Compared with Creaky Old Windows, OS X Is a Pleasure to Use

- 2006.09.08

I've been out of the school environment for three months (a.k.a. summer vacation) and it's difficult to come up with topics when I'm not in an environment that produces - well - any type of work. This article is not on any particular piece of software, but on OS X itself.

OS X Ahead of Its Time

When OS X was introduced in 2000, it was a major jump from other operating systems of the day. Compare OS X 10.0 to Mac OS 9 (introduced in 1999) and Windows 2000 (I'll go out on a limb here and say 2000). OS X introduced the modern look and feel we've come to love (assuming you run OS X - if you run OS 9 or earlier, more power to ya).

From personal experience, I find OS X to be a more pleasant system to work with. As I've said in earlier columns, my eighth grade humanities teacher's husband works for Apple, and because of that, she brought in two Blue & White G3 Power Macs running OS X 10.2.

Creaky Old Windows

Compared that to the computers in use at our school at the time - the teachers ran Windows 2000 Professional while most student computers ran Windows 95 or 98. And those computers where sluggish at that!

All the students in the class who preferred to use a faster computer, which was just about everyone, would reserve the computers before class started (last period of the day) just to use them for the hour we where in class.

Plug and Play

Compatibility is a major issue nowadays, and I'm not talking about data files; I mean hardware.

Just a couple of weeks ago I made a slideshow of photos for church (time for an article on iPhoto), and I simply plugged in the adapter, then the VGA cable, and in a second the extended desktop popped up. Now when you need to do something for a demonstration or are just in need of a few more inches of desktop space, it's really nice not to have to search around for the appropriate drivers needed for any device you want to use.

Recent Advantage Mac articles

Free and low cost ways to bring some Leopard features to Macs running Tiger, 2007.10.29. You can't make Mac OS X 10.4 do everything 10.5 can, but you can get about 80% of the way there with freeware and shareware utilities.
Vintage Macs provide a less distracting writing environment, 2007.09.18. A Mac OS X user finds an old Macintosh IIsi and discovers the joy of writing undisturbed by music, messaging, and streaming content.
The GIMP, a free alternative to Photoshop, 2006.09.13. Although it's not as powerful or polished as Photoshop, the GIMP may be all the image editing software you need.
More in the Advantage Mac index.

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February 14 in LEM history: 98: A perfect compact Mac - 00: Extended computer warranties worth the cost? - Making your PC work with your Mac - 01: Customize Microsoft Word - 02: Quadra revives a passion for computing - 03: Real world performance - DIY Pismo screen replacement - Best Mac for writing - 03: Fastest browser on the Mac - 06: 15" MacBook Pro - Impressions of a newly acquired Lisa - Finding and using free WiFi - Apple should liberate OS 9 - 07: New Mac mini cheaper than upgrading a Power Mac - 08: Falling in love with OS X
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