The Ultimate MacDate

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"

Comments

20 IE Windows?!!!

[jaaron]

From the article:

When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open, Outlook with another 5 - 15 emails, Power Point with NDA presentations, ...

20 IE Windows??? Man, this guy has got to get a copy of Firefox and learn the joy of tabbed browsing.

Re:20 IE Windows?!!!

[Croaker-bg]

You can CTl+tab in firefox between tabs and ctl+shift+tab to go backwards through the tabs. Same functionality. There is also an extension that will allow you to ctl+tab to the last tab you used in a historical order. These are very handy features and save you the overhead of having multiple IE windows open with the same at the keyboard functionality to jump around.

There is a lot of open source software for MacOSX

[Anonymous Coward]

For those Mac OS X people with Linux envy, there is a lot of open source programs available on http://fink.sourceforge.net/.
To install fink, you need to give a root account on Mac OS X even though there is an administrator account. Mac OS X does not have a root account as default for security.

Re:Installing apps

[nine-times]

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what he means when he says "Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive..." It just copies the .app folder, right?

Maybe what he was noticing was the result of some settings/preferences/whatever being copied to his library, which many applications will do on the first run, but not when you install them.

On the other hand, more and more OSX apps have actually gone to using an install program, including Apple's apps, which I find unfortunate. I like the whole drag-and-drop method of installation.

Re:Office 2004 for PC?

[boaworm]

iCalendar is shorted iCal, more info here.

Office 2004 is the Applized version of Office XP. More info here. Outlook is renamed Entourage btw...

And... it's probably more correct to say that Office XP is a Windowized version of Office 2004, since much development/innovation at Microsoft is implemented first at their Apple department in California (not in Redmomd like the rest of the stuff). As an example, they tried out a sidebar in IE for Mac. Dont think it ever made it to Windows...

I wouldnt say you are insane, just that you misread the PC/Mac stuff. Some apple software ends up on win32 though, like iTunes.

Re:Installing apps

[AKAImBatman]

the Start Menu directories (in which "shortcuts"/aliases to directories/folders don't result in navigable file-system menus)

A fun Mac experiment:

- Drag an application onto the taskbar. This will create a shortcut. Now move the location of the application. The shortcut will still work!!!

- Open a text file in TextEdit. Move the file. Make a change to it in TextEdit. Notice that TextEdit doesn't care you moved (or renamed) the file, it writes to the correct place! No more accidentally duplicated files!

Gotta love the Mac file system! :-D

Re:Well now

[technomancerX]

"In short, very few users are debating the worthiness, usability, or power of an operating system these days.

You're right on this point. However most people could give a damn about flexibility. They want a machine that isn't going to get eaten alive by viruses every other week. Windows does not provide this. Period.

As for the other points you raise, aside from gaming I have never had a problem finding either hardware or software for my Mac.

I am also not a Mac zealot, as I use Linux, Windows, and OS X on a regular basis. I have to say for servers Linux wins every time. For games Windows wins every time. For actually getting work done, OS X wins hands down every time.