I just made the switch to Mac. After 20 years in the Microsoft world, switching operating systems is a little like learning to walk again. All of a sudden I don't know the shortcut for making text bold. Or how to install programs. (Turns out you just have to drag and drop.) I can feel my brain rewiring the shortcuts, and the process is not very pleasant.
But even after a few days of stumbling, it's clear that I'm here to stay. Mac OS X is a thrill to use. Partly it's the eye candy, but mostly it's the usability. My bar is set fairly low, though - Microsoft Windows is built on a number of dubious usability assumptions that should have been abandoned long ago.
The Windows Start button was never a good idea. Intuitively, if every task starts with clicking on the same button, that button might as well not be there. One should think that the idea of providing direct links to the most common tasks should be a staple of good interface design. Yet Microsoft still clings to this idea, making it even more prominent in Vista.
And then we have the madhouse that is the Start menu. I try to be conservative when it comes to installing programs. Even so, I have perhaps 50 or 60 programs and utilities that I use on a semi-regular basis. And they all have their own entry in the Start menu. But a direct link? No, I have to open a little folder, and then click on a link to open the program. So that means three clicks to open a program. Very convenient.
Yes, yes, I know we have the desktop and the quick-launch toolbar and the various different areas of the start menu that try to guess what program you're likely to use next. But the end result is messy. And forcing users to grapple with several different ways of doing the same simple task is hardly a triumph of good user interface design.
The Mac OS X application dock, however, is such a triumph. It has two important advantages. One, it provides a convenient way to launch your most-used programs. Direct link, always visible. And two, it provides an intuitive link between launching a program and re-activating it later. Windows breaks that link, since programs are started from one location (Start menu or desktop) and re-activated from another (task bar).
And then there is multitouch. Instead of using only one finger on the trackpad, the newest Macs (as well as the iPhone, of course) lets you use several fingers at once. You scroll a window with two fingers. You right click with a two-fingered tap. You zoom pictures using a pinch motion. And best of all, you can flip web pages back and forth using a three-finger swipe. They almost always work, even if your fingers aren't perfectly positioned. They're a joy to use. (Microsoft has also understood this, and seem to be pursuing this idea quite aggressively in Windows 7.)
Windows does score a few points. It is surely more logical for the application pulldown menu (File, Edit, View etc.) to be attached to the application window, as is the case in Windows. Currently, for instance, I'm typing this blog post into a window that's open on a standalone monitor attached to my Macbook Pro. That means I have to switch to another monitor in order to e.g. add a bookmark. And the concept of maximising a window, which is quite useful, doesn't seem to exist on a Mac. (There is the green little button, but what does it really do?)
The most important difference, though, is that Mac programs on the whole seem to be much better designed. Windows programs usually have more features, but they're never precisely the features you want. So I'm here to stay, and I'm not looking back.
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