Mac Switching: Think "Too Different"

It's easy to get into a Mac Vs. Windows argument when discussing certain features of OSX. It seems that, in the head of would-be Mac defenders, Apple can do no wrong.

The odd thing is that any former Windows user who voluntarily switched to Mac has already admitted that they consider Mac superior to Windows PCs. But that doesn't mean that this has to be a blanket admission. The purchase of a Mac does not immediately imply that a former Windows user has sipped at the Mac Kool-Aid.

Switching from Windows to Mac is hard, and the more of a "power user" you are, the harder it is. You have more keyboard shortcuts, small specialized apps, and customizations and tweaks on your Windows system than an average user. That also means that you have a lot more work ahead of you to replicate these things on your Mac to create a comfortable working environment.

That is not to say that users like myself are trying to make Mac into a Windows clone. We switched to have fewer spyware worries, to have all that fun commandline Unix under the hood, to have a wide variety of advantages. But a few things in the interface can give us pause.

For me, the biggest and most disconcerting adjustment is the loss of the "Explorer Interface", both in terms of browsing my own hard drive and in terms of finding an FTP client that offers it.

I just find the way the Mac Finder works to be... inefficient. That doesn't mean I think that the interface should be changed to the Windows way and only that way. But it would be nice if the "Explorer Interface" were an option.

This isn't me trying to make my Mac work like Windows. This is just a good thing that I'm surprised is missing from OSX. But if I ask why OSX can't offer this functionality (in addition to the existing functions, not instead of them), I get jumped on by the Mac faithful. It's as if I defiled a holy place by suggesting that Apple adopt one of the things I believe Microsoft got right.

I'm told to get used to it. I'm told that I should consider that maybe the Finder works this way "for a reason". Maybe it does, but at least for me, that reason doesn't mesh with the way I like to work and am used to working. I'd love to "get used to it", but if it slows me down and if my productivity is negatively affected, that is a bad thing.

There are a lot of good things about Apple and OSX, but Microsoft isn't retaining its market share simply because it's ingrained. Some of it is that Apple has thought so differently, that the Mac environment can feel alien to people who have become used to Windows. And if the answer to "how can I make my environment more comfortable" is "like it or lump it", that's just wrong.

I'm starting to regret switching. I miss some really minor little things that I now realize I took for granted. But more than that, it's just frustrating trying to get those little things so I can work in ways that are comfortable and familiar for me. But rather than accomodate me, it seems both Apple and its legions of faithful tell me that I should feel privileged to accomodate Apple.

And the sad thing is that power users like me are influencers. We're the ones our friends, family, and business associates look to for advice on hardware, software, etc. We're the ones who will persuade or dissuade people on the topic of switching. And when we're feeling frustrated, regretting our Mac purchase, and avoiding getting down to work because it feels so klunky to do it on our Macs, we're going to tell people to stick with Windows and avoid Mac.

I'm finding I really am not liking being a Mac owner as much as I thought I would, and my advice to anyone who is reasonably happy with Windows is to stick with it. If you need to be productive in more areas than e-mail, Adobe design tools, and Microsoft Office, you're going to spend days trying to find a replacement for those little apps you used so often and will miss like the dickens when you can't find a Mac equivalent that has the same feature set.

I miss four little things...

• The two-pane interface from Windows Explorer
• Crimson Editor (tabbed MDI and a great bracket matching function)
• WinSCP - SCP and SFTP with a Windows Explorer style filesystem browser.
• IrfanView - Probably the best little graphics viewing/cropping/converting utility around. Easy, functional, free... love it.

But when I'm developing sites, these things are the three things I use most and I cannot find functional equivalents on OSX. It makes work less "fun" and more frustrating.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Gadgets & Gizmos, Techno Thoughts.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.