Why Macs Are Better, Or, Not Really

So, as you all know, I'm a Mac kinda guy. I used to be a Windows guy. In fact, just about the same time Mac OS 8.6 came out (the same time as the original G4 towers; PCI graphics, or some such) I was convinced Apple wouldn't be among the living within a couple of years. The first computer I bought (not one given to me) was a Sony VAIO something-70. It had a blazing 166 MHz Pentium chip, 33 MHz front-side bus, and came with a whopping 32 MB of RAM. And, man, you could crank that RAM all the way to 128 MB. Never thought I'd need more than that.

Boy, was I wrong.

Anyway, Mac OS 8.6 comes out whilst the Mrs. is in school and suddenly finding the need for a Mac. So, we get her the newest Mac G4 (a 400 MHz monster, before the speed reduction), complete with 10 GB HDD and 128 MB of RAM. The PC is suddenly anemic. Oh, yeah, you could pop 1.5 GB of RAM into that baby. We still have it, too, with a 30 GB HDD and 768 MB of RAM. It's in storage at the moment, but I'm sure it can still be useful one day.

Okay, back to my little story. We get the Mrs. a shiny new G4, and I fall in love with Mac OS. Now, remember, this is pre-OS X. Long story short, we keep the Sony for a few more years as my machine, and she gets the newer, nicer, built like a tank Mac. Even shorter: Replace the Sony with an HP. Big mistake. Blah blah blah. HP dies a third death, decide not to throw more money into the piece of shit, get a Mac mini. G4 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9200 32 MB onboard RAM, Tiger pre-installed. Yeah me. Finally happy with my computer. Soon thereafter, get the Mrs an identical machine. But, lucky her, she gets the 1.5 GHz version with the moderately fast 5400 RPM drive and the Radeon 9200 with 64 MB of onboard RAM while I'm oh so lucky to have the 4500 RPM drive. Yeah me?

So, here's the point, if you didn't catch it by the headline. Macs are superior to Windows' machines in many ways. Now, I don't mean this as flame bait. It's my observation based solely on my experiences. Let me share. One of the first differences I noticed between the G4 tower and my Sony was build quality. While the Sony was made nicely, it definitely had a cheaper feel to it than the Mac. For example, to access the innards, on the Mac you just lift a little handle on the side and the entire side opens down, like a door. On the Sony, you have to push back a cheap feeling plastic tab on the back and slide the side off. To close the machine up you just lift the side on the Mac and it closes with a pleasant little snap. On the Sony you had to make sure the metal tabs on the removable side fit onto the metal grooves of the case and slide the puppy forward until it, too, gave an audible snap. Pleasant, and, honestly richer sounding than the HP I had later, but not quite as nice as the G4.

Now, that's just one example, and I'm not going to give more. There's just too many little differences along those lines that I've noticed between the build quality of Mac's and PC's. Granted, for many years a comparatively spec'd Mac was more expensive than a comparatively spec'd PC. But, that's just true anymore. Don't believe me? Take any Mac and go to Dell's site and spec out a PC with comparable guts. Betcha the Mac and PC are nearly the same price. And, if the Mac is more expensive, the difference will be less than $100. On the flip side, though, if the PC is more expensive, the difference will be closer to/more than $100. Regardless, the build quality of Mac's is such that you can tell they designed with care and attention to detail. Too often, non-Mac PC's seem to put together from cheap cases using ill-conceived internal layouts and the cheapest plastics around.

Again, my observations, my experiences.

I won't get into the OS war, though. To be frank, I prefer the way Mac OS X works to the way Windows works. It's as simple as that, preference. But, and this is a major "but", I am beginning to seriously dislike the Dock. One of the biggest issue the Mrs. has, and I, as well, is knowing where the fuck you are. Now, sure, I know if I'm in Firefox, or Mail, or Thunderbird. Each one's UI is different enough that it's easy to spot. But, how about the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator. When your eyeballs deep into your work the subtle changes to palettes just isn't enough of an indicator. At least in OS 8.6/9.x you could pull off the App Switcher into a little floating window that would show the front most app as a depressed button like icon. I've been waiting for the Dock to do something similar for quite some time. Egads, man, how the hell am I supposed to discern anything from a friggin' little black arrow, or, what the Mrs. calls "Morphine Bubbles" in Leopard. I have to say it is the biggest single point of UI failure in the entire system. All we need to make it right again, and to make the Dock actually useful, is to somehow offset the current app's icon in the dock. Give it a glow, or make it significantly larger. Something that is a solid, can't miss it unless I'm a blind moron kind of visual indicator. What with all the other eye candy the system has I can't fathom why this would be so damned difficult. For God's sake, the friggin' sliders have a 3D slippery look to them. Move them up and down and you get a water-like movement with them.

Oh, other complete UI failure in Mac OS X. When you minimize a window in an app, move to another one, and then ⌘-Tab back to the first app, why the hell doesn't the window you just minimized come back up, especially when it's the only frickin' window you have open for that fuckin' app? Why? Oh, of course, this brings us back to the Dock.

Oh, wait, the argument is "Well, if you minimized the fucking window, why would it magically maximize (or, at the least, unminimize) just because you went back to that app?" Well, fine, argument accepted. Except, oh, I don't know, I can't friggin' use a keyboard shortcut to bring my minimized window back up. Oh, sure, I can ⌘-M to minimize my window. But, there's no equivalent for the reverse action. WTF?

[NOTE: This post is taking quite some time to write. In fact, hours, if not days. At the moment I'm quite the happy one having downed the champaign, and it's fast approaching the next day. So, this will have to be continued later.]

[NOTE 2: It's been nearly a week, 6 days in fact, since I last touched this. I think it deserves a solid wrap up at this point, don't you?]

Getting back to minimized windows, I do believe that there is a "Please bring my windows back up from being minimized" keyboard shortcut in Windows. Correct me if I'm wrong. I also believe that this holds true under KDE and/or Gnome. Again, correct me if I'm wrong.

So, the question is, for a system that is supposed to be intuitive, easy to ease, and ultimately the ultimate in user friendliness, why is that, at the very least, these two glaring issues remain? The current OS is 7 years old (10.0 having been releases in 2001) and the Dock hasn't evolved terribly much, and switching apps (and getting your document windows to come along) still lags behind the ease with which that action could be accomplished under OS 8.6/9.x.

For all the crap that is piled upon Windows and Microsoft, some of it very well deserved, some of it plain bs, there are areas *gasp* where Windows, from a usability perspective, bests OS X. Sure, it's silly that you have to go to Start to shut down. But, with Vista, now you just have the Windows icon on the taskbar. No "Start" in site. Now, the taskbar, while a mess in its own right when it comes to organization, does a couple of things better than the Dock. First, and most importantly, it takes up a lot less screen real estate. Second, hmmm, well, I can't quite think of a second thing at the moment. And, where Windows Explorer wins over the Mac Finder is when you have an app with documents all in the same window. Maximize that app in Windows, and all minimized doc windows come up. No searching for that one stupid document out of 20 or 30 you have opened and minimized.

Now, don't get me wrong. As I said in the beginning, I'm a Mac guy. Just not blindly faithful to all things Apple does with its OS. Mac OS X does a much better job at security over Windows. It does a much better job of getting out of the user's way, letting them do their work without having to fight with the OS. But, Windows does have its shining moments, for all its flaws. So, yes, Mac's are better, for me, than Windows' machines, or Linux machines, for that matter. Yet, at the end of the day what really matters is getting your work done, being secure that that work will be around for quite some time, and being secure in whatever information your store on your machine. For some people and companies, that means a well maintained, well guarded Windows environment. For others it means Linux. It doesn't mean that Macs are the be all and end all of all things computer. It also doesn't mean that Macs are destined to remain a < 10% ecosystem. It just means that Macs are better for most people, and I believe for many businesses, but they are not the panacea so many try so hard to make them.
In the end, it's all about using what works best for you. Using what makes the most financial sense, the most usable sense, what is the most comfortable.

So, yes, Macs are better, but, not really.