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30 Days with Mac OS X

It's supposedly the best of both worlds - the stability and security of a Unix operating system with an easy end-user interface. It's Mac OS X, and we spend 30 days using it to find out what Apple has to offer over Windows. The "30 Days" saga continues...

Introduction

By now you know the drill. We started with 30 Days with Linux, in which we examined the Ubuntu Linux operating system (OS) from top to bottom to try to figure out how far Linux had come for the power user. We got great feedback directly from some of the Ubuntu bigwigs who were very interested in our problems. In response, Ubuntu 7.04, the successor to the construct that we used for the article, was almost completely devoid of all of the problems and incompatibilities that we brought up. Wow.

Then we took a hard look at Windows Vista Home Premium in 30 Days with Vista to see if Microsoft's new incarnation was palatable for the mainstream user, an improvement over XP, and worth the cost.

Even though we had to outlay the cost of the systems we used in this editorial out-of-pocket, we just couldn't let the missing OS go missing any longer. "What about Mac?"

Indeed, the original premise of "30 Days with Linux" was that people were claiming, "I'm just going to switch to Linux (or Mac)," in response to the various Vista horror stories that were starting to brew leading up to its retail release. We've done Linux and Vista, so now it’s Mac’s turn at the plate.

Mac OS X is unique in that it is the only consumer operating system tied to the hardware that it runs on. You cannot legally run Mac OS X on a non-Apple system. Since Apple hardware usually has a steep price premium attached, the "the Mac experience" is price prohibitive for many. Arguably, in return, you get a very aesthetically pleasing system that is generally reliable, stable, and well-supported because of the limited product lines offered by the company.

While many power users who can build computers are willing to let an OEM assemble a computer for them when it's a value-added proposition - better support and the guarantee of 100% working parts, assembled professionally - it's another thing to not be given that option at all. So any claim that a power user would switch to Mac should be investigated.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, unlike with my experiences with Vista and Linux, I have previously used a Macintosh computer as my primary operating system for an extended period. In 2002, my parents bought a PowerMac 800MHz "Quicksilver" G4 for my graduation from college. It was a good computer that lasted me a little over three years - with various upgrades along the way. So I'm not a complete stranger in a strange land here.

However, I switched back to the Windows platform shortly after I started writing for HardOCP in late 2005, mostly because I needed to get familiar with the games and programs I was testing. In getting addicted to Battlefield 2 and Oblivion, I wanted a PC of my own as well. That system was/is Whakataruna, mentioned in the previous articles in this series.

Still, I have not used a Macintosh in almost two years, and plenty of changes have occurred in that time - including a shift from the PowerPC architecture to an Intel-based architecture. If nothing else, we felt that was reason enough to consider taking a fresh look at Apple and its operating system.

The Rules:

1) I'll test only on Intel systems - that's all that Apple makes these days, anyway. While I probably could have gotten a used G5, we wanted to see what a user who bought a Mac today would experience.

2) I would try to test out as many "typical end-user" applications and activities as possible. Digital photography and video, burning and ripping DVDs and CDs, email, Web browsing, gaming, word processing, MP3 playing and organizing, instant messaging and IRC chat, scanning, movie watching, etc. I'd also plug in as many components as possible from my own collection of hardware.

3) I would use Mac OS X in my home as the sole operating system for 30 days, with limited exceptions to test "BootCamp" capabilities. (This rule was respected more in the breach than in the observance - I had to go back to my Linux/Windows computer about 10 days into the test to diagnose and fix a problem I had.)

4) When I had a problem, I would consult Apple's Discussion boards and the #MacOSX channel on the Freenode IRC network.

5) I wouldn't buy any third-party software to run on the Mac. The premise of the article is to find out whether people frustrated with Vista will find it viable to move to a Mac platform from a Windows platform. Those people probably have tons of software tied into the Windows platform - and they'd probably want to know what freeware they could use to "make do" until they saved up to buy the equivalent software on the Mac. Additionally, if third-party applications cause issues with our system, then it’s a fine line between what is at fault – the application or the OS.

6) I'd stay away from virtualization and Parallels Desktop. While it may be a viable part of the Mac experience these days, Parallels Desktop A) costs money and B) is essentially Windows. I want to evaluate the Mac OS, not the Windows OS on the Mac OS.

7) I would check out BootCamp and install a Windows partition on the computer to see if it's possible and stable, but spend little time there. It should be enough to prove that it "can be done."

8) I'd take a look at using X11-based applications to add to my productivity and see how easy it is to get programs working under X11 and what problems X11 programs might have on a Mac.

9) We'd start testing on Apple's lowest-end computer, a $600 Mac Mini. We wanted to see if a low-end computer could handle the Mac OS X operating system. We would then move to a higher-end $1500 MacBook.

As the testing went on, the Mac Mini turned out to be very slow and unresponsive for many of my tasks. This was likely due to the low amount of RAM in the computer itself. I might have pried open the computer with putty knives and put in some more RAM, but I decided instead that it would be better simply to return the Mac Mini and test a higher-end system. Quite frankly, I did not want to unduly criticize the OS for underpowered hardware - thus the need for two systems. Of course, the cruel irony here is that since Mac hardware and the OS are tied together, it’s surprising that the company would equip such a woefully underpowered system with a bulky operating system. While we certainly have no qualms about giving Macintosh grief for that, we wanted to get a perspective from another hardware platform as well, as we have done in our previous articles.

With these rules in place, we went out to our local Mac retailer and bought some systems.