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One of the biggest differences I found between Windows and Mac is the concept of installing programs. Essentially your program is one big file. You drag this file over to your "Applications" folder on your hard drive. Then drag the icon into the dock if you want. Bam - installed. There is no concept of a registry, no .ini files, no .dll files scattered all over. If you want to delete your program, just drag it to the trash. It's THAT easy.
For the basic home user I agree.
But for the poweruser, not really. For example makes it much harder to find where the application preferences are or what driver files are loaded on the machine like device manager in windows. And from a sysadmin perspective it makes things harder. For example in a windows domain I could easily remotely connect to the registry of every computer and set how applications behave, on the Mac, shrug.
The drawback to that is speed. I have noticed that both Firefox and Thunderbird run at about 75% of the speed that they would normally run under Windows. This more than likely has to do with the OS dealing with one big "file" versus smaller files and the registry.
Um, no. A single large file won't hurt performance. Its not like its some very large unorganized file that needs to be searched through to find functions and such inside the file. From my own use of a g4 powerbook I agree the mac feels much slower, but its not because it has an inefficient file system. (although the lacking of thumbnails for graphics files like in winxp does make sorting through pictures slow)
The other thing that is hard to get over is the concept that there are no full screen windows. I prefer to run my apps in full screen mode. Open Word for Mac and it's just large enough to use - no making it the full width of the screen. (Well, you might be able to, but it doesn't default to that size.) I read somewhere that Windows users are more apt to use their apps in full screen mode versus windowing, whereas in Linux and Mac they're sort of forced to use windowing.
Well there are full screen windows in the same way that apps in windows use them (i.e. some games, playing video files, etc) where the window contents fill the screen completely. But I'm guessing you mean maximized windows. maximized windows wouldn't work on the mac. In windows the start menu, program tray, and active applications fill a bar that completely fills a side of the screen while on the Mac the dock is centered along a screen side so a maximized window wouldn't make sense.
In short the UI's are designed very differently which seems to be a personal preference as to which is best.
With the deluge of spyware and viruses, and the draconian tactics of Microsoft in Windows, I would not be surprised to see more and more people switch away. I am pretty much a die-hard Windows/Linux sysadmin and I personally want to ditch all of my Windows machines and go Mac.
If you think MS uses draconian tactics you really shouldn't be praising Apple. They are much worse, only as the Mac has a small user base no one seems to care. For example of one issue see:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/retailaccounting.html
http://www.tellonapple.org/
Eli Allen
