Thursday, September 1, 2011

I'm a... well, I don't know: Part I

Most folks I've met are firmly in one camp or another when it comes to the never ending debate that is PC vs Mac. I used to be staunchly PC - I grew up with them and my family's choice of poison is Dell. It wasn't until recently when my Dell suddenly refused to charge and I got completely surrounded by Mac people that I even contemplated crossing over. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a 13 inch Macbook Pro which comes with Lion.

Let's just say I'm not so sure about the PC camp anymore.

I've never been one for mice - it's another piece of equipment to carry (tiny, but as a student, I was already lugging around enough stuff). By enabling gestures, the trackpad allows me so much more functionality at the tip of my fingers (literally) than the mouse and PC trackpad combo ever did. While some of my gestures are already keyboard shortcuts, I find it more natural to use the gestures (it might be my webOS background). Unfortunately, the tradeoff here is that I've found the contextual menu harder to get to - with a PC, I got to it with a simple right click or the contextual menu shortcut button that's part of the keyboard. On a Mac however, the equivalent is the two finger tap on the trackpad. This means that I have to press and hold with two fingers with my right hand and navigate with my left through the menu - if I let go, the menu disappears. An alternative I've found is pressing the Command button and then tapping, but this has been inconsistent.

I haven't really put my Mac through its paces yet - the majority of the time, I live on phones, my Touchpad, and my work laptop. Thus, the majority of my software is free downloads from the App Store. This is a big bonus for me, because there's no PC equivalent (yet...). I'm enjoying the apps that live in the status bar mainly - I have 1 click access to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ simply from my status bar. In addition to those, I don't have to hunt around the Internet for applications - my first stop is the App Store, which I found pretty familiar from iOS.

It's slightly unfair to be comparing my four year old Dell with Windows 7 to my Mac because I've lived with my PC longer. The constant concern of it crashing (old hardware + new OS optimized for better hardware specs = frequent BSoD) is still fresh in my mind, and I'm less likely to put up with my very short battery life. However, I find that I still return to my PC sometimes. Old habits die hard, and designers know that an effective product is one that a user can easily assimilate into their routines or methods of performing tasks. My Mac is super effective, but some basic tasks are still easier on the PC for me, such as word processing. I have not purchased any software that is better than the standard Mac option for it, but I have played with Microsoft Office on a Mac, and MS Office is much better as an experience on PCs (go figure).

All in all, I highly doubt I will ever return to a PC given a choice. I admit to wanting to throw my work PC out a window when I try to do a gesture on the trackpad. But I'm not entirely a Mac either.

I guess that makes me a fence straddler for now.