My First Year With Mac OS X

[macDonalds]

Ho-Ho-Ho! I figured I'd give some lengthy reading as my Christmas gift to you. It's been a little over a year (10 years prior with Windows-only) and this is my post to sum up my experience to this point.

Tiger

Beautiful. Quick. Seamless. Those are a few adjectives that come to mind when I first came on board. I would say Tiger was a much more "enjoyable" experience than Windows XP. After playing with Tiger for a while, switching over to Windows just seemed boring. Apple definitely hit the nail on the head with their hip/cool vs. stuffy/business commercials.

Pros:

-Graphics: Icons, Dock, Menu, etc.
-Install/Uninstall process
-Expose
-Spotlight (although a bit sluggish)
-Startup/Shutdown speed
-No Viruses/Spyware
-Bootcamp/Virtualization options

Cons:

-Mighty Mouse is horrible (ok, so this isn't Mac OS X's fault)
-Finder doesn't live up to Windows Explorer
-Mail is lacking in the feature department
-Dashboard has little purpose for me
-Inability to resize windows from any point

I was quite pleased with Tiger. I would put it a notch above Windows XP. And Windows XP is the best OS MS has put out to date.

Leopard

A few days ago I received Leopard and did a fresh install. I wasn't sure what to expect, being this was my first OS X upgrade - but for the most part I felt it was a worthy upgrade.

Pros:

-Spotlight is snappy (yay!)
-Spaces
-Consistent UI look
-RSS integration in Mail
-Safari is much faster
-Shutdown takes 2 seconds


Cons:

-Default dock is horrible
-Folder icons are hard to distinguish
-Coverflow usability is questionable
-Nothing that made me say "Wow!"

Leopard is an excellent upgrade in many ways. I happen to think that although there weren't many amazing moments, the usability upgrades are worth the price of admission. The overall speed of the system is much faster and therefore makes me more productive and less frustrated. This means more to me than any fancy graphical upgrades. Also - Spaces is freaking awesome! I think you either get it or you don't. As someone who works with Windows by day, Spaces is great because I can have one space dedicated to a remote desktop session and another dedicated to VMWare -- both at full screen. Although not a new technology, it sure is a welcomed one!

I'm still undecided about Stacks -- seems like a "decent" addition. Nothing to write home about. I'm interested in Time Machine and will be purchasing an external HD for that. And Coverflow - hmm, don't really see any benefit from that. It's nice eye candy but from a productivity stand point, I don't see any reason to utilize it.

So there you have it. A year in and it's definitely been a great switch. I'm not a full convert as I develop web applications with Microsoft technologies. That pays the bills so I won't stop it any time soon, but it sure is nice to switch over to Leopard when I'm done working 🙂

 

[rhyndu]

Default look is horrible

Ummm... elaboration?

Although brief, it is a good review. I have been enjoying this new crop of "I joined the Mac Side one year ago..." stories 😀

 

[macDonalds]

Ummm... elaboration?

Although brief, it is a good review. I have been enjoying this new crop of "I joined the Mac Side one year ago..." stories 😀

The Dock? Well the default is way too light and it's hard to make out some of the icons. On top of that the orb that depicts your open programs is difficult to see as well.

 

[mkrishnan]

Congratulations on a year! Sounds like you've rapidly climbed to being a fairly experienced OS X user. Hopefully year two is even nicer than year one. 🙂

 

[jasonklee]

i guess people like to stare and ruminate on the look of the dock more than i do. i mean, don't you have a good idea where your app/folders are located? most of the time i never stop and stare at the dock and curse apple. i just click the app and continue working. same stacks, without looking i know what order i put them in, so, i'm not really confused which stack is which.

maybe it's just me.

 

[macDonalds]

i guess people like to stare and ruminate on the look of the dock more than i do. i mean, don't you have a good idea where your app/folders are located? most of the time i never stop and stare at the dock and curse apple. i just click the app and continue working. same stacks, without looking i know what order i put them in, so, i'm not really confused which stack is stack.

maybe it's just me.

Not really a big pain-point for me - just could have been done a bit better. Otherwise I'm very happy with Leopard.

 

[jasonklee]

well, in a few weeks 10.5.2 will be out, and, finally, we'll be able to customize a few things to our tastes. i hope some functionality is restored.

 

[hdsalinas]

I have a similar experience and agree with most of the points.

After almost a year of using tiger I upgraded to Leopard. There are a few things that I really like.

- The Airport status icon on the apple menu bar is now very responsive. In tiger it used to lag for me for about 2 or 3 seconds.

- Spaces is very useful. I have assigned each CS3 app in its own space. Very useful, fast and practical
- I love the way stacks work
- I have no problem with the dock or the new folders.

I dont like however the way Leopard transitions from the desktop to front row. I love the new front row but the previous version transitions was cooler. Also cover flow is great in itunes, but not sure how useful it is in finder, quick look is awesome.

I have a couple of relatives that are die hard windows users. When they ask me "so, whats new in your Leopard?" I am afraid I wont have that much to show.

I love leopard but I feel that is just like a service pack for tiger. Sure we apple fans appreciate the new face lisft and the new cool little tweaks and bells but for most people is just an update.

 

[26139]

Complaint

I very much dislike Stacks and the new Dock. I use custom icons for each of my folders on my dock, so I can see at a glance which one I want to open. It's frustrating not to be able to tell them apart so quickly now.

I know there are workarounds, but I don't see why we can't turn off the Stacks "preview" feature. Stacks itself works terribly on my 1.5Ghz 12" powerbook, I'm very thankful it looks like lists are back in 10.5.2.