My first byte of the Apple

I finally took a byte of the Mac World

After years of denying the Mac a chance, I finally ventured a bite of the apple.

At my new job, I was given the choice to opt for a Windows machine or “a Mac”. I decided on the latter. Despite the fact that I was risking productivity because I had no experience with the Mac whatsoever, I, for some odd reason, still wanted to take a walk outside the Windows world for a change. Just a stroll. I had heard so much about OS X and what not from Mac Lovers and even felt immense peer pressure to own a Mac at U Penn where they were so common. So, I guess I decided that it was finally time to see what kind of air these so-called ‘User Experience’ gurus breathe and what makes Apple the king of design.

Needless to say, the shift to the Mac was frustrating at first. The thing that threw me off the most was that the file menu came on the top of the screen and not on the window itself. I also didn’t fancy the fact that the ‘close’, ‘maximize’ and ‘minimize’ buttons were placed on the left of the window and not on the right.  I was forced  to retrain my brain to use the command key to “copy-paste” instead of the Ctrl key and struggled for so long to discover my favorite ‘Show Desktop’ shortcut (its Command + F3 btw).  I was completely disgusted by the fact that my MacBook touchpad didn’t have two buttons.There wasn’t even a  ’Home’ and  ’End’ key which made things tedious. And now, I had an added worry while downloading freeware – does it support the Mac ? Plus don’t get me started on the fact that  the OS didn’t come with its own “Paint” program. I was quite disappointed.

But what I failed to realize was that the Mac had its own personality. I was trying so hard to take the Mac and somehow map it to Windows somehow that I overlooked that this machine actually had its own way of living.  Once I opened my mind then, slowly and steadily, the Mac started opening up to me as well.

For example, installing things was as simple as two clicks and ejecting a dmg file. The process was quick, clean and simple without many rude prompts.  The spotlight feature (Alt + Space) sort of drowned Vista’s search in terms of speed and accuracy. I learned that a Mac user doesn’t need to know where his files are. In fact, he doesn’t need the desktop stuff either. Spotlight will do. I fell in love with the file preview shortcut (hit space while hovering over a file) – made browsing over files much easier. And common operations proved to be much faster too. So, with time, yea…the Mac started to grow on me.

So, should you consider me as a convert ? Not exactly. My brain’s still structured  like a Windows machine and I still find Microsoft’s creation very natural for me. Its like asking a hardcore stick-shift driver to drive an automatic – he can drive it , he might even enjoy it but he won’t feel ‘right at home’. Finding my way through the control panel, playing with network configs, enjoying a universe of software etc. are actions that pull me back to my Windows machine at home.

In any case, I’m loving the experience.  Yes, my first bite of the Apple was bitter-sweet but I’m looking forward to discovering more in the Mac world. And something tells me that I’m in for a ride. Time will tell.