Order is restored — The Mac experiment is over!

I have to start by saying I gave it every chance. I used Mac OS X (Leopard) for over two years since I got my iMac in November 2007. I bought the Mac for a few reasons - not the least of which was a big discount, cashback, and a free iPod. But I also wanted to see what everyone was on about, and why Macs have such a loyal following.

The Mac "package" is very impressive. Apple making the hardware and software gives them total control over the Mac experience - something unique in the personal computer industry. The Mac look and feel is delightful to the eyes - such consistently high presentation serves the platform well.

However they say beauty is only skin deep. To be fair, Macs do have much more depth than that - it's a solid dependable OS that only crashed on me once or twice. I'll even miss some things as I return to the other side - easy drag and drop application installation and Exposé are just a couple.

Since I have been working permanently from home, I have been using my iMac on a full-time basis. I have a Sammy netbook which runs Windows 7 and is great, but I cannot honestly recommend crouching over a 10" screen and trackpad all day long. So I needed to use my iMac which provides me a glorious 24" screen, and a real mouse.

To begin with, things were OK. Browsing the web is much the same on any platform. I started to get annoyed though with Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. I bought it soon after it was released, expecting it to provide much of the same functionality that I had enjoyed on Office 2007 on Windows. I could dedicated an entire post to it but to summarise, Office for Mac is dire, dire, dire. AVOID! The people who wrote it, need to sit in the corner of the office of the Windows Office team, shut up, and learn everything they can, from scratch if they have to. Going back to Office 2008 after using the "older" Office 2007 is painful.

Sadly OpenOffice, for all its freeness, still pales in comparison next to Microsoft's offering. If you say otherwise, you are lying. Deep down inside you know it to be true.

The final straw came the other day. Cat made me see the light. I was sat swearing at Office on the Mac. Cat could see how frustrated I was getting. She said I needed to just get a Windows desktop and be done with it. As annoyed as I was, I started defending the Mac, saying how it was fine and I would carry on using it. I suddenly realised I was becoming a Mac user and had to change before it was too late.

Allow me to explain. Most Mac fanatics allow themselves to be blinded by the platforms inadequacies and refuse to listen to anyone who says otherwise. Here I was, clearly struggling with a failing of the system, yet I completely turned on Cat when she pointed it out, and not my anger at the system.

It would be unfair to give up on the OS for one program - certainly there is some irony that I return to Windows because a Microsoft product on the Mac is pathetic. But there is more to it than that. Windows offers me everything I want and need in a computer. For all Apple's greatness, as a power user, trying to do something is like doing it with one of my hands tied behind my back.

The Mac platform lacks the great range of applications on Windows. iPhone users know this feeling. The iPhone has the largest number of apps on a mobile platform by far, and for that reason, I think it is the leading mobile device bar none. I think the same about Windows. Simple things, like burning an image to disc. ImgBurn is the greatest app for that, it's freeware and exclusive to Windows. I use Keepass for password storage - the Windows version is better than the Mac version. Some of the Wii tools I use are Windows only. Windows is not perfect, far from it, but it is better supported, and an order of magnitude more people use it, so any solutions to problems are just a Google search away.

VMWare's Fusion product only partly solves the problem. It's great, but still lacks the feel of the real thing running natively.

So last night, I fired up Boot Camp and installed Windows 7 Professional. The process was actually pretty good. The only issue is that the sound drivers provided by Apple are beyond pants. The speakers hissed when playing a sound, when setting the sound to mute!! I got the latest drivers from Realtek and the problem is much improved - still the sound is not as good as when running on Mac OS, but it's OK.

One thing I do have to critisise is that Boot Camp comes with the OS, therefore I cannot get the latest features (such as reading my Mac OS hard drive partition in Windows) without forking out money to Apple. Plus they are still to officially support and supply drivers for Windows 7 - not really acceptable considering the OS has been out for a few months, and had over a year in beta. Sadly I suspect a certain amount of arrogance from Apple is partly behind this.

Technically I can still boot in Mac OS whenever I want, so it's not the end of the road, but I will need a good reason to, especially when I can do everything and more in Windows 7 - the greatest OS available today.

It's been a fun ride, but the time has come to admit defeat, the Mac is dead, long live Windows!!

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