Switching from Windows to Mac OS X: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I have recently (well 3 days ago) started to make a transition from Windows to Mac OS X. I thought some of my experiences might be useful to others who may be thinking about making a transition and how painful (or otherwise) it might be.

So why did I decide to move to a Mac. The simple answer is that it is Unix. I had the (dis)pleasure of doing some freelance programming for the Macs back in the 90s and the experience was so painful that I swore never to work on Macs again. But the best of us have to eat our own words often so I should have seen it coming.

I have increasingly been very frustrated by the unreliability of my Windows machine. It is painful to use and the operating system constantly assumes that it knows better than you, which means that if you wish to do anything remotely clever with it, you are likely to end up with no hair (on account of pulling them out in frustration). One of my Mac-evangelist friends was watching this frustration grow and constantly prodding me to move to a Mac. His argument was that it was now all Unix and given my love for the rather austere world of Unix and things such as Emacs and Pine it would be ideal for me. So finally I decided to take the plunge. In the next few posts I will share some of the experiences in making the transition. But you should bear in mind that my motivation was that I wanted a Unix machine (no Linux won't do ... I'll explain some other time :) ). So bear that in mind if/when you read these posts.