Blog ala Vidar

Late last year I bought a Mac Mini to check out what all the fuzz was all about. After a month, I upgraded to a 27″ iMac because the Mac Mini was painfully slow. With a 5400 rpm disk and 2GB RAM you can’t do much more than surfing in my opinion.

Anyhow, I bought an iMac with a bit better specs:

• 2.93GHz Quad Core Intel Core i7
• 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• 256GB SSD + 1TB SATA disks
• ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5-RAM
• 2560 x 1440 screen resolution

I also bought a cheap 27″ Benq screen so I have more space to play around with.

My main focus on this computer was to get really familiar with Garageband, one of the applications delivered with every Mac. First impression was just “WHOW!”. It still is. Apple has done a really good job at creating an application for hobby musicians. I can easily record one or multiple tracks from my keyboard, guitars or microphones. It even helps me get my track’s beat synchronized with something called groove matching. Check out the little intro video if you’re a hobby musician. I bet you’ll be impressed!

iLife (the package which is delivered with every Mac) also contains iPhoto and iMovie. I haven’t really tried iMovie, but iPhoto is simple and fun.

So, what does a Windows-guy have to say about the operating system, Mac OS X? Short answer is I don’t like it. I’m used to Windows 7, and to be honest, I can’t see why people think Mac OS X is more userfriendly. Sure, the control panel is much more tidy, you don’t have to think about “C:, D:” etc, but that’s about it in my opinion. I use the keyboard for more or less everything in Windows. Switching apps, minimizing, maximizing, docking windows to the left or right. There are probably the same amount of keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X, but some things are just plain stupid. For instance, if you get a message box with a Yes/No, the focus is not in message box. You have to use your mouse, because No is _ALWAYS_ the default, and in 99.99% of the cases, I’m clicking yes with my mouse. Also, resizing windows is a big pain. For some reason, I always place windows in the bottom right corner. What if you want to resize that window? Well, you’ll have to drag it to the middle of the screen, and then resize it in the bottom right corner, because in OS X you can’t resize from any angle. I hear this is “fixed” in Lion, the next version, though. Everything else is more or less the same as in Windows. You’ve got something similar to a start menu, a taskbar (dock) and a file menu. The fact that Chrome, VLC and other often used applications are the same on Mac, you can’t really tell the big difference. Especially if you install Parallels. If you’re familiar with XP-mode in Windows 7, you’ve already seen this. Parallels makes it seamless to run Windows applications on your Mac, and with Coherence mode they work just like Mac apps. They even mimic the keyboard-shortcuts. So, the applications that aren’t supported on OS X, I simply just run in the Windows 7 instance. That’s a big plus since the only word I can use about Outlook for Mac is; USELESS!

My conclusion is; As an operating system, Windows kicks OS X’s ass! But, the application package you get with Mac (iLife) is just awesome for “creative people” that like to play music, take pictures or make movies.