OS X and Macs - the Windows killer?

For the last week I have almost exclusively been using a PowerPC Mac - claimed by Apple to be a great platform just a few years a ago. Personally, I think that Mac OS X is an interesting platform. The mac hasn’t grabbed me.

On the up side, OS X (and Darwin) is based on BSD, so it has some good security foundations, it also uses many tools common to Linux, such as bash and CUPS. The 3D desktop effects are kinda cool for the first day, but then just become part of the day to day experience. I am yet to see a real advantage to the OS X 3D desktop.

The Mighty Mouse is pretty slick. The scroll wheel feels very nice and is well positioned. The side buttons for expose are addictive on the first day. A let down is that you have to change your preferences to enable the right button.

I don’t claim to understand the whole Mac software management system, but from what I do know, you drop a disk image (a dmx file) into the applications folder in finder and it is installed. Want to remove it? delete the folder. This is pretty neat, once you understand how it works. It reminds me of the klik package management system.

The file open dialog is a crazy hierarchical beast, that works. Jumping between levels in a tree really works. Pity more than 3 levels down it can involve some vertical scrolling and you need to select a file to get its full name if it is too long.

Now for the downsides of using a Mac running OS X.

The keyboard feels awful, this is one of the times I would recommend a Microsoft product, but as MS keyboard feels far better than an Apple Keyboard. The standard mac keyboard feels plasticy and the key travel doesn’t feel right. I have used a range of keyboards over the years and the Mac keyboard feels awful. Maybe apple should rebrand Logitech’s kit, like Microsoft does.

My next complaint is key bindings. For ever since I remember, [home] takes you to the start of current line and [end] takes you to the end of the current line. Many apps even ignore the [home]/[end] keys. Windows, GNOME and KDE all bind [alt] [F4] to close window - but not the mac. There are many other standard combinations ignored by Apple. Another annoyance is the apple key - for most things it functions like a [ctrl] on a PC, but not in a shell, then it functions like an apple key and [ctrl] functions like a [ctrl] key under *nix - I have lost track of how many windows i have closed when trying to delete a word in the console (bash fiends know what i mean).

Inconsistent use of key combinations. In the console and some other apps, [apple] [arrow] loops through the windows of the application, but not Apple Mail, it has decided that the combo expands/collapses message threads, very annoying when trying to compose a message while trying to copy and paste from another.

The maximise button doesn’t actually maximise. I am not sure if it is up to the application or the window manager, but clicking maximise (the green circle) may increase or decrease the width or height of the window. When I click maximise, I expect the window to be maximised - or at the very least increased in dimensions.

The real deal breakers for me are the [home]/[end] keys, the inconsistent shortcuts and other crazy behaviour of OSX mean that I won’t be switching to a Mac anytime soon.

Over the next week I plan to load more FLOSS on the mac, such as Mozilla Thunderbird for email, which will join Mozilla Firefox web browser and gvim - my referred text editor. I doubt this will be enough for me to stick with OS X.

The indigo iMac G3 I landed last week is likely to be running Copland (a PPC port of xubuntu) real soon now. I am still trying to work out what I do with Julie’s Apple Powerbook G3, which currently runs Xubuntu 6.06.1 LTS, as ubuntu has dropped support for PowerPC in feisty. Maybe I can find other PowerPC machines to install Copland or Debian onto 🙂

I am yet to see how OS X is more user friendly and easier cross grade path for windows users than a Linux desktop.

Update 2020: I’ve been a relatively happy mac user for the last 7+ years. It is a lot easier than trying to use a Linux Desktop in corporate environments. Some of the things noted in this post still annoy me, especially the inconsistent key bindings.

Klik is no longer around, but the concept lives on with flatpak and Unbuntu’s snaps.