Now that I've flushed out to Microsoft fanboys by complaining about Vista's interface and anti-open-source tricks, I'll irritate the Mac fanboys just to make things even.
I have a dual-core Intel MacBook Pro, a slick silver $2,000-plus laptop with 2 gigabytes of RAM. So, tell me:
Why am I seeing the beachball when trying to open mail, view a photo, whatever?
Why does it take so long to launch a program? Comparable applications launch in half the time on a three-year-old $600 desktop PC.
Why does it take Spotlight 15 or 20 seconds to search the directory I'm looking at? I can scroll and find filenames manually faster than that.
Why am I running out of memory/file handles/whatever? I have Linux systems that run for years without needing a reboot, but my Mac needs one daily.
The Mac is supposed to be the epitome of user interface engineering, yet I'm constantly tripping over little bits of UI ugliness. Dashboard is pathetic, and Apple should be embarrassed to include it. iTunes is a mess. When you try to save a file, some apps will pop up a minimalistic file selector with no clear way to change directories. If you mix in X11 applications the whole place turns into a zoo. (I suppose I'm supposed to lick Steve Jobs' shoes for his allowing me to run X11 at all.)
Mac zealots generally drool over iPhoto, but it's lame when compared with Picasa, which runs on Linux and Windows but not OS X. Apple Mail has a host of technical issues when used in an IMAP setting, and the system has no way of letting me replace Apple Mail. (I can run Thunderbird, but other apps that want mail services, such as iCalendar, insist on launching Apple Mail.)
And don't get me started on that 1985 "menu bar belongs to the screen, not the window" mistake. Or the poor support for multiple mouse buttons.
Have I offended the Mac crowd yet?
For the record, here's what I touch daily: MacBook Pro at work. HP desktop running XP at home. Sony Vaio dual-core laptop running XP at home. Ancient 300-megahertz Pentium running Ubuntu Linux, Gnome and KDE at home. (The family complains about the speed but loves the built-in games.) And a series of web servers running various Linux versions that never, never need rebooting.
Comments
No offense taken
No offense taken by this long time Apple user but some of the comments you've made are as subjective as those used by Apple fanboys to criticize the Windows environment.
I think we've all had enough of that. Those discussions aren't helpful and frankly, most people don't care.
(and since we're sharing computing history, the record, I bought my first Apple in 1985 and haven't looked back at home. At work, I've been in a Windows only environment since Windows 3.1 came out.)
Regarding your application load times or Spotlight , like any computer (Windows, Mac, Linux), there are too many factors to consider and speculating without access to the box would be fruitless.
I can help you with changing mail apps though. That's a simple fix.
Just ask Dave Taylor.
Often ...
Often Apple fans think issues like the menu bar are just personal preference, but that one in particular is not preference at all -- it's a real practical problem. I have two monitors, including a 21-inch widescreen. Getting the mouse pointer to the danged menu bar is like running a 400-yard dash.
Thanks for the advice about the default mail application, but apparently I already had set it to Thunderbird, so that doesn't fix it. This may actually be an issue with Groupcal (which lets me tie iCalendar together with the Evil Empire Exchange messaging system). It's launching mail.app to send replies.
Its all the same
It's not OS X sucks. Its not XP sucks. It's not Vista, or Linux sucks either. It's just - Computers suck.
They suck our time, patience and anything. And if you keep using them long-term, you just have to admit nothing is perfect. Even though I like my MacBook
My MacBook Pro is not the slow
I got a MacBook Pro in December. It's the first Apple computer I've owned since 1999, when I gave up an ailing PowerBook. It's been all Windows for me ever since then. So I'm still going through the transition, and everything that's different between Mac OS and Windows is still obvious to me.
But I have not had the speed problems you describe. I've been in love with the speed, in fact. Spotlight is instantaneous. Opening ginormous photos in Preview -- fast. Preview is 10 times faster than Adobe Reader for reading PDFs, in my opinion.
Now, opening Photoshop is slow, but it is as least that slow on my souped up Intel Core 2 Duo at work. Same with opening Word -- pokey. (Maybe it's font management? Dunno.)
Spotlight performance
Very odd. My Spotlight experience has been exactly the opposite -- so I use Google Desktop for finding things whenever possible. It's lightning-fast.
What puzzles me is that this Mac is incredibly fast at some things, especially screen updates, but chronically slow at cold-start launching programs of any type (the ancient 300mHz Linux box loads Firefox faster). Since the Mac doesn't actually close programs when you close their windows, this is less apparent in routine usage than it otherwise might be, but it's still annoying.
Mine's not slow
I have a MacBook I bought last year that my wife now uses, mainly.
When I started at GHS, I got a MacBookPro with a 17inch screen. Loved it, but it was a lot to lug around on all my travels. So that machine is currently being used by an intern and I have a 15 inch MacBookPro.
In no case have I experienced your slowness issues.
Except, when I had Google Desktop installed. When I uninstalled it, lots of problems were solved.
Spotlight is fine.
The Finder is limited, but I recently discovered, downloaded, installed and paid for Path Finder. It's awesome and I highly recommend it. There's nothing better for navigating directories in either the Mac or Windows world. It's $30 shareware.
What's all the fuss about?
Why do people obsess over the launch time of applications?
I mean, when I wake up and stroll into my den for a tough 6 hours of work (I love working from home) I either wake up my MBP - who tends to keep the same hours that i do - or I press the little "ON" button. That is, if I took the effort to turn it off the night before.
I go make a cup of coffee, come back, and all my apps are open...ready for me to silently curse their inability to agree on what the darned "home" and "end" keys are for!!!
The apps could take 3x as long and I wouldn't notice. Is this really such a big deal?
(BTW - Photoshop opens in 7 seconds on my machine... I just timed it. So maybe I'm like the rich guy telling everyone else that money doesn't make you happy. IT CERTAINLY DOES!)
Are you kidding me? Who cares about application load time?
you think speed is the prob?? OSX sucks totally in many ways...