Goodbye to Mac OS

About 5 months ago I decided that the new computer I got was going to be a Mac. The whole journey since then has been somewhat fraught, but here I’m just going to be talking about the differences (by my own very specific, and casual use-case) between Windows and Mac, and what caused me to eventually utilize the handy-dandy dual-boot feature of my new Macbook.

From when I first got the iMac five months ago, I was kind of confused about the appearance of everything. Obviously it looked different because it was a Mac, but I’ve used Macs many times in my life, and my mom’s computer up until she died was an iMac (part of the reason I wanted one). In college I used, and loved, the Mac OS. It was very different back then, but I’ll touch on that at the end.

So what was visually weird about it? Well, my eyes were kind of straining all the time, to be honest, to the point where I kept having this confused thought of “I’m not that old”. The irony about this was that the screen is 27 whole inches — not exactly small. In fact, I ended up returning it partly because I was uncomfortable with that screen size. The problem specifically was that I was having trouble reading the text. I determined straight away that this had something to do with what they now call “font smoothing” or “text smoothing”, because just using the phrase “anti-aliasing” is too complicated for people, apparently. Anyone reading this will probably know what I’m talking about, but anti-aliasing, in text or in graphics/video (where it makes sense), is a way of cleverly using the three color elements of the pixels that make up any image to smooth out the jagged edges that are inherent to pixels. It works great for video and graphic elements, but when it’s used for text, I hate it. It just simply makes everything harder to read. And, boy, does Mac OS not want you to turn it off.

I googled the hell out of this problem, and figured out a possible fix, then emailed my brother-in-law who has much more experience with Macs than I do, and he tried to help me out. There was a programmer’s setting that allowed you to turn it off, so that eventually was the solution to that problem.

Now Windows likes to follow Apple’s lead, so when I installed Windows, of course all the text on-screen was anti-aliased. Not my cup of tea, but the difference is that a couple of Google searches later, I found the settings and set them very firmly in the “off” position. Problem solved.

But there was another problem related to text. Everything was just too small for me. Not too small to read, but too small to read comfortably, and when I use a computer, I want the experience to be as close to effortless as possible. No problem, right? Just increase the default font size!

“Hold on there, pardner.”

Apparently, there is no parameter for general or system-wide font size in the new Mac OS’s. This is another issue I googled the hell out of. I was finding people like me, desperate to change the font size without changing the literal monitor resolution, and there was very little recourse there. There was no way to increase the system font size without increasing the icon sizes as well, or just general imagery. This is another example of Mac wanting you to do things the way THEY have decided it should be done.

As I said, the eventual solution was to change the resolution of the display to half of its actual resolution, which makes everything bigger. This was very difficult for me to accept, but I had to. And then everything actually looked slightly bigger than I wanted it to. The other bizarre thing is that the “recommended” resolution in the Mac OS settings was some random fraction of the total resolution. In order for graphics to look optimal, the fraction of the original image’s resolution should either be half or double, instead of a random fraction of the original ratio. So for 800x600, to take an old example, the optimal resolution to retain the integrity of the graphics would be either 400x300 or 1600x1200. I’m sure there’s a word for what I’m trying to express but I can’t think of it. Anyway, for Mac to suggest a random fraction of the native resolution is strange to me, but I’m not a programmer.

When I installed Windows, I was relieved to see that not only was there a parameter for general font size, but it was right there in the settings, and not only that, but the highest resolution for the display was the default resolution; not a lower one. Also by default the font size was set at 200%, because I guess it detected that I had a high resolution monitor.

Point three for Windows— no superfluous third menu. In Windows, there is the so-called taskbar at the bottom of the screen, which shows your active applications, monitors PC usage, has a clock, etc. As well, there is the default menu bar at the top of any open window. This is already more than enough. On the Mac, instead of a taskbar, they have the dock. I’ve never liked the dock, so I guess I’m biased, but why do we need literally three menu bars?? Count them — the dock, the everpresent Apple menu at the top of the screen, and the menu bar at the top of any open window. Yes, you can minimize or even hide the dock, but that’s really frustrating to me. And it’s also slow — needlessly slow. In fact, there is a parameter to change the dock so that when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen to display it, it appears right away instead of with a delay. Why the delay?

This leads to another really frustrating problem that I had with the way the windows are displayed. You’re not allowed to maximize the windows so that they, you know, take up maximum real estate without obfuscating the Apple menu or dock. For some reason, maximizing the window on a Mac means also covering up the Apple menu and making it like the app you’re using has suddenly taken over the computer. If you want to have what I would think everyone would want, where you maximize the window such that it takes up the whole screen, sans the Apple menu and dock, you have to press “option” while clicking on the green maximize button. This is OK, but here’s the problem for me. I don’t have the greatest motor function anymore, so on Windows, when a window is maximized and I want to access the scroll bar, I can simply wave my mouse to the right, and if the app is maximized, the pointer is automatically on the scroll bar. If you do this in Mac OS when a window is maximized, the pointer will technically be on the desktop, not the scroll bar, and if you click there, you’ve just lost your active window and activated the desktop. You have to move the pointer precisely to the scrollbar which is slightly to the left.

And speaking of the dock, why no indication of the active application? On Windows, it clearly delineates which app is active by lightening the tab on the taskbar. On the Mac, it has a little dot right below each open app. That’s nice, but which is the active application?

“Well you don’t need to know the active application — it’s the one you’re USING!”

OK, but sometimes if you’re using multiple web browsers, which I almost always do, or you have a couple windows open where you’re doing different things, “multi-tasking”, then you want a clear indication of which window is active. There’s no such indication on Mac OS. Someone actually made a youtube video in response to someone else complaining about the same problem, and he replied that there was clearly an indication of which application was active. I guess I need to go back to Mac school because I never saw it.

I’ve also just noticed generally since switching back to Windows that the text is generally clearer and more readable, and it’s not because it’s larger. This is where it’s a little bit harder for me to give an explanation because I’m not really sure why this is — I just notice it and it makes a big difference for me. I want text to be able to be small, but clear. There seems to be more contrast in Windows for displaying text, although I don’t know why that would be.

On Windows, smooth scrolling is also on by default, and is also (relatively) easily disabled. If you’re familiar with smooth scrolling, it’s an ironically named feature that actually makes scrolling less smooth and less functional. They do some weird thing where when you scroll it tries to organically react to how you’re moving the mouse’s scroll button, and it’s a nice idea, but I’d much rather just have it scroll the standard three lines every time the mouse wheel clicks. To be fair, the second time I installed Mac OS (that’s another story), I didn’t really end up trying to change that parameter, I just lived with it, but if it had been easy, I would’ve done it.

Now I come to an issue that’s less related to the Mac OS, per se, but it directly related to my experience of the OS. Whenever I would google a question about a problem I was having, the first results that would come up were usually from the apple discussions website, where people send their questions and someone from Apple responds. Obviously this could partly be a function of Google not finding what I wanted, but the answers were usually something along the lines of “Apple has a different way of doing what you’re trying to do that’s better.” Here’s an example of a typical answer from apple.discussions.com.

Again, this isn’t really a strike against the OS, but it just sort of adds to the frustrating experience. When I google an issue with Windows, the results I get are much more forthcoming, for whatever reason.

Another part of the culture of using Mac OS is “hotkeys”. These are key combinations that you use in lieu of the cumbersome-ness of using a mouse. I think this is a result of the programming nature of the early years of computers. It’s ironic to me because Apple is sort of known for being the first computer to popularize the mouse. I love using a mouse. I still think it’s a really cool idea. I don’t particularly like using key combinations to perform the tasks that I could with a mouse, because the keyboard is always farther away from me. Again, I don’t know why, but the Mac seems to encourage hotkeys for everything, to the point that when you’re trying to learn something, whether from an internet how-to or within the OS itself, the emphasis is on the keyboard way of performing a function, such that I have to figure out where in the menu the corresponding action being described is, and if it’s in the Apple menu or the window menu. I don’t want to use a hotkey, and I don’t care whether Apple wants me to.

Another feature I missed is the window snapping, and Microsoft has actually expanded it. Now you can snap a window to the right or left and make it take up 1/2 the screen, or you can put it to the corners and make it 1/4 of the screen. This is genuine utility. I’m sure there’s a way to do this on the Mac, but you probably have to download an app or something.

This brings me to the App Store (all caps). Nothing wrong with the App Store. I mean, I don’t love the concept of a walled garden so it’s not really the way I would prefer to have downloadable programs indexed, but it has its use. The problem I have is not with the App Store itself, but with the fact that it seems as if Apple is designing the OS with the presupposition that everyone is going to use it to download whatever they need. When I ordered the Mac I was excited about all the cool software that it would come bundled with, and the idea that it was a cohesive productivity package. That’s not what it is anymore. I believe this is because they want you to use the App Store. I like the idea of a computer that comes bundled with a cohesive suite of productivity software, and a few whimsical programs (Nanosaur, anyone?) along with it. It’s fun, for one thing, but it also just makes the product feel more complete. Windows still comes bundled with all kinds of productivity software. I had a hell of a time trying to edit a picture with the software that the macbook came bundled with, and I believe that was by design. I finally downloaded a ‘paint’-equivalent program, which wasn’t even available on the App Store.

So now I come to the final point that I mentioned at the beginning. When I was in college I had a Mac, and loved using it. There was something cozy and intimate about the experience. A bit difficult to articulate, but it really felt like the computer was kind of an extension of you and it was there to help. The smiling Mac face seemed genuinely representative of the experience. In the year 2000, Apple changed from their “System” OS to the Unix-based OS X. They were basing the name off of the iterations before it, but it was a completely different system.

I know many people loved the change, and that’s great, but I never got used to it. It felt cold and sterile compared to the original operating system. Not only that, but Apple made it clear they DID NOT WANT you to continue using their “classic” OS. People have said it’s more stable, and I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t use a computer in a way that makes it so stability is the number one issue for me. I feel like most people don’t. Increasingly, people have used their computers to as a way to pass time and as a consumer electronics device. That’s largely how I use mine.

Windows, even though it was and is largely a copy of the Mac, has retained the degree to which the OS felt cozy and familiar. It feels like it’s there for you, instead of telling you how you’re supposed to be doing something. It’s a weird dichotomy because I really admire the way Apple has a future-centric approach, but I guess it’s impossible to disentangle that “this is the way we do this” mentality from that visionary quality. I still think Steve Jobs fucked up when he didn’t include a floppy drive in the iMac. That’s a “fuck you” to casual users AND business users. This leads to another aspect that I didn’t even think about before writing this, but I know I’m not alone because I’ve heard other people mention it.

You know how when a radio station changes format they do it in the cover of night and then act like nothing happened? And you know how it’s infuriating? That, to me, is how Apple treats changes within their products. Why not just acknowledge it? I’m sure there’s a reason but I don’t really know what it is. It seems like Steve Jobs never acknowledged the misstep of the iMac not having a floppy drive. Maybe he did. But to my understanding this has continued in the Apple culture long after Steve Jobs died. It’s a weird way of handling things that I don’t think makes sense.

I still love the Mac from years past, but obviously that’s not coming back and Windows is actually much closer to that experience than any Mac today could be. That’s fine, Mac is a different company now and the OS is more stable and it has its own niche, but to me Windows is simply much more fun and frankly, user-friendly. I like feeling like I can explore the ins-and-outs of the system software and customize it if I wanted to. Even if I’m not going to change any system settings, it makes the experience more fun if I feel that the OS allows that. To me that’s what makes it a “personal computer”.