by Preston Gralla, Computerworld
Hier ein kleiner Auszug:
If you haven’t yet touched or used a MacBook Air, take it from me: This is the most beautiful piece of hardware you’ll ever see. Plenty of other people have rhapsodized over it, so I won’t waste the space here extolling its virtues.
How light is this machine? I took it to a nearby cafe to work, and when I left, I panicked halfway down the street. My backpack was so light, I was convinced I had accidentally left it at the cafe. Of course, it was safe, sound and snug in my backpack—I simply hadn’t felt the weight.
At $2,500 for this configuration, though, this is not a machine for Everyman or Everywoman, particularly in these trying economic times. However, my assignment wasn’t to test and review this particular computer, but rather to report on the Mac experience compared to the PC experience. So with a few exceptions, I’ll focus more on the Mac OS X and the Mac way of doing things, rather than on this particular model.
For PC users, Mac OS X takes some getting used to, but once I did, I found it a more elegant, polished piece of work than Windows (either XP or Vista). With so many nice little touches, it seemed as if I was finding a new one every day.
At first glance, the Mac OS X layout is spare compared to Windows. Apart from an icon representing the hard disk, there are no initial icons on the desktop, no Start button or Start Panel, and no pinned programs. Instead, there’s a single Dock across the bottom of the screen, similar to the new taskbar in Windows 7. There’s a reason for that similarity, of course: Microsoft took the idea from Apple. After all, why not steal from the best?
The Dock took some getting used to, because of its double-duty as both a program launcher and a task switcher. Because I was used to the pre-Windows 7 taskbar, I constantly checked the Dock first to see what programs I was running, but it was no help because the icons were a mix of those pinned there and those that I had recently launched. Only after one of my editors pointed out that there are small, glowing blue dots underneath running apps did I find out that there’s a way to differentiate between apps that are running versus apps whose icons live permanently on the Dock. But those dots are so faint and subtle as to be of very little use.
I quickly discovered the command-Tab key combination for cycling through open programs, much like Alt-Tab in Windows. Still, I wanted better visual clues to show what I was running — preferably thumbnails or a preview of some kind. And then I discovered Exposé, a superb feature for viewing, organizing and switching between your running windows.
To use Exposé, you just press the F9 key (Fn-F9 or F3 on a MacBook Air), and you’ll see previews all of your open windows nicely arranged against the desktop. Click any to switch to it.
There’s a lot more to Exposé as well; Press F11 to get to the desktop, and F10 to see thumbnails of all windows open in your current application. You can also customize Exposé so that when you move your cursor to a specific area of the screen you can perform an Exposé function.
As for launching programs, the Dock isn’t the only way to do it. You can also run them from the Finder, which is a more impressive and useful version of Windows Explorer. And you can put aliases on your desktop to run programs and access files and folders.
Every part of the operating system shows a similar combination of simplicity and elegance. Want to get a rundown about every aspect of your hardware and software? Click the Apple icon in the upper-left-hand part of the screen, select About this Mac, then click More Info and you’ll be able to easily browse through screens of useful, easily accessible information. Similarly, selecting System Preferences from the Dock lets you customize many aspects of the operating system.
There’s a lot more and I could spend more time writing about Mac OS X, but you get the point. While it takes a little bit of getting used to for a Windows user, it’s an excellent operating system.
What did I learn after several weeks of living with the Mac?
First off, I had expected there to be a longer learning curve, and had thought that in the long run there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the Mac and a PC. After all, an operating system is just an operating system.
To a certain extent that’s true. When you use productivity applications themselves, there’s not a great deal of difference between using them on a Mac versus using them on a PC. However, when it came to the operating system itself, there’s certainly a difference, and a substantial one. Mac OS X is simpler to use and easier to configure, yet has more bells, whistles and “eye candy.” And much of that eye candy, such as Exposé, is not just elegantly designed and entertaining, but quite useful as well.
That’s not to say that every aspect of the Mac is superior to the PC. Vista’s Network and Sharing Center, and especially the Network Map, is an excellent, simple, all-in-one destination for networking that Mac OS X would do well to emulate.
Overall, though, Mac OS X beats Windows. There, I’ve said it. And lightning hasn’t struck me yet.
However, there’s no doubt that you often pay extra for a Mac; there really is a Mac tax, even if Microsoft has overstated the amount of that tax. But after living with a Mac, I can understand why people would be willing to pay the tax.
How light is this machine? I took it to a nearby cafe to work, and when I left, I panicked halfway down the street. My backpack was so light, I was convinced I had accidentally left it at the cafe. Of course, it was safe, sound and snug in my backpack—I simply hadn’t felt the weight.
At $2,500 for this configuration, though, this is not a machine for Everyman or Everywoman, particularly in these trying economic times. However, my assignment wasn’t to test and review this particular computer, but rather to report on the Mac experience compared to the PC experience. So with a few exceptions, I’ll focus more on the Mac OS X and the Mac way of doing things, rather than on this particular model.
For PC users, Mac OS X takes some getting used to, but once I did, I found it a more elegant, polished piece of work than Windows (either XP or Vista). With so many nice little touches, it seemed as if I was finding a new one every day.
At first glance, the Mac OS X layout is spare compared to Windows. Apart from an icon representing the hard disk, there are no initial icons on the desktop, no Start button or Start Panel, and no pinned programs. Instead, there’s a single Dock across the bottom of the screen, similar to the new taskbar in Windows 7. There’s a reason for that similarity, of course: Microsoft took the idea from Apple. After all, why not steal from the best?
The Dock took some getting used to, because of its double-duty as both a program launcher and a task switcher. Because I was used to the pre-Windows 7 taskbar, I constantly checked the Dock first to see what programs I was running, but it was no help because the icons were a mix of those pinned there and those that I had recently launched. Only after one of my editors pointed out that there are small, glowing blue dots underneath running apps did I find out that there’s a way to differentiate between apps that are running versus apps whose icons live permanently on the Dock. But those dots are so faint and subtle as to be of very little use.
I quickly discovered the command-Tab key combination for cycling through open programs, much like Alt-Tab in Windows. Still, I wanted better visual clues to show what I was running — preferably thumbnails or a preview of some kind. And then I discovered Exposé, a superb feature for viewing, organizing and switching between your running windows.
To use Exposé, you just press the F9 key (Fn-F9 or F3 on a MacBook Air), and you’ll see previews all of your open windows nicely arranged against the desktop. Click any to switch to it.
There’s a lot more to Exposé as well; Press F11 to get to the desktop, and F10 to see thumbnails of all windows open in your current application. You can also customize Exposé so that when you move your cursor to a specific area of the screen you can perform an Exposé function.
As for launching programs, the Dock isn’t the only way to do it. You can also run them from the Finder, which is a more impressive and useful version of Windows Explorer. And you can put aliases on your desktop to run programs and access files and folders.
Every part of the operating system shows a similar combination of simplicity and elegance. Want to get a rundown about every aspect of your hardware and software? Click the Apple icon in the upper-left-hand part of the screen, select About this Mac, then click More Info and you’ll be able to easily browse through screens of useful, easily accessible information. Similarly, selecting System Preferences from the Dock lets you customize many aspects of the operating system.
There’s a lot more and I could spend more time writing about Mac OS X, but you get the point. While it takes a little bit of getting used to for a Windows user, it’s an excellent operating system.
What did I learn after several weeks of living with the Mac?
First off, I had expected there to be a longer learning curve, and had thought that in the long run there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the Mac and a PC. After all, an operating system is just an operating system.
To a certain extent that’s true. When you use productivity applications themselves, there’s not a great deal of difference between using them on a Mac versus using them on a PC. However, when it came to the operating system itself, there’s certainly a difference, and a substantial one. Mac OS X is simpler to use and easier to configure, yet has more bells, whistles and “eye candy.” And much of that eye candy, such as Exposé, is not just elegantly designed and entertaining, but quite useful as well.
That’s not to say that every aspect of the Mac is superior to the PC. Vista’s Network and Sharing Center, and especially the Network Map, is an excellent, simple, all-in-one destination for networking that Mac OS X would do well to emulate.
Overall, though, Mac OS X beats Windows. There, I’ve said it. And lightning hasn’t struck me yet.
However, there’s no doubt that you often pay extra for a Mac; there really is a Mac tax, even if Microsoft has overstated the amount of that tax. But after living with a Mac, I can understand why people would be willing to pay the tax.
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