right on bro!

I’m giving up on OS X and the MacBook that I have had since February. Here’s why:

* The keys on the bottom left of the keyboard. For the life of me, I keep making mistakes. I use a Windows laptop during the day, and the reverse placement of commands from Ctrl to Alt (and Alt to Ctrl and the open Apple key) are driving me nuts.

* No taskbar. I’m too used to the Windows taskbar, and keeping multiple windows open and switching back and forth is just too difficult, even with something like Quicksilver.

* Too hard to develop. I have my set of tools on Windows - the Adobe suite, TextPad, FileZilla, etc. For the life of me I could not find a suitable replacement for TextPad. Also, IE is still a good 80% browser market out there. At the end of the day, if you are designing + developing on a Mac, you still need a Windows machine to test it on.

* Bad compatibility with Microsoft Office - okay this isn’t quite fair, because I never bought Office for the Mac. I tried NeoOffice and it kept crashing, and it was kinda like Office, but not really. I need the real thing.

* Feels too fragile. Which is kind of ironic, because it’s a pretty heavy laptop. But I feel like I can take my Dell laptop anywhere, whereas with the Mac, I feel like it might crack at any moment or something.

* BSD is cool, but what can you do with it if you are not a Unix person by nature? For my purposes, all I did was open up Terminal and ssh to some other boxes, and run a few ping’s and traceroute’s. Which I can do on Windows just fine.

* File sharing with a Windows network is a pain in the ass. I could never figure out how to share files.

Things I liked about the Mac:

* iPhoto - iPhoto is, like, the best photo app ever. Picasa on Windows comes close, but not close enough.
* Logic (it’s sweet)
* Not having to do virus and spyware scans

In the end though, it doesn’t justify the existence, so I am back on my Dell laptop for now. The MacBook is now sitting in the closet. Anyone want to buy it?