I've got about 50 minutes left in my download of the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo for OS X but I don't think I'll stay up to try it out tonight, I got an early start this morning so I'm going to cut this post (and my awake time) short tonight (sorry guys, I promise more later).

What originaly convinced me that it would be possible for me to use a Mac was the fact that virtually every application (read: not games) I needed to use was available on the Mac. There was actually one point a long time ago where absolutely everything I was running on my PC was available for the Mac (I was only playing Warcraft 3 at the time), I almost did the switch-experiment then but I wasn't feeling adventurous enough. Other than the normal apps that everyone uses (FTP, IM, email, etc...) I have a couple of requirements: Photoshop, MS Office and Dreamweaver. I've grown accustomed to using those three applications in publishing articles for AT and luckily they were all available for OS X.

The first thing that's important to note is how simple the application install process is under OS X. In most cases there's no need to run the Windows equivalent of a setup file, instead you just drag the program onto your hard drive and it's installed. Some programs do have an installer, in which case the process is identical to it would be under Windows. Removing programs works in the exact opposite way; drag the app into the trash and it's gone. The one benefit here is that applications seem to properly remove themselves after this is done with, although I haven't tried removing Office just yet :) (under Windows you pretty much need a surgical procedure to truly remove Office from your system)

Photoshop and Dreamweaver are identical to their Windows versions, although Word is a bit more uncomfortable for me. I'm not sure if it is just the floating toolbar that puts me off but Word definitely feels much more foreign than I would expect my wordprocessor of choice for the past decade to feel, even if it is under OS X. I'm curious as to what Office 2004 for OS X will be like, because v.X definitely doesn't "feel" like its XP counterpart. From a functionality standpoint, everything is the same - except I haven't been successful in locating a wordperfect conversion filter in v.X. The rest of the Office suite seems pretty normal, although I haven't used Entourage (Outlook for OS X) as I'm currently quite happy with Apple's Mail.

One complaint about some apps that are on both OS X and Windows is that they often feature Windows shortcuts. For example, in Word v.X the home and end keys will take you to the beginning and end of a sentence just like in Windows, but there is no other OS X app that will do that. Instead, you have to use control + left/right to go to the start/end of a sentence. Neither option is "better" it's simply a matter of which one you are used to, but being in an OS where everything uses one method and having a single application stubbornly stick to another method frankly doesn't make sense. I guess that's a Microsoft gripe but I'm not so certain how responsive they will be to feature-requests from Mac users; then again, I'm probably jumping to conclusions, the Mac Office team is actually probably committed to their users.

I have yet to use any of the content creation applications such as GarageBand or FinalCut so I can't comment on those now, but I do have some words about Apple's Calendar and Mail clients. Calendar is a great application, it's very simple, the interface is great and the application itself is decently powerful. The UI is impressive but my biggest complaint about the app is more of a complaint with the platform - no blackberry support. I am a blackberry addict, I need it to get through my day and the fact that I've been unable to sync it with my G5 has been a huge issue. (the fact that I gave up blackberry sync functionality should say a lot about my interest in this experiment). The lack of blackberry support is more a fault of RIM as they don't see the demand in this market, but the fact of the matter is that you won't see sales until there is support out there. There's Palm support for OS X, there needs to be blackberry support. The blackberry sync application is a relatively simple app to begin with; porting it to OS X should not be a mammoth task by any means. If anything, the limited hardware/software configurations should make support a much simpler issue than on the PC if a client were developed. If I end up liking OS X enough I may have to ditch the blackberry for a Treo 600.

Apple's Mail client is also quite impressive; it's extremely easy to use but also extremely powerful, especially if you're willing to put in the time to learn how to script it. Without any modifications I had Mail doing everything Outlook 2004 was doing for me, including filtering spam. Just like Outlook, Mail's spam filter isn't 100% and it lets a decent amount of stuff through - but luckily we've got a filter on AT's mail server that picks up the rest. I'm hoping that Apple will continue to update the Junk Mail filtering engine on Mail as time goes on like Microsoft has, but only time will tell. I haven't accumulated enough email to judge performance between Mail and Outlook, but for someone who receives ~100 important emails and thousands of others to filter through on a daily basis I can say at this point I prefer Apple's Mail. We'll see if things change once I accumulate more messages but right now I'm liking Mail. My only complaint about Mail? There's no way to directly import Outlook .pst files; you have to export your .pst to a different format and then import them into Mail. So I left all my old email on my PC...every single message I've received since sometime in 1998, all organized into a nice hierarchy of dates corresponding to individual .pst files. Ah well :)

With the productive apps talked about, there's the next point that inevitable had to be made: gaming. Being a hardcore gamer on the Mac (by PC definitions) is basically impossible, unless you only play a game that is available on the Mac. The gaming scene has improved tremendously since I last remembered it, surprisingly enough Halo is even available for OS X. There are a few gems, such as the UT2004 Demo being released for OS X alongside WinXP, but the Mac is not a gaming platform. Luckily I've got multiple PCs in the house for just that purpose as I like keeping games off of my "work" computer(s). Gaming is something that will prevent the cold-turkey switch to a Mac for a lot of users, myself included. There's no getting around that, regardless of how nice the OS is.

My final comments on software on the Mac is about IM clients: OS X needs a port of Trillian. There are a number of clients with potential being developed for OS X; I first started using Fire because that's what everyone told me to use and its functionality was there, but the interface was horrid. Right now I'm using Adium which has a significantly improved interface, but lacks key features (can't check away messages, no file transfer, etc...). The Trillian developers mentioned the port to Objective-C as an issue for bringing Trillian to OS X, but it is desperately needed - unless Adium can get out of alpha quicker. The benefit of open source clients like Adium (other than the free aspect) is that they are constantly being updated, even in their alpha states (the v2 alpha has received an update a day for the past 6 days). If there is to be a Trillian port to OS X it needs to be done before clients like Adium are given a chance to mature, otherwise there will be very little demand for it. I wouldn't hold my breath though, it doesn't seem like OS X is a top priority for Trillian at this point - the hope lies in the open source community.

With all of these applications installed I've managed to bog OS X down to where I expected it to be; I've got a total of 15 apps running (including Finder) with 20 windows open and I'm beginning to see points where the system isn't as responsive as I would like. If I had to compare it to the previous PC I was using (Athlon 64 3400+) I would say that the system isn't actually any slower, but granted I'm running on a dual processor G5 setup vs. a single Athlon 64. I'd say any "seat of the pants" performance difference there is between the G5 and an Athlon 64 system is largely due to the OS. The aggressive caching OS X does seems to prevent disk swapping a lot, which does make the system feel faster overall than my PC when heavily multitasking. I have a feeling that with a little more memory (system and video) this thing would be running even smoother. Actually, that's a good word - smooth is the best way to quantify how the system seems to react when you're heavily multitasking.

The smooth comment being made, the G5 could use some faster CPUs. I've heard all the rumors about 2.5 - 2.6GHz 90nm G5s due out soon with 3GHz available by the end of the summer; if they are true, then that's exactly what this system needs. A nice 25 - 50% increase in clock speed (assuming no architectural changes) should improve overall system performance significantly; I think the G5 would be perfectly setup (given current software requirements) with a pair of 2.5GHz CPUs, at 3GHz we'd be talking butter. I don't know if I could deal with anything slower than the 2.0s I have right now, but the plus side of higher clocked CPUs being released is that the 2.0s will drop in price.

We always need more power, regardless of which side of the fence we're on :)

Thanks to the helpful comments from a number of you I did some looking into Exposé's performance as a function of video memory size. It does seem like 64MB isn't enough video memory to keep Exposé running smoothly with two high resolution diplays and a number of windows open. I've requested all of ATI's 9800 Mac products so I'll hopefully be able to do a 64MB 9600 vs. 128MB 9800 vs. 256MB 9800 comparison here with respect to high-res Exposé performance. I'm beginning to think there may be a need for a Mac section on AT; hardware is hardware after all :)

I know I said I'd keep this one short, but when I get to writing I can't really stop (I know, I talk too much). Keep the comments coming and I'll keep the blogs coming. Quick question for the keyboard junkies out there: is there a Safari equivalent to CTRL+Enter for completing a URL? I'm looking to be able to type 'anandtech' then hit a keystroke combination to add the www. and the .com. I swear I haven't been able to figure it out on my own if it does exist, it's probably the simplest thing in the world and I'm just missing it :) I'd appreciate any and all help as usual.

Take care all.
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  • Adam K - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Thanks for the helpful replies.

    It seems I am confusing a “power user” and an “enthusiast.” You see, a “power user” to you sounds like a regular “Joe user” to me. If I am misunderstood, please clarify exactly what a power user is…I helped my parents how to use the features available to them in their operating systems. At times they are running several applications at the same time. Does that make my parents “power users” by your definition?

    Power means to control, rule, and command. I hardly feel like I am really in control of the hardware Mac OS is connected to. I do not think it is outrageous that others agree. Apple should loosen up its proprietary licensing enough so that a few enthusiast tools can be developed. That is all I am asking. The simple fact that the core hardware cannot be manipulated at all is frustrating.
  • Eug - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Adam K said: "I consider a power user a user who wants to have control of all of the hardware and software connected to the system. The more control, the better."

    Adam K, not really. Your main assertion here is if it can't be overclocked, then it ain't for a power user. The problem is that the VAST MAJORITY of power users will never overclock their machine. They will simply pay the $$$ to get the performance they want. You're describing the hardware enthusiast, which is worlds different from true power user trying to get work done.

    Adam K said: "It seems that the computing world cannot have a discussion about different platforms without users from the different platforms associating themselves with their platform of choice."

    You're working again from an incorrect assumption. I'm typing this message from my Windows box which I built with my own bare hands. (I've never even owned a Power Mac.) This home-built box has had multiple overclocked CPUs in it, but in the end I quickly realized that if I want POWER I really should just pay for it, instead of buying lower GHz parts and overclocking the bejeezus out of them.

    Indeed, what this heavy duty overclocking has taught me is how to appreciate a good case design when I see it. And it seems to me that the G5 Power Mac design is perfectly suited to my impression of what a power user wants. It's expensive, but it's well-designed and extremely overbuilt. The Power Mac G5 simply exudes quality.
  • OoTLink - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Yeah ern that raises a great thought..

    If you prefer to use gnome or blackbox, use XDarwin.

    If you prefer to use KDE, use apple x11.

    IMHO the best thing you can do is install apple x11, set that up with KDE, turn around and install XDarwin and set that up with blackbox (simply have an xinitrc that you change for either case).

    I really prefer blackbox' minimal GUI :)

    Probably the easiest way to install xdarwin is through fink (if you want to make that even easier grab finkcommander of versiontracker), or at www.xdarwin.org. :)
  • OoTLink - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Admittedly, OS X is not as readily customizable as windows (where you can change the button size, window control size, and whatnot to any shape size or color) -- this is a function that's almost belittled by even KDE's window options..

    OS X can certainly do such things if you sit back and hack... it just doesn't come as easily, nor was at the time seen as a direly essential function. I suggested a few weeks ago that apple try to implement a DPI function into their OS where one slider could adjust the element sizes for EVERYTHING globally (this would work really well, would it not?).

    As far as I'm concerned, and as far as my experience takes me, OS X as a whole is far more flexible than windows. With a few things (fink, namely), I can set up just about any rather popular BSD program on my g4 with ease. Currently I have xdarwin running blackbox, gkrellm (extremely handy and space efficient for me), and xmms (I don't know why, it's just cool). If you're willing to take a slight functionality hitch you can even kill aqua and run XDarwin or X11 seperately (though I've not done this at all with 10.3 yet so I don't know how easily done it is).

    If you have any plans to try running a webserver on your machine, do check out www.entropy.ch for PHP and MySQL (as well as an abundant amount of other) installers, resources, etc.

    ONE thing that should be kept in mind is that while the part of the plan was to use OS X as it was "meant" to be, *raises eyebrow* there IS no preset way. This is the beauty of a system with soooo many uses. You can run OS X as anything from a webserver to a computer for a 5 year old... to put it shortly the "experience" as it was meant to be is running xdarwin, along with 20 other vanilla OS X apps and be playing a game with a compiler running...

    It's also considered a typic experience for a 10 year old to be playing put put's revenge.

    Anand, having come from using windows machines daily myself.. I found the floating toolbars in just about every productivity app, along with the single anchored menubar to be EXTREMELY awkward to get used to. Unfortunately I think this is one of those things that takes time to get used to, however it is much easier (hey you're on a cinema display like I am.. try this!) to have 2 or 3 documents lined up next to each other with only one toolbar at the top.. this suddenly becomes sooo much more convinient.
  • _Em - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I am glad to see that most people haven't taken Adam K. to task as a hellbound MS Windows/PC zealot; he does make some very valid points as well as a few misinformed points. However, Anand has already covered most of these issues in his early posts, so it might be more useful for us to provide information where possible, more than opinion (if anyone disagrees, feel free to do so :).

    One of the things I have loved about OS X is that with the combination of OpenFirmware (lovely Forth console), the BSD/Mach kernel underpinnings, and such open technologies as OpenGL/SDL, I can do just about anything with my mac, given a bit of time and research. Even with the old MacOS, I was able to upgrade my Color Classic from a 16Mhz 540x420, max 12MB RAM beast to a 50Mhz, 640x480, 36MB RAM powerhouse. My old iMac DV SE (400Mhz G3) has on-board jumpers for adjusting clock speed up to around 1.8Ghz IIRC, and this is one of Apple's "disposable" computers.

    In short, the Mac platform has a different breed of power user, who is interested with different aspects of tweaking their machine, compared with the regular PC power user.

    What does this have to do with Anand's dual G5 box? Well, I'd love to see him delve into OpenFirmware and "Haxie" level exploration at some point in the future; I remember the first game of Pong I played in the OpenFirmware "BIOS", and I have to say that the freedom to explore and create is great -- even if the base hardware is limited and expensive. There are a lot of things you can do to tweak a Mac (performance or otherwise) that won't void your warranty.

    Also, try installing KDE under XWindows on the Mac; it opens up all sorts of new areas of "tweaking" and UI customization.

    And finally, on the Gaming front...
    I've never liked using the latest and greatest games, but as far as classic games and emulated games, the mac has more than you can shake a stick at. A dual G5 should be able to run just about anything out there in those fields :)
  • Anonymous - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I'd have to agree with adam k on the hardware enthusiast point. hardware enthusiasts often want DIY boxes, and you cant get that with the Macintosh platform.

    w.r.t. how far you can overclock the G5 CPU with air/water cooling: I think one major reason you don't hear of these and other common hardware experiments being tried with Macs is because Macs are expensive. The average hardware enthusiast doesn't have $2000+ to blow on a computer just to possibly burn it out with OC or short it out with water. OTOH if you look in the right places you can find people who have taken used Macs and done things with them.

    1337 is a (IMO lamer) form of 'elite'/'leet'/'l33t'. it's a term from the early days of networked computers -> people needed a new way to say how cool they were with computers so they said that they were elite. this has degenerated into 1337 among lamers and script kiddies.
  • Anonymous - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I'd have to agree with adam k on the hardware enthusiast point. hardware enthusiasts often want DIY boxes, and you cant get that with the Macintosh platform.

    w.r.t. how far you can overclock the G5 CPU with air/water cooling: I think one major reason you don't hear of these and other common hardware experiments being tried with Macs is because Macs are expensive. The average hardware enthusiast doesn't have $2000+ to blow on a computer just to possibly burn it out with OC or short it out with water. OTOH if you look in the right places you can find people who have taken used Macs and done things with them.

    1337 is a (IMO lamer) form of 'elite'/'leet'/'l33t'. it's a term from the early days of networked computers -> people needed a new way to say how cool they were with computers so they said that they were elite. this has degenerated into 1337 among lamers and script kiddies.
  • Lucian - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Adam K,

    There seems to be no "flamefest" going on here, but if there is, you seemed to have set it off with your comments regarding what _you_ think an "enthusiast" should be. You came off as a "typical PC user" to many of the Mac users who are reading this blog and I can't say I blame them for fighting back.
  • Adam K - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    It seems that the computing world cannot have a discussion about different platforms without users from the different platforms associating themselves with their platform of choice.
    I don't understand it. I grew up using Macintosh computers. My first laptop (which cost me $5,000) was a Powerbook 3400c, in 1997. Only recently did I buy a PC. That should not matter. But for some of you, it seems, this is another PC vs. Mac flamefest discussion; therefore you force me to identify myself amongst you to earn your respect, which I personally find quite childish.

    I have been attempting to point out a couple things that the Macintosh platform does not offer for the enthusiast (thanks, anon for the clarification). I consider a power user a user who wants to have control of all of the hardware and software connected to the system. The more control, the better.

    I stated several times that OS X is excellent. There are several advantages to the owning a Macintosh. Need I repeat myself again? I think it is extremely immature to, rather than address my questions, attack what you do not understand.

    And I have no idea what 1337 means.






  • Adam K - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    That's great that you guys take cheap shots at me, rather than listening to what I am saying.

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