1. Bonus Reasons if you're still a 'Thomas'
There are a large number of very small reasons a Mac is great to work on:
every version of OS X has sophisticated screenshot capability built in. CMD+4 provides a selector marquee. CMD+4+Spacebar takes just one window. CMD+3 takes the whole screen. You can set the format of the screenshot file and where Mac OS saves it.
The inbuilt image viewing app is powerful — it can view PDF and open/export to most other image formats; you can crop resize rotate adjust colour balance etc.
Expose lets you quickly see all your open windows or your desktop or just the windows of your current app. Way better than ALT+Tab (which Macs also have) or Flip 3D (which Macs thankfully don’t have.)
The Dock is much more efficient to use than the Windows start menu and taskbar — the icon opens an app or returns to it if it’s already open. It doesn’t become crowded when you have lots of windows open.
Target disk mode allows you to boot a Mac into a mode where the whole machine acts like an external hard drive. Plug it to another Mac using Firewire and you have the easiest way in the world to do a system-to-system drive mirror. (Though disappointingly Apple didn’t include this feature in its latest MacBook.)
Quick look lets you view pretty much all major file formats by clicking on the file and pressing the space bar — no need to wait for an app to launch. Windows simply doesn’t have this.
2. Easier to troubleshoot Macs.
It’s usually pretty easy to figure out what’s going wrong with a Mac. There are three applications that help you and are all in one place and easy to find in the Applications/Utilities folder:
Activity Monitor (a more powerful version of Windows Task Manager)
Console (which shows all system logs in one place)
Disk Utility (which helps you identify disk integrity issues).
It’s very rare that you can’t get a decent hint of where a system problem lies from those three apps. On Windows similar apps are available in the system but they’re more scattered and immeasurably more difficult for the average user to find.
3. Bonus Reasons if you're still a 'Thomas'
There are a large number of very small reasons a Mac is great to work on:
every version of OS X has sophisticated screenshot capability built in. CMD+4 provides a selector marquee. CMD+4+Spacebar takes just one window. CMD+3 takes the whole screen. You can set the format of the screenshot file and where Mac OS saves it.
The inbuilt image viewing app is powerful — it can view PDF and open/export to most other image formats; you can crop resize rotate adjust colour balance etc.
Expose lets you quickly see all your open windows or your desktop or just the windows of your current app. Way better than ALT+Tab (which Macs also have) or Flip 3D (which Macs thankfully don’t have.)
The Dock is much more efficient to use than the Windows start menu and taskbar — the icon opens an app or returns to it if it’s already open. It doesn’t become crowded when you have lots of windows open.
Target disk mode allows you to boot a Mac into a mode where the whole machine acts like an external hard drive. Plug it to another Mac using Firewire and you have the easiest way in the world to do a system-to-system drive mirror. (Though disappointingly Apple didn’t include this feature in its latest MacBook.)
Quick look lets you view pretty much all major file formats by clicking on the file and pressing the space bar — no need to wait for an app to launch. Windows simply doesn’t have this.
4. OS X + Windows is better than just Windows
Ignoring Linux for a second on a Mac I can legitimately run OS X and Windows (natively or under virtualisation). On a PC I can only legitimately run Windows.
It means I can use OS X for everything but if there’s the occasional application for Windows I need to use (specialised company application; MS Access; mobile phone firmware upgrader utilities) I can easily do use Windows.
Another of my colleagues said she’s found a good use for OS X’s Spaces virtual desktop feature — OS X on one desktop and Windows on another desktop. Of course you can always pause a virtual machine too which means having Windows on-call when you need it doesn’t need to be chewing up CPU time in the background.
5. A culture of good quality community software
There’s a culture of very good quality freeware/shareware with excellent user interfaces on Mac — probably a result of Apple leading by example in user-interface design and shareware authors emulating this.
The average Mac user could get away with only purchasing Microsoft Office and using freeware/shareware and Apple provided software for everything else.
On Windows the signal to noise ratio in freeware/shareware is extremely high. There’s so much junk software out there; it can be hard to find a tool that’s good quality.
Some examples of exceptionally good shareware which I don’t think there’s an equivalently good Windows alternative for (taking into account both the software capabilities -and- the front-end GUI):
the recently open-sourced VisualHub )
Adium
OnePassword
Transmit
AppFresh
6. Power of the Linux command line with Photoshop CS4
Just for a moment let me diverge from Mac vs PC and take a look at Mac vs “all the alternatives”.
There are a few key apps that are for many people ‘must-haves’. Microsoft Office. Adobe Reader. Adobe Flash. Photoshop.
Linux can satisfy almost all of those needs. But Photoshop is a sticking point. Although there has been great progress in WINE — even sponsored by Google — you can still only run Photoshop CS2 (or CS3 if you’re lucky.)
And don’t tell me the GIMP is a total Photoshop replacement. I’ve tried it many times. Its user interface just isn’t up to scratch yet.
The reality is until Adobe really puts its support officially behind Linux (like Google has with Picasa for example) it’s always going to be an uphill battle.
With OS X you get a polished OS with the power of a UNIX/Linux command line (not the lame DOS-style prompt of Windows) and the ability to run the latest officially supported version of Photoshop.
7. Still no need for additional security software.
On a Mac you don’t have to run additional security software which therefore doesn’t slow down the computer doesn’t cause problems and you don’t have to shell out for an annual subscription for it.
This is an enormously contentious point. Some people will argue black and blue that you need to be a good citizen in the world and make sure you’re scanning for Windows viruses on your Mac email in case you accidentally forward on a virus sent from one Windows user to you to another Windows user.
My opinion is: if Fords have a problem with their wheels falling off that’s never going to be resolved I’m not going to drive my Holden slowly on every road just because a Ford might find its wheels falling off at any time.
And what’s with Microsoft selling OneCare anti-virus? It has decided to make money off selling a fix to a problem in its original product (Windows). That’s just offensive.
8. Neat and contained system settings.
Apple is very neat with its OS config settings. In Windows there’s many many places you can change system-wide settings — the registry add/remove programs the hardware manager the services manager network connections control panel etc.
On a Mac the OS config settings are basically all in the control panel (with a few exceptions — notably the default browser can only be changed through Apple’s own Safari browser — evil.)
It makes both using a Mac and supporting other people using Macs much easier. One specific example: it is overcomplicated to guide a user to editing the TCP/IP settings for a particular network adaptor on Windows but it’s one of the most common things you have to do to resolve network issues.
9. Apple seems largely to be lameness free
On the whole Apple seems to come up with far fewer lame ideas that were non-starters to begin with. Microsoft on the other hand is the master of lame ideas. For example Sideshow in Vista. Windows Ultimate Extras. 10 editions of the same OS. XPS file format to compete with PDF. One size fits all UAC — “You just tried to change the date. Did you really mean to do that?”
10. Apple doesn’t load the system up with Rubbish.
Oh sure Apple festoons its OS with hooks into online services designed to get you to spend money. But on the whole Apple’s festooning with vendor-specific services is much less intrusive than on Windows.
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Just about every (brand name) PC sold comes loaded up with junk that keeps popping up at you reminding you your six month trial is about to run out and some apps are deliberately difficult to uninstall.
Macs come with iPhoto (linked to with Apple’s book/photo printing service) MobileMe (stays out of your way unless you specifically activate it) iTunes (to purchase stuff through the iTunes store) and so on. Basically Apple doesn’t try to force its way into your wallet like PCs tend to — Apple takes a carrot approach with some genuinely useful services rather than a stick (“your PC is our advertising billboard cough up buddy”).
Of course this isn’t a problem with Windows itself per se but it is inextricably married to the Windows user experience for most people.
11. More useful apps out of the box
Every Mac comes with some very useful apps that don’t come on Windows. (Of course you can easily download them for Windows but ubiquity of app distribution can make or break a platform — it’s why people have never really equated Symbian Series 60 phones with “useful applications”.)
Useful apps on every Mac:
Stickies
iPhoto
Expose
iCal
Time Machine.
Yes this is no barrier to a Windows power user. But remember the majority of computer users are not power users.
12. File sharing is much easier
Sharing files between computers has always been something that feels like it should be a lot easier than it is. Of course one of the reasons for this is the need for security which is opposed to ease of use because security is about putting up barriers.
But it’s also about user interface design. Mac OS hasn’t always been easy for sharing between computers; in fact I’d say it’s only 10.5 which has got it mostly right. But in 10.5 it actually is easy enough for ordinary users to use — if you want to share the files on your computer you switch on file sharing in control panel.
Shared computers on the local network appear in any file management window in OS X like a disk drive — and when you try to open them you’ll be prompted for a system username and password.
It’s the first form of computer file sharing that really puts it in front of the average user’s eyes without them having to do anything to get to it.
