OSNews

Mail / Address Book
The mail client is not as comprehensive as Outlook (which I wouldn't touch with a long pole due it's security problems) but allows you to set up multiple accounts and folders and do the usual stuff, all easily of course. There is also a good SPAM filter which you have to teach but works pretty well after a while, the spammers don't stand still though so it won't catch everything. There is also a feature which allows you to check through the email addresses you've used and add them to the system Address Book. This is better than it sounds because if it stored everything it encountered you'd end up with an address book full of people you don't contact or know. This way you get to pick the important ones. The Address Book isn't something I used much but it can export the addresses which you can backup and read on other systems which is useful.

Help System
All of the built in programs have a built in help system which can handle most problems but it does tend to be on the slow side, they should replace the display with something Safari based if they haven't already.

Terminal
For the geeks out there there is a Terminal (shell) present. It's default was Tcsh but bash is present if you want it as I did, I believe bash is the default in Panther. You can do neat tricks like making the shell transparent which sound like a gimmick but can actually prove useful as it lets you read off info from the window below.

The usual tools are all there as you would expect but you won't get absolutely everything you'll find in a Linux distro (i.e. the 5 you use and the 3995 you never look at). There is however the "Fink" tools which you can download and it provides a whole set of other Unix tools.

You can of course also download X Windows for OS X but I don't have a use for it so didn't.

Other Applications
I used MS Office at times which has a different interface then the PC version which, once you are used to it I found to be better. I usually find MS software to be buggy and for some reason it seems to go out of it's way to annoy me, this was no exception. That said it was perfectly usable, I had no 100% CPU hogging problems like Dr Haque mentioned recently in his series.

On some systems the small apps are free, on others you pay $$$ but they are not excessively priced on the Mac (low $10s). I tried a few of the free apps but of what I tried I found the commercial stuff to be better.

There's a ton of software out there for OS X if you need it so getting software is no problem. Comparisons with the PC's software base are meaningless as most people only use a relatively small number of applications, new platforms don't always have these but eventually even the most obscure of platforms get a decent selection of software. i.e. I can get all the software I need on BeOS and the Mac has a much bigger software base!

I did get myself some other software for the system all of which performed their function well:

FirewalkX (enhanced firewall)
IRCicle (IRC client)
CodeTek Virtual Desktop (desktop switcher)

I also used:
RBrowserLite (Free version of a commercial FTP client)
Which seems to work OK, I did have some problems with huge transfers but they may have been the FTP server's fault.

Conclusion
So, what can I conclude after using a Mac for the past year and a bit? Remember of course that the current Mac range, OS X and the iApps have now been updated multiple times.

My answer can best be given by describing my situation: You see, it was not my iBook and I had to give it back, what do I do now?

I'd never had a laptop before and the freedom it gave was very useful. In fact with my propensity to take photographs by the ton I need a laptop if I intend to go anywhere (either that or a few 1GByte CF cards...). So I'd like another laptop. I could get a PC laptop and then I've got a choice of Windows, BeOS or Linux.

The Mac provided a much better experience than any system I've ever used before and none of the above compare, I'd like to stick with a Mac. It's easy and quick to set up and from then on it just does it's job, it does not get in your way or try to annoy you. It's also stable, Yes, I've seen it crash a few times but very rarely. The interface is the best in the business and it comes with some very good applications. This is the way computers should be, right now nobody else even comes close.

I do have a few minor niggles with the Mac but I cannot say I have any major complaints.

I don't consider them to be bad value, if you are just looking at CPU speed yes P4s are faster than the G4s but these are entire systems and as such are not so bad value considering what you get. Besides of which in a Laptop battery life is rather more important than raw computing speed.

I quite like the 12 inch iBooks given their size and weight. I especially like the 12 inch PowerBooks which could act as a full desktop system given their spec (one version includes a Superdrive) but I'm not so keen on the small screen if I had to use it all the time, plugging in a decent sized external screen will soon fix that though. In fact take the screen off and it'd be small, portable and still look good, a portable desktop - hmm, Did I just invent a new form factor?

Many alternative computing (BeOS, MorphOS, etc) users have a windows partition or entire PC sitting around for when they need access to a file or content which other systems can't read or have a device with no drivers etc.. (I myself have an old copy of Windows for this purpose). The Mac has the advantage of not having these sorts of problems, pretty much everything works and you can watch all the content on web pages (i.e. Quicktime, Flash, Real etc). If you really want to be Windows free, the Mac makes a good choice.

Unfortunately I can't afford a new Mac right now so in the mean time it's back to my PC...

Copyright © Nicholas Blachford April/May 2004