Falling to the Dark Side...

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2006-03-30 11:22pm

...Yes I finally took the plunge and go myself a MacBook Pro. 2 Ghz of Core Duo, 1GB of RAM (soon to be 2GB), 100GB hard disc, x1600 Radeon 256MB, and all the fixings. God knows what I was thinking at the time, but practically overnight I’ve gone from a militant Windows user to an OSX enthusiast. Mad props to Durandal for getting me to make the switch; I’m not sure I should say this out loud but “YOU WERE RIGHT”. There, now that Chicago is in ruins thanks to Durandal’s expanding ego, we can move on to WHY I made the switch.

But perhaps some history is in order...

The last Mac I used was my Color Classic I had in the early 90s. I ditched it for a DOS/Win 3.1 486 after a while so that I could play games like X-Com (which I was absolutely hooked on) as well as moving away from a computer that I felt babied me too much. I wanted something with a challenge and having to edit my config.sys file and run memmaker just to play a game was just what I was looking for. The fact that I liked to rip the guts out of my machines on a regular basis didn’t hurt either.
I hated Windows 95 from the get go and I always understood Windows’ inherent deficiencies and even considered moving to a Mac once during the Windows 98 heyday. But soon the long awaited NT5 arrived (with a friendly renaming to Windows 2000) and suddenly Windows was something tolerable again. Windows XP only made this more and more true.

But I was still curious about Macs and after a few false starts (including almost buying a G5 tower a year ago, I finally took the plunge just yesterday by buying myself a shiny new MacBook Pro. I figured it would make a good machine for email and web surfing, plus I might even get into doing some of my graphics editing and website chores on it. Oh how naive I was...

I’ve had roughly 28 hours with my MacBook as of right now, and during that time I’ve used it for play, work and even a few serious projects, as well as gotten comfortable with the UI and all of its nuances. I’m here for the purpose of informing all those who are interested in the ups and downs of switching from the perspective of a diehard Windows user.
First the MacBook pro itself:

Pros

Minimalism: From the minute you open the remarkably small box, you know that Apple has given you only what you need. This might seem like a con at first, but anyone who has opened a PC from Dell, HP or any other big OEM is probably sick to death of all of the unnecessary crap in the box. It was a welcome change to receive merely the MacBook, power cable, a small box of CDs (with nary an AOL disc to be found!) tightly bundled with the manual, and a small lycra IR remote.
This design philosophy is also present in the software; imagine what a joy it was knowing that I wouldn’t need to reformat and reinstall my OS to get rid of needless crap! All the software that Apple includes is either genuinely useful, or is a trial version of useful software.

Sleekness: It goes without saying that this is one slick machine. The understated grey-Titanium, the smooth finish, the backlit keys, slot loaded DVD...I could go on forever. It’s a sweet machine to look at as well as to get a hold of.

And what a trackpad! It’s freaking huge!

Little Innovations: By this I’m referring to the distinctly Apple touches which range from neato to “Why the hell didn’t someone think of this sooner?”. The magnetic power cable which keeps the charge cable in tight, but will pull without pulling the laptop is a fine addition, as is the mim-remote, the built in iSight camera (high quality, unlike most laptop webcams), the unique locking mechanism, etc.

Cons

High-pitched Whine: For some reason, my MacBook has a soft, high pitched whine when PhotoBooth isn’t running. God knows why this is, but its a known issue. I’m a little pissed though that Apple hasn’t released a statement or an intention to fix it; I just paid $2500 for a laptop, I don’t need to be a hardware beta tester.

Some Quality Issues: This is related to the first con. Although this laptop has a high quality feel in some places, in others it feels almost cheap. I like the bleeding edge design feel, but I want robustness in a laptop, not just pretty. Only time will tell if I am worrying for nothing or not.

Now, onto the real meat of this thread, my feelings about OSX, which is really the core of the Mac experience. Yes, Apple makes very pretty machines, but that’s not why I bought it and it’s not a reason anyone else should either. If that’s what a Windows user wants, Sony has done very well selling overpriced PCs to people who like their notebook to match the furniture for years. OSX is what this is all about, and I’m here to tell you that if this is what being a Mac user is about, Mac people might actually be onto something.

Although the quality of the hardware is spotty in a few places, the quality of the software isn’t in the slightest. All of the bundled Apple software including Safari RSS, Mail, iChat, iTunes, Address Book, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, Garage Band, iWeb, iCal, Photobooth, Pages and Keynote are uniformly excellent. Not a single app feels cheap or half-baked, a remarkable thing considering that most of it was free. Even if Apple stops selling PC’s, they could make a killing just selling this software.
What’s really amazing though is how well it all works together. Everyone knows Macs are easy, but they are also productive as hell. For example, on a Windows machine, if I wanted to edit a picture from the net, I would have to save it to the desktop, and then open it with my image editing program. In OSX, I simply drag files from one program to another, it doesn’t matter what they are. This is especially handy when you are using something like iMovie and you want to combine text, images, video and audio.

I’ve always liked OSX’s Dock better than Windows XP’s Start Menu, but that’s not where the fun ends in 10.4. OSX has the charming ability to treat everything as a 3D surface, which means that you can do some amazing things like Expose, the Dashboard and more. It’s hard to describe how amazing these two things are without someone looking at them with an experienced Mac user to guide them through it, but trust me when I say that OSX’s UI blows GDI+ out of the water. Really, Windows XP looks like it’s from the stone age by comparison.

That’s not all though, thanks to the fact that all the surfaces are 3D accelerated, you can TRULY multitask because not just the foreground app is being used. You can run video and many other things in background apps and they keep chugging along with nary a hitch in performance. I can’t explain how cool this is, I’m so used to maximizing my windows that it never occurred to me that I might actually have multiple windows layered on top of one another while remaining visible.
Obviously I haven’t completely gotten the hang of the UI in all its glory yet. I’m a quick learner, but I’ve still got a ways to go. That said, I’m think I’ve got a good handle on the good and bad of this system.

Pros

UI: The UI under Tiger is absolutely fantastic. That’s all I can say without actually showing someone what I mean. It looks simple at first, but there is some wicked functionality buried beneath the deceptively simply looking desktop.

Rosetta: Not all apps have been recompiled into “Universal” binaries for the Intel Mac platform (although almost all of the Apple ones already are), so an emulator is necessary to run PPC native code. Normally this is a disgustingly slow procedure, but Apple’s Rosetta is lickedy split as far as emulators go, and it’s totally seamless to boot.

Dashboard and Expose: Revolutionary and fantastic. Not much else to say.

Cons

Cost: No, it’s not what people think, I’m not coming down on the cost of the machine itself, I think that it was well worth the $2500 I paid for it. No it’s the extras that I take exception to. For example, my company just bought Final Cut Studio to use on a G5 workstation in the office, so I decided to load it up on my laptop and give it a spin. Low and behold not only does Rosetta not support pro apps (not really surprising given their massive system requirements) but Apple wants me to spend $50 for a patch that contains native Intel binaries. I just spent $1300 on a software package two days ago and they want $50 for a “crossgrade”? Can we say bullshit?

It’s not just that either, the Apple development community seems designed to suck your wallet dry. There just isn’t as much freeware (although the stuff that there is has been quite nice) and Apple is stingy with the free upgrades. I don’t mind paying for new functionality, but I hate the idea of paying for a recompile or bug fix.

Poor Office Support: This certainly isn’t Apple’s fault, but it is a reality nonetheless--Office 2004 for Mac sucks. It is slow (even on the native G5s), it is badly coded, and it’s a huge weakness for the platform. Yes, I like Pages and Keynote, but they can’t replace Office, especially in the case of Outlook and Entourage is a poor substitute.

Performance: Performance under OSX is pretty damn good for most things, but there are some strange performance hiccups. I’m hoping that another GB of Ram will smooth these out a bit, but with a top end machine I don’t expect UI stutters (although I admit, these are few and minor in occurrence). Really this is more of a very minor annoyance than anything else.

To wrap this up before it approaches the length of War and Peace, yes I do love my new MacBook Pro and I especially love OSX 10.4. Is it perfect? No, it has some disadvantages. Will I continue to use it? You bet your ass. OSX’s quirks are easy to overcome considering its strengths. It may not be able to replace Windows completely (I’ll miss Outlook...I really will) but only because of certain problems with application support, not because of the OS itself.

Sure I missed a lot in this review. I’d love to tell you about how much I liked Front Row, Apple’s charming alternative to Windows Media Center, or about how fast iMovie HD makes making short films, or about how spyware is a thing of the past, but I think I’ll save that for another time. Suffice to say that I am now a Mac user primarily and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Sure I’ll still load up XP on my desktop for some work things involving heavy Office use and also to game. But I’d say 98% of what I do I can do on a Mac and I love it. Now if only Microsoft would release a truly great Office version for OSX I would be set for life (although I’m not holding my breath on that one) but for now I am managing to deal.

To Windows users out there who haven’t seriously tried OSX, I say to you to keep an open mind about it. A few hours of working with OSX on serious work and you’ll realize what a great workflow it enables for serious power users. Sure it’s a lot “safer” than Windows in that it doesn’t make you work very hard to get a good user experience out of it, but at the same time OSX rewards those who know how to handle it and make the computing experience itself that much better.

Oh, and Praxis I still think you are a stupid wanking fanboy. Thank God I didn’t change my mind about THAT.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-03-31 01:16am

Oh, and Praxis I still think you are a stupid wanking fanboy. Thank God I didn’t change my mind about THAT.

Hey, I've improved over the years, seriously, when is the last time you heard me go on a "Macs rulez!" rant? I've actually listened to your (non-constructive) criticisms about me and tried to improve. It's been many months at least...come on, give a guy a break.

Anyway, glad you tried out Macs. I'd recommend you dual boot Windows on it just to see how it performs in comparison, except that I've been told by some that Windows doesn't utilize all the fans properly so be careful about heat levels if you do.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-03-31 01:24am

Praxis wrote:
Oh, and Praxis I still think you are a stupid wanking fanboy. Thank God I didn’t change my mind about THAT.
Hey, I've improved over the years, seriously, when is the last time you heard me go on a "Macs rulez!" rant? I've actually listened to your (non-constructive) criticisms about me and tried to improve. It's been many months at least...come on, give a guy a break.

Yeah, now you're just a stupid wanking Nintendo fanboy.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-03-31 01:32am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:
Praxis wrote:
Oh, and Praxis I still think you are a stupid wanking fanboy. Thank God I didn’t change my mind about THAT.
Hey, I've improved over the years, seriously, when is the last time you heard me go on a "Macs rulez!" rant? I've actually listened to your (non-constructive) criticisms about me and tried to improve. It's been many months at least...come on, give a guy a break.
Yeah, now you're just a stupid wanking Nintendo fanboy.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-03-31 01:39am

Uh...

Actully, to be honest, I was thinking of a similer switch, but later on, when I have more cash. One thing that interests me is how hard was it to transfare files over. Also, how much oppertunity for tweaking.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-03-31 02:05am

Ace Pace wrote:Uh...

Actully, to be honest, I was thinking of a similer switch, but later on, when I have more cash. One thing that interests me is how hard was it to transfare files over. Also, how much oppertunity for tweaking.

MSN quote:

[12:42:37 PM] Ace Pace-Ya!: and I want a Mac

And transferring files is easy, it has Samba.

Oh, Kernel?

Performance under OSX is pretty damn good for most things, but there are some strange performance hiccups. I’m hoping that another GB of Ram will smooth these out a bit, but with a top end machine I don’t expect UI stutters (although I admit, these are few and minor in occurrence).

As much as I like OS X, I will be the first to decry the thing as a RAM hog. It takes about twice as much RAM as Windows XP does for decent performance.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-31 02:12am

How come older iBooks with 512Mb run alright? Some things (like Safari) seem to bloat a lot, but for a home user I haven't seen any performance problems.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-03-31 02:14am

Stark wrote:How come older iBooks with 512Mb run alright? Some things (like Safari) seem to bloat a lot, but for a home user I haven't seen any performance problems.

512 MB is usually considered the good performance level, but even that stutters if you get enough apps running.

My mother's PowerBook has 768 MB of RAM, runs pretty well 90% of the time- unfortunately, she has a tendency to leave apps running in the background and it sometimes stutters on occasion when she has iPhoto, Safari, FireFox, Word, Photoshop, Preview, and a few other programs she clicked on by accident running at the same time

I am so grateful she is not running Windows. She even downloads random .exe files on the Mac. I'm sure the thing would be virus laden by now.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-03-31 02:44am

Rosetta sucks RAM like crazy. On a PowerPC Mac, 512 MB is just fine for everyday stuff. But Kernel is talking about Final Cut Express, Photoshop, etc ... A lot of those heavy productivity apps haven't been made universal yet, so they'll have to run under Rosetta, which makes heavy use of instruction caching for its dynamic translation. Smaller apps run very well under Rosetta, but the Big Boys really need to make their stuff universal. (It helps when you have hardware native implementations of the Cocoa APIs around. Just ask the WINE folks.)

As for OS X vs. XP in terms of RAM usage, I'd say they're about equal. I've seen XP be just as much of a dog on a machine with 256 MB of RAM as OS X.

Ace Pace wrote:Actully, to be honest, I was thinking of a similer switch, but later on, when I have more cash. One thing that interests me is how hard was it to transfare files over. Also, how much oppertunity for tweaking.

Run both your Mac and PC over a local network, and check the "FTP Access" box in OS X. Bingo, you've got an S/FTP server you can upload files to.

As for the UI stutters, wait for Leopard, which will enable OpenGL rendering of UI elements. Right now, the CPU actually does all the layout. The GPU only gets involved with compositing. So what you see on a window is actually a texture made by the CPU. When Quartz 2D Extreme (or, if you prefer a less retarded moniker, QuartzGL) comes around, all the UI elements will be drawn and positioned using the GPU. Then everything will be composited on the GPU.

You should actually be able to turn QuartzGL on with the developer tools, but it's definitely not a finished implementation. I ran into font drawing issues with it, for example.

Ironically enough, Windows Vista will probably help OS X out a lot in terms of GPU usage. With Microsoft introducing the new specifications for GPUs in Vista, you'll start seeing GPUs that can actually do integer calculations and support a lot more technology geared toward drawing anything you want rather than just games. Apple only has to take advantage of the capabilities GPU makers will start introducing to support Vista.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2006-03-31 03:25am

Durandal wrote:Rosetta sucks RAM like crazy. On a PowerPC Mac, 512 MB is just fine for everyday stuff. But Kernel is talking about Final Cut Express, Photoshop, etc ... A lot of those heavy productivity apps haven't been made universal yet, so they'll have to run under Rosetta, which makes heavy use of instruction caching for its dynamic translation. Smaller apps run very well under Rosetta, but the Big Boys really need to make their stuff universal. (It helps when you have hardware native implementations of the Cocoa APIs around. Just ask the WINE folks.)

Actually, I've been pretty much solely using non-Rosetta apps since Final Cut Studio won't even run (none of Apple's pro apps are supported except with the Universal binaries) and I don't have Photoshop installed yet. About the only thing I've run using Rosetta is Office 2004.

Even so, according to my widget sources, a healthy 800MB+ is getting sucked up.

As for OS X vs. XP in terms of RAM usage, I'd say they're about equal. I've seen XP be just as much of a dog on a machine with 256 MB of RAM as OS X.

Sure on a 256MB machine, but Windows gives you consistently responsive performance even under heavy multitasking with 512MB of RAM; it doesn't really benefit from more except if you are doing application specific things. OSX OTOH seems to suck up memory like a sponge and it could definitely benefit from doubling my already relatively high RAM amount.