The PC is all I have ever known. I guess it sort of fits like the proverbial old shoe since I know it inside and out, upside down, and backwards. I am familiar with all the hardware, software, settings, file structure, tweaks, tips, hacks, etc… Well, I guess I shouldn’t say all, but I’ll leave it at a lot. Macs were just something with pretty colors, but were not very useful for doing real work. Actually, I had that notion without ever really using a Mac so I guess it was just successful subliminal advertising or something like that. Anyway, all that to say this: I now have a 20-inch, 2.0GHz, 1GB RAM iMac in my home.

First off it’s not technically my computer since it actually belongs to Walnut Creek of Thomasville. I am just using it to do work at home with a program called MacDraft which, believe it or not, is not available for the PC unless you get PCDraft, but I’m not getting into all that.

With my previous Mac experience being somewhere between zero and “didn’t I use something like that back in the early 90’s when it was called Macintosh?” I wasn’t sure what to expect. I will say the first couple days have been a positive experience. So far I’ve clicked about every icon on the dock, and learned enough about the system settings to set up accounts, mount a windows network share, and make some other simple changes (background, screensaver, etc…).

So far … one of the best features … the keyboard … one of the worst … the keys. I’ll explain a little further.

I love the keyboard – probably my all time favorite. Aside from the obvious cool sleek look which you’d expect from a Mac, the touch is the best I’ve ever felt. Keyboard touch is a big deal to me, and it may be in my head, but I feel that I can type faster, and in general get a lot more done with a good feeling keyboard. The keys need to take a minimal force to press, yet there needs to be a definite break point where the keystroke has been made. A stiff, hard to press keyboard is obviously no good, but those without that distinct keypress feel are no good either. The sweet, silver and white iMac keyboard just hits the sweet spot.

I don’t like the keys. Maybe I just need to learn a little more about them, but many of the keys on the Mac keyboard do not behave the same as they do on their PC counterpart. This is a big deal for me since I’m an extensive keyboard user as opposed to an excessive mouse clicker. Keyboard shortcuts really speed up your workflow, when you can seamlessly call up a feature without moving your hand over to the mouse and back.

For example, the home and end keys just seem totally messed up. On a PC, when editing text, home takes you to the beginning of a line and end takes you to the end. However, on the Mac, home takes you to the beginning of a document and end to the end but it does not change your cursor position. I’m not sure why one would do that but I’m ok with it if there was a replacement for the Windows function of home and end. I read on one message board to hold command and the left and right arrow keys. This only halfway works. For instance in Firefox, where I am now typing this post using Wordpress, if I press command + right arrow it takes me to the end of a line, but command + left arrow takes me back to the previous page. That makes no sense to me. There are some other issues including the two keys labeled delete when one is really backspace. Also, does the keyboard really need shift, control, option/alt, fn, and command? How many qualifiers do the other keys need? For a company that appears to stress simplicity in its products this seems out of place. These things may seem trivial, but they have really hindered my workflow.

As much as I may grow to like the Mac I know I can never fully switch for one simple reason: applications. I am, for now, tied to the PC since there are many applications I use which have no viable alternative on the Mac. One is AutoCAD, and another is Chief Architect. CAD is not a strong point of the Mac which is odd since that is the reason (MacDraft) I am even using a Mac in the first place. From what I’ve seen so far MacDraft’s capabilities pale in comparison to AutoCAD, and I am only using it because a supplier for Walnut Creek requires it. There is a reason AutoCAD is the industry standard: it is the best. I also use engineering evaluation software which is only available for the PC, and have not even checked into alternatives.

The great thing about the Mac is its ability to handle media. I have not had enough time to experiment with it, but I hope to report more later. I did easily manage to hook up my digital camera and import the image above into iPhoto, resize it, then upload it to Flickr without any real problems. Most things are very intuitive even for a Windows user except for those stinking keys.

P.S. And why, when navigating the file system, does pressing enter attempt to edit the folder or file name instead of opening it?

Why does Radio Shack ask you for your phone number when you buy batteries? I don’t know. – Kramer