Last night was my full night using Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.8) without touching Windows Vista at all. So far, my impression of this OS is quite good. It’s solid, lots of niceties being built-in, things which I hoped would be built-into Vista. As much advanced I am in using Windows, I am a total n00b when using Mac. After I boot it up (oh yeah, the boot up to Mac OS X is super duper fast), I was left sitting there, don’t know how to use this new OS facing me. The first thing I installed was Microsoft Messenger for Mac, followed by Firefox 2 for Mac. After that, I don’t know what else will run in Mac. Frankly speaking, I didn’t know how to do basic things that I can do with “my eyes closed” in Windows, like taking screenshots, safely remove hardware, so embarassing.
So, I read a couple of “switching-to-Mac” guide on the Internet, 10 Things Every New Mac Owner Should Know, From Windows to OS X, Useful Keyboard Shortcuts in OS X, A Guide to OS X Software for Switchers, and The Tao of Mac. As there are many software I usually use in Windows are Windows-only, I have to find its Mac OS X-equivalent that can do the same tasks. The software guide to OS X really helps me going, from there I knew about Flip4Mac (to play WMV files in QuickTime), Adium (a wonderful and cute instant messaging application, supports popular MSN, Yahoo, GTalk until never-heard-before of Gadu-Gadu and QQ), and some other applications that I have installed.
Speaking about installation, it’s a no-brainer in OS X. A guide I read said Windows users like to complicate things, searching for installers and uninstallers, kinda true. There’s no such thing per-se in OS X. Just drag the downloaded application into Applications folder, and good you go. To remove the application, just drag the application into Trash, and it’s gone. It’s so simple I was skeptical at first, hehe…. Maybe the guide was right, Windows users like to complicate things :p How to take screenshots? I clicked on Print-Screen, then looked for Microsoft Paint equivalent. It’s not available. Now what? Later on I found out, by Cmd+Shift+3, it’ll take whole-screen-shot, and automatically save the resulting PNG onto desktop. Weird combination, but much less steps than in Windows for sure.
My Mac OS X desktop now, still quite bare.
Keyboard shortcuts are different and takes time to get used to. Instead of Ctrl, Alt, and Shift, it has 
, 
, 
, and Shift. Home and End are Ctrl+left-arrow and Ctrl+right-arrow respectively. To move files, instead of Shift+drag files, it’s Command+drag files. Instead of Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, and Ctrl+V for Copy, Cut, and Paste, it’s Cmd+C, Cmd+X, and Cmd+V respectively. Different, but not that hard to get used to.
Mac OS X System Preferences Search. Note how it tries to “spotlight” the potential icon you are looking for based on your search terms
Also note how wonderful application like Adium uses the Dock to its maximum potential, showing you who messaged, how many unread messages, and that duck icon is quite animated, depending on your status, very cute indeed. Download manager shows the current download speed (200+KB/sec in the screenshot considered quite slow. At one point, I managed to hit 670KB/sec 
) All in all, it has been a positive experience the last few days with Mac OS X, and am looking forward to using it more for my computing usage. I know I’ll still need to boot to Windows Vista once in a while to use applications that are not available for Mac OS X, notably Microsoft Money 2007 Deluxe. We’ll see how it goes
