A Month with a Mac - Part II: The Mobile Experience
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 24, 2005 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
When I finished writing the first Mac article, I knew that I hadn't covered everything that I wanted to. At the end of this article, I'm left with a similar feeling. I haven't even talked about the applications that make up iLife, but that's actually on purpose, since they have just been updated to their new '05 versions. I haven't touched on a number of the applications that I use on a regular basis under OS X, or even bothered comparing cost of software ownership on Mac vs. PC platforms. I've talked a bit about subjective performance, but I haven't done much with actually doing apples-to-apples performance comparisons within the Mac world. Over 10,000 words in this article, and there's still so much more to talk about. I started the first Mac article saying that it had been one of the most difficult articles that I'd ever written, and that statement holds true for this one as well. I can crank out a review of a CPU or a video card or just about any benchmarkable, quantifiable technology in a day, but summing up an entire platform, from the perspective of an outsider, is difficult - especially to a group composed of insiders, outsiders and critics alike. There will be more of these articles to come - you can pretty much already guess what the next one will be. I took it upon myself to do the first two Mac articles about the Power Mac G5 and the PowerBook G4, but AnandTech readers have written me asking for my take on the Mac mini. Hopefully, I can shorten the turn around time on that one though.As for the PowerBook G4, it's an excellent laptop. If you're used to the portability offered by something ultra thin, ultra small and ultra portable, then the PowerBook isn't the notebook for you. But, having owned some of the smallest laptops around, I can say that despite its bulk, I can get a lot more work done on the PowerBook than I could on my more portable notebooks. And compared to most average notebooks, the PowerBook is extremely competitive in portability, especially the 12" and 15" models. It's smaller, lighter and thinner than competing PC notebooks, which are all things that matter when talking about a notebook. In terms of performance, the PowerBook G4 held its own just fine as my companion on numerous trips, never disappointing me in terms of performance. I was actually somewhat surprised, especially considering the low expectations of G4 performance I had going into the experiment - whether it is OS X, the G4 itself or the combination of the two - the performance of the laptop was definitely nothing to complain about (other than the slow hard disk, which is true of all notebooks, unfortunately).
As far as the display goes, the beauty of LCD panels is that there are only a handful of manufacturers, regardless of whether you're talking about PCs or Macs, so the display specifications are obviously competitive. The native 1280 x 854 resolution provides a decent amount of desktop real estate, which is quite handy when working on the road and it is a good resolution for the 15.2" screen.
The slot loading Super Drive (CD-RW/DVD-R) is also nice to have, especially coming from a string of notebooks without any built-in optical drive for portability. The plethora of ports, including DVI-output, is equally useful. Evaluated purely as a notebook, I'd say that the 15" PowerBook G4 is a little expensive, but the most full-featured, complete package that I've ever seen in a notebook. The 12" PowerBook would be a little tougher of a sell for me, simply because I'd be giving up a decent amount of screen real estate, but despite its heavier weight compared to things like the ThinkPad X series, I'd still probably pick it simply because the package as a whole is much more complete. Having an optical drive, despite the number of times that I've said the contrary, always comes in handy. It's not that you use it all the time, but it's the handful of cases when you need it that you can really appreciate it.
And then there's the OS. On the desktop, there's the issue of gaming, but when you're dealing with a portable solution like the PowerBook, gaming isn't really much of an issue. The integrated Mobility Radeon 9700 isn't used for much now, but it will come OS X Tiger. Unless you do a lot of .NET development on the road, just about anything you use your laptop for is available under OS X - and as a portable OS, OS X works very well. The price argument isn't as big of a deal on the mobile side, and although the Mac mini is an attractive platform on which to get introduced to OS X, the PowerBook may actually be a more useful one if you find yourself using a laptop a lot. While OS X as a desktop replacement to a life-long PC user may be a tough sell, the PowerBook is a much easier sell if you need a laptop. If you don't, well, then there's this little thing that Apple just released...
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garote - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
A note about Exposé usage on a powerbook:I know it's unorthodox, but consider using the 'Fn' key, on the lower left, for activating Exposé. It's easier to reach in general, but especially easy to use when you want to drag an icon/file _through_ an Exposé operation (via hold-release), from one window to another. Especially if you're right-handed.
You can still use Command-up/down for home/end, Command-left/right for begin/end of line, and Option-left/right for next/prev word. You'll have to invoke F6 to use the keypad, however, and you'll lose quick access to page-up/page-down.
The big difference, of course, is that you'll lose access to the regular invocation of the FN keys - however, I find that I never want to use the FN keys anyway, unless I want to embed a bunch of Photoshop macros in them.
Try it for a while. If you're a heavy Exposé user, you may find the change quite pleasing.
adespoton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Hi Anand; just thought I'd clarify a statement you made in your conclusion:"Unless you do a lot of .NET development on the road, just about anything you use your laptop for is available under OS X...."
For anyone in this situation, Project Mono is available for OS X at http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/macos/MonoFra...
Of course, this doesn't give you *all* the .NET bindings etc., but for basic .NET development it works quite well -- and has the added benefit that you can test the programs out under OS X as well, without resorting to emulation.
jayemcee - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Thanks for a nicely balanced article. The speed issues tend to fade a bit (especially pure cpu speed) when looking at the way the system operatesand how it helps productivity. Less downtime for the system (my uptime has been continuous except for reboots at software updates times). Drag and drop into and between applications make the system appear very elegant to me and a bonus is when I want it... there is BSD *nix underneath OS X.The hardware is as good as it gets for the price and I do not feel cheated by Apple. Of course, there is also that indefinable Apple experience that you get when opening the boxes of a new piece of apple hardware. I guess that I am addicted to that as well. :)
You write well and many PC magazines would do well to emulate your methods of testing the unquantifiable variables of all machines that they test and then write about... for public consumption.
mattfaulds - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Great article. Good to see someone weighing things from a bablanced point of view.Would like to reiterate the greatness of Sidetrack (www.ragingmenace.com)
I have an iBook G4 and have changed the button to a right click button, the corners of the tap pad to exposé functions (and a right click corner) and a scroll on the right side. It's very customisable and very stable.
Apple really really should pay him lots of money and incoporate the optional function as standard. You need it with the limited space on a laptop.
Cheerio
waterbug - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Anand,Another thing to compare between OS X and Windows is sleep/wake behavior. Try this at home:
Connect both your Wintel laptop and your PowerBook to a WiFi network with DHCP and verify connection by opening a browser. Close both lids for 5-10 seconds, until you're sure they're both asleep. Open the lids.
You should be able to click a link on the PowerBook within 5 seconds of seeing the LCD come on. If you have a static IP, it'll be even faster.
On my XP laptop, it takes anywhere from 10-45 seconds to reacquire the wireless signal, figure out the encryption, reacquire a DHCP address, and then finally be able to do anything.
It sounds trivial, but imagine this scenario: imagine you're working with your laptop in the kitchen, and you decide to move to the dining room. Do you close your laptop, or walk over to the dining room with it open? With my Dell, I walk around the house with it open. With our iBook, I close it even to rearrange things on the bed. It's not a huge issue, but it's one of those "little touches" that makes for a more satisfying ownership experience.
lookmark - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Nice article, as always. I too am slightly disappointed by my 15" PB's wireless range, and hope Apple is able to improve it in fure models.Just want to chime on the fabulousness of Quicksilver, which is like just a little taste of Tiger's Spotlight, focused on launching (or more, if you want). Well, well worth checking out.
I too started with the Applications folder in the Dock -- didn't we all? -- but Quicksilver is so much better it's quite astonishing, and considering it's completely free and open-sourced all the more so. Apple is clearly taking notice as well.... it's been reported from the latest Tiger builds that the (customizable, of course) shortcut for hitting Spotlight quickly is now command-space, a la QS.
jim v - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Actually, the ethernet port on the PowerBook is 10/100/1000bcstanding - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
I am one of those guys that switched from PC to Mac (3 years ago). This article (with Part I) is one of the most insightful and unbiased articles I've ever read on the subject of the Mac User Experience. Very well done!I also thought I'd chip in an idea - if you don't have quite enough RAM, you may want to leave apps open (just hide them) instead of quitting them. OS X seems to be faster when swapping a program back into memory than starting it outright. I'm on a 3 year old PowerBook, though, so this may not be applicable for faster Macs...
davechen - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
As an old school Unix programmer, I've always hated keyboards that have a large caps lock and a small control key (as most do these days). I use control a lot more than caps lock. Hell who ever really uses caps lock.So on OS X, I'd be lost without uControl. It's a little control panel that allows you to remap modifier keys (along with a lot of other things). Here' the link:
http://gnufoo.org/ucontrol/ucontrol.html
jsares - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
I second and third the suggestions for SideTrack. Great shareware from a great guy.