The Juicy Cow

I love my Mac. I really do I’ve been a Windows PC user for about 10 years, I used to setup my own computers putting together the best pieces of hardware I could find, tweaking every bit of the system to gain the most efficient computer possible. So I probably had about 5 or 6 different computers running from Windows 95 to Windows XP. Last year my laptop Sony Vaio died, taking with him all my data by the way. That’s when I decided to jump the fence, Mac were affordable, especially with the student offers and it was possible to run Windows XP/Vista on it. Why not then?

So I’m now the proud owner of a Mac Book Pro 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of DDR2 SDRAM. I use it about 14 hours per day for both professional and personal purpose and, well, I couldn’t go back to a Windows PC…

In a nutshell, I would strongly recommend to anyone looking for a new computer to go Mac. But…

BUT, everything isn’t perfect in Steve Jobs’ world There are a few things that can really be annoying. I selected the 5+1 points that annoy me the most with my computer use.

1. What’s wrong with this keyboard?

I use my Mac to do a lot of coding (PHP, JavaScript…) and I hate the fact that on a Mac the average user is suppose to be so smart that he has to GUESS which key to use to get characters like “|” (pipe), “[]“, “{}” and other “\”… So yes you hear me right, these characters are not drawn on the keys! You have to guess where they are or ask Google, it may be faster than trying every possibility…
But on the other hand there is two different ways to get “@” and “#” for example… And the “*” character is drawn on two different keys…
So is it too much to ask to have those characters actually physically represented on the keys? Especially when you have to pay US$49 for the cheapest Apple’s keyboard…

2. Where is the MPC support?

When you are careful about your music you like to have it on a decent format that doesn’t alter it too much and guarantee you a good audio experience. Apple used to work for years with professional from the Audio world and is surely aware of that (see point 3). However the MPC format is not supported by Itunes and there is no solution (add-on, plug-in, patch)… to play your MPCs with Itunes… It’s even more frustrating when you know that Apple’s Ipods are capable of playing MPCs…
So the solution is too have your MP3s on Itunes and use one of the poorly made 3rd part softwares to play your MPCs…

3. Why do I need a professional microphone to speak on Skype/MSN…?

On my Mac Book Pro, the Mic plug is a Mic-In. It means that there is no amplification for your microphone. Therefore you need a pre-amplified microphone… Such things are quite expensive and not even available on the Apple Store! So the bill will easily go upper than US$100… and this for chatting on Skype! Other solution are to use USB microphone (but there is only two USB ports on the MAC Book Pro so believe me you want to use your Mic-In…) or to use the embedded microphone but you need to be literally on top of it to have it working properly…

4. The Finder is such a piece of crap (pardon my French).

When it comes to file navigation, I think the Windows Explorer is unbeatable… It’s so easy to jump from different hard drives to folders and the other way around… On Mac OSX you have to be careful. Most of the time you’ll have to jump from one display to the other one (icons only to list view to grid view…) in order to go back or go up in the folder hierarchy… I reckon the easiest way is to have a big screen and many Finders open so you can navigate easily… Apple is aware of that and the next evolution of Mac OSX should improve those issues.

5. I want a decent Microsoft Office or alternative working on Mac OS X.

If you want to crash a Mac it’s easy. The only thing you have to do is to install a Microsoft software on it. It works with the Mac version of Microsoft Office (2004). In addition of being buggy it’s also ugly and NOT user friendly (have already try to insert a graph?). So Mac users are waiting for the new version of the Microsoft Office and in the meantime are looking to other solutions such as the Google online Office like products… Be careful Microsoft, the longer it takes you to release your software the more market shares you lose.

5+1. Why did they use half of the Amazonian forest for the package?

Apple got finger slapped by ecological organization regarding the use of dangerous chemical materials and parts for the making of Apple products.
They reacted and put together a special “green” page on apple.com but they forgot to change the way they are packing your shiny new Apple branded product… For every single product from Apple it’s always the same deal… It’s a Russian Dolls game… The big package contain a smaller package which contains another smaller package and so on… Please Mr Jobs, give a break to our trees…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!