It took a long time to deliver but I’m finally there – I’ve moved to Mac. They say a picture is worth a thousand words…
I’ve posted a full Flickr set of the unboxing of the iMac and iPod – not too many pics as it’s been done already. It’s too early to feel settled with OS X although I’ve so far managed to do everything I’ve wanted to, including an almighty struggle to get my iTunes library over to the mac from the pc. I ended up hacking the library xml file to get it to work. However the iMac hardware is stunning. Quiet, fast and bright – in fact too bright much like when you view a TV in a store and it’s set to 100%. I ended up reducing the brightness to just over half to make it easy on the eyes. Even then it was brighter than my last LCD. Still can’t get used to using the Apple key for cut, copy, paste and there are obviously lots of oddities that will take time to understand. Expose is stunning though and makes managing multiple windows a painless task – windows could learn a lot and that still hasn’t been addressed in Vista which is an issue as more people move to larger and larger desktops.
The iPod is as impressive as ever. Screen is bright, video’s look sharp although I still think it’s too small to watch TV episodes and movies on. Most noticeable are the new earbuds – comfy and sound good. Gapless playback is also welcome…at last.
Downsides. Only one at the moment – the Mighty Mouse. It is OK but not a patch on my old Logitech which will be pressed back into service. The virtual right mouse button is awkward and the side buttons require a lot of pressure to activate. Not for me and it defies logic as to why Apple couldn’t design something better.
Seeing as I’ve spent only a day with the iMac I’m surprised how easy it is to perform basic tasks although I do feel vulnerable due to my lack of knowledge. If something went wrong I would probably struggle badly. With Windows I felt comfortable that no matter what I did I could rectify the situation – it will take a while to get that feeling with the Mac. Hardware has also worked like a dream, both new and old. Joy of joys – I don’t have any dead pixels (well none that are obvious and although I’ve scanned a few times and can’t see any I ain’t going hunting). Thoroughly delighted that I finally made the move. It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks go as I scratch beneath the surface. To be honest I can’t wait.
The copy and paste thing still throws me. I do windows+C the PC at work and option+C at home. 9 months after switching you’d have thought I’d get that sussed by now! The other thing I found strange was applications not quitting when you closed all open windows.
Switching over iTunes was a bother to me too.
But anyway – welcome to the enlightened world of mac.
Hmmm
A new computer purchase is on the horizon for me and I’m swithering… PC or Mac?
I would love to switch but, ultimately, it might well be price that puts me off. Either way I’ll be watching your progress closely.
P.S. What you doing this coming Saturday? Coming to the blogmeet?
I found price to be fairly comparable with Dell for example. Ahem. For what it’s worth the weekend working with the mac was easy apart from iTunes. If you have any specific questions let me know and I’ll try and answer them honestly.
This coming weekend will see some experimentation with Parallels and boot camp for those windows apps that I still need. Will be interesting to see if I’m still as satisfied with moving to mac as I feel today.
Blogmeet – tempting but I’m in Madrid from Tuesday-Friday so may be busy Saturday. I’ll let you know.
Yay. And snap. Lovely new desktop. You get used to the apple key eventually for copy and paste. I find it more irksome to have to press control+apple+left or right to goto the end of a line, but even that starts to become automatic. Pretty soon you’ll start cursing windows at work when you start pressing windows+C. 🙂
Gordon, you’d probably be surprised at prices of Apples these days. One of the mags did a comparison between Apple and Dell on like for like spec and in most cases they were much of a muchness.
I have a love-hate relationship with the mighty mouse. Looks great, and 80% of the time it does what I expect. But sometimes I get a right click when I wanted left. Or vice versa. The squeezy thumb click thing must just take time to get used to, as I can do it without thinking now with no effort or force. I remember struggling with it when i first switched though. I really shoulda gone wireless with the kb & m though. Looks slick.