(This is a rename and update of the post Mac OS X: Released from the Dock)
I never thought I would say this, but after reading many articles of people converting from Mac to Windows, I, too, have to admit.
I love Mac.
Not in the hardware sense. In fact, I find it slightly underpower. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, with 3GB of RAM (It's actually 4, but my old macbook could only see 3). It's white, and gets dirty rather quickly (I had a protective layer on my keyboard, but for no reason it got dirty from underneath!) And I can never seem to get over the fear that it would one day melt down. Coupled with the fear of Mac OS Updates that left many people unable to boot up, I am rather afraid to update until I managed to backup my harddisk properly. A mac is supposed to be worry free, right?
Yet, thinking back to the old Windows days. I remember reinstalling it almost every half a year, just so to clean up all the unnecessary stuff and speed it up. Blue screens seem common back then.
So, just what is different now?
Hardware
Windows: Sure, I could get more powerful hardware with a Windows PC. But that was exactly where the problem with. I could upgrade, so I did. And with it came a lot of hardware incompatibility. I remember custom-building my own PC. For some reason, the motherboard seems to fry my Video Card every few months. And I had wanted a dual DVI output video card, so it was not cheap. And I had like 4 harddisks in it. It was a power hungry machine. And one night, I heard a spark (and see one too) from it. It was from the PSU. And it was not any cheap PSU. It was a reliable 200 bucks CoolerMaster!
Mac: Compared that with my Macbook. I only upgraded my RAM from 2GB to 3GB, and changed my harddisk from 80GB to 160GB (that was actually forced as it totally died on me. There was clicking sound from it! I suspect it was due to hibernation. I normally just close my Macbook and carry it around without waiting for it to finish writing to disk, I suspect)
Operating System
Windows: I have quite a lot of grips with it. First, it was hard to switch from Explorer to Finder. I am so used to the side exploring window, that Finder was pretty hard to get used to. Next, apparently when you copy a folder over and there is one with similar name, it overwrites it! Unlike Window's merge function there.
Mac: But Mac has a true unix root, and there are really some things I really am more comfortable to performing in commandline than in GUI. "find . | xargs grep xxx" sure is a nice thing to be able to do. Simple file editing with vi. Tailing logs. Maybe there had been Windows equvilant programs, but I did not get a chance to meet them.
Software
Windows: Nothing beat Visual Studio as an IDE, but that was about the only thing I missed from Windows. Now, I'm pretty happy with Eclipse, since I develop exclusively with Java now (rather than .Net). Outlook Express was pretty cool too. Microsoft Office/Visio is a must for work collaboration (some clients prefer we pass them Word Documents or Excel Spreadsheets). AVG is a good virus scanner, and free too.
Mac: This is really where I love Mac. Mac has lesser software, but each of the one below totally wow me.
Home Entertainment
Front Row is very good to have for watching media from afar (like back on my bed when my mac is far away, and I can use a remote for it).
Workflow
Automator is a really cool workflow designer, and it's free. I did not have much need, but it is really really cool.
Text Editing
I use a lot of Notepad, because it is small and lightweight. Over at Mac, TextEdit was what Notepad is, but with TextWrangler I found what I truely need. It's really tedious to have multiple Notepad floating around. I remember Windows had various similar solution, but I could not get myself to like them(perhaps only Notepad++).
Media catalog
Delicious Library 2 is a very cool media cataloging tool, and it's available on Mac only for now. I had always wanted to keep track of what media I have (from books to CDs), and the Barcode scanner really helped a lot.
Backup
I am always afraid of losing data. Actually, it went beyond that. I am afraid of losing my working Operating System. Back in Windows, whenever I have a really bad crash, I had to reinstall my Windows. Not anymore in Mac. SuperDuper! is a really cheap Mac Backup software, which backup the entire harddisk and make the backup bootable. If my Mac ever crash, I can feel safe knowing I can boot up from a backup copy, and recopy my backup over to the crashed harddisk. It supports bootup from USB external drive too!
Windows
Still, some Windows Applications are irreplacable, like Microsoft Office. VMWare Fusion to the rescue. Previously it was Parallels Desktop, but it was rather heavyweight for my taste, and took up more disk space. Now, with VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta, it offered whatever Parallels Desktop had to offer (at least according to my needs). I can click on my Excel documents from Mac, and have it open up in my Windows VM. And then there's Unity, where my Windows Applications look like they are in Mac. You could not have that in Windows (but then again, most people would argue that you have all you need in Windows)
Application Launcher
When I was on Windows, I put frequently access applications in my quick launchbar. And I had it by the side. It sped up my productive by a fair bit (granted, it only speed up by a mere second, but it made me feel better since I did not have to navigate through a series of menu, and that made me happier and indirectly more productive). But QuickSilver just blew me away totally. I never know how I manage to live so long without it. It made me feel powerful, and a person who feel powerful would definitely be happier, and again more productive. I can have less applications on my Dock, and it feels cleaner too. My Dock only perform one thing now, to switch between windos and applications. But that's still taking up valuable screen space (regardless if it was by the side or bottom)
Windows Switcher
So it was clear that I need a windows switcher solution, to get rid of Dock. Apple-Tab was only suitable for application switching, and some of my applications (like Finder) have multiple windows. I tried to get use to Expose, with F9 and F10, but it was just too slow. Fantasktic was recently released, and I tried it out. It was fairly nice, on initial look. But after a day of using, it turned out to be not what I need. First, it did not play well with multiple Firefox launched (with multiple profiles). Next, it obscured a part of the top of many windows. Finally, the minimize function did not work on multiple monitors. Then I found Witch. Now this is truely what I wanted. It is simple, and intuitive. Until Fantasktik is better, I probably will stick to this.
And with that, I judge my Mac Setup complete. I had never have such feelings before, and it truely is wonderful.
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