Date / Time which can also include any other clocks such as timezone for another country. The uStream Widget allows me to quickly check which ones are live and the Map of the UK there is a Web clip.

What is a Webclip? in Safari you can clip any part of the web page which is then shown as a widget on the Dash Board, in this case a radar of the UK which is always updated when you go into the Dashboard.

Spaces
Originally uploaded by Mauldor

One of the features of OS X 10.5.x is a thing called Spaces, this allows one press of a Button (in my case F13) to display all the spaces – I have chosen 4 as you can see. This is Live display as well – EyeTV is running as well as my VNC to another PC etc. The normal way of Switching though is CTRL + Arrow Keys, with this you can quickly get around the various programs via the different Screens. I have set up Safari to always open up on Screen 1, iTunes to open on 3 and Mail to open up on 2 – what is good about this – anything spawned off them programs (such as Chat clients message box) stays in the screen you assigned.

Picture 1
Originally uploaded by Mauldor

In this screenshot we see that I have open Earl n ustream, Colloquy to chat away with a new skin (which looks very pleasing to the eye i think) and a picture I was working on as a background for my own stream.

I will explore all the reasons why a sample company will not switch to Apple by given you the low down on a few factors, which are open to discussion. Lets

Hardware
First Examine the Hardware side of life – a typical company buys in many computers and in today more mobile world, this is normally Laptops. Compaq produce the 6715B laptop, this comes in at £531 Inc Vat – remembering companies do not pay VAT so this brings it down to £451 per Laptop but what do you get for your Money?

Athlon Turion ML60 Dual Core – running at 2Ghz.
2 Gig DDR-2 Ram
160GIG SATA 2.5″ Drive
DVD+/- Writer
Ati 1270 Graphics Card.
15.4″ TFT running at 1680×1050
Windows XP Pro SP2 including DVD writing programs.

Now to compare this to the Apple Hardware, the mac book pro, this comes with Either a 15″ or 17″ Screen, the difference is 1400×900 for 15″ or 1680×1050 for 17″ Screen, as we are trying to compare like for like (to a degree). We are either looking at £1299 or £1799 – quite steep you would agree. Exclude the VAT off these and we get £1105 or £1531. A quick look at those prices and this tells you that you can buy roughly 3 Compaq Laptops for one Apple Laptop. This builds up to quite a saving if your buying in 5 every other week.

Servers
On price alone, the Dell 2950 Series (which uses Quad core – same as Apple) is half the price of the same XServe and as we as a company run Debian, we do not have to worry about the price per seat and all that. Once again then we can see that you can buy twice the hardware from a PC Vendor vs. the Apple solution. I know they are comparing it to Windows Server with its money per seat and all that but the world does not start and end with Microsoft all the time.

Software
If we brush aside the Email / Web apps as these can be done on just about any OS out there, you got to remember that companies have applications such as AutoCad and many other in-house / speciality software which while it can run on a Virtual Machine or Boot Camp, you are loosing the fact you are switching back to windows.

Support
Every Man and his dog can support Windows to death, the tech support people are 10 to a Penny but Apple support is a lot less on the ground. While they might not need to support it as much. Training would need to be given to the end user on working the Mac as well no matter how easy it is.

What Apple are Aiming at
They are happy to sell to the Video / DTP / Graphics Market and home users – there mark-up is so high that they make enough money per machine to stay in business. They have no-one to compete against them (such as Dell vs. Compaq) and steadily grow as people buy them. If they Lowered the price to reflect the real world prices of hardware and offered a competitive upgrade option along with real Dual running OS/X + Windows (the ability to switch at will), then they might break into the Business side of life, sell lots and start gaining market share a lot faster.

the Imac Arrived with 10.4.13 (or whatever the last 10.4 version was), came with DVD to convert it to Leopard 10.5.0 – which got updated to 10.5.1. Many Application got installed, removed and of course we tried the various Beta’s of 10.5.2 along the way. The most Sane of us would suggest that I should wipe and start from Scratch but I am against this process for now.

I am suggesting that the problem Application is in fact iChat – the person at the other end looses connection and it goes downhill from there. Symptoms of when it is going wrong are Spaces taking ages to start, Spring loaded folders loose all contents and Apps takes ages to run, esp VMWare etc.

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.