I was pottering through google on my day off today trying to find the solution to a problem where the minimize button would disappear on my mac. I posted it on ResEx forums as i usually do, but thought i’d see if i could find anything on google

Anyway, as always happens when you’re opening links all over the place from google, you stumble on something else which interests you. It doesn’t actually help you with what you were looking for but has turned up because some of the words you’d put into google are on this page too and you are compelled to have a read.

What it was was a Mac Switcher who was asked to explain the difference between using a Mac and a PC after buying a MacMini.
Or as the author puts it:

I wrote this when someone in a reply to my journal asked me to tell them about the mac. I figured it was long and well-punctuated enough to merit usefulness to others. I’m too lazy to fidn the best place on the internet so I’ll put it in this forum and hope no one minds.

Before I get completely distracted again here’s the article Forum: For Those Considering A Mac

I’m always interested in how people would describe the differences, because I’ve been a Mac user for the best part of 15 years, but at the same time had a Windows computer in the house/work/school/uni. Growing up I learnt on BBC Micros learning to program in Basic and playing games as you do when you’re 7-10 years old! Then we got a Amstrad 1640 which apparently had a 68086 intel processor though i thought it was a 286 *shrugs* – it had DOS and something called GEM Desktop as opposed to one of the early versions of Windows. I got a Mac LC II a few years later having used a Mac at school, and my dad bought a Packard Bell 486DX2/66 to replace the Amstrad which nobody ever really liked. I got a Performa 6200 with a 603e processor, and the 486 got replaced with a Pentium 2 laptop. My brother needed a computer, so he got a HP desktop with an AMD Athlon on my recommendation of what he would find most useful. My last (and current) mac was a Powermac G4 450 which is coming to it’s last legs in terms of performance, but still running perfectly well. My mum got a Windows laptop from work, and every office i’ve worked in has had Windows computers. At Uni i used windows, but also DEC Alpha unix machines (which i used to use for transferring files to and from uni as they were essentially ftp servers and accessible off campus) and SGI’s running IRIX. I’ve also got a FreeBSD server at home which i don’t have nearly enough time to play with and took what seems like forever to install. It originally had a Smoothwall Firewall & NAT Gateway which we used in my old uni house to share our internet access – at the time it was cheaper to buy a cheap PC (2nd hand didn’t need to be good and only needed to last a year) and install Smoothwall (which was free) than buying a router.

Anyway, back on topic…
The author is very complimentary about Mac OS X, and is clearly using OS X 10.4 Tiger since he talks about Spotlight. I like the way he talks about things i wouldn’t think twice about like the close, minimize and zoom buttons:

Instead of Minimize Maximize Close buttons on top left, Mac OS X has Red (close) Yellow (minimize) Green (fit window to content, which is sometimes like maximize); and these circle buttons are on the top left.

I would just say the buttons you’re used to in windows on your PC are on the left of the window instead of the right on a mac, a slightly different order and largely do the same thing.

I like the analogy of saying that the taskbar in OSX is at the top of the screen as i know that when i’ve wanted windows to look more like a mac i move the taskbar to the top. I think the description of Windows’ “My Documents” folder is spot on:

There is a My Documents like area of the hard drive and it functions much the same way as in Windows (except that Mac OS X will always let you go up a folder and end up where you should, unlike Windows’ My Documents which sometimes seems located in two places)

For those who don’t use Windows much My Documents appears as both a folder/alias/shortcut/something alien. Because it has an icon on the desktop that is created automatically which is not a windows shortcut file, and displays as such in the location bar. But what it is actually showing you is the contents of
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\
If you choose to go up a level when viewing it from this icon on the desktop it takes you to the desktop
If you go up a level when viewing from the actual location it takes you to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\ which is very confusing, and if like me you forget this you want to tear the thing to pieces.

The other comment that is spot on and really well expressed is on installed apps where windows chucks stuff all over the place, but Mac OS X is different:

the entirety of most programs is all packed into one seemingly indivisible icon of beauty – un-installation requires only that you drag the icon to the trash bin (recycle bin). You can of course choose to explore inside the program’s icon and get to the nitty gritty if you feel the urge

I like that expression a lot!

The other thing I like is the comments on constant state of refresh:

Mac OS X is in a constant state of seamless refresh. Whereas in Windows you may need to exit a folder and come back to see a change, or refresh the desktop for some reason, Mac OS X has no need for such things. Something happens, you see the results everywhere, instantly – how it should be.

I only really became aware of this when i had internet access on a windows computer. The reason i noticed it then is because every version of the Mac OS right the way back to System 7 has had the feature described above and I found it very odd when downloading files on windows. In the Mac OS, the instant you start downloading a file it creates it and you can see it in the download location. Windows doesn’t do that, it downloads the file to the temporary internet files and doesn’t show it to you until it’s finished and then moves it to the download location.

I’m surprised the article doesn’t say anything about icons lining up on the right instead of the left because that’s the first thing that hits me when i switch between the two, and has quite an effect on desktop pictures. Also surprised there’s no mention of Exposé yet he talks about X11! I still play with Exposé while waiting for saft to load all my saved browser windows up in Safari, and i’ve had 10.4 for nearly a year – still can’t get over how amazing it is. Dashboard isn’t as much fun to play with as it’s not as quick as playing with the windows!

I’m a big fan of understanding things from doing them, so i would find it very difficult to explain to someone why I prefer the Mac OS without actually showing it to them. But anyway, i think i’ve quoted enough of the article and you won’t read the actual one if i quote any more.

Completely unrelated, MacHeadCase told me about a thread on TechSurvivors’ forum talking about an anonymous surfing add on called Tor – link is to the OSX instructions but it also works on Windows, and various Linux & BSD distros. It uses something called Privoxy but all packaged in a nice friendly installation.
I installed it, set it up, and it’s far too slow to be acceptable so i switched it off – will probably keep it installed in case i have a need for it but I wouldn’t recommend it
It’s a clever idea, and it’s all explained on the Tor: Overview site, and allocated me an IP address somewhere on a virtual server in Amsterdam. Mighty impressive, but the speed hit outweighs the benefits of having that anonymity when i go to sites.

—
* Edited to fix one of the links – missed out a quotation mark!