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The Mac Switch

Whooo the switch to the Mac has been time-consuming. Nothing like re-learning decades of software and keyboard shortcuts and… everything.

Stuff I love:

Unix. Yay. No more DOS or batch files or Cygwin or whatever.
The apps are generally better. Lots of creative, well-designed software out there.
Spaces is great. Virtual desktops were always clunky in Windows, but Spaces is slick and works.
I always hated it in Windows but iTunes is excellent on OS X. I feel happier with my music collection than I have in years.
I feel more in control of my software and OS. I always suspected Windows was betraying me in the background, OS X feels pretty locked down.
The audio is rock solid. I had gotten used to Windows audio crapping out if I launched two audio apps at the same time or various other factors. No more!
Time Machine is great and has simplified my backups.

Stuff I don’t love:

I hate the magic mouse and tiny keyboard. Holy god they’re awful. It took me a week of struggling to get used to them before I tossed them and figured out how to disable mouse acceleration. And I also felt ripped off getting a shitty little laptop keyboard with my big expensive desktop.
I miss Total Commander. I feel like a dummy in Finder, clicking and dragging around like a baby. I’m adjusting, but slowly.
I haven’t found a window manager I like yet. I was using Winsplit Revolution on Windows and it was nice.
Page Up/Page Down/Home/End. OS X hates these keys. I’ve remapped them but there are still a few apps that act weird when I hit page down and page up.
Every app seems to have a different keyboard shortcut to switch between its tabs. On Windows it’s always ctrl-tab. I’ve remapped them now (yay) but it was a dumb struggle.
Mac software is really expensive.

These complaints are pending my switch to the replacement Mac as they might be due to this busted unit (more on that shortly):

The internal speakers could be a lot better. It sounds like the bottom panel in the front needs some holes poked into it.
The hard drive is a huge bottleneck. Hopefully this will improve once I throw more RAM in, but I’m routinely listening to the hard drive grind and it annoys me.

Re: the busted unit. I bought a refurbished Mac to save $300 or so and three of the four RAM slots were dead. One was physically misaligned. Apple support was good and I’m moving everything over to the replacement Mac they sent me.

Also if this Time Machine restore on the new system works as advertised, I will be so impressed.

Posted on - December 14, 2010 [at] 8:09 am by Brad
Tagged in - mac, nerdy

8 Comments on this post

Lukas on The Mac Switch
December 14, 2010 at 11:00 am

There are a bunch of window managers for Macs. Personally, I like Divvy.

Jason Clark on The Mac Switch
December 14, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Welcome to the Mac. I switched 8 years ago and haven’t looked back. Time Machine has gotten me through 2 dead hard drives without a hiccup.

Regarding Ctrl-Tab: the Mac equivalent is Cmd+` (that’s the backtick key, above tab); it should work just about everywhere.

oddbjorn on The Mac Switch
December 14, 2010 at 12:12 pm

Check out muCommander for a reasonable Norton/Total Commander-style file manager. I prefer SizeUp as a tool to flick windows around by using keyboard shortcuts. YMMV.

Bill Odom on The Mac Switch
December 14, 2010 at 12:45 pm

Check out Divvy and Cinch for window management. They’re rock-solid and work very well together.

I use Path Finder for better file management. It’s light years beyond Finder.

pseudosu on The Mac Switch
December 14, 2010 at 5:46 pm

My new desktop came today, box not even opened yet. Hoping no to have similar issues w/ my refurb, not to mention the keyboard/mouse. I’m thinking of adding the trackpad. Might wind-up using that more than a mouse because it’s what i’m used to from my laptop. Thought of that?

fluffy on The Mac Switch
December 15, 2010 at 1:38 pm

I’ve always been happy with the default manager in OSX (ever since getting used to its different mental model than what I was used to in Linux) but thanks to the comments here I’ll have to check out Divvy.

Regarding home/end/pgup/pgdn, they just work differently on the Mac than on Windows. They behave exactly as they did on OSX. Notably, they refer to the view, not the cursor. To move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line, use cmd-left and cmd-right. I don’t think there’s a keyboard equivalent to “move the cursor a screenful at a time” though (that’s the sort of thing where on the Mac you’re supposed to just use the mouse).

cmd-` is the standard command for switching windows, but not tabs. MOST apps support cmd-alt-left/right for tab switching, even if they say something else in the menu. cmd-[/] is also pretty common.

I actually love the tiny keyboard (the Bluetooth version, anyway) and the Magic Trackpad. They’ve both done wonders for my wrist problems. The wired tiny keyboard is crap, though, and Magic Mouse just seems silly. The only thing I really dislike about the Bluetooth keyboard is the lack of any sort of numeric keypad, but having the trackpad right next to the typing area with no extended reach makes up for it.