My review of my new Mac Powerbook G4 12":

First impressions

This is a review of my new Mac. I've used Apples since the IIe, and was on OS X starting with the public beta. Nonetheless, I switched most of my work to an IBM laptop a few years ago. It seemed like now was a good time to switch back, so I did so.

How I chose the computer: It didn't seem very competitive to PC offerings out there. Pricewise, it was quite cheap, but price wasn't a factor for me. I really wish Apple would come out with lighter, faster laptops, like e.g. the Fujitsu 7000 (14" screen, 3.8 pounds), the IBM T43 (14" screen, 4.5 pounds), or the Sony Vaio 380 (13" widescreen, 4.7 pounds). All these computers I was considering came with build-in DVD writers. The Mac G4 12" was the heaviest, and yet also had the smallest screen, and also the lowest resolution screen (the IBM and Fujitsu are both 1400x1000, the Sony 1300x800, the Mac 1000x800). In terms of performance, the most noticeable stat is the bus speed. PCs are running at 533 MHz, the Mac at 167 MHz. The Mac was however cheaper than the PC alternatives, but again price wasn't an issue. So why did I still buy the Mac? For one thing, I thought the OS would make up for some of the other cons. This is partly true -- for example, Expose does make the 1024x768 screen slightly more bearable.

About the computer itself:
The display: I didn't notice this in the store, perhaps partly because I couldn't move the computers around to compare screens. But the 12" screen is very dim. The viewing angle is also awful. Even though the screen is only 12" diagonal, there are still very noticeable shifts towards the edge of the screen (with my head at a reasonable viewing position). Very precisely setting the angle of the screen helps slightly, but not enough. (If the angle isn't exactly right, though, the entire screen will look too dim.) Apple's hingeless design may look cool, but since the screen opens up so its bottom is actually beneath the keyboard level, this makes it a little difficult to use the computer with good posture (without hunching over). Perhaps other smaller notebooks have similar problems, I don't know, but just looking at the case, it seems that using a hinge would push the screen up by maybe 3/4". Maybe the first thing I did after turning the computer on was to change the desktop background. I chose one of Apple's backgrounds with I think a blue sky. And I was very surprised to see visible dithering. It shouldn't be dithering -- I think this means that the screen is only 18 bit, not true 24 bit capable. Apple's specifications don't say, so I am suspicious.
The noise: This computer is very noisy. The hard drive never sleeps and there is always a noise from it. Before the computer sleeps, there is a blessed moment of silence with the LCD screen still on but the hard drive asleep. Worse, the fans are quite noisy, too, and they come on quite frequently. I recently downloaded Temperature Monitor, and the graphics card might be the culprit. In any case, once the fans come on, I can't figure out how to get them to turn off. Leaving the computer on with nothing running, the fans will stay on indefinitely. I have to put the computer to sleep then wake it up for the fans to turn off.
The keyboard: I am not quite used to it, and am missing keypresses still. Probably just me.

The switching process: It took me a bit of time to figure out how to connect my old PC laptop to this one. Eventually, though, I figured out how to share Windows folders, and then how to get the Ethernet connection working. Apple's documentation wasn't very helpful, since it basically told me to look at the Windows documentation to figure out how to set up the PC. The Windows documentation isn't very good at all, and it would have saved me some hassle if Apple had included its own documentation. Eventually, though, things started to work, even with just a standard Ethernet cable. If anyone else has questions on how to do this, I think I can probably help. Actually, I was transferring files from three sources: the PC laptop, my old Mac, and the network. The PC laptop transfer was the easiest. When transferring from the old Mac, I repeatedly ran into issues with the Finder. It would often lock up (with a beach ball) when copying even just moderate numbers of files (a few hundred or thousand, a few hundred or thousand megabytes). Worse, when the Finder became unresponsive, so did the whole computer. For example, I sometimes had to wait at least a minute before the force-quit dialog would show up so I could relaunch the finder. Then the Finder wouldn't actually relaunch. This was hell. Since then I have learned that the Finder can't copy more than one group of items at a time. It consistently gives beachballs, and effectively freezes, when trying to copy more than one group at a time. This is very worrisome, because I don't like file-handling routines to crash, and potentially corrupt my data. It is such a basic bug, too.

The operating system: This is very unstable, worse than Windows XP but perhaps similar to WIn2k. I've had only one or two true operating system crashes in the few weeks I've been using this computer, but I've had many more Finder crashes and from my perspective the Finder is part of the OS. Generally, the OS is very unpolished. I have been used to Windows, which after a while one begins to feel was designed by the proverbial monkeys at typewriters. But the Mac is surprisingly frequently even worse. This was a big letdown. Besides the Finder, which has dozens of bugs, another random example is the Airport menu which often shows full bars when it means no bars.
The application switching method is just terrible. I cannot figure out the order applications show up when I command-tab. It stays consistent for a while, then seems to randomize. After it randomizes, I have to tab through all the applications to find what icon is associated with what name, and then shift tab back (because I'll have gone too far). Windows is more consistent and more efficient. While expose is frequently nice, there really needs to be a place where applications/windows are consistently organized, with text visible not just random icons.
Spotlight is surprisingly useful. Dashboard is hardly anything, but is better than I expected. (But it is quite slow -- why for example does it take a second for the clock to show its hands?)

The single-button mouse: It is very surprising to me that I am using modifier keys much more frequently than on a PC. For example, I have to command-click all the time. In Firefox, I have to control-click. To page-down, I have to press function-down arrow. To forward-delete, I have to function-delete. And yet I am less efficient than on a PC. For example, in Windows, one can always tab through the choices in a dialog box (Okay, Cancel, etc.). What is the equivalent key combo on a Mac? I just figured out that tabbing to cancel can be enabled in the Keyboard control panel, but I am still not sure how to hit cancel -- pressing return after selecting cancel still sends Okay. Why is Windows more intuitive than Mac?

Applications:
Powerpoint 2004 is not as good as the equivalent PC Powerpoint, I noticed very soon. For example, the animation controls are significantly worse (more complicated to use, fewer controls). It is also much slower opening files with meta inserts. I had thought that Keynote came with the Powerbook, but apparently, only a trial version. Anyway, it didn't do a good job importing a Powerpoint presentation (for example, losing arrowheads on line segments, changing transparent images to a solid color, and losing the animations). The arrows can be quickly fixed -- but Apple should have fixed this -- and I don't know how to fix the other things.
LaTeX installed easily, though I prefer the simpler directory structure and GUI interface of the Windows miktex. I struggled a bit with this yesterday.
For surfing the web, Firefox doesn't work as well on the Mac as it does on the PC. The key problem, which has forced me to switch to Safari, is that dragging URLs to the Finder creates a file with the URL as its name, instead of the web page title (as with PC Firefox, or Safari). Also, some of the commands seem to be messed up in Firefox. For example, Delete and Shift-Delete don't go forward and backward (as on the PC, or with Safari). Interestingly, two-finger mousepad scrolling works quite differently than in Safari -- up and down is fine, but left and right seems to go back two pages and forward two pages respectively (can't get it to go forward or back just one page). The Safari implementation is better. For now, I have to use both Firefox and Safari, because Firefox has better web archiving with the Scrapbook extension, and also it saves the tab bar state on quitting. I also don't know how to switch between tabs in Safari -- control-tab doesn't work. On a PC, FIrefox sufficed.
GraphicConverter is a nice powerful application, with a learning curve. iPhoto is just awful compared to Picasa -- no lossless editing and it forces you to use its directory structure, it also saves every image before letting you go on to the next one (meaning it is glacially slow) -- but I have been able to work out a photo workflow using GraphicConverter. Still, the PC workflow was superior, since Picasa is substantially faster with a much better interface and more controls than GraphicConverter. I had intended to pick up Photoshop CS 2 right away, but the Intel announcement has put software purchases on hold.
I am using VirtualPC to run a few applications, for example s7raw to convert RAW files from my Fuji camera.
I had assumed X11 would be either installed by default or downloadable from Apple. So I left the install CD at home and went on a trip. But in fact, the only way to get Apple's X11 is off the install CD. I had to compile and install X11 myself; this was a huge pain.

Random: The computer doesn't warn me before it goes to sleep because of low battery power.
Here is a bug which I assume must be an operating system bug, because the same thing happens in all sorts of different applications: A line of text just disappears, or is duplicated, in a text box. There are lots of bugs like this -- but I remembered this one because it just now occurred here. Clicking around, and scrolling up and down, then more clicking, and the text appeared again.

This is largely a negative review, and, yes, I am considering switching back. The noisiness of this powerbook is unacceptable -- as I sit here even just typing, the fan is cycling louder/quieter/louder/quieter -- and the poor screen is very annoying. Connecting to an external monitor makes it even more noisy, since the graphics card really struggles. And yet another forced incompatibility with the Intel switch? It's good news that Mac hardware will finally catch up to PCs (a year from now, at least), but I don't want to have to rebuy all my software. The bugginess of OS X has really annoyed me. Why can't Apple stop and fix the current bugs before adding on tons of new features which make it even buggier? The current Finder deserves the adjective "Microsoftian" more than Windows XP.

That all said, I'd certainly appreciate any advice as to how to improve things.


Second impressions (added 6/28)

Here are some second impressions a few weeks later. It's mostly a list of bugs I've run into, although there are some nuggets hidden there if you care to dig through it (Quicksilver!).

Short summary: OS X is great. I love the interface, and the screen space with dual monitors. Spotlight is fantastic — on Windows I had missed a decent search function (never tried the google desktop search, though). For me, Dashboard is very practical; I use it for conversions, calendar, weather, google maps, dictionary, stickies, and two photo albums for inspiration. Little tips I found in this thread like using the space bar to select a button have made navigation so much easier (but it doesn't work in Photoshop 7!). Another key combo: ctrl-cmd-D looks up the word under the mouse in the dictionary. I have no idea where these come from — couldn't find anything in the Help topics — but they are great to know.

Quicksilver works a treat and has eased navigation a bit. The developer's web site makes it sound like huge bloatware (talking about automating emails and the like — why do I need to automatically send out tons of emails from the Desktop?), but in practice it just works. I also downloaded Witch for app/window switching with text labels, but it was too ugly.

I've basically figured out a photography workflow. I convert RAW files in VirtualPC, then use GraphicConverter to edit IPTC and to finish conversion for my Jalbum website. Occasionally, I use Photoshop 7, but I don't trust that it saves the EXIF properly, so I only use it through GraphicConverter. GraphicConverter is dog slow even at trivial things like making a selection and I have considered using Picasa in VirtualPC, but for now I'll just wait.

About the interface, there are a few little things that I wish Apple would fix, but now know they never will. For example, dragging selected text doesn't work like I think it should. Back with OS 9, for example, I drag-and-dropped all the time. When I switched to Windows, I had to switch to using copy-paste, because drag-and-drop behavior just wasn't consistent. On OS X, drag-and-dropping is much like Windows, and I'm becoming resigned to using copy-paste. Another example: Menus occasionally open then immediately close, instead of staying open. So I have to open them again. Mac (pre OS X) used to have the best menus around, but nowadays little things like this have broken them.

Here come the promised bugs. I feel the software is all buggy, even more than most of the big Windows apps. I'm a bit afraid that we're doomed to buggy software for a while now, especially because of the Intel transition. I have taken to quitting applications when possible to try to keep them "fresh."

The "Open with.." is completely broken. OS X insists on opening my TeX files with Script Editor even though I have several times told it to "Always open" with TeXShop (another very buggy program).

Preview has crashed several times. Finder has crashed: At one point, while scrolling through a window, the Finder blurred all the icons down the window. It didn't freeze and I was able to take a screenshot and close the window. Once, after waking the computer up, the Dock would not appear (I typically have it hidden to the side, but nothing would get it to pull out). I could see the Dock if I went to the Apple menu and turned hiding off, but if I turned hiding back on again nothing would trigger it to show itself. When I tried to restart the Dock wouldn't go away. Apple's force-quit dialog is useless (Microsoft, from long experience I suppose, has a much better force quit dialog), but fortunately I have the Activity Monitor in my Dock (which was still responsive and was visible since I had turned off hiding) so I quit the Dock with that. After restarting, it seemed to work fine again.

I tried Keynote for a presentation last week. I did so because Mac Powerpoint has a worse interface than Windows Powerpoint. Keynote is missing a lot of features (e.g., an arc tool) and its LaTeX interface (via EquationEditor, the only option for what I do since I sometimes need tex->dvi->ps->pdf compiling) is inferior to Powerpoint's. But I decided I'd give it a fair shot anyway, and converted over a presentation I was working on. After Keynote crashed and I lost 30 minutes of work, I'll never use it again. Keynote doesn't do automatic incremental saves, and is quite slow at saving files (the same presentation, maybe 30MB, Powerpoint saves in ~5 seconds, and Keynote in ~45 seconds), so there is no practical way to protect my work. I've opened up both NeoOffice and OpenOffice, but they were too ugly to contemplate using. Maybe I'll give them a fairer shot next time.

Mail just crashed and I almost lost an email. Fortunately, I'm relearning the old habits of saving all the time, and I'd saved a draft. It crashed because I lost the wireless connection while I was sending the email, because the wireless connectivity stinks. </rant> (I haven't made any controlled tests on wireless connectivity, but it sure hasn't amazed me.)

Safari is buggy. For example, a few days ago it couldn't be hidden. Hide Safari didn't work, Hide others from another app didn't work. Restarting Safari fixed it. Perhaps this is a window manager bug.

I had a similar problem actually with X11. All of a sudden the windows all maximized (even though their hidden icons were still there), and I had to minimize them back one by one. X11 on a Mac laptop, by the way, is awesome.

The problem with disappearing lines of text seems to be limited to TeXShop.
Sleep is fairly nice. I wouldn't mind if it went to sleep faster, also if it gave some feedback that it was putting itself to sleep, but it wakes up quite quickly.

Fan just came on. I guess I'm typing too fast.

I'd like to upgrade to Photoshop CS 2 (still on 7), but I'm worried about this whole Intel switch thing. I'd like my software to last.. But I'll have to give in eventually, since converting 12 megapixel RAW files in VirtualPC, even with batches, is a lesson in patience, and I'm going on vacation soon (lots of photos!). This whole Intel switch caught me by surprise.