As I reported before, I am trying out a Hackintosh (running OS X on my non-Mac machine). A few initial thoughts from a long time Windows user.
First, let’s back up. My initial experience with computers was a Vic 20, followed by Apple IIs, all in school, and I longed for an Amiga when they were out. (I would eventual fall for the NeXT as well, but that platform never took off…save to start the World Wide Web… still would love to have a good NeXT Cube or Color…. all beyond the point.) I remember the Lisa and respecting the innovation there, and I remember the first Mac (and its awesome 1984 ad) and thought they had a thing over PCs, of course by the time the Mac rolled around PCs were finally starting to break through to the common people. Anyhow, for a long time I used DOS, and I was okay with the switch to Windows 3.1, though some tasks I still found easier to go to the command line for (just try to get me to do too much command line stuff these days… I recall little beyond dir and dir /w). I had a harder time moving to Windows 95 from 3.1, though I eventually got used to it so much that I had problems remembering how to do stuff in 3.1 when I was installing Road Runner. Now of course I have Windows XP, and I keep marching on…
On to OS X. So I install OS X onto my PC (an AMD based machine at that, which throws in an extra challenge…) and the first attempt doesn’t work (didn’t read the options, missed things like AMD, etc…), second attempt works very well save the fact I can’t connect to the Internet. I eventually fixed the Internet (detailed a bit in my previously linked post) and eventually kill the system when I try to upgrade to 10.5.4 (from 10.5.2). I try a third time, better success on the install (turns out the drivers I needed for the Internet access were an option had I looked at all of them) but again kill the system with the upgrade… lesson, leave it at 10.5.2. Fourth install is what I am on now, everything is running fine and I can now finally get to see what it is like.
First thing that disoriented me was the way the applications menu bar goes to the top of the screen and doesn’t seem connected to the application itself. To access the default menu, you have to resize or minimize the application, then click an empty spot on the desktop (probably don’t have to do it that way, I am sure there is an easier way to bring up the regular menu).
Then I noticed closing an application (via clicking the X on the upper left of the application’s window) doesn’t seem to make it quit. It is still on the bar, with the little light below it showing that it is still going. Right click that and you can choose quit, or just make it big again and choose quit from the menu. Either way, this seems a little odd. I can get used to the menu bar being in the same spot, but this seems unintuitive, at least from a Windows user POV.
Then today I installed XCode. When it was finished, I didn’t see the icon to start it anywhere. I eventually found it in the folder it was installed in, but there was no shortcut to it in the Applications or Utilities folders, I didn’t see a new folder for anything show up. If all applications/games do the same thing, then this would make Mac harder for the average person to use. I know enough to look in the folder it was installed to, but a casual user may just want to click the Windows Start button, click over to the application/game they want and go from there. Perhaps there is an option for this kind of thing, and perhaps most applications/games that aren’t geared to developers may install shortcuts (I think they are called an allies in OS X) in an easy to find location.
Those 3 issues aside, the only thing standing between Apple and bigger market share (I know, Steve Jobs said “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” but still, they have to think about a better market share I would think) is price. Those 3 things you can easily retrain people on, just put a “Learning to use Mac OS X for Windows users” video on the desktop or something, but price is a harder thing to get past. Perhaps they seriously do see themselves as the BMW of the computer world. This would explain why an honest to God Mac costs nearly twice as much as similarly equipped PC. Some people like BMWs. Me? I say if I had the money for a BMW, I would rather get a basic Toyota Camery and spend the rest of my funds on something else. Both cars get me from Point A to Point B. The BMW may do it with more style (who really wants a hot leather seat in Summer and cold leather seat in Winter anyhow? I seriously don’t get why cloth isn’t an option in high end cars since I don’t want to burn myself or freeze myself until the seat warmer kicks in, and what if I just don’t want to kill an animal just to have a seat that might feel slightly nicer in good weather days) and ride refinements, but short of nearly living in the car driving all the time, who cares? Of course it is the, short of nearly living in it all the time, that is the catch in the Mac’s case. If you spend all your time on that PC, then it probably should be as refined and stylish as it can be. Still, the people who on the pocketbook of most companies don’t care about such things, they see that PC from Dell costs less than half as much and the employee can do just as much on it, so it wins. I am not saying that Macs need to approach Dell’s price points, even Dell’s high end XPS price points are probably lower than what I would aim Mac at, but I would come in close so that more people may look at it more closely.
I also think I agree with John Carmack, and that Apple just doesn’t get games. This may be largely Steve Jobs’ fault, I don’t know. But I think they underestimate how important gaming is to the home market, at the very least casual gaming (since serious gaming seems to be moving to consoles, not so much by choice of the hardcore gamers, but by publishers).
Anyhow, those are my initial thoughts… it’s 1:30 and I must get to bed… I’ll tag this post and the other Hackontosh post up later…