Diary of a new Mac user – 5 things I dislike so far

December 23, 2011
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It’s been a couple of months now and my initiation into the Mac world is pretty much complete. I’m a long way from learning every trick and tweak, but the small things that tripped me up early on aren’t a problem anymore. That said, Mac OS and the Air do still hide a few things I’m not so enamoured with.

1. The one thing I truly miss(ed) from Windows 7…

In my last post I praised the window management in OS X, but there is one feature that it lacks compared to Windows – Aero Snap. Aero Snap, in case you didn’t know, was introduced in Windows 7 and allows you to ‘snap’ windows to one half of the screen. It’s especially useful for looking at two documents side-by-side, something the 1,440 x 900 display on my Air ought to be perfect for. Mac OS doesn’t have this by default, but luckily there are plenty of apps that replicate it. The simplest, and cheapest, is called Split Screen and it does the job for just 59p. Job done.

2. The Dashboard

It’s not like it’s offensive, but it’s only marginally less pointless than the Sidebar introduced with Windows Vista in so much as it’s not in the way all the time. I’ve downloaded iStat Pro, which is actually a little bit useful, but the rest is just superfluous. Harmless, but superfluous.

3. Not being able to write to NTFS hard drives

I’m not sure if this is a fair complaint or not, but as a former Windows user not being able to write to hard drives with the NTFS file system is a major pain. Of course, Windows has the same problem in the opposite direction, but whichever side of the fence one sits on it’s a problem I could do without. I see creating partitions in my future!

4. iCloud is only half useful

In theory Apple has got a lot right with iCloud, and if all you ever use is Apple products then it’ll probably serve you well. But one thing it doesn’t do well is web access. If I want to access files on iCloud from my prehistoric Windows work PC, I have to use iTunes – I’m not going to do this. Consequently I’m sticking with Dropbox, which suits me just fine. The exception are, of course, Apple’s own iWork apps, but I choose not to use them at present. Apple needs to sort this out before iCloud can be taken seriously.

5. Mail app isn’t as good as Gmail

As a Gmail user, it’s hard to imagine living without priority inbox. It, combined with the brilliant Other Inbox service, keeps my email clutter to an absolute minimum. This makes the Mail app somewhat redundant, despite he fact using it has nice fringe benefits such as integration with Spotlight search. I don’t suppose Apple will try and support this in future, but an alternative that combines the utility of Gmail with the integration of the Mail app would earn my vote. If you know of such a thing, let me know.

Previous posts in this series…

Diary of a new Mac user – 5 things I love so far

November 7, 2011
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1. Full-screen apps

It sounds like such a trivial thing, but full-screen apps in Lion are awesome. iA Writer, my chosen writing tool, is a case in point. It’s the perfect, no distractions writing tool and it works all the better thanks to the full-screen mode. It’s the multi-touch gestures that make full-screen mode work, though. They make it practical to use apps entirely in full-screen, safe in knowledge you can get back to the desktop in a swipe or two.

2. AirPlay & Home Sharing

An Apple TV is needed to fully appreciate this point, but streaming music wirelessly is awesome and the Apple TV does it really well. Sure, there are plenty of excellent wireless audio systems (Sonos, Squeezebox, DLNA – take your pick) to choose from, but for my purposes the Apple TV is ideal. It plugs straight into my AV receiver, and therefore my 5.1 system, and I can control it with ease on the TV. It’s just a shame it can’t do the same for Spotify.

3. The glass-touchpad

Of all the design features Apple’s introduced in recent years, the glass-touchpad has to be my favourite. I remember when I first reviewed a MacBook with one – it made Windows laptops feel archaic in comparison. That the likes of HP, Dell and Asus are still struggling to replicate it (see reviews of the HP Envys or Asus UX31 for evidence) just goes to prove it’s no trivial accomplishment.

4. The peace and quiet

The MacBook Air really is epic in its goodness. 90% of the time it’s totally silent and only vaguely warm. Stress it for a while and it will start to gust, but in general use you’d be hard pressed to know anything was going on in there.

5. Mission control

With one small exception, window management on Mac OS is in a completely different league to Windows. I kind of appreciate why Microsoft hasn’t focussed on this, it’s something of a power user’s niche interest. But the combination of Mission Control (Spaces as was), full-screen apps and gestures makes for a far smoother, more pleasant workflow – particularly on a laptop where there’s limited screen real-estate. The exception? I’ll get to that in another post.

Diary of a new Mac user – Day 1: Getting Started

November 5, 2011
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That’s it, Apple has won. It was inevitable. First the iPhone, then the iPad, now the MacBook Air – the entry-level 13-inch if you’re wondering. I’ve even bought an Apple TV for its AirPlay and Home Sharing goodness. Apple’s victory over years of entrenched PC loyalty is complete.

The best laptop ever made? Probably.

Mostly painless migration

By and large my migration from PC to Mac has been surprisingly painless. It helped that I’d already got a clear idea of what apps I needed to download before my Air arrived. Seashore for image editing, Reeder for RSS, official Twitter app, Neo Office for productivity, Chrome for web browsing. And, of course, Dropbox – the single most useful app in existence.

My only serious decision was how to transfer all my music. While Apple has a useful migration tool, the idea of transferring 40GB or so of data across a Wi-Fi network seemed foolhardy. Instead I opted for the tried and tested external hard drive backup option.

It’s here I had problems. For reasons unclear transferring my whole music folder just wouldn’t complete without an error. I thought it might be a power saving measure kicking in, but fiddling with those settings didn’t solve the problem. In the end I resorted to copying it across in chunks for 5GB to avoid the problem. A tedious workaround, no doubt, but one I shouldn’t have to repeat.

iTunes is still iTunes

Of course, iTunes being the fussy program that it is (despite its idiosyncrasies I’ve grown to like it), I then had to re-import the whole library in again. I fancy anyone without a little experience would find this process a bit challenging, but I guess that’s why the migration tool exists.

Even with these small challenges any thoughts of installing Windows, something I hadn’t ruled out, have been quickly extinguished. I’ll post some more thoughts in due course.

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