Switching to Mac OS X: The Good

So my new laptop arrived and as I started it up, I was pleased to see that it did what it said on the tin. No OS crashes, no long boot-up sequences. Though my Mac knowledge was rusty I could recognise that some of the nice usability features of the GUI had been maintained. I could also finally get to a Unix shell to prod around the file system without having to remotely logging into a Unix server. I am afraid I live in the past. I am not a big fan of GUIs. I use them and like them but I also like being able to do things simply from the command prompt. Somehow I have always found it quite hard to do with Windows. The system is not designed to be operated from the shell which makes using the command prompt rather painful. The same cannot be said of Unix and this is where Mac OS X outclasses Windows for me.

A host of applications came pre-installed such as Safari, Mail, etc. I was also pleased to see a built-in multi-desktop feature which I have tried to use for years on Windows (based on experiences with some Unix Windowing systems) but without much success. The multi-desktop systems on Windows are third party applications that never fully integrate with the OS. As a result you have to fight your way around the multiple desktops which kills the point of having a multi-desktop set up. The Spaces utility on Mac OS X is fully integrated and is a joy to use. 

I could also install other applications that I normally use, e.g., Skype, etc. with ease. I really like the feature that a download can be mounted as a partition and used as such. It is a great use of the underlying Unix functionality and very intuitive to a Unix-biased user such as myself. I also installed MS Office (yes sadly I have far too many documents in MS Office format to fully escape the clutches of Microsoft products). Overall, the basic set up and installation was easy. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Airport work well straight away (despite hearing lots of people complain about it over the years).