5 ms·
I was in your position recently and decided to switch. 3 months later and I'm back with Windows - it is simply more efficient for me. I'm really big on producti
by Poleris 18y ago
I was in your position recently and decided to switch. 3 months later and I'm back with Windows - it is simply more efficient for me. I'm really big on productivity, so I really tried to customize every tool I've listed below. To give some background, the main programs I use are:
1. (http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/04/09/launchers.html?page=1 http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/04/09/launchers.h... "Launchers - SlickRun vs QuickSilver + Butler/Launchbar")
a) Ported all current bangs from SlickRun to QuickSilver.
b) Tried Butler, Launchbar to quickly launch artists, songs. Ended up sticking with Launchbar.
* SlickRun is marginally faster, minimalistic. Support different use cases.
* Felt frustrated in QuickSilver's scripting language trying to do simple stuff like "Open new Window (not tab), ssh to this hostname."
* Tie as I'm prejudiced.
2. Terminals - PuTTy + cygwin vs Visor + Terminal, iTerm, x11... + Gnu-darwin, fink
* I heavily abuse remote (Ubuntu) session screens to do all my work. (I'm usually a Rails dev using VIM.)
* Needed 256 colors, package manager, bright (as opposed to bold) colors. Prefer no tabs.
* I have no idea why the native Terminal program doesn't support 256 colors. Entirely silly.
* Package management is a pain. Ended up doing all my work on my remote Linux box.
* I really prefer PuTTy. Every single terminal program I used on OSX either didn't fit in visually or were missing some feature that was provided in PuTTy.
* Spent way too much time frustrated while trying out everything. At then end, still frustrated.
* I understand this might just be due to my prejudices, so tie.
3. Virtual desktops - VirtuaWin vs Spaces, Witch
* Spaces has huge numbers of problems. Especially when combined with CMD-TAB. Spent way too much time frustrated. Gonna give this one to Windows.
4. Browsers - Firefox vs Firefox.
* Lack of right click drag mouse gestures. Large drop in productivity I never managed to replace. Windows wins.
5. Music - Winamp vs iTunes.
* I really learned to hate iTunes. A lot. Ended up bugging out on my giant music library and crashing a ton for no reason. ... Spent even more time debugging/Googling. Frustrating.
* Tie, lots of people like iTunes. I prefer my Winamp + Python script to update m3us.
Every other program had a relatively easy replacement. Here are my other gripes:
6. Hardware - Right click.
* 'nuff said. Everyone trying to justify this design decision is probably a fanboy.
7. Keyboard shortcuts.
* Three months later, I'm completely used to the keyboard shortcuts and hate them passionately. Does anyone honestly like the Apple bindings better?
* They lie! Changing bindings for applications like Firefox in the "control panel" does not work at all. Another frustrated day.
Conclusion:
* If you spent a lot of time becoming proficient on your platform of choice, you probably can only lose on OS X.
* It is incredibly frustrating trying to make "minor" tweaks. They turn into massive battles that remind me of my days trying to tweak my Linux desktop box.
* If you aren't an efficiency freak like me, you might gain by switching.
- mhartl 18y agoWe can't ignore it. It's shoving everything off to the right.
- m0shen 18y agoI have to agree about the shortcuts. They are killing me inside. I particularly hate how fn+arrows and command+arrows change between applications. With no documentation.
- tdavis 18y agoFor someone who used a Mac for 3 months, I'm surprised you never figured out there is a right click... there's been a right click for a long time. I use it constantly. "If you spent a lot of time becoming proficient on your platform of choice, you probably can only lose on OS X." Until you spend a lot of time becoming proficient with OS X... it goes both ways. I don't understand how people come to these conclusions.
- Poleris 18y agoI know that, but for someone using mouse gestures in FF, I can't do a right click+drag left/right/up/down, etc. "Until you spend a lot of time becoming proficient with OS X... it goes both ways. I don't understand how people come to these conclusions." Right, it goes both ways. So if you spent a lot of time becoming proficient with OS X, I wouldn't recommend you switch to Windows. But if you spent a lot of time becoming proficient with Windows/Linux, I wouldn't recommend you switch to OS X.
- asmosoinio 18y agoDid not read you comment yet, but does this markup have to break the layout of the page? Makes the discussion not so nice to follow with too long rows. I remember someone else also complaining about this lately... Why is the PRE-tag used here and how can I get around this?
- natrius 18y agoInstall the Stylish Firefox extension and add a whitespace: pre-wrap rule for pre tags on this site.