Windows user goes Mac; and why OS matters less than Browser
I've just switched my Lenovo T60 Thinkpad running WinXP for a MacBook Pro running Leopard; my first ever Mac experience. I'm surrounded by people who swear I'll never look back, and I'm keen to learn a new OS, so I'm putting my 'Apple is all form over function' views to the back of my mind and getting stuck in.
Three days into the switch and I'm warming up to the Mac. Having not used Windows 7 extensively, I can't do a fair comparison of the current Apple and Microsoft OSes, but here are a few thoughts on the good/bad points of the Mac way of doing things vs Windows XP.
Switching Windows to Mac: my likes and dislikes
Mac Wins
Exposé is a great way to switch between many open applications; combine it with an Active Screen Corner (move mouse to corner of screen to trigger) and it's slick, seamless and, most importantly, super functional.
Spaces (multiple virtual screens), though not Apple's innovation, are a great power feature to gather application windows used concurrently into the separate uncluttered views.
Proper Terminal with the power of a proper *nix shell, not the Windows command prompt. Only of interest to techies.
Mac Fails
Removed useful and intuitive keys or key labels (compared to standard Windows laptop keyboard) for what, I can only assume, is aesthetic reasons. Home and End, for example, perform a useful purpose. Now I have to use trial and error combinations of Fn / Ctrl / Alt / Cmd + arrow keys until the cursor hops to the start/end of the line/document [Update: Some of the unpredictable behaviour was because the Cmd+arrow shortcut was overloaded and also flipped between Spaces. Changing the Spaces shortcut to Alt+arrows has helped]. Likewise, keys F8-F11 perform a useful function (triggering Exposé or displaying desktop), but I'm left to memorise their function by trial and error, presumably because somebody in Apple deemed that printing another icon on the keys to indicate their function would look cluttered.
File browser, 'Finder', defaults to displaying image thumbnails in an unusably tiny size with massive white frames. Changing the default to show larger thumbnails enforces this setting for all file icons, not just photos, which is plain silly.
Image Preview doesn't allow stepping through multiple images. There seems to be no way to step through a folder of photos previewing each at fullscreen and deleting selectively without installing another application. I now use Picasa for this, but Mac OS should do something so simply out of the box.
Why the Operating System doesn't really matter
But before I get carried away with minor user experience gripes, the headline is really that the whole switch from Windows to Mac has been pretty painless. Not because Mac OS is especially intuitive to a Windows user (it's not) or because I spent hours reading the manual and learning about Mac-specific applications (I didn't), but because the only applications I use 95% of the time are the Chrome and Firefox browsers. The other 5% is split between the Terminal and Excel, both for work purposes.
So although I have this sleek new Apple operating system that has a great deal more power and functionality behind it than nearly 9-year old Windows XP, it makes not the slightest difference for day-to-day use. I'm sure I'd be equally ambivalent if I'd moved to Windows 7 or a Linux variant.
The Browser is becoming the OS
Projects like Google Chrome OS make a pretty clear statement that to many the browser is increasingly replicating most useful functionality provided by the OS, to the point that the browser is becoming the OS. As web-based office apps replace their old heavyweight desktop equivalents, Spotify replaces your locally stored music, Flickr/Picasa your locally stored photos, etc., there seems no reason to use bloated 'traditional' operating systems that will run every conceivable application on your machine, when in fact all you need is a browser.
There will undoubtedly still be a place for traditional operating systems for some years when it comes to tasks like high-end graphics editing or gaming, but the appearance of web-based tools like Picnik providing decent photo editing for images you have uploaded to Flickr, Photobucket, etc, shows the direction of movement even for processor intensive tasks.
In the meantime, the spectrum between mobile phone and laptop is becoming ever busier with high end smart phones like Nexus One, tablets like Apple's iPad, and a plethora of netbooks, most of which will be their owner's second (third or fourth) computing device, that are focused to almost entirely on connected apps and the browser. These devices will no doubt provide market demand for even more innovation in web-based replacements for desktop applications.
I look forward to Google's Chrome OS launch and to seeing the way we think of the browser and operating system change in dramatic fashion in the next few years.