The Switch

I have done it - I have made the switch. Apples ploy to convert windows users by selling a small compact machine where windows users could use their existing keyboard, mouse and monitor seems to be working - and I fell for it! They have made it small enough so that when you buy a more powerful machine - you can just attach the Mac Mini to your TV and instantly have a media center - I fell for that too.

One day, I just got absolutely fed up with my main machine which runs Windows - the laptop fan would run at top speed even though the machine is apparently not doing anything, and there would be days on end where the hard disk would just have a fit - nonstop activity which just slows down the whole machine. Windows calls its self a multi tasking OS but it could not multi task to save its live. I found Mac OSX to be a true multi-tasking machine - copy 100 files in the background while doing something else and you wont notice any slow down - try the same on a Windows machine and you will need to go and make a cuppa tea or you will be tearing your hair out.

T'was good timing as Apple brought out their Mac Mini - I decided to fork out the 60,000 yen to give it a try before I spent 300,000 yen on a machine with better spec. After playing around with the OSX for a few days, I ordered my Power Book and laced it with the usual upgrades.

Above: Cool packaging comes with the Power Book. The machine was heavier than I thought it would be and the bottom does get very hot - they all seem to do that though - what's that all about?

Above: The keyboard lights up under dimly lit conditions. Even if you don't read or write Japanese - you may want to consider the Japanese keyboard simply because there are more characters on each key so that the light up looks better. I would have preferred a Korean keyboard though as I never use kana input but Apple don't seem to have a Korean keyboard out :-( This feature only seems to be useful to me when I am on a flight - useless on the ground - but still looks cool. Is there a way to keep the keys lit all the time? - at the moment, they only seem to light up when the room is pitch black.

Above: So its going to take me a while to get my years of computing habits and processes over to the Mac and unfortunately there is some Windows software which I just need (like the drivers for my EZA rom cart). Problematic as I don't want to carry around a Windows machine too when I am on the road. But not problematic in reality because I discovered Virtual PC 7 - A windows emulator. I was very surprised to see how well it ran on the Mac. While it does not cater for 3D games, It does pretty much anything else including being able to watch AVI files! The photo above shows Virtual PC 7 running Windows XP - and inside that I have VBA - a Gameboy Advance emulator running. the scary bit is when you run VPC7 in full screen mode - you forget that you are sitting in front of a Mac!

I have been working with Windows on a professional basis for over 10 years now and from only a few weeks of Mac computing, I find that OSX is a far superior OS - this is coming from a seasoned Windows power user who used to hate Macs. Here are just a few examples of why I say this.
The interface allows you to switch between tasks and the desktop with ease - windows slide in and out of view, zoom back and forth - and it looks great too :-)
The back up and imaging functionality is great. For example, boot up with your mac whilst attached to another mac and hold down the T key and your machine acts as an expensive external hard disk - making it easy to backup your HD or access files in an event of an OS crash.
The Disk Utility application allows you to make an image of your clean installation (or whatever you like) so that you can do a quick restore after your system gets filled with crap. On Windows - I had to pay for Power Quests Drive Image in order to do the same thing.
Encrypting of folders is a functionality built in - unlike Windows where you had to pay to do the same thing.
A big difference for myself is the ability to use Chinese, Japanese and Korean simultaneously whilst designing or coding - without having to choose which one of these languages I want to use and rebooting my machine after.
Most applications don't need to be installed - just copy the executable to a place of your choice - a preferences folder is created in your home directory but in most cases that's all - unlike Windows where your Windows and system32 folder would just fill up with shit.
I have been able to find enough freeware and cheap shareware on the Mac to replace most my Windows equivalents already.

I used to see Apple ads of folks against a white background taking about how Macs have changed their lives and about how "I wish I made the switch earlier" - and there's me thinking "yeah right". I worked with the first generation of Apple computers and also worked with the ghastly Mac OS8 (or was it 9?) whatever - what a load of steaming cack. The OS would crash at every opportunity - I just could not get over how you needed to assign memory to a given application - what the hell was that all about? Anyway, I have never been a great fan of Macs and also used to think that Macs were for people who did not know anything about computing and that people who bought Macs did so because they looked cool - how wrong I was. Hidden behind the indeed cool interface is a system that demands a higher degree of computing knowledge and if you want the most from your mac - you are going to have to understand Unix.
As such, doing things on Unix can take some time as opposed to point and click on Windows. Some people may not be bothered in spending the extra time but the time is well spent as the power presented to you is astounding. If you are a serious developer and are not already developing on Unix systems, then I do recommend that you invest some money to get yourself a Mac - the money you invest will be trivial compared to what you will learn while working with OSX. Switching to Mac has indeed been one of the best things that has ever happened to me.