Mac vs PC for Web Design, an Independent Review

Ello Again, wasn’t expecting to see me again so soon? Ha Tough I’m back.

Well from the title it’s pretty obvious what it’s about so I guess I’ll start with just a little back story. Once upon a time, there was a web design / developer / online marketeer (yeah a bit of a mouthful I know anyway…) and he got pretty fed up with using Microsoft products to do all his stuff on – oh and to clear this up, it was me. Right, so I’ve always used Microsoft Windows, XP, Vista, etc etc to do all my web design. Really not so much through choice, as just blind habbit which lead me to this place. I guess the biggest migration for me was from designing on Windows XP, to designing on a Mac, and I have to say Vista is horrible. Now just so all you fanboy’s don’t jump in and crucify me – Vista really is a pretty bad operating system, and as for user friendly. It is not. Now for a few examples of why my life became a misery developing under Windows Vista.

What sucked for me under Vista (including general annoyances)

1. I love that Vista has taken on board the whole ‘lets use a graphics tablet’ thing, by having a nice new cursor, good integrated usage and usable tools like the handwriting recognition (which was fun to use for about a week then I realised it is, and always will be quicker to type than try and write it, edit what was wrong and then send). But what annoyed me was this, when handwriting in Live Messenger, because they done away with the send button on the latest versions, I could not send messages with the tablet without then opening up the on screen keyboard and pressing enter with the mouse or merely using the keyboard to do what I wanted to avoid. 
2. The onscreen keyboard on the password login doesn’t work at all… now they obviously didn’t and never have tested this, because the mouse cursor goes behind it, making it entirely useless…
3. When I drag several files into Dreamweaver, I work on them, i.e edit then save them again, I return to the highlighted files in the window to ftp them across with a swift copy and paste, but then! Vista has de-selected all the files I edited… so I have to painfully select them again… sounds trivial, but when you do it for the next hundred times in the day it becomes more of a time waste than it initially sounds (also Windows XP never did this).
4. Vista has done alway with the handy ‘Open With…Dreamweaver’ when selecting several files. So I highlight a whole load, right click…and its no where!!! Why??? If you do it with a single file it works, but multiple…no, forget it!
5. Constantly asking for my permission to do absolutely anything.

So basically, all those things annoy me… and make my life a misery.

So every 6 months or so, I download, install and try a Linux distro (I love linux), and so I do this routinely, but as you cant get adobe products on there, and still cant, it was a waste of time for me. If I wasn’t a web designer I’d be using Ubuntu in a shot.

Next up was Mac, I’ve always pondered the idea, but they are so overpriced due to the fact they now even have PC hardware in them, this always annoyed me so until this point I steered clear of them. But for some reason I decided to give them a try…

So I got a £1300, iMac, with 24″ screen off their website. Ok now just from a PC point of view, the hardware is all worth in the region of £500, if not less. So this makes you realise your paying another £800 for the Operating System and the Brand itself. That’s what I begrudge, but it’ll never change I know that for sure (Insert Mac Fanboy Attack Here).

But anyway… I got a iMac…

Web Design & iMac’s

Ok so that’s what this is all really about. After waiting a little longer than I expected for delivery (I can only expect that my iMac was literally hand made at the time of purchase), I got the delivery, and I have to say the whole thing absolutely stinks of quality when I got it out of the box. It’s brushed metal, its shiny, everything is packaged to perfection… so I was already a little impressed. So anyway, I got it on the desk, plugged it all in. Got really annoyed with the absolutely tiny keyboard and weird looking mouse, and tried to turn it on. Now call me an idiot, which I’m sure you will, it took me a good minute or so of inspection to find the on button (back right of the monitor for other idiots like me). So I got it on, sat through the initial setup, and funky sound track and seeing the word ‘Welcome’ in so many different languages. Already my iMac was intimidating me, it looked expensive, and I felt cheap and inadequate just looking at it for sure. 

Ok so what’s crap with Mac

1. Small learning curve, though to be expected, it is a different OS.
2. With the tiny keyboard, I had to use twitter to find out where the # was  (alt + 3 = #). (thanks @danblog)
3. Finding out how to do a screenshot was also difficult, there’s no print screen key, and I didn’t bother to memorize the key combination.
4. It is linux! Clearly, the feel of it is Linux, which makes me happy, I sum it up already with (its Linux, with adobe stuff!)
5. No right click, they kinda make it seem like they are being intuitive, but its irritating. Cause now you have to press ‘Ctrl + Click’ to right click which seems really devolutionary to me.
6. Some applications stay open even when you close them with the X, so you have to go to their name in the top menu and close them there, or you realise you have 10 programs still open. But I guess its something you get used to.
7. They use the cmd key for everything, like I couldn’t figure out how to copy and paste until I realised they use that. Seems a bit odd considering they still have a Ctrl key, so why not stick with something that already works?
8. You can only use the time machine with an external hard drive (or so it seems so far), I just assumed you could make a partition or something.
9. Lack of standard DVI or even VGA, they use their own which requires an adapter to DVI if you want a second monitor.
10. American Keyboard… the @ is at the no 2 key… odd, and still getting used to it.

Ok what’s good with Mac

1. Multiple Desktops (just like in Linux!) great to work with, made my dual monitor setup pretty much redundant.
2. 24″ Monitor, wow the thing is massive… clear, crisp, really good!
3. Hardly required to install any programs as nearly everything I tried initially, there was a program which could open it.
4. Adobe runs much faster, smoother on Mac.
5. I feel more inspired when I work on it, so I’m more productive (something I’m very glad for).
6. I use bootcamp, so I even get the best of both worlds with windows XP installed (there is LOADS of support from Mac on this, drivers and such).
7. No bloatware from Apple (you know the crap applications you don’t need).
8. Nearly all the applications I have installed are .dmg files (images files), you simply mount and drag into the applications folder.
9. Stacks are a great idea, especially for downloads.
10. After not liking the small keyboard to start with, I soon realised its actually ok, and I can type faster than ever before.

After I use it some more, there will probably be a follow up article, but for now that’s all I can say constructively.

Cheers

Wuup Team