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What was gained? From eComStation 1.1 From Windows 2000 From Linux |
What was lost? | What did it cost? |
Apple, maker of the popular Macintosh computers, iPod and iTunes Music Store, have tried over the years to coax PC users to switch to the Macintosh platform. They have touted their highly praised elegant graphical user interface, visual appeal of the OS and of the iMac computer line and resistance to virus/worm and denial of service attacks which frequently cripple Windows systems. But they never spoke directly to me. They aimed their marketing at users of DOS and later Windows, but I was using a PC operating system which was already years ahead of Windows in visual appeal, usability and technical power, so the Mac had little or nothing to offer me.
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"...I spent $2,000 buying a Mac rather than spending $0 to install Linux onto my existing PC... because there is no guiding vision behind Linux." |
That changed in late 2003 when, out of curiosity over the new and improved MacOS X system, I read early reviews of the then new release 10.3 (codenamed Panther). The feature set and well thought out user interface had me salivating. I had only had this experience twice before: once in 1994 when IBM released OS/2 Warp (10 months before Microsoft finally managed to get Windows 95 onto store shelves with a hollow imitation of the OS/2 Warp graphical user interface) and once in 1997 when Be Inc. brought their visually stunning and multimedia-rich BeOS to the PC platform. Now Apple showed the same kind of forward thinking and user-centric design that had been so rare and cherished with other developers.
You may be asking yourself why I didn't become interested in MacOS X before 10.3, and the answers are pretty simple. From what I could gather at the time of its release in 2001, MacOS X 10.0 was a very shaky product. It was the first release of a completely new MacOS -- it bore almost no resemblance to the classic MacOS which had been developed from 1984 through 2000. It was, at its heart, a totally different animal and there were bugs that needed to be shaken out and a heck of a lot of optimization to make it run faster and with greater stability. Being a radically new system, there were also only few native programs available, though it had the ability to run many of the older breed of MacOS programs without the benefits of the new system's advances. It was a bit like Windows NT which came out in (I believe) 1993 but was so completely different from the mainstream Windows 3.1/95/98 that it didn't sell well until after 2000.
Versions 10.1 and 10.2 were for all intents and purposes stability and performance improvements with not much added in the way of the user experience. The interface looked really nice (for its time) but had some quirks which were remedied in 10.3. The system also lacked some important usability features I had grown quite accustomed to in both OS/2 and Windows 2000 by that time, such as a built-in task switcher. I would later come to rely also on OSX's support for the X11 windowing system (popular in the UNIX and Linux world) and prior to version 10.3 this was neither a built-in nor supported component.
But what had me salivating was not so much the elegant look of the 10.3 user interface nor the promised (additional) speed improvements, impressive though these features were. I was drawn first and foremost to Exposé, a task switcher unlike anything ever seen before -- anywhere. This was the most user-centric piece of programming I had ever seen. If you're not familiar with Exposé.
With a single click of a button, or if you choose you can set it up to respond when you move your mouse to any corner of the screen, you can easily move all windows out of the way to expose your desktop (useful for quickly clearing lots of windows to get at a folder or file that's sitting on the desktop). Move the mouse back to your chosen corner or press the key again and all windows return to their original positions on the screen. I can tell you this makes dragging a file from one folder to another extremely easy.
The second Exposé option is to have every open window scale down in size and display side by side on the screen with zero overlap (making it incredibly easy to see what windows you have open and use your mouse to click on the one you want to change to). Hovering the mouse over any such shrunken window displays the window's title in a non-intrusive highlight over that window and clicking any such window brings them all back to their original size but puts your selected window in the foreground. This is all possible due to MacOS X's unique graphical user interface which is based on Adobe's popular PDF document formatting technology which allows text and images (even videos that are running) to be smoothly scaled up or down with minimal loss of display quality.
The third option with Exposé is very much like the second except it only affects all open windows of the currently selected program. Let's say for instance, if you are browsing the web and switching between three or four windows of the Mozilla web browser; with a single key press or moving the mouse to the designated corner of the screen, all Mozilla windows scale down to fit side by side on the screen and display their contents in smaller form (including any animations or videos which may be running in them). For users plagued by web popup ads, this may also be useful for seeing all of them at once so you can close them quickly and easily.
Now let's say you only want to briefly see the desktop or all open windows or all open windows of the current program and then you want everything to automatically switch back to normal. Simply press and hold the designated key for a second or two and it happens. Of course, you could also just press the key twice in succession to achieve the same effect.
MacOS X 10.3 had numerous other intersting features, and I was certainly happy to know the whole system rides on top of a time tested BSD UNIX core which allows for powerful multi-user file management, security and rock solid stability. There are no known MacOS X viruses (or virii if you prefer). This is a luxury I had known for years with OS/2 but which had become a problem when I started using Windows 2000 for multimedia purposes. Now I am able to do my multimedia in MacOS X and leave all fears of virus/worm/denial-of-service attacks behind.
But anyway, while MacOS X runs on a UNIX core, there is no need whatsoever for the user to learn UNIX. Apple is a company with a long history of developing very easy to use software. It was MacOS which Microsoft was first accused of blatantly copying when they released early versions of Windows. It was MacOS which won a famous timed contest between a (I believe) 7 year old child setting up and getting online with a brand new, out of the box Macintosh versus a pair of grown men (both editors for a PC publication) setting up a brand new Windows based PC. Apple has not abandoned that ease of use, they have instead found a way to incorporate the vast technical power of UNIX with their years of experience designing elegant and user-centric interfaces. This is a feat which no one else has accomplished. My own number one complaint against Linux (and the reason why I spent $2,000 buying a Mac rather than spending $0 to install Linux onto my existing PC) is that the Linux user interfaces (plural, because there is no guiding vision behind Linux) all feel half-finished and over stuffed with cryptically named programs that I don't know whether or not I would ever use. With MacOS X, and particularly in the 10.3 release, Apple has created the perfect balance between making a general home user feel comfortable and enabling the use of high-end design graphics, film editing and server applications.
Other users will point to other features of MacOS X 10.3 (Panther) as the reason they use it. Certainly iChat AV (AOL Instant Messenger compatible chat with audio and video chat features built-in) is nice to have; the upgrades to Apple's own email and web browser programs (Mail and Safari respectively) are definite boons; and improvements in networking (especially networking with Windows based PCs), the look and feel of the user interface as mentioned previously and various bundled tools and utilties are all welcomed. But it was Exposé that truly hooked me on the Mac. I don't expect any other developer will have anything remotely similar for at least 2-3 years still, but I and millions of other Mac users are enjoying the full benefits of it right now.
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"There are no known MacOS viruses." |
Your mileage will vary. PC users who have never known anything but Windows will not understand many of the rich features I have enjoyed on my PC since 1995 when I purchased IBM's OS/2 Warp 3 operating system. Others who have only used OS/2 won't have my level of understanding with Windows 2000, and those who use Linux will have a very different view of what makes for a good operating system.
In my own personal case, what I gained by moving from eComStation 1.1 (which by the way is based on OS/2 Warp 4.5 but enhanced and sold by a different company) to MacOS X includes modern multimedia support both for viewing and for creation. OS/2 always had good audio players (for mp3, ogg vorbis, even RealMedia audio) but the video support had been lacking for years. By the time some good work was done to modernize OS/2's video playback support, it lacked full and legal DVD video support which had become a standard on Windows and Macintosh. So now with the Mac I get excellent all around multimedia support.
eComStation's user interface looks much nicer than the old OS/2 Warp 4 UI, but at its heart it is still the same thing; it's just been spruced up a bit with new icons, a few new fonts, new title bar effects (gradiant and bitmap image backgrounds) and buttons. MacOS X is a totally new animal compared to eCS and even compared to Windows, which has its roots in OS/2 going back to the early 1990s. I gained a vastly more elegant and visually appealing user interface, complete with direct-to-PDF screen capturing and print-to-PDF built into every program that uses the system's print functions. The user interface of MacOS X feels more "alive" and is most definitely built on a more modern concept of user friendliness.
There's also much more USB (and FireWire) support for external devices such as hard drives, mice and keyboards, speakers, printers and scanners, the Apple iPod, etc.
And lastly, though I don't use it much since I am but one person, MacOS X has great multi-user support, including Fast User Switching which allows a second (or third or fourth...) user to log into the system while the other(s) remain logged in. Multi-user support also invovles file and folder permissions and optional encryption for greater security. With OS/2 there never was true, system-wide multi-user support. But as I say, I hardly use it in OSX since I am only one person. Still, it's nice to know it's there and able to be built upon for future enhancements.
Windows was always a step down from OS/2 for me. By the beginning of 1997 I had become so accustomed to the incredibly flexible way that OS/2 Warp handled objects and files on the desktop that nothing else has ever come close. Windows 2000, for all its improvements (compared to Windows 98 and NT4) still has a rather shallow user interface with exceptionally limited configuration and customization options. MacOS X 10.3 is still pretty shallow compared to OS/2's world class "object shadows" technology, but it's a few steps ahead of Win2K, including the aforementioned built-in PDF print support and being based on a more modern concept of user friendliness.
The aforementioned Fast User Switching in MacOS X 10.3 is nonexistent in Windows 2000 (it exists I believe in Windows XP but I've never used that). There is also a significant reduction in system startup (boot) time as well as system responsiveness under heavy loads when running MacOS X. My PowerMac system has two 1.25GHz processors, while my PC boasts an AMD AthlonXP 2400+ running at 2GHz. The Mac boots to a fully usable state within about a minute while Windows 2000 crawls along (and seems to go dead during most of the boot process) and takes well over 3 minutes to boot to a usable state.
Configuring networking, even between my Windows PC and the Macintosh, was a complete no brainer on the Mac side. I made zero, yes zero, configurations for my local area network under MacOS X 10.3. Clicking on the Network folder in the Finder (the equivalent of Explorer in Windows) automatically locates my Windows workgroup and my shared drive on the Windows PC. The networking setup in Windows itself required me to select DHCP to automatically find my network (IP) address and to manually enter a workgroup name to use. The Mac, it seems, automatically sets up a workgroup called WORKGROUP, but as I said it also automatically located and used the custom workgroup I had setup previously in Win2K. Two Windows PCs will never, ever find each other until you manually specify the same workgroup name on both PCs and reboot both.
I gained the freedom to choose the programs which are installed on my computer. Unlike Windows, where Microsoft has (at long last despite their years of saying it) forcefully welded Internet Explorer and Outlook Express into the system so they cannot be uninstalled, I am free to uninstall Apple's Safari browser and Mail program. I can also remove Apple's QuickTime media player if I choose.
And most certainly, I gained freedom from computer viruses (or virii, if you prefer), email worms and Denial of Service attacks which plague Windows users on an everyday basis. There are no known MacOS viruses. And since Outlook Express is not force-fed to every user, I'm not vulnerable to attacks which use my address book to propagate other attacks while pretending to be emails from me to my friends. That stuff just doesn't happen on the Macintosh.
Alright, to be fair I've not used Linux extensively. I cannot use Linux extensively. It winds up confounding the hell out of me long before I manage to get comfortable with its lack of consistency, its refusal to make things simple and the ten thousand and one different text editors that are all installed by default and put into the "start" menu.
So what I have gained in moving from my few skirmishes with Linux on the PC to MacOS is a great deal of consistency, reliability, and a single guiding vision toward a user-centric design. Apple has won award after award for the past 20 years by making attractive, powerful yet simple programs. Linux is a great system for use as a server or program development, but it is most definitely not ready to be used by Average Joe or even by my mother who has a hard enough time learning Windows. MacOS X allows great power and flexibility IF you want it, but it uses consumer-reasonable default settings. MacOS X also has a lot better showing in the commercial software market, with first rate support for Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat, Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver, Microsoft Office 2004 (you read that right), VirtualPC 6 (for those who want to run Windows-only programs on a Mac) and games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake III Arena (note, I am not a big gamer, so I'm only assuming those are the big games right now).
What was lost has somewhat been said already. I lost OS/2's (and eComStation's) fabulous WorkPlace Shell user interface, with its dead simple simplicity and extremely powerful object shadows and modular design. I figure the high level of visual appeal in MacOS X and its ties with the powerful UNIX subsystem (for file ownership and access permissions) offsets this to some extent.
I've lost a few Windows-only multimedia programs such as PowerDirector Pro, VirtualDub and TMPGEnc, all of which had use for me in converting video file formats into VCD (VideoCD) or standard MPEG and DivX formats. Some of that functionality is taken over by Apple's iMovie and iDVD programs, but Apple has chosen to specifically limit their import and export format options (it's not easy to import, for instance, a Windows Media file or an MPEG into iMovie, but once done (perhaps with the help of 3rd party programs) you can export to Apple's QuickTime format, to DV for use with digital camcorders, or to DVD video, which is a handy standard.
I've lost my favorite email program in the whole wide world -- PMMail for OS/2. But then again, I lost that when I moved from eComStation (OS/2 based) to Windows 2000. There just isn't another email program which is as easy to use and which has true multiple account support (Outlook and Outlook Express DO NOT have multiple account support as all accounts must share the same inbox and outbox). However I'm somewhat satisfied with the multi-platform Mozilla Thunderbird email program, which I can use in eComStation, Windows and MacOS X and not have to learn/deal with different programs that work in different ways.
As far as my move from Linux goes, I lost my frustration. :) Okay okay, I also lost some money because while Linux is available free of charge from numerous distributors, MacOS X (like Windows) costs money. I also had to buy Macintosh hardware, because MacOS X does not run on IBM-compatible PCs. I rather enjoy being able to pull my PC apart, add in new hardware, upgrade the processor for under $100, etc. The options with a Mac are more limited. I can add more memory and more hard drives, but due to artificial restrictions built into some of Apple's multimedia rograms, I need an Apple certified DVD recorder (aka SuperDrive), but I can add any other CD/DVD drive in the secondary bay if I wish -- I'll just need to use non-Apple programs when writing to those drives. The PowerMac computer is also specifically designed as "a unit". The case cannot be easily modified as with a PC, because the case is built in such a way to create the proper airflow to cool the processors and graphics card. Any more than superficial modifications could throw off the airflow.
I already noted that I spent around $2K (USD) for my Macintosh. What I haven't told you yet is that for that money I got a dual 1.25GHz processor system with a gigabyte of high speed DDR memory, an 80GB hard drive and 4X DVD-R "SuperDrive". The system has built-in sound, 56K v.92 fax/modem and 10/100 Mbps networking, USB mouse and keyboard as well as built-in Firewire ports for use with external hard drive, DV camcorders, etc. I additonally got 2 years of AppleCare warranty which covers maintenance/replacement of the system if anything goes wrong in that time.
MacOS X version 10.2.4 (aka Jaguar) was included, which I quickly upgraded through free download to version 10.2.8. I added a 2 port SerialATA card and a 160GB SerialATA hard drive. I later purchased a copy of MacOS X 10.3 (aka Panther) at a discount, which I upgraded (again through free download) to version 10.3.5 and got the full iLife 2004 suite (a $50 retail value) which includes Apple's award winning consumer multimedia authoring tools iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand. I got all this for around $2,000.
A similarly equipped brand-name PC (an HP, Dell or IBM) with 2 years extended warranty would probably only cost around $1,200-1,400 but would also only contain a single CPU, would definitely not include iLife (which is available for MacOS only) and would lock me into using an ass-backward operating system from Microsoft.
If you want to learn more about MacOS X, even just to see what it's about, the two best things I can suggest are to visit your local Apple Store (they're springing up worldwide) and visit http://www.apple.com/switch/.
©1996, 2007 by Don K. Eitner