PianoWow

I was debating about this for some time after Apple announced its new mouse, the Magic Mouse.  I’ve had my Mighty Mouse for about 9 months, and had only one complaint about it so far.  My main concern about the Magic Mouse was about the clicking behavior.  It wasn’t clear from Apple’s material on it that it actually still “clicks”.  I thought perhaps it would just sense a click with a touch of the finger, but after testing it in the Apple store, I was pleasantly surprised that it does in fact click.  I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t able to rest my finger on the mouse as I was using it. I decided to go ahead and buy the Magic Mouse today.

My one problem with the Mighty Mouse is with the tiny trackball used for scrolling, middle clicking.  At first there were no issues, but a few months ago, one of the directions (up) stopped working.  It would scroll right, left and down, but not up.  Odd…  So I did some digging and there are some very creative ways to clean off the gunk that builds up underneath the track ball.  Too bad Apple didn’t provide some easy way of getting the ball out and cleaning under it.  You basically have to disassemble the entire device to do that successfully.  But with a little compressed air, it’s just about good as new.

The scrolling on a touch device should be more reliable, so the Magic Mouse solves that problem for sure.  Another problem I have with the Magic Mouse is the lack of middle-click, which I use in firefox to open new tabs (and close tabs) all the time.  But there is software (BetterTouchTool) out there to support that.  You can enable middle-click with two- or three-finger click.  So that solves that.  The other problem is the Magic Mouse just feels less confortable under my hand than my Mighty Mouse.  The Mighty Mouse was all curves and felt very natural.  The Magic Mouse has hard edge to it, which I suppose was necessary for clearly delimiting where the touch functionality would work and where it wouldn’t, but it still feels different under my hand.  Some thing else that has changed in the feel department is that the sides of the mouse are now metal, which means they feel cold in comparison to the white plastic the older mouse had.

I wish they had made a wired version of the Magic Mouse.  I’m not wild about changing batteries in something I use every day.  Suppose I happen to be out of AA batteries when the mouse finally decides to die… That does not sound like a fun situation.  It does come with its own Energizer batteries pre-installed, so that was nice.

On the positives, the scrolling on the Magic Mouse is flawless.  I was very impressed.  The two-finger swipe is a nice addition as well.  I checked, and you can use that feature to change tabs in firefox, so that it functions a lot like iPhoto does.  The tracking is laser, which basically does away with the need for a mouse pad.  But I still keep mine for sentimental/habitual reasons.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that the side buttons have also been removed, but I never used those anyway.  I set the side buttons to Exposé, so that would happen suddenly, unexpectedly on occasionally when gripping the mouse too tight.  To me, the lack of side buttons is a good thing.  I won’t get surprised by all my windows spreading out again.

In summary, the Magic Mouse is a cold, industrial, better replacement to the organic-feeling Mighty Mouse.  It solves my one issue with the Mighty Mouse, and adds some new features, like two-finger swipe.  Well done, Apple.

I recently switched from a Windows machine to a Mac.  After 3 months of using my MacBook, I feel comfortable enough writing this post, to fully document my impressions of the difference between Windows XP and Mac OS X right now.

Please note that while I could write this about Vista, not many people use it.  I have read that many of the things I will discuss have been upgraded in Windows 7.  But my complaint on this front is simply that Windows 7, in the near future, will be doing what Mac OS X did years ago.

I am going to list features that support three different arguments: 1) Windows is better, 2) Windows and Mac are equal and 3) Mac is better.  Please note that I am only restricting this to the base installation of either OS.  The availability of software on either platform is widespread: free, commercial, or otherwise.

Windows is Better

Windows does a couple of things better, in my opinion, mostly because I’ve grown used to the behaviors, having used PCs and Windows for many years.

• GUI – resizing a window by using the mouse is much more flexible and easier on Windows.  In general, any corner or edge can be dragged as opposed to the Mac, where only one corner (and no edges) can be dragged.
• Keyboard
  1. Home and End Keys
     

     Action	Windows	Mac
     Move to beginning of line	Home	Command+Left
     Move to end of line	End	Command+Right
     Move to beginning of document	Ctrl+Home	Home
     Move to end of document	Ctrl+End	End

     It’s not often that I need to move to the end or beginning of a document.  But I move to the beginning and end of a line very often, when editing a document.  On the Mac this costs me an extra keystroke, when compared to Windows.  The keystroke savings when going to the end or beginning of a document aren’t enough, because this operation isn’t used as often.

  2. Insert – The insert key on a PC causes most Windows programs to toggle between insert and overwrite behavior when editing text.  This is not an option on a Mac, and the extra keystrokes required to delete characters are a minor nuissance.

Windows and Mac are Equal

Certain things they both do well.  In some cases, I wanted to move a few of these itmes to another section, but the difference wasn’t large enough to merit a “completely better” argument.

• Killing badly written programs that freeze
• Compressing and decompressing ZIP archives
• System options – Windows’ Control Panel and Mac’s System Preferences both do what they are intended to do
• Background apps – System Tray (Windows) and System Menu (Mac) processes function without bothering the user too much
• Beauty – For the most part, they are equal, but I like Mac’s animations better.
• Windows manager – while they are slightly different, they both allow multiple programs to run and the user can switch easily between them.

Mac is better

• Installation – Installing and uninstalling apps, in most cases, is as simple as adding and deleting the .app file to and from the applications directory.  In other cases, an installation and uninstallation program will do the job, just like Windows.
• Search
  1. Spotlight – best way to run a program.  Just Command+Space, and type the first few letters of the program name.
  2. Finder Search – best way to find a file.  The feature itself is easier to find than Windows Search, works faster, and is more powerful than the Windows counterpart.  I attribute this in part to good UI design, and a better file system.  NTFS/FAT might as well have been designed in the dark ages.
• Programs – the base installation of Mac OS X is much more powerful than Windows.
  1. GarageBand has no Windows counterpart
  2. iMove is more intuitive than Windows Movie Maker
  3. iPhoto has no Windows counterpart
  4. iTunes beats Windows Media Player in every category
  5. Safari is better than IE
  6. Preview has no Windows equivalent
  7. Finder, while it has its quirks, still trumps Explorer
  8. TextEdit is Notepad and Wordpad combined
• Disk management – Every mounted, internal and external drive/disc appears as an icon on the desktop.  They also appear as a place in Finder.  Disc image creation, maintenance, and burning are all supported natively on a Mac.
• Backup – Time Machine, which comes with Mac OS X, has no Windows equivalent, 3rd party or otherwise.  I attribute this to the file system Mac uses.
• Print – both have a large array of printer drivers built-in, but the Mac can print to a pdf out of the box.
• Networking – Airport is easier, and more reliable than Windows’ wireless network utility.  Any shared resource on the network appears in Finder automatically, and can be accessed with no configuration.
• Internet Publishing – Mac OS X comes with basic web publishing software and the ability to serve web pages easily.
• Console – UNIX (Mac) vs. DOS (Windows).  Enough said.
• Launch Bar is like Windows’ task bar and and quick-launch menu combined.  You have to play with it to appreciate it.
• USB – devices are recognized and usable much more quickly.
• External display – Mac remembers the resolution, position, and hierarchy (primary/secondary monitor) of any external display when it is disconnected.  This way, plugging the monitor back in resumes the previous state with no configuration.  Windows forces you to re-configure each time you plug-in.
• TouchPad – it’s a small thing, but MacBook has multi-touch gestures for things like scrolling, right-click, swiping through a list, changing programs, and many other things.
• Corners and Spaces – another small thing, but once you get used to it, you really miss it on Windows.  Spaces allows for multiple desktops to run different programs.  You drag the program to the desktop you want.  Windows can have this option as a 3rd party program.  Corners, as far as I know, has no Windows equivalent, and allows you to execute certain commands simply by dragging the mouse into one of the corners of the screen.  Things like start screen saver, sleep, show spaces, etc.
• Dashboard – again, no Windows equivalent.  Vista sort of did this with the sidebar, but that takes up valuable space.  Dashboard is a collection of small utilities you can run at any time with a shortcut.  They are hidden from view when not running.

So what have I concluded?  I decided that an extra keystroke here and there when trying to replace text or move to the end of a line is worth all the goodness I get from the rest of what Mac has to offer.  I love my Mac.