The Switch One man's account on switching to Apple

Author: Henrik Paul Published: 28.08.2006 In English Suomeksi

Day Two: Revelations

I've wondered for a long time about the PC/Mac split. On any desktop computer, everything that's not a Mac is categorized as a PC, basically. For me, PC means personal computer, not e.g. Windows. "Linux?", I'd ask, "Pretty much PC," they'd answer. "OS/2?", I'd ask, "No Mac, hence PC," they'd answer.

Well, finally I've got a candidate for the reason: key mappings. Because I've got a Finnish keyboard layout, this might naturally not be a concern your keyboard locales, but it threw me off and made me helpless again. The keys are all wrong!

For instance - who in their right frame of mind puts forward-slash, backslash and pipe all in one key?! Another key thing that gets me is that there isn't an AltGr-key (I hear Alt called "Option" on the Mac) so typing the @-sign requires a slight readjustment, using the left (and only) Alt key. Ditto for tilde (~). Not to mention most Control-something operations on Windows are Command-something on the Mac (Command is the Apple/Fancy hash-button), even though there is a Control-button on the Mac. Oh well, it boils down to adjustments and habits, I guess.

Other than that, at this point, I'm still keeping on to my opinion that OS X is just another operating system, and PC/Mac segregation is just dumb.

Some open applications

During its conception in 1979, the Mac was envisioned as "an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer^[1]." While people still fight about whether there is a little extra in the pricetag or not, I'm willing to underline the ease-of-use part. Case in point: My fiancée does know her way around computers, but calling her a wizard would be stretching it. Quite a bit. Anyhow, her laptop has bogged down to snail-speed because of a very old installation of Windows XP, so she had a habit of using my desktop computer for checking email and surfing and whatnot. Unsurprisingly, she now has gotten into a habit of using my laptop, thanks to the wirelessness of it. As a matter of fact, right now I'm on my desktop writing this, while the laptop is ... occupied.

It seems like you can handle everything important via the GUI, where all the too technical stuff is tucked away safely from the error-prone user. But then again, I can pop up the terminal and wreak havoc if I really want to. Sadly, the most havoc I've wreaked yet is adding an entry to the /etc/hosts file and, a bit dissappointingly, it worked like a charm, so I have still some work to do in this section. The terminal seems quite Linux friendly. I've got all the commands I'm used to and the filesystem structure is *NIX like, which means, when I get into the hacking mood, I don't have to learn that from scratch. The only thing is that I can't use Alt as Meta-key (without losing the alternate characters), so I have to use Esc. Yech.

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