Image Credit: "IMG_3092.JPG" by {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} on Flickr

The past 29 Days of my life with a new Mac has been an awesome and rewarding experience. I’m surprise how much my life has changed merely by switching to a Mac. It may sound corny that a computer has changed significant parts of your life, but in a world where we rely on computers more often it makes sense. The approach of Apple is very different from Microsoft of the general open-source community and it makes computing approachable, useable, and adaptable. Nothing is perfect and while I believe Apple has made major strides since my last experience with them, there’s are some things missing on Mac.

Major Game Developers

I’ve mentioned this a few days ago, but Mac lacks the hardcore gaming culture. Most gamers are using PC’s, mainly because developers rely on Direct X, and prefer Windows over OS X. In the future there should be an increase of developers should be developing games for Mac’s. I believe a market would exists and broaden if they did so, these machines are powerful and capable of even the most resource hungry video game.

An Understanding of How Secure Mac Is

Mac’s do not suffer from the same amount of viruses and spyware Windows does. There isn’t a Mac virus in the wild, and OS X isn’t attacked as often as Windows. This isn’t to say Mac’s don’t have some security problems. A major Java security hole remains unpatched by Apple (http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/20/mac-os-x-java-security-hole-exposed/), even though a fix has been available by Sun many months ago.

I haven’t had a Mac long enough to understand how frequently Apple patches critical items or how often Mac’s are attacked. Leopard feels like a stable and secure system, what scares me is Mac users are convinced they don’t need anti-virus software, with evidence they don’t. It’s a fact I’ve been convinced of and don’t intend to install anti-virus unless I need to.
What’s missing is a clear understanding of Mac’s security. What makes Mac safer than Windows? Why is sandboxing so important? If a virus appears, can Leopard handle it and tell me something is wrong? Being told I’m safe and seeing why I’m safe are two different matters at hand.

A World Without Windows

Windows is a necessary evil in this world. For those, like myself who are migrating from PC, there are some uses to the operating system. We have old programs, files, and tasks that need to be accomplished within that world. While migrating to Mac is easy, there is a cost, either through time, buying alternatives or downloading free codecs. Someday, software developers will release all of their applications for both Mac and PC. Someday the differences between Windows and OS X isn’t the applications needed to be ran for each operating system, but the operating system itself. Apple’s biggest gap is, even in a world with Vista, a buggy, heavy operating system (that I like), it’s still required either through Boot Camp or a virtual machine. There’s some items on Vista that I miss, but can live without entirely. Windows has its place in the world, a place I believe is shrinking because of Mac’s superiority.