When I got my Macintosh in July, I half expected that it would become my primary workstation, as I’d seen detailed by a number of (often surprised!) bloggers like Tim Bray and James Duncan Davidson. Despite my initial bad experience, once it resolved itself I was gung-ho to use OS X–I even impressed myself by fixing a problem to which even Google couldn’t find a solution.
The more I used the Mac over the next several days, though, the more I found myself wanting… something. I’m still not sure exactly what it was–I tried all of the built-in applications and liked features of them, particularly Mail’s ability to combine IMAP accounts–but I found myself using the X server and terminal window to connect to my Linux box more and more often. (It didn’t help that Mac’s X server doesn’t antialias fonts.) Finally I gave up: I reconnected the monitor to the Linux host and Switched back.
I still use the Mac from time to time when I want to check websites in Safari and IE5/Mac, but mostly it’s just a CD ripper for my iPod. It’s not even as good at that as my Linux machine: the iPod seems to choke on some iTunes-generated MP3s, even with error correction enabled and having the encoded files “optimized for Velocity Engine”, but I haven’t had a hiccup playing back the files I ripped and encoded in Linux.
One final irony–much to John’s chagrin–is that because I don’t use the Mac as my desktop, my primary means of using its UI is through a virtual display running on X under GNOME. It’s just easier that way.
Heresy, I say! Heresy!
Welcome back! 🙂
i’m with you. i hated Windows, and still hate Windows, but after buying a Powerbook a year and a half ago, the most useful thing it’s done is getting clients to hire me because they think i’m making more money than i actually am. the UI is nice, but flawed. most of the applications leave out the very preferences that i would like to tweak.
also, there’s that Alan Cooper quote, “No matter how cool you user interface, it was better if there were less of it.” the Mac interface does a lot of slick things that are good, but there is so much visual “stuff” on the screen. the thickness of the candy-colored scrollbars, etc. anti-aliased fonts look great on giant 23″ Cinema Displays, but on small screens (like that of my 12″ PowerBook), i want text to look like it does on Windows – ugly and small, so i can see more of it at once.
so basically, it’s sitting right here on my desk. it acts as a remote file dump for my digital camera when i’m out on a photo shoot, and i take it to give presentations, occassionally watch a DVD somewhere besides my desktop (i don’t own a TV, fortunately). it’s a neat little machine, but there wasn’t enough of a reason for me to stop using Windows. i mean, i’m a web developer, most of the world accesses the Internet through IE, so it makes sense to just use Windows for dev work instead of cranking up the bloated Virtual PC to test something in IE…
rant rant rant