Ramblings of a new Mac user.

JackKelly

Having just bought my new 13' Macbook Pro (and first Mac) I thought I'd start a thread to put down the most notable differences I've encountered for anyone in the future who is thinking of switchin and wants hands on reviews.

I've just finished a Computer Science degree, and was using Linux almost exclusively for 4 years, so it's an interesting switch to a more closed source enviroment.

First the hardware. Even at 13', this machine is a beast. I upgraded to 4gb RAM and I'm happy with the choice (although it took an extra week or so to ship and deliver). I'm used to having to juggle open programs, only keeping 1 or 2 apps active at anyone one time. At the moment on my mac I have Firefox, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Last.fm, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Eclipse, Skype, Adium and a few terminals all open without even a stutter. You can really just open everything and have it sit in the background until you need it.
My old machine was a 4 year old Acer 2.0Ghz with 1gb ram, so this is a welcome change. I can't really get over the speed of everything. I suppose I'm a bit out of the loop at this stage, but it's unreasonably nippy! The keyboard itself is also very comfortable and I find it easy nice to type on - no double hitting keys or mashing the keypad. The backlit keyboard is great in the evenings and a welcome feature.

There's not much point in mentioning the screen and aesthetics etc. as there are plenty of good in-depth reviews on all that. In a word, it's a beautiful machine.

One thing I *really* like though is the trackpad. I'd go as far to say that I prefer it to the mouse, and that's definitely a first! To start with it's nice and big. This can be hard to get used to as you sometimes find your other hand accidentally resting on it as it stretches so far across the bottom of the machine. The single button works excellently in my opinion. It comes into it's own when you use it with multiple fingers. On a normal trackpad there is sometime a feature to rest two fingers on the trackpad, and then click the button to enable some feature. This can now be done in one go by just pressing the Mac trackpad with two fingers. This is hard to explain but maybe you get the idea!

The best part though, is that you can enable expose/clear desktop/app selector (same as Ctrl+Tab on windows) by dragging four fingers either up, down or across the trackpad. It's invaluable! At first I thought that these multiple finger gestures were a bit of a gimmick. This is certainly not the case. For me, they are a big step up in usability and simplify desktop navigation enormously. I find myself using the rotate/scale/flick gestures almost as regularly as I would use the right-click for example.

Furthermore, when you have expose enabled, you can filter the windows by clicking the corresponding app in the dockbar. All this has made navigating multiple windows and applications a complete breeze. Much much easier then anything I've used before.
One of the features of Linux/Compiz I really liked was multiple desktops. It was great loading up firefox on one tab, switching over and loading something else on another etc. While this is possible with spaces on Mac, I don't find myself using it as navigating with expose etc. is so efficient. To sum up, desktop & window navigation is spot on! It's easier and more efficient than anything else I've experienced and really makes using the computer a lot more enjoyable.

In term's of Snow Leopard, it's a bit strange switching back to a desktop (in the Microsoft sense of the word). It's a bit confining to be honest. It feels a bit like playing a game of bowling with the bumpers up! While I can fly around the desktop with all the bits and pieces mentioned above, when I go into system preferences there is a total lack of options. It's a bit restrictive in my opinion. That is coming of course from someone who is used to being able to configure everything in linux so it's really only a case of getting used to the new enviroment.

That said, there is a terminal, and while it doesn't harness the same power as on a linux machine, it is still there. I haven't done any programming/development/building on this yet, so I suppose I'll write more when the time comes. That's really all so far, I'll update this a bit when I've done more with the machine.

cornbb

Good for you. Piece of advice: get to know the Terminal, it can be a very useful tool and the Unix geek in you will appreciate its power. You can use it to tweak things that are not available in the system prefs. Here is a small example to start with: http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2008/02/top-50-terminal-commands.html

Macs suffer from a reputation as being "closed" and untweakable. There is probably some truth to this, especially compared to a Linux machine, but there is still plenty you can do under the hood. If you are into programming/development I'd strongly advise installing Xcode and the optional Unix development tools too. Enjoy!

Naikon

I like Macs, but they really don't 'feel' as traditional Unix clones
when compared to Linux/BSD/Solaris(at least for me).

The format of common files can be a bit strange in comparison to other unixes.
Still, it's a fully POSIX(Apple can afford it) compliant system, so more Unix than Windows:p

OP, have you looked at projects like PureDarwin?

These 'pure' OSS distros could bridge the gap nicely if you want a
XNU kernel based server. Userland is mostly GNU stuff, along with X11.

Congrats on the Mac anyway. They are nice machines.

Hotblack Desiato

TimAy wrote: »

I've just finished a Computer Science degree, and was using Linux almost exclusively for 4 years, so it's an interesting switch to a more closed source enviroment.

Dual boot it I have to say I like my Macbook hardware wise, but OSX is very limiting.

JackKelly

yea, when I get a bit of time, I'll be installing ubuntu and windows