Image Credit: "Apple Enlightenment" by SeenyaRita on Flickr

30 days later and I’ve come to the end of this journal a different computer user than I entered. At this point, I find it difficult to think about using anything that isn’t a Mac. Its not the applications, the look, the feel, that has swayed my mind, it is the simplicity. The MacBook Pro is a top of the line laptop, regardless of any operating system you use. My computing life is easier, I save more time performing tasks, and I’m able to do more with less.

When I began this journey, I took a look at the costs between a new MacBook Pro and a Dell Studio 16 XPS. After buying a Mac and finding several replacement programs, not needing to replace software that comes with the system, I’ve saved money rather than spend more. I’ve cut mindless tasks from my daily life (such as disk optimization and system clean ups) and have performed actual tasks, such as file organization. On a Mac performing these tasks are easier, managing my time is easier, and yes, my life has become simpler.

Usually, when a person discusses their life with Mac, and why Mac is better than PC it comes off as annoying. It sounds elitist, snobby and makes you feel like your not a part of the “cool” kids. Even though there’s much more to discover, my life and even my thoughts about how technology can be used has changed. It’s because Mac’s are better. There’s a lot more to gain than to loose by switching. Then again I’ve become one of those elitist, snobby Mac users who thinks the world is amazing because of a piece of hardware.

In 30 days, I’ve come to the conclusion that my MacBook Pro enables me to do more than previous Windows based systems. While I didn’t explore every nook and cranny of the Mac (I intend to in the future), I feel these 30 days covered many possibilities and issues for a person migrating to the Mac world. After 30 days, two things are abundantly clear: 1) I won’t go back to Windows and 2) my computer life has changed dramatically.

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.

Image Credit: "A Mac Playing the Piano" by jochenWolters on Flickr

I’m on my last three days of My Mac experiment. I wanted to use a program that comes with Mac that I haven’t. Something fun and interesting. My choices left me to either trying Front Row or Chess. I never understood the purpose of Front Row until I tried it. I had no clue what Front Row was, did, or provided to the Mac experience. I was delighted when I experimented with the program.

Front Row is what Windows called “Windows XP: Media Center”, and is a self-contained program that turns your Mac into a TiVo like media explorer. Through Front Row, you can listen to music, listen or watch podcasts or video photos. Unlike iTunes or iPhoto (which the application uses for it’s sources of material), it provides a theatre like environment for these items. Turning your laptop into a media center.

When opening Front Row, your computer screen goes back, and a menu appears with your options of music, video, podcasts, or pictures. Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you can navigate through these items done by either a scroll down list or screen flow.

Front Row isn’t a break-thru application that provides a major advantage over PC. It’s a simple app that provides a cool feature when warranted.

Image Credit: "Ready to attack" by trekkyandy on Flickr

27 Days Later and I’ve become a Mac Zombie (get the reference win a cookie). Apple has infected me with the evil “I Love Mac” Virus through Avalon (my 17” Mac Book Pro) and I want to spread my evil Mac germs everywhere! So far my life with Mac has been amazing, I don’t have any major complaints and with Snow Leopard around the corner, I’m excited to see what Apple improves.

On Day 26, I talked about customizing your Mac, mainly though the physical appearance and icons, but I want to highlight some tweaks I found helpful.

Tweaking the Trackpad

Mac is known for it’s one button mouse capability. In a world of left ad right clicks (and an operating system that supports them), I find using the command key annoying to display contextual menus. As my good friend Jeff mentioned on Day 23 you can enable the mouse to right click without any difficulty. To do this enter the Trackpad option in the System Preferences panel. Here, enable the “Secondary Tap” under the two finders portion of the options and viola. By tapping the Trackpad with two fingers, you will “right click.” This is one of my favorite tweaks!

Enable Quicktime to Play All Video Formats

Quicktime is a good video player, but limited, it does not support many video files including Windows Video and Audio files. There are two solutions to access these files without converting them. The first is by ditching Quicktime for VLC, a popular media player, especially on the Windows platform. A Mac version exists and is as simple and agile as Quicktime. your other option, for those who want to Quicktime, is to add the proper video codecs. Microsoft provides a Windows Media codec (made by Flip4Mac) enabling Quicktime to play both Windows Media Video and Audio. Perian adds codecs to more media files (but it excludes .wmv’s). I hope with Quicktime X, these codecs will not be needed.

CPU Fan Management

smcFanControl has become a must need utility for every MacBook users. I’ve previously mentioned how hot the MacBook Pro can get. smcFanControl provides the ability to manage the fan speed and time when they should operate. It’s a great application that does the job!

Tweaking Resources

There are plenty of resources to tweak your Mac. Smashing Magazine had a great article about 30 popular tweaks for the Mac while I don’t see the need for every tweak, many are worth noting, especially the section surrounding firewall control. Macworld has continued to provide as a must read resource for Mac tweaking and knowledge, especially the MacGems section and  two articles recent articles titled Butler at Your Service and Customize the OS X Workspace. Leopard is very tweakable, more so than Windows with the breadth of free and developer software. If you have some favorites, share then here!

Image Credit: "Pimp my mac" by Krudo. on Flickr

I have been afraid to customize Avalon. With Windows, I always feel I may break something when customizing the system. In my new Mac Life, customization is simple and easy. While background and color options can be managed within the system preferences, there are some additional ways to customize the Mac to your preferences.

Dock

The Dock is a wonderful shortcut bar for applications and folders. Adding an application shortcut is as simple as dragging the application to the dock. Further customization can occur within the system preferences, such as it’s location (left, right, or bottom), magnification animation, and icon size. Folders can also be placed on the dock, allowing quick and easy access to often used folders. By command clicking on a folder you can configure the way it displays files, either in a grid or stack, where files are placed one on top of the other. This is really useful as files can be easily organized or dragged from a stack, or grid.

Changing Icons

I have several external hard drives for the system. I really have had the itching to change their icons. Icon changing isn’t a simple process in Windows, but on Mac’s performed through a quick drag and drop process. Apple has a great article in changing Icons, it’s worth reading. To return to any default icon, just open the information window, click on the icon, and press delete. It’s a really simple process. It may seem like a small unimportant feature, but it provides a customization I’ve been seeking in a system.

Background Images

Changing the background image isn’t a hard problem. Unlike Windows, Mac makes it easy to further customize the background to your specifications. In the Desktop & Screen Saver section of the system preferences, you are able to import folders that contain background images. Along with the current beautiful backgrounds, you can also have the system randomly choose a background image randomly from your selection. A process often performed by a third-party program within Windows.

Finding Great Icon’s and Wallpapers

DeviantArt and Flickr are great resource to find new icons or wallpaper’s to customize your computer. Two additional resources are Smashing Magazine’s “Really Stunning Desktop Wallpapers” and the Iconfactory that has a lot of stunning high quality icons. Apple has a guide on customizing the Mac, which also includes the screen saver, windows and additional preferences. For external customization, Skinit provies “skins” or sticker like material that can be applied onto the case of the MacBook Pro. Some designs look amazing, but I’m not going to change Avalon’s external look.

If your a serious gamer, your not buying a Mac for its gaming possibilities. Historically, Mac gaming has been a joke, the selection of titles limited, horrible, and three years late. Ever since the migration to Intel processors, many speculated game developers would openly approach the platform. Developers still prefer Windows over Mac, as most of the popular games are made for PC. There are exceptions to this rule.

There’s three (well four) options for gaming on a Mac. I’ve tested three of these options but rather avoid the fourth.

Gaming inside a Virtual Machine

I rely on VirtualBox as my Windows based virtual machine. It runs and operates Windows XP without any problem. Being able to create a virtual machine that would handle gaming resources was never a problem. The amount of resources required made the system feel sluggish, and impossible to properly run a graphic intensive game on the system. For simple games that do not require a significant amount of computing power, Virtual Machines do not seem to provide the best solution.

Gaming Emulators – Running Games Within OS X

The second option is to run the game naively, using a game emulator. Emulators create a Windows environment running within OS X. The most recommended emulator for games is CrossOver Games which is built on the Wine open source and designed strictly for gaming. As on a Virtual Machine, simple games worked seamlessly. The real test was running a graphic intensive game, like portal. While minor graphical glitches did present themselves, Portal ran seamlessly on Avalon. It was an odd experience playing Portal within a Window on Mac. There were some bugs, but nothing that could be ignored.

Not every game works with CrossOver Games. They have a library of titles known to work and those known to fail. I was highly disappointed with Bioshock, a beautiful game, but inoperable through the emulator.

Exceptions to The Rule

There are several exceptions to the rule of poor Mac gaming. Some developers have supported Mac and built Mac native versions of their popular games. World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and newly released Sims 3 all have Mac native versions. I’m even surprised by the Mac version of Madden 08. I believe in time developers will begin to create Mac versions of popular games that exist on PC. A list of current games available for Mac exists on Apple’s website.

What about Boot Camp?

I am trying to avoid using Boot Camping my computer. This is possibly the best way to game on a Mac, but I don’t want to deal with that process. Even running XP in a Virtual Machine gives me the shivers. With that said, if your extremely passionate and want the best performance for your Mac gaming, a Windows installation with Boot Camp is the best option available. It’s not one I would like to take.

Image Credit: "Get a Mac Ads: Better" by silverkeys on Flickr

Mac are cool! Get over it Microsoft! I haven’t heard of people not liking something cool. Even those who pretend not to like cool things are following a popular un-cool trend, which in some circles, is cool! There are some features in OS X that are, for lack of a better word, cool (how many more times can I use this word). They are also very helpful. Throughout the past 24 days I’ve been using these features extensively but haven’t mentioned them at all. Today is all about showing off some of those features I find, cool.

Exposé

Exposé is a simple way to unclutter you screen. By moving four fingers down on the mount pad, all the open application Windows are shrunk and reorganized neatly on your screen. If you move your four fingers up, they slide off the screen and reveal the desktop underneath. These features can also be used with the F9 and F11 keys. F10 highlights each application and their windows, while fading the background windows. This feature is better than Vista’s to Window switching with the ALT and TAB keys.

Spotlight

Vista revamped Windows find, making it easier to find documents and access information. Spotlight is a better version of this. Spotlight, accessed through the upper right hand corner of the screen or by pressing the COMMAND and SPACE keys searches for anything typed into it. It reacts to every letter and categorizes the results by  file types, such as images, documents, applications, etc. In many cases, spotlight replaces going through folders to find a specific file or application.

The Finder

Although the Finder is not “feature”, it’s sidebar, where devices, shared items, places and searches exist, is a very helpful feature. Windows has had a left folder sidebar where additional folder actions and in Vista popular locations were positioned. In OS X, the sidebar helps navigate from one area to another with ease, and helps find recently changed or access files and folders. This has become the best way to explore my network, USB drives and other needed locations on my system.

Mouse Gestures

The track pad on the MacBook Pro makes life easy. It’s huge, acts as a large button, and enhanced by the mouse gestures ability. Mouse gestures are additional ways to operate applications by moving a finger, or several, in a predefined direction. Most PC trackpads have a scroll function on the far right side, where a finger will allow scrolling much like a mouse wheel. On Mac, by placing two fingers and moving down or up, the screen’s content scrolls in that direction. This can be performed in any location on the mouse pad. Mouse gestures is one of the features that has made my Mac life so easy.

Little, but well thought features like these that has made my computing life easier since switching to Mac. It is also what makes Mac stand out.

Image Credit: "Once you go Mac, you don't go back." by Andrew Trinh

I’ve been spoiled by Mac and  I will not go back to PC! I cant go back! Day 23 was filled with working on PC’s in school bas to finish work and fixing families laptops and desktops. I found myself making silly mistakes. I’ve grown accustomed to Mac and instantly missed my mouse-pad gestures and the placement of the command key, I expected everything to work as they did on my Mac. They did not. I was in a world I’ve known for many years that suddenly felt alien. Program installations displayed unnecessary pop-ups, the right mouse button seemed unnecessary (although I miss it the most on Mac), laptop cases felt flimsy, and the ALT key was in the wrong place! Clearly, Planet Windows was a world I left far behind 22 days ago.

I hoped  my migration to Mac would not diminish my familiarity with Windows. They are clearly different systems. Windows feels bulky, weighed down by unnecessary items and features. Accomplishing a task is just a bit more difficult. My return to Windows for a day reaffirmed what my experience has told me, Mac’s are simpler and easier. That’s not to say Mac’s aren’t powerful or complex, I barely scratched the capability of this PowerBook Pro. In many cases OS X is more complex of an operating system than Windows. Unlike Windows, your not met with its complexity head on. For specific tasks and operations you can use the Terminal, which requires knowledge of Linux, but it’s not a necessity.

OS X is an impressive operating system and Avalon (my MacBook Pro) is an amazing piece of hardware! I can’t go back to a Windows based system, unless I have to.

Image Credit: "PRO TOOLS WITH THE MAC G5" by jae michie on Flickr

I do plenty of audio work. I create music, podcasts, and edit tons of audio. To complete these tasks in Windows, I required several different tools, one for song creation, audio editing, mixing, and recording. This is not meant to be a negative, audio programs aren’t built to serve every audio purpose. I never liked the Windows specific audio creation and editing tools, some provided great features but lacked many others.

Creating a Song

Leopard came with it’s own music creation software, GarageBand. This application, a part of iLife, can create music and record music through music loops or by using a guitar. GarageBand provides many features for a free application, and recently added the ability to learn how to play music.

While GarageBand is a simple app for music creation, and does not have all of the features of an Ableton Live or Pro Tools, it can create really great music. An example of GarageBand’s ability would be Jeff Jacques band, Deathmole. All of their music is created within GarageBand.

Creating a Podcast

GarageBand is an amazing podcast creator. It can record voice, and then add sound effects, stingers, or music to the recording. Another feature is its ability to add artwork to the entire podcast or specific segments. To my knowledge there isn’t an alternative application that comes close to GarageBand’s podcast creation abilities.

Editing Audio

With the many audio tools available on Mac, the best audio editor is Fission. Fission is a single waveform editor that provides plenty of features to get the job done. Fission’s claim to fame is being the first lossless AAC editor. With Fission, tracks can be easily joined, audio can be easily removed, and split without much difficulty. The one feature lacking in Fission is its ability to not create new audio. It simply edits existing audio, nothing more nothing less. This isn’t too much of a downer, especially with the breadth of audio creating tools provided for Mac.

Image credit: This is frustration" by cw3283 (cwPhotography) on Flickr

My Mac Life hasn’t been perfect (although damn near close!). Over the past three weeks there has been a small list of frustrations I’ve had with the new Mac. Nothing is perfect and these mounting frustrations are smaller than the long list of frustrations with Vista. With the Apple Wordwide Developers Conference a week away, I decided to list a few of these issues. Some of these frustrations may be fixed in the upcoming version of OS X – Snow Leopard.

File Sorting

Here is something Windows does a lot better than Mac. Vista is able to sort all types of files, read MP3 file information and sort them by artists, and automatically sort files based on the file type. This doesn’t happen on Mac, when sorting files, treats files and folders the same in some views. Files aren’t sorted by a predetermined sorting system. Once you drop a file into a folder, it ends up at the end of a list in Icon view. With the powerful Spotlight tool, you would think the ability to sort files would be better than Vista, but they are not.

Music Organization

I’ve previously detailed my dislike, and then like for music organization with Mac. It’s a love hate relationship. I would love iTunes to separate music and video, rather than being an all-in-one multi-media application. There are benefits as an all-in-one app but those benefits can be annoying.

iWork ’09

While iWork is a replacement for Microsoft Office, I feel it lacks some features. iWork does not recover lost data. More specific features like flow-charts are missing.

Quicktime

Quicktime needs an overhaul. Snow Leopard, the upcoming operating system seems to provide the overhaul required. Until then I’m annoyed I need to utilize the VLC player for viewing windows media files or certain types of .mpg’s. I believe Quicktime to be a better video player, but it lacks in features and file support.

Handling Text Files

Mac has a text editor, Text Pad. While Text Pad reads text files, it doesn’t create text files. Text Pad’s favorite format is rich text format, which provides a lot of flexbility, doesn’t help when I need to create a simple text file.

Compared to Windows, my current list of frustrations is small!

What are your Mac frustrations? Thing s you hope they fix in the near future?