So I've made the switch back to Mac OS from Windows. When I started my new job six months ago, I had this day already in mind, which is why I got a MacBook Pro as my laptop and have been running Windows under Boot Camp until now. The thing that drove me to switch now was the inevitable decay of performance and stability of the Windows OS finally reached a breaking point.
All new computers start off with great performance. Just the core stuff installed. No wear and tear from use yet. But then you start to use it. You install software. You upgrade. The OS auto-updates itself, and so do some of your applications. You try out some things, uninstall them. Or maybe you don't; you just don't use them anymore. Then weird stuff starts to happen. Some apps don't work right. You have to reinstall them. Sometimes they lock up or crash. Eventually the machine itself won't shut down properly, or locks up or crashes. And there's nothing you can do but wipe the hard drive and start over with a fresh install of the OS.
Windows had gotten there for me. Booting up literally took 10 minutes before the system was responsive enough for me to use. Outlook refused to start up or shut down properly. I got errors on launch, and had to force quit every time. Yahoo! Desktop Search would freeze the machine on shut down every time; I had to force quit. About half the time I'd just end up forcing the machine to power off by holding down the power switch for 5 seconds. I spent far too long having Windows diagnostics check my disk for damage on boot.
Some days I would get home from the office, pull my laptop out of the case and the fan would be spinning like a centrifuge and the case was as hot as molten lava. Yes, the laptop had failed to go to sleep. Again. Despite the top being closed and the heat sink in the keyboard reflected back to the circuitry by the screen. And every now and then, the power manager would take over the computer, using 100% of the CPU. the only way out was to remove the battery and operate on AC power only. To reset things, I'd have to boot into Mac OS, and then back to Windows. There's another 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
I suspect I'll have issues with Mac OS too. Things are great so far. But of course they are; it's a fresh OS install. I've just started to put my favorite software on it. QuickSilver. OmniGraffle. Firefox 3 beta. Parallels Desktop (to run that piece of crap Windows in the background). I give it a few months before the first problems surface. Then maybe another few before they get really annoying. Six months seems to be the half-life of a Windows install. Mac OS might take a bit longer, but I've no doubt it will succumb too. And that's when I'll become a luddite. Or maybe I'll just upgrade to a new laptop.
Until then, I'm enjoying it. I shut the lid, and the computer's asleep. I open the lid, and it's ready to go and even already connected to the wireless network after I sign in! It auto-detects my second display, and even rotates it to portrait mode without a separate driver. And it recognizes all my USB devices, even after several dockings and un-dockings. It's the little things. :-)
All new computers start off with great performance. Just the core stuff installed. No wear and tear from use yet. But then you start to use it. You install software. You upgrade. The OS auto-updates itself, and so do some of your applications. You try out some things, uninstall them. Or maybe you don't; you just don't use them anymore. Then weird stuff starts to happen. Some apps don't work right. You have to reinstall them. Sometimes they lock up or crash. Eventually the machine itself won't shut down properly, or locks up or crashes. And there's nothing you can do but wipe the hard drive and start over with a fresh install of the OS.
Windows had gotten there for me. Booting up literally took 10 minutes before the system was responsive enough for me to use. Outlook refused to start up or shut down properly. I got errors on launch, and had to force quit every time. Yahoo! Desktop Search would freeze the machine on shut down every time; I had to force quit. About half the time I'd just end up forcing the machine to power off by holding down the power switch for 5 seconds. I spent far too long having Windows diagnostics check my disk for damage on boot.
Some days I would get home from the office, pull my laptop out of the case and the fan would be spinning like a centrifuge and the case was as hot as molten lava. Yes, the laptop had failed to go to sleep. Again. Despite the top being closed and the heat sink in the keyboard reflected back to the circuitry by the screen. And every now and then, the power manager would take over the computer, using 100% of the CPU. the only way out was to remove the battery and operate on AC power only. To reset things, I'd have to boot into Mac OS, and then back to Windows. There's another 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
I suspect I'll have issues with Mac OS too. Things are great so far. But of course they are; it's a fresh OS install. I've just started to put my favorite software on it. QuickSilver. OmniGraffle. Firefox 3 beta. Parallels Desktop (to run that piece of crap Windows in the background). I give it a few months before the first problems surface. Then maybe another few before they get really annoying. Six months seems to be the half-life of a Windows install. Mac OS might take a bit longer, but I've no doubt it will succumb too. And that's when I'll become a luddite. Or maybe I'll just upgrade to a new laptop.
Until then, I'm enjoying it. I shut the lid, and the computer's asleep. I open the lid, and it's ready to go and even already connected to the wireless network after I sign in! It auto-detects my second display, and even rotates it to portrait mode without a separate driver. And it recognizes all my USB devices, even after several dockings and un-dockings. It's the little things. :-)
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