The Mac Switch

Whooo the switch to the Mac has been time-consuming. Nothing like re-learning decades of software and keyboard shortcuts and... everything.

Stuff I love:

• Unix. Yay. No more DOS or batch files or Cygwin or whatever.
• The apps are generally better. Lots of creative, well-designed software out there.
• Spaces is great. Virtual desktops were always clunky in Windows, but Spaces is slick and works.
• I always hated it in Windows but iTunes is excellent on OS X. I feel happier with my music collection than I have in years.
• I feel more in control of my software and OS. I always suspected Windows was betraying me in the background, OS X feels pretty locked down.
• The audio is rock solid. I had gotten used to Windows audio crapping out if I launched two audio apps at the same time or various other factors. No more!
• Time Machine is great and has simplified my backups.

Stuff I don't love:

• I hate the magic mouse and tiny keyboard. Holy god they're awful. It took me a week of struggling to get used to them before I tossed them and figured out how to disable mouse acceleration. And I also felt ripped off getting a shitty little laptop keyboard with my big expensive desktop.
• I miss Total Commander. I feel like a dummy in Finder, clicking and dragging around like a baby. I'm adjusting, but slowly.
• I haven't found a window manager I like yet. I was using Winsplit Revolution on Windows and it was nice.
• Page Up/Page Down/Home/End. OS X hates these keys. I've remapped them but there are still a few apps that act weird when I hit page down and page up.
• Every app seems to have a different keyboard shortcut to switch between its tabs. On Windows it's always ctrl-tab. I've remapped them now (yay) but it was a dumb struggle.
• Mac software is really expensive.

These complaints are pending my switch to the replacement Mac as they might be due to this busted unit (more on that shortly):

• The internal speakers could be a lot better. It sounds like the bottom panel in the front needs some holes poked into it.
• The hard drive is a huge bottleneck. Hopefully this will improve once I throw more RAM in, but I'm routinely listening to the hard drive grind and it annoys me.

Re: the busted unit. I bought a refurbished Mac to save $300 or so and three of the four RAM slots were dead. One was physically misaligned. Apple support was good and I'm moving everything over to the replacement Mac they sent me.

Also if this Time Machine restore on the new system works as advertised, I will be so impressed.