It’s not as perilous as it sounds. There’s just some things that one needs to get used to. What I like is that while some Linux distros tries to emulate how Windows works, so that it makes it easier for potential Windows users to switch, OSX tells you to screw what you know, and do things this particular way instead. Foe example, the buttons to minimize and close a window is located on left instead of the right.
Since Apple controls both hardware and software, OSX feels much more integrated with the hardware. This also makes the OS much more stable, but I generally don’t think that OS stability is no longer an issue in this day and age. Those who argue that Windows is not stable at all should go back to Win9x days. Now, if Windows screw up, it’s most likely a hardware issue. It’s a by-product of trying to support the gazillions of possible hardware combinations available today. However, OSX will always be inherently more stable than Windows, simply because it is usually only installable on Apple-certified hardware, and also because of its Unix backend.
Performance on Snow Leopard is generally fine and becomes much more snappy after the RAM upgrade. Multitasking is not a problem, and is in fact much more pleasurable due to the gestures on the trackpad. For normal coding, office work, using iTunes and browsing the web, my MacBook is more than capable, though I did experience my first spinning wheel of death in Firefox once. However, this is easily rectified by “Force Quitting” the application.
I was quite surprised about applications installation in OSX. Having been subdued into thinking that simply copying an application over and expect it to work is heresy, I believed that only the magic touch of an installer is the one true way of making applications work. Even when I used Ubuntu, one needs to be familiar with Synaptics or Aptitude to download and “install” applications. In OSX however, installation is a dirty word. One does not need to perform any voodoo in order for applications to work. Applications come packaged in .app files and one can simply run it. And that’s it! There’s no “installation” or “registry”. Theoretically, a .app file can be run anywhere in the system, as long as you have permission to do so. However, there is a special folder in the dock called “Applications” which is linked to a physical location on the hard drive (/Applications) where you can simply copy all your apps into it. If you frequently use a particular app, just drag it onto the dock and a shortcut will immediately be made. Nifty!
The Dock is a very useful application launcher, which Windows 7 tried hard to emulate. You can launch apps in it (DUH!), set which app to run at login, is customizable, and is also where currently running apps are shown. A little “light” is shown at the bottom of app when it is run, regardless of whether an app is docked.
Enough about installation and launching apps. First time OSX users need to also know how the OS handles quitting an application. One must know that clicking on the red X on the window pane of an app does not quit the application, but merely closes an instance of it. The benefit to this is that the enxt time you launch the app, it will be much faster, since it is already in memory. The obvious disadvantage is that if you don’t have enough RAM, your machine memory may get overused and performance will take a huge hit if hard drive swapping comes into the picture. To properly quit an application, one can manually go to the “File” menu and choose quit, or by pressing Cmd-Q on the keyboard. Again, this takes some time getting used to as well.
Another major change is that in OSX, there is no such thing as “maximizing” a window. The “+” button switches between “user state” and “standard state” of a window, and an app developer usually sets “standard state” as stretching the window to fill the screen. This is of course subject to preference, as there are advantages and disadvantages to this.. Personally, I prefer a maximize button anyway. With OSX’s improved usability using the multi-touch trackpad, switching windows is just a swipe away. If one is working with big 1920×1200 monitors, one can really appreciate the Aero Snap feature in Windows 7, where dragging a window to the sides automatically maximizes to half the desktop, and you can just pull the window off where it will snap back to its original size. For OSX, you may have to pay US$7 for that.
Another thing I appreciate in OSX is how well the sleep works. Just to have a taste, I can start up a virtual machine in Parallels, and while the VM is running, close the lid to put my MacBook to sleep. When I open it, everything will be magically restored, including the VM state. A friend reported that he was playing Civ 4 when it went to sleep/hibernate as the battery was depleting. When he plugged it in and resumed, Civ 4 was at the exact state when OSX went to sleep mode. Now, that’s freaking impressive. I think this represents the height of what can be achieved when the OS is tightly coupled with the hardware. Fast boot up, fast shutdown, and amazing sleep capabilities. I will never shutdown this baby ever again.
This is just the impression I got of OSX after playing with a couple of weeks. OSX is as polished as any unix-based OS can be. I’m impressed with how user-friendly this OS is, and if it wasn’t for the folder nomenclature, you will be hard pressed to see its unix roots. OSX is a joy to use for both play and work. But then again, so is Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04.
