I'm a long time Linux user, but a much longer Windows user. While I've used a Mac before, I've never used as my primary desktop. Yesterday, my Mac Pro arrived, and I've been getting used to the 'Apple way' of doing things. Read more to see some of my notes and road bumps as I discover more about Apple's UNIX certified operating system on Day 1!
The first thing I noticed about the Mac Pro, was, of course, it's beautiful metal case. Apple's attention to detail and focus on computing aesthetics are legendary, and although the price tag reflects this, the sturdy build of the Mac Pro and frighteningly simple to upgrade interior help ease the pain.
One of the first things that struck me about the case was the lack of ports on the rear - most PCs have a plethora of connectors, including many USB ports, at least one Ethernet port, two PS2 ports, and typically 5.1 surround sound plugs. The Mac Pro seems to have minimal plugs. There is also a more subtle difference - Macs apparently don't have hard reset buttons. Another fairly alien concept is not physically opening the CD/DVD-ROM oneself; instead, an eject button on the keyboard ejects the tray.
But the pleasing aesthetics are not limited to just the case and internals - the Apple Mighty Mouse and the frankly bizarre, tiny Apple keyboard are radically different from the Dell counterparts I was using before. Sure, all devices considered were bluetooh-based, but the extremely small keyboard (it's probably only a foot (30 cm) or so long) with very non-standard buttons was...is...wild. The mouse is significantly more alien, as the left and right clicks are "integrated" and you left or right click by physically clicking on the left or right side of the mouse (I know how that sounds, but I can't think of a better way to explain it right now). Instead of the standard scrollwheel, the Apple Mighty Mouse sports a tiny ball, like a little nipple, capable of rotating in any direction and acting as a middle click, which I've come to quite like. Right clicking, however, is still next to impossible.
My boss, who has been looking forward to converting me to Apple for some time now, assisted me with getting familiar with the system. The first thing he did was guide me through reinstalling OS X and utilizing the four drive bays - 2x150 GB WD Raptors in RAID1 for OS X, and 2x1TB WD RE-2 Drives in RAID1 for storage. The configuration of the RAID disks was surprisingly simple. Perhaps the most familiar part of the installation is OS X's BSD based kernel handles disk partitioning like all BSD/UNIX systems do (using controller, disk, slice syntax).
The installation was fast and uneventful. In a bit more than half an hour I was creating my user account and face-to-face with the OS X desktop.
"The first thing you need to do," my boss explained to me, "is to install QuickSilver." We did this (for those who don't know) by downloading a .dmg file. These are like setup programs, but different - for one, the setup program and all required files are self contained inside of the .dmg file. Secondly, you don't simply "double click" to execute the .dmg file - the .dmg file is mounted like any other block device. In this case, QuickSilver comes with an installation program, which my boss walked me through as the installation of QuickSilver allows for varying degrees of customization.
"Now this will let you execute programs, find files, go to websites, all sorts of stuff," he continued, "it's like Apple's Spotlight, but better." For those of you who don't know, Apple's Spotlight is a fast indexing tool for OS X, allowing you to quickly search Documents, Music, Dictionaries, and more.
After a quick tutorial on using QuickSilver, we moved on to installing OS X equivalents or counterparts for most of the same software as on a PC. This includes Firefox, Eclipse, Adium (chat client), Skype, pgAdmin3, MySQL GUI Tools, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Cyberduck ((s)ftp client), VMware Fusion (a strange VMware Player/VMware Workstation hybrid), Remote Desktop Connection, and, finally, Office 2008 for Mac.
After installing this plethora of software came the OS X updates. Updating in OS X is far easier than it is in Windows. For one, the updates don't install themselves and reboot your machine. To update, you simply click the Apple then click "Software Update...". OS X automatically detects what updates you need and prompts you to install them. Updates to applications are included in this manner as well, similar to Microsoft Windows Update. After two or three reboots and a keyboard firmware update, the system was fully uptodate.
Despite all the beautiful eye candy of the OS X desktop, I immediately searched for a Terminal. A quick tap tap on the Fn (Function) key, followed by "term" and QuickSilver led me to the Terminal program. The default Terminal, much like your basic xterm in Linux, was void of color and features a white background and black foreground. Unlike xterm, however, OS X's terminal allows you to create tabs, new windows, quickly and easily remap many key combos, etc.
Unfortunately, my Linux ~/.bash_profile was partially incompatible with OS X, mostly due to syntax changes in common programs like ls. Some quick adjustments and I was good to go, but sad to see no time reformatting option for ls
Here is where I touch on my real reason for moving to OS X: I need a functional desktop GUI that is well integrated and responsive to keyboard commands. I work extremely rapidly with the keyboard in Windows, even more than in Linux, mainly due to the "Windows" key. But I also need quick access to a command line and common Linux binaries - stuff like perl or python. While there is perl and python for Windows, they're of poor quality, slow, and behave very differently than their Linux counterparts. A lot of these requirements are due to my work with Linux servers - I often need to write and test scripts or software out before deploying it. Simply put, I need the usability of a Windows GUI but the heart of Linux.
I can already hear some of you crying out for me to use some Linux distribution - perhaps Ubuntu or OpenSUSE. I've used both. They don't compare in uniformity or logical behavior next to Windows or OS X. Apple and Microsoft run a tight ship and encourage or outright force application developers to utilize their GUI system for uniformity - application dialog boxes are perhaps the most common here. You don't see multiple UI toolkits on these platforms competing for your sanity and responding to different key commands.
Well that about sums up my first day "making the switch." I'll write more in the near future detailing the challenges I've encountered.
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