Mac and OSX: It's a Question of Taste

So, it’s 100 days since we got our spanking new iMac, and in the interests of no-one but myself, I thought I’d do a quick write up.

Having read a recent survey that showed customer satisfaction among Mac users being streets ahead that of Windows users, it’s no surprise to find myself agreeing with them. Although there’s any number of functional and behavioural differences between the two, advantages and disadvantages of either UI approach are probably cancel each other out.

Sadly, the two main differences, for me, are pretty intangible. I say sadly because, although I love the way the Mac works, I’ve used Windows my whole working life, and I’m so familiar with it, and with the PC style of keyboard layout, that I’m equally comfortable with either – I would have loved to say that the Mac kicks Windows’ butt in this area too, and maybe in the future I will, but for now it’s pretty even in my book.

So what are the intangible differences? The first is that OSX is so obviously more finished and complete. When I first started using it, it brought to mind a John Lassiter (the brilliant Pixar film director) quote: when someone asked him what set Pixar films ahead of other CGI animations, he said “We sand the bottom of the drawers”. The beauty is in the attention to details. Although it’s a slightly unfair comparison – OSX is vastly more mature than Vista – I suspect OSX’s polish is a result of more than longevity.

To show what I mean about polish, I realise that the following are trivial examples, but they are things that when I noticed them, made me smile. I can’t say Windows has ever done anything that has made me smile.

Firstly, the Safari web browser has the usual ‘hot’ links toolbar. Windows has an equivalent. In Windows, dragging a link to a new position on the toolbar brings up a vertical line and an arrow in the position where the new link will be dropped when you let go. Well, that’s fine; clear enough isn’t it? In Safari, performing the same manoeuvre causes each hot link button to shuffle aside to let the new one in as you move it to its new place on the tool bar. Functionally, it’s achieving exactly the same objective, but that minuscule animation just adds a little panache, a little flair that Windows really can’t be bothered with. You can see this yourself if you download a copy of Safari for Windows: highly recommended since it’s a great, fast browser anyway.

The second example is in Photoshop, in which you use the ‘Hand’ tool to move the image around on screen so you’ve got the bit you’re interested in where you want it. In Windows, you drag the hand around the screen and release when you’re at the spot you want; releasing the mouse button as you drag just stops the image moving. On OSX (I’ve just noticed I wrote in Windows vs on OSX; why is that?), releasing the mouse button while you drag the image causes the image to float gradually to a stop, over a time dependent on how quickly you were dragging. It’s lovely; entirely non-functional, but it just adds some enjoyment to your experience of using the tool.

The second major difference between the two (and this going to make me appear an even more deserving candidate for Pseud’s Corner): I don’t know how often Steve Jobs talks about Microsoft, but this quote from the ace documentary The Rise of the Nerds just about sums it up.

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they, they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product, and you say why is that important - well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea - if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.”

And from earlier in that same program, “Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

So now you know. Apple computers and OSs are designed and built by people whose cultural hinterland reaches way beyond computer science, or even software and GUI design. Their experience is based on their involvement in and curiosity about the whole of human culture, and it is evident in what they produce. Microsoft’s corporate culture, one gets the feeling, is rooted in a love of the technology, and what it can do, not what it can let a creative mind do with it. With luck, the grip of Microsoft will lessen over time, and these tools that we use almost everyday of your lives will change from the cobbled together horrors we usually have to put up with into being the objects of beauty Apple have shown us they can be.