Why I'm Glad I Made the Switch to OS X

Now that I'm becoming more or less comfortable in OS X, I thought it would be a good time to pause and reflect on why I'm happy to have made the switch. I should say, however, that I continue to have a small number of OS 9 applications that I have to run and that these still give me as much trouble as ever, if not more.

Here are my positive impressions of OS X:

• It is smooth. There is a fludity of flow and motion about this OS and its UI that, once you are into them, make work at least seem to go more smoothly. Part of it, I suspect, is the subtle psychological messaging going on in things like the Genie effect, the sliding in which icons and folders engage, the constancy and consistency of the new Finder window (which I have come to vastly prefer over the OS 9 and Windows style UI) and little touches like icons that bounce to get your attention.
• It is stable. Not one system crash since I started OS X last, more than three days ago. I cannot remember the last time either my OS 9 or my Win98 box ran that long without a hiccup. That is refreshing and it gives me confidence that the system underneath my work efforts is solid. That in turn gives me the feeling that it's OK to try things that are efficient (like doing several things at once) without worrying about whether I've covered all my bases first.
• It is functionally gorgeous. The larger, clearer icons, the font change away from Chicago (proven to be the worst font design in history by virtue of the fact that it is the only font I never saw anyone use for a document!), the generally crisper contrast between foreground and background and between adjacent objects, somehow make the interface seem more intuitive and alive. I find myself already relating to it in ways I never did my OS 9 interface even though in its day the Classic UI was still vastly superior to anything else out there. (By way of example, the icons Microsoft came up with for Office:X are stunningly simple and clear. I used to have to squint at their icons to see if they were Word or Excel. No longer. Great graphical design.)
• Sheets are so much clearer than separate dialog boxes. Most of the time, a dialog box on the Classic and Windows UIs is sort of dangling in space. I know I had the experience many times of having an app running in the background toss up a dialog, go look at the dialog, and have trouble connecting it to the process that displayed it. No longer. Sheets descend, with smooth animation (more of that gorgeousness) from the title bar of the window to which they pertain. Brilliant.
• The dock Yeah, I know, everyone hates it. Sorry, I have come to love it. It is so darned informative at a glance. I can see which apps are running (and by process of elmination, which need to be launched if I want to use them). I can arrange it to suit my taste (big complaint I have about the task bar in Windows98 and the old application menu in OS 9). My wife, who is getting ready to switch to OS X this weekend, loves the magnification feature. I don't find it useful but she says it helps her eyes a lot. Nice touch.
• The integration of PDF into the environment is smooth and elegant and quite useful. PDF files just open in Preview without any effort or knowing where Acrobat Reader is stored. This one feature could turn out to be a major selling feature.

For now, let me just say that I am stunned by the two-stage transition I went through and how quickly and painlessly I ended up making it when all was said and done. I really suspected I'd be fighting the new UI and functionality for at least a few weeks if not months. Today, I have had to look up only one thing in David Pogue's book.

I am now absolutely certain I made the right move. Switching to Windows would have been harder and, I'm convinced, more of a rough-edged transition.

So Steve & Co. have me hooked for another generation.

Whew. I'm so glad!

Last update: 11/13/02; 2:12:32 PM.