Though the Web browser has grown in importance and changed drastically in function since the first version of Netscape Navigator ruled a fledgling Web, its interface has not changed that drastically.

Though tabbed browsing introduced an important new element, most browsers sport forward and back buttons along with stop/reload buttons, an address bar and, more recently, a search box. Most browsers today look enough like Netscape Navigator 0.91 that few would be lost if they traveled back in time.

But lately there has been an attempt to shake that up some. First came Google Chrome, introducing the idea of tabs on top, and now comes the new beta of Safari 4, which adds even more new interface changes.

Though I’m always a fan of innovation, there’s a lot about these interface changes that bug me and not just the new “bug report” button. I’m admittedly no interface designer, but there are a lot of things that I would definitely do differently…

Just to be Clear

I want to make it clear that I really do like most of what I see in Safari 4. It’s a solid browser over all, especially for Mac users. I like how fast JavaScript moves on it, I like the new “Top Sites” feature and the way it is presented, I like the use of coverflow and I like the overall stability and speed. For doing the things that a browser does, it’s great.

The problems I have are isolated with the interface and some of the changes they’ve made since version 3 and even apart from the latest Webkit nightlies. They seem to have taken a serious departure from the standards of browser interface design and, though I have to admire their daring, it seems they’ve made a few missteps.

Specifically, there are two problems that have me unnerved.

Tabs on Top… Way on Top

When Google Chrome introduced the idea of moving the tab bar to top of the browser, it was a controversial move. I, personally, don’t like tabs on top because it is an ineffeciency for me. Look at this example.

As you can see, if I want to get my cursor from where it is locate to click on a tab, I have to go over not just where the tab bar should have been (the red box) but over the bookmark toolbar and address toolbar. This not only doubles the mouse distance for this very short move, but puts my most common mouse action farther away from where my mouse usually is. Most uses, for me, of the address and/or search boxes are through a command+t to open a new tab and then using the tab key to access the needed box.

However, I can’t begrudge Safari that as Chrome did indeed start it and it does have the benefit of giving one more room in the browser pane. Where Safari went wrong was having the tab bar also double as the title bar of the Window in both Windows and OSX. This is taking a weak idea and making it downright stupid.

The title bar is a crucial part of the Window. It’s how you interact with that particular window on your desktop, including minimizing, shading, closing and moving it. Now it also has to play the role of tab bar? This means you have to be able to open, close and reorder tabs tool. That puts no fewer than 7 major functions in one very narrow strip of screen real estate.

To make this work, Safari added a new convention. In Firefox or Safari 3, if you wanted to drag a tab, you just clicked anywhere on the tab and dragged it, easy. With Safari 4, click and dragging a tab blindly grabs the whole window. Instead, you have to grab the three diagonal lines on the right hand side of the tab to move it around. It’s another convention to learn and adapt to.

Is it minor? Perhaps. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen (anyone tried using the latest version of Microsoft Office?), but I don’t see any reason to crowd the title bar with tab functions when it hardly saves any screen real estate at all and seems to open the door to a lot of mistakes.

The Reload Button

Real fast. On the screenshot above, find the reload button. Trick question. It isn’t in that screenshot.

The reload button is actually IN the address bar, the same way the RSS icon usually is.

it was bad enough when IE7 moved the reload button to the other side of the address bar, now Safari has to find a whole new place that no one will think to look for it. I grant that it is not a button that is commonly used and I agree with combining it with the “stop” button, if you need one you definitely don’t need the other, but it is it so rarely used that we need to play hide and seek with it?

The reload button is an important part of the browser for many people. I use it refresh statistics of keep on top of Twitter if I’m not in my Tweetdeck or to keep my email fresh if Gmail is acting funny. I don’t use it often but when I need it I don’t want to go hunting for it.

This is another classic case of change just for change’s sake. The nagivation bar has never been particularly crowded or cluttered and moving the reload button to the end of the address bar just necessitates that the address bar be longer and adds more buttons to the end of it, not actually cleaning anything up. Worse still, any gain is lost with the addition of the bug report button at the far right.

Because, you know, there’s a button I’m going to use a dozen times a day. At least I can remove it with “Customize Toolbar”.

Things that Still Suck

With that in mind, there are still a few issues I have with Safari that have been around since version 3 and beyond that I was hoping they’d fix with version 4 but, so far, no luck.

1. One Window Mode: Why is it that I am constantly closing windows when I supposedly have pop ups blocked? Gmail links open in new windows as do any links have that designation. The problem is that, with Firefox, new window secretly means new tab, as it should be. With tab browsing there is NO REASON to have two windows.
2. Tab Overflow: Tab overflow still sucks. You now get a “…” and you can click on that to get the full tab list but you have to close enough tabs to fit in your window before you can rearrange latter tabs. Firefox overflow management isn’t perfect, but a lot better.
3. Favicons: Seriously? No favicons in tabs? You have to be kidding me. It is almost impossible to tell, at a glance, what is in which tab and, when you combine that with the ways tabs get compressed it is a real mess. You don’t even have to sacrifice screen real estate, just make them double as the close buttons on hover.

These are just a few of the UI decisions with Safari that I have a beef with that haven’t been fixed. Though the new version 4 is an improvement in almost every way, it takes the existing UI problems and magnifies them all many times over.

Say Something Nice

Real fast, since my mother would not be happy that I haven’t said anything nice about the new UI, I do have a few words of praise.

Here are a few new things that I actually do appreciate:

li>Tab Highlighting: One of the problems with Safari 3 was that it was almost impossible to see what tab you’re in. All of them looked about the same. With 4 that problem is gone. The tab you’re in has a noticeably different tint to it and the tab itself is wider. A pretty slick way of handling the problem.
1. Top Site Interface: This is a bit of cheat since it is only new because the feature is new, but managing the top site feature is very slick. I ended up making mine all pushpins since my browsing history is too thin to be of much help to it (I switch browsers too often). You can ban sites from appearing, drag and drop entries and doing so automatically makes them “stickies”. Very intuitive.
2. The “Wonder Bar”: The new address bar functionality is simply superb. If you type in a domain it defaults to taking you to the root, not to some random URL on it. However, if you want said random URL, you can always arrow down. It also is smart enough to pull from both your history and your favorites. Though not quite as smart as Google Chrome’s one bar, it is pretty slick and is a huge leap forward.

Though it seems that most of the interface decisions put this new version of Safari back a ways in usability, there are at least some people on the team who aren’t asleep.

Bottom Line

Me, I like Safari. It’s not a perfect browser and the extension junkies are going to always harp on how you can turn Firefox into everything from a Web development client to a blender. I have nothing against Firefox, but it seems to me that Safari, especially 4, just moves that little bit faster, looks a little cleaner and is a little more gentle on my system. There are a few Firefox extensions I love, but, for most things, Safari gets the job done fine and a bit faster.

However, even as I use Safari 4 to type this, I feel like I’m tolerating the interface. Where once it was one of the draws to the browser, now it is a drawback. If it weren’t for the souped up page loading and JavaScript, I probably would just ignore it and go back to Firefox.

For right now though, I plan on using it. I may switch back in a few days but so far I am pretty happy. I just wish they could get these UI bugs fixed. It might make it a little more bearable to use.

Final Note: Share some of these gripes? Fix them using the commands in this video. (Note: The Reload button is NOT in my Customize Toolbar for some reason. I’ve checked repeatedly).

photo credit: phauly

When it has come to operating systems, I have always had a hard time making up my mind. Windows, for me, has been a good choice for my gaming consoles and a reasonable one for work as well. Mac has become my default office system, having used it now for nearly two years as my primary “getting things done” machine.

However, Linux has always been my secret love affair. It is a relationship that has stretched over half a decade. It began with some spare hard drive space and a desire to to see what Linux was all about. Now, it is a relationship on life support.

You see, I’ve come to notice something. After seven years of using Linux, seven different distros, countless versions and six computers, I’ve finally hit a point where I have to admit something. That every computer I’ve had both Linux and Windows XP on has worked far better with Windows than Linux.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, but none of them bode well for penguin.

A Bit of History

Real fast, I want to explain where I am coming from and why I am not some random Linux-hater. I have been using Linux for about seven years. I started in 2002 with Mandrake Linux. I was curious to see what Linux was about and wanted to see if it would work well for me. I first installed the OS in the free space of my Windows hard drive but that went afoul after a few weeks when Windows was nice enough to “fix” my hard drive by removing the partition divide and then erasing my Linux setup.

Still, it didn’t take me long to get back to Linux (I was kind of mad at Windows at this point). When I bought a new system a few months later, I wiped the hard drive and made my former machine Linux-only, giving the new computer to my significant other. I had my Linux comp and, if I wanted to use Windows to play a game I could borrow hers.

Ever since then, I’ve had a constant relationship with Linux. At no point between then and now have I not owned at least one machine with Linux. In the time that’s passed, I’ve had Linux on four different desktops and two laptops. I put it on old machines, I put it on new ones.

I’ve also tried a wide variety of distros too. I started with Mandrake, but I’ve also tried Red Hat, Xandros (both desktop and Eee PC version), Debian, PCLinuxOS, gOS and, of course, four different flavors Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Kubntu, Xubuntu and Easy Peasy).

Though this relationship has been constant and exciting, it’s also been a love/hate one. On systems where I was dual-booting with Windows, it was always a struggle to resist the urge to boot back into Windows. Between problems with the OS, missing programs and inelegant solutions to common problems, Linux always felt like a sacrifice, something that I was giving up to appease the open source Gods.

To quickly explain why, I’m going to break it down into three parts.

1. Major Issues

I was aware that, especially early on, that Linux was an OS for “tinkerers”. I liked playing with computers and learning, so I didn’t mind and even relished some of the fiddling, but there comes a point where I want to get down to work and Linux, at times, seemed dead set against that idea.

Consider the following things that happened to me over the years:

Could any of these things happen on Windows or Mac? Sure. Some people have had similar or worse problems with both. But here’s the deal. Neither have happened to me and no one I know has spent a Saturday with a can of compressed air trying to keep a CPU cool so they can fiddle with Windows options.

Either I have the worst possible luck with Linux, am doing something so obviously wrong that I should hurt myself (like flipping the magic “make Linux suck” switch) or something is wrong.

2. General Laggardness

One of the sales pitches for Linux is that it is supposed to bring old systems back to life, run better on old hardware and move faster, more reliably than Windows.

Bull.

I have to give Linux its credit. It doesn’t hang up, hour glass, pinwheel or do any of the things you see from time to time on Windows or Mac, instead though, every action feels slow. Every time I’ve put Linux on a system that had Windows previously (or even still does) it has moved slower. Every click felt less responsive, every keyboard press a little more delayed. Any gain I got by not being hourglassed every hour was lost by the million or so micro-delays throughout the day.

Applications, for me, load slower. Pages come up with less speed. Clicks take a split-second to respond and my typing often gets more than a bit ahead of the screen. I don’t have these issues with Windows so how is Linux making things faster?

The worst (for Linux) is my current dual boot machine. Here we have a true apples-to-apples comparison as Windows and Linux both run on the same hardware, each have their separate hard drive (of the same size/kind) and I can trivially reboot between the two and try each out in similar situations. Linux boots faster and is ready to work a bit more quickly, but once Windows XP gets up fully, it starts running laps around the penguin.

It’s sad, but entirely true in my experience.

3. App Backwards

Finally, though most major applications have decent Linux counterparts (Firefox is on Linux, OpenOffice is pretty good, etc.) there are some apps that have nothing. What if you want a version of Windows Live Writer or Ecto for Linux? Last time I checked you were out of luck. Most Linux blog editors are like using crayons to do high art.

Even the apps that do seem to have Linux ports don’t seem to work as well in Linux. The last time I tried playing online games on Kongregate in Linux I nearly threw my monitor. Flash, despite being almost almost version-equal, runs like garbage.

The bottom line is that there is almost always some sacrifice when switching to Linux. There is some program that you’re going to have to give up, one that won’t work nearly as well or some other problem that you don’t have to put up with on Windows or Mac.

Excuses, Excuses

Linux supporters and developers are quick to point out that the problems I describe are pretty well-known and are also not their fault. They are quick to blame hardware manufacturers for not release adequate specs and open source drivers. They say they could get more speed and better effeciency if hardware manufacturers would just work with them.

I am almost certain that is true, but that isn’t a problem Windows has. Microsoft is powerful enough to strong arm the hardware companies into doing their bidding. Mac, on the other hand, just controls which hardware they allow their OS to run on, eliminating the problem completely.

Is it fair? No. But consumers don’t care about fair, they want a system that works. Consumers don’t like “evil” and if all else is equal they’ll choose one that is “good”. But if given a choice between an evil system that works and a good one with flaws, they’ll choose the evil one almost every time.

The reason is that open source, though a great buzzword, is no a feature. It doesn’t, by itself, make the computer go faster, crash less or be more productive. Better programming and design do those things. When open source has been able to make better programs, as with Firefox, users have adopted it. When it hasn’t, as with desktop Linux, they won’t.

The major benefit of open source favors programmers and hardcore tinkerers. People who want to buy a CPU and do work on it don’t to choose new windows managers nor do they want to be forced to make such a choice. A computer, to them, should be a like a toaster, fast, efficient, rarely breaking and getting its job done. Free as in freedom, doesn’t matter and free as in free beer only goes so far.

If there is such a serious issue with hardware drivers and support from 3rd parties, and I believe that there is, then perhaps we need fewer Linux-heads coding the kernel and more pressing the flesh and working with these companies. Maybe we need more lawyers working to combat Microsoft’s behavior and maybe we need businessmen bringing in companies to the fold.

A lot more than code goes into making a great OS. Microsoft and Apple both have business partnerships, legal teams and countless other non-programmers helping to build every next OS. Linux can not grow on programmers and fanboys alone.

Yet, it seems like that is exactly what they are trying to do.

The Good News

In all of this I have discovered something. Going back to the “controlling the hardware” issue, in cases where Linux is built around a specific computer, it does seem to work very well. Take my review of Easy Peasy. Though others on different versions of the Eee have had some serious problems, as indicated by the comments, for my laptop it worked swimmingly. I’m sure that, if I installed XP on the same machine, I would be in for a world of frustration.

The Eee PC is an excellent example of what happens when manufacturers use Linux well. They built a laptop around Linux, it works out of the box and it does what it is supposed to do. End of story. Linux CAN work and work very well but it takes more than blindly slapping CDs into drives and rebooting.

Rather than encouraging end users and the uninitiated to download and burn Linux distros, thus putting them on PCs built with Windows in mind, perhaps we should be focusing on getting manufacturers to sell Linux. There has been a lot of push on that front and some mixed success, but it makes more sense than letting install problems, broken drivers and slower computers sour potential customers on Linux before they’ve had the chance to really see it work.

Conclusions

In the end, what Linux needs may not be a kick in the rear, but a change in strategy. I may be done installing Linux on computers that weren’t built with Linux in mind, but that doesn’t mean I won’t buy a Linux desktop if the price is right and my needs are met.

As long as Mac and Windows get to cheat and have assurances the hardware they’re on will work great for them, Linux will always look like a slow, problem-riddled OS. Sure, the open source nature of it may convince the die hard, but the people who are just punching a clock online don’t care enough to make the needed sacrifices.

I know that this is going to get me some hatemail and possibly worse, but at some point I have to face up to reality. Every computer I’ve put Linux on ran better with XP. It may not be Linux’s fault, but the fact remains.

Until that fact changes, Linux will remain the third place desktop OS by a longshot.

Though I seem to rag on them a pretty good deal, Apple actually has a strong history of releasing good products that justify at least some premium.

However, this makes me wonder what they were thinking when they released the Mighty Mouse. Though it was a Christmas gift from an absolutely wonderful pair of in-laws, it seems to come pre-packaged with a set of headaches and problems that have me wondering if this is really an Apple product I’m using.

It sure looks like one, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t act anything like one.

Some Background

I am admittedly a hard guy to buy Christmas presents for. If I see something that I want, I usually buy it for myself so, when November rolls around and people ask what I want, I usually have no answers. I’m a grown man with a checking account, if I can’t afford it I’m not going to ask for it as a gift and, if I can, I’ll buy it.

However, this year I suggested a wired Apple Mighty Mouse to my in-laws. I had purchased the keyboard and was in love with it (typing this post on it in fact) and thought the mouse could be a good compliment but had only toyed with the idea of buying it.

I opted specifically for the wired version since I have a long and ugly history with wireless mice and am quite used to the wired variety. Too many wireless ones have died at inopportune moments and were used to test the strength of my office drywall.

I knew the features of the mouse, the one-button design, the 360 degree scroll wheel and more. But what I didn’t know is that they would be quite so difficult to use. This mouse may look sleek and easy, but there is going to be some adjusting when you first set down to it.

The Good

Before I begin to go over my issues with it, I want to highlight what I like about the mouse as, shockingly enough, I actually think it’s a good product, just not up to Apple’s usual standards.

First, I like the overall size, shape and weight of the mouse. Though other reviewers said it seemed too big, it fit my hand nicely. It’s a lightweight mouse, but not so light that it feels like it goes sliding all over your mousepad, giving it a nice balance.

The scrollwheel is great, very sensitive and easy to use. Likewise, the mouse’s optical sensor works well and is very sensitive. In the time that I’ve used the mouse, I haven’t noticed any instances of it jumping or skipping. For the most part, it is a solid, perfectly-usable mouse. Though it’s low profile means that the grip is slightly different from other mice, it isn’t uncomfortable or a problem.

Still, as you probably have guessed, there are some pretty big issues with the mouse, just not ones you’d think of when you imagine a product by Apple.

The Issues

The biggest problem I have with the Mighty Mouse is what most call its greatest feature, the one-button design. Sure, it looks awesome and futuristic, but using it is a mess.

The reason is that the mouse seems to have a hard time distinguishing between left and right click. Though left click seems to work reasonably well, right click does not. If I don’t press the mouse down at the exact upper right corner, it responds with a left click, even if my press was well on the right hand side of the scroll ball. Furthermore, if I press too far back on the left hand side of the mouse, it ends up producing a right click, though that is far more rare and far less annoying.

Though this problem has become less of an issue as I’ve used the mouse, I’ve both grown adept at finding the correct spot and the mouse seems to have loosened up some, it’s still annoying as, every once in a while, I find myself getting the wrong click out of the mouse, usually at the worst possible times.

Second, the side buttons on the mice are useless. When I had them switched on, I kept activating them on accident but never when I wanted to. Their position is horrible for me and I had to switch it off to save my sanity. You can pretty much forget about ever using those unless you have mutant hands.

Third, the 360 scrolling, while a neat feature, is almost never used. When was the last time you were on a page that needed to scroll horizontally? If you don’t work with spreadsheets or office files that scroll left to right, you’ll probably never see it in action.

Finally, the cord. Most corded mice come with fairly thick cords that have a little weight. Though this can lead to the cord pulling the mouse, it prevents the cord from bunching, catching and otherwise interfering. The Mighty Mouse cord is thin and it seems to be like memory wire, always staying in the last shape it was in, which is unfortunately rolled up.

My efforts to straighten it have had mixed results. There are still noticeable kinks in the line, the image above showing how the cord looks when you lay it out, but it is at least usable if I don’t plug it directly into my keyboard.

All in all, none of these problems are “deal breakers” for me but it has shown me clearly that this mouse is more than a little fallible. For a product that costs over twice as much as reasonable competitors, these types of mistakes are not forgivable.

Bottom Line

I would stop short of saying that the Mighty Mouse is a “bad” mouse. However, I wouldn’t say that it is a $50 mouse either.

If this mouse were about half the price, it would be a pretty good buy. It has some pretty unique features, a great look/feel and its drawbacks can be easily overcome. However, as it sits, it is way overpriced and not worth the cash. There are simply too many other great USB mice out there that don’t come with the headaches of the Mighty Mouse and offer a much lighter price tag.

As it sits right now, I say get the Mac keyboard, but forget about the Mighty Mouse. Clearly, two different teams worked on each product and I now know which I think deserves the bigger raise.

Sure, being built on Cocoa gives Camino a natural speed and memory advantage over its brother, but the difference, over all, has been barely noticeable and certainly not enough to propose switching to a browser with fewer features.

Personally, I was thinking that it was time to take the project behind the shed and put it out of its misery. It filled a nice niche when Firefox was being a jerk to Mac users but now that we’ve kissed and made up Camino seemed to be a third wheel in a very sordid love triangle.

So imagine my surprise when I found out not only that Camino had released a new version, but that it was a beta of 2.0. I was skeptical, to put it modestly, but decided to give it a try. I felt that I owed it to the old girl since she had comforted me when Firefox had me wanting to hang myself.

I have to say though that the surprise is indeed a pleasant one and this version of Camino just might become a real challenger for Firefox, at least until Chrome is release for the Mac in a meaningful way.

What’s New

If you look through the release notes (linked above), you quickly see that most of the new features of the 2.0 release center around tab management. Whether it is drag and drop tag reordering, tab overview or a key board loop that now interacts with the tab bar, everything is centered around tabs.

That decision is sensible enough though. The 1.X branch of Camino was plagued with problems in tab management. The lack of tab reordering and effective extending of the tab bar made it unusable for even medium intensity surfers. If you opened up more than about eight tabs with 1.6, you were in for a double bag of hurt.

In that regard, 2.0 does address those issues quite well. Tab overflow is handled with a modest amount of sanity and drag and drop dabs works well, actually managing to surpass the usability Firefox brings to that feature.

Other than bringing sanity to the tab bar, there isn’t a lot new to Camino. It upgrades the engine to Gecko 1.9, for what that is worth, and adds full page zoom, which is useful for those who are visually impaired. All in all, cool features but not really the kind of things you expect in a new number release. Camino has been one of the worst at releasing 1.X version without an upgrade to 2 so I’m not exactly sure what made this one the release that had to be 2.0.

Still, it does fix a few issues that have become major gripes about the browser, so it is worth at least a serious look.

Kicking the Tires

When you pull up Camino you notice quickly that the new one looks just like the old one. Not a bad thing if you’re into green, blue and red buttons, but it would have been nice to have a new interface that didn’t look like it was from 95 or designed for kindergarteners. Still, it is functional and since you don’t spend much of your time looking at the buttons on your browser, unless you’re an idiot, it’s also forgivable.

The browser itself actually feels very solid. Even though it’s a beta, it feels much more stable than other “released” browsers. I’ve had no crashes or obvious bugs in my time using it, which is pretty amazing considering that even “stable” browsers usually show some wear and tear after about four hours with me pounding the keys.

Compared to the latest beta of Firefox, which I had been using full time, Camino 2.0 beta feels more stable and, surprisingly, faster. Where Firefox seems to beach ball my computer a few times per hour, Camino causes no such hang ups. Tabs open fast, changing between them is instant and RAM usage seems to hover between 120 and 175 MB at any given time, actually making it “cheaper” to run than Tweetdeck.

Granted, all of that is pretty amazing, but there are drawbacks to consider. It may be stable, fast and running a reliable engine, but that doesn’t mean its perfect, just almost.

Problems

What I don’t like about Camino is its near-complete lack of extendibility. Sure. There are ways to add icons and some extensions, but they are hacks and certainly not as clean or easy as add ons in Firefox. Furthermore, most add ons for Firefox are not available for Camino yet, though some important ones, such as ad blocking and Flash blocking, are built in.

If you’re the type of person that has a lot of Firefox extensions, Camino is going to feel very confining to you. Installing add ons and skins feels more open heart surgery than it does putting on a new set of clothes and, worse still, there is no guarantee that said add-ons will work with 2.0. Though that is true with any new release, at least with Firefox you can enable and disable extensions without blowing up your browser.

That being said, how much this impacts you will depend on your browser usage. “Power” users that depends heavily on specific extension have already become too addicted to Firefox to ever switch and probably wasted the time they’ve already spent reading this review. So, to those of you, my apologies and you can go home now.

To the rest of us mere mortals, Camino 2.0 is just a solid browser, not exceptional, but so perfectly mediocre that you can’t help but love it.

Conclusions

As I said, Camino is not and never has been for Firefox users snorting the cocaine of extensions. If you’re hooked on them and don’t think you could survive without your fix, you need both an intervention and to stay away from Camino.

If you can pry yourself away from your extensions, Camino 2.0 is an impressive browser. It moves fast, uses little RAM, is amazingly stable and uses what I feel is the best rendering engine. Personally, I think this is ideal for Safari users that want to switch to a Gecko-based browser but don’t need nor are they used to all of the bells and whistles that come with an extensions library.

However, Firefox users that might be willing to go through withdrawl and ween themselves off their extensions, will find Camino both a fast and capable browser and one that feels more bullet-proof than it’s brother.

Camino used to be the best Firefox for a Mac, thanks largely to Mozilla’s use of non-native code on their Mac releases, but now it is carving out a new niche as the “Safari/Firefox” hybrid for Mac. It’s a browser that has the simplicity and Mac-friendliness of Safari, but the engine and usability of Firefox.

It’s a nice niche and one I am fond of. It has become my default browser, at least until the new Firefox beta is released…

That being said, the most frustrating thing about using a Mac is not anything Apple does, but rather, the imaginative ways that developers screw you over. Not only is the library of freeware a lot less robust on Macs, but developers seem to treat their Mac versions like red-headed stepchildren, waiting unbearably long to release their apps on non-Windows platforms.

The problem is that Macs are insanely popular with the risk-taking geeks that like to try out new software, so releasing an app for the Mac is not long longer an option, it’s a requirement. Still, many developers, including some I respect, are dragging their feet in getting their applications into our hands.

So here is my top five list of applications that need a Mac port, but seem to be sitting on it as their Windows counterparts move forward.

5. Spicebird

Spicebird is, for all intents and purposes, a double insult. Not only does it not have a Mac version, but it DOES have a Linux one. I like what Spicebird is trying to do, combining email and IM makes perfect sense and basing it on Thunderbird, which is a solid mail client, makes it even better.

The problem is that there is a Mac version Thunderbird and the technology that they use for IM connectivity is open source as well. There is almost no practical reason that there should not be a Mac version.

Some time ago I spoke with the developer and it was confided in me that none of the people working on it have a Mac so they can’t release one. So, if you’re a Mac open source developer looking for a new project, get over there.

The only reason this one doesn’t rank higher is because it is too new to get really excited about.

4. Google Pack

Ok, you’ve gotten a bright, shiny new Mac. Now you need to go out and install the essentials. Quicksilver, Growl, etc. It’s a pain, but on Windows Google has solved much of the problem with a program called Google Pack that sets up your computer with the essentials for Windows.

It’s a neat idea, but where is the Mac version? Sure, Macs are easier to set up but it would still be nice to just run a program and then have it all appear, especially when you have to set up a new computer for family members.

Sure, Google Pack is not the most beloved application on Windows, but it is the idea that counts in this one. I’d like a little help with this and I’m not sure why Google hasn’t done something similar for the Mac yet.

Of course, this isn’t Google’s only appearance in this list…

ThumbsPlus 7

This one is less for me and more for my friends that work more heavily with images. Personally, I get by fine with the image tools on the Mac, but others I know struggle because they don’t have access to ThumbsPlus.

Thumbsplus is a super-powerful image editing application that is aimed at manipulating a large number of images, say a new set you’re planning on uploading into Flickr, and is much more efficient than iPhoto or similar applications on the Mac.

I personally have not much use for this app but, this one is for my artist friends!

Digsby

What makes the case of Digsby worse than the others it the tease factor. Since the launch of the Windows application, there has been a place to click to download the Mac version, the only problem is that no such version exists and you get directed to leave your email so they can notify you when it becomes available.

What Digsby does is provide multiprotocol IM functionality, similar to Adium, and then combine it with email and social networking alerts. It also has a really neat docking feature and, in its latest incarnations, seems to be very CPU and RAM thrifty.

Though I don’t know if it would replace Adium or not, I can’t compare the two side by side, it is easy the best IM client for Windows, trumping Pidgin, Adium’s cousin, easily.

It’s time for the tease to be lifted, let us have our Digsby!

1. Google Chrome

This was predictable, I admit, but nothing else really could be number one. For Google to release Chrome, a truly revolutionary browser for many reasons, only on Windows is an insult (or an embarrassment if you ask Sergey Brin), and to then take it out of beta without having even publicly tested a Mac version is an outright indignity.

To make matters worse is that we all know a Mac version is being developed but hasn’t been released to the public, even as a pre-beta. Instead, Google has pushed an unfinished and untested beta on Windows into production and left the Mac users wondering where there browser is.

Though I grant that Chrome has a slew of problems, it is still the first major evolution of the browser since Firefox and it has a great deal of promise to revolutionize at least certain aspects of the browsing experience. In fact, its effects can already be felt in feature updates in Firefox.

That being said, not having a Mac version leaves Mac users on the sidelines of this and essentially makes it so that our voice does not count. That really irritates me.

But more than that, I’m upset that Chrome has become my default browser on my Windows computer, much like Digsby is now my default IM client, but I can’t use either on Mac without trickery.

That, my friends, sucks. Pure and simple.

Final Thoughts

Yes, there are tons of great ways to run Windows apps on the Mac. Either through Boot Camp or Parallels, but is any of these Apps really worth putting Microsoft Windows (probably Vista) on my Mac and running it? I don’t believe so.

None of these apps, alone or in unison, justify the headache, expense and hard drive space it would take to run apps on my Mac or, worse yet, abandon it altogether. No, for me, the Mac is still the best but it would be nice to get a little app love once in a while.

Then again, we’re the only ones who can run Skitch…

However, their MacJournal application is not one I’ve ever been able to understand. It has traditionally been a Journaling application, one that lets you keep a diary of sorts of your daily life. While that is a neat idea, I’ve often wondered how useful such an application is because few people seem to want to run to a computer to record their lives events.

Though the app is slick, letting you organize your life into journals, folders and more, I really didn’t see how this application would fit into my life or the life of anyone I know.

However, when Mariner announced its recent update to the application, I learned that it provides another tool, blogging. Though the blogging tool is far from new, when I learned that it was capable of helping me edit my sites, I was excited about the possibilities.

It truly had the potential to go from an offline journal editor for those with no lives, to a full fledged life organizer for bloggers with no lives.

But my excitement was short-lived. After downloading the app and giving it a test drive, I learned that this was no blog editor, but rather, was a journaling application with the blog editor shoehorned in. The result was that MacJournal remains a decent journaling app, but fails to fill my much-needed niche.

Not For Blogs

The problem with MacJournal and blogs is pretty straightforward. MacJournal is a journaling app. It is designed for a strange form of life scrapbooking where you bring together text, images and video in a post about an event.

While it is a potentially neat idea for those that have the time to record all of this, when you’re dealing with something that is just for you, formatting is not terribly important. One doesn’t care if the headline is bold, instead of an “H2″ tag or whether your image is aligned left or right with proper wraparound.

However, when you post something to the Web, formatting becomes critical. Everything has to look and feel right in addition to being written well. If your header tags or alignment is off, your post can be ruined.

This is why many bloggers code their posts in raw HTML rather than giving a visual editor, even the default one in their backend, a chance to mess up the code.

However, MacJournal has no such feature. In fact, in my time using it, there were no formatting features at all. The only text formatting one can do, other than adding images and video, is bolding, italicizing or colorizing text. With no ability to hand-edit raw HTML code, that means that even a simple post like this would be completely impossible.

But the problems did not end there. There were no ways to edit the most meta information. You could not change the post date, permalink, excerpt, draft status or anything else related to the post. Though MacJournal offers tags, none of my old posts, once imported in, bore their existing tags. It is unclear if new tags are treated as such in WordPress, MovableType, etc.

The result is that, unless your posts are a few paragraphs of text with an image or video nearby, MacJournal is going to disappoint you when it comes to blogging. It’s a pity though, there really is a great deal to like about the application.

Some Compelling Features

The reason that this review is so difficult for me is that I actually want to like this application. It has a slew of interesting and compelling features that, if I could use the app, would make it a virtual must-have.

Here’s a short list of my favorites:

• Full Screen Editing: Admittedly, I think that the full-screen editor craze that has people shelling out $25 for Writeroom is overrated I found the full screen editor in MacJournal strangely compelling. It worked well, was easy to read and great to work with, I could see writing an initial draft in that mode and then formatting in another. I might not pay full price for a standalone editor, but if it were included as part of another app, who knows?
• Organization: MacJournal could, theoretically, become a central hub for all of my daily activities. By helping me create blog posts, keep track of links/ideas and manage everything I do with my writing, it could be a powerful boost to my workflow, eliminating sticky notes for good.
• Smart Image Hosting: Finally, I like how MacJournal allows you a variety of sources for hosting your images, including Picasa, something even Skitch doesn’t provide.

All of these features could, in theory, give the application a serious advantage over my current Blog editor, MarsEdit. However, at this time, MacJournal is just too weak in the blog department and will need some serious beefing up before it is ready for even a modest blogger.

Conclusions

I really want to like MacJournal. Much like my ex-girlfriends I really want this to be love but have to admit that it has no real function in my life, it just isn’t a good fit. It’s better for me to kick it to the curb and give it a chance to grow up, assumedly after sleeping with all of my friends, and see if maybe we can work something out as adults.

The good news is that the MacJournal team has hinted at the possibility of adding many of the features I need into a new release down the road. However, it does little to help me right now as the countdown timer is ticking on my free trial.

Sadly, this is an app I will not be purchasing. Though it has gotten some great reviews from major publications, for this blogger, it doesn’t have a place right now.

That being said, I highly recommend MarsEdit to any of my power blogging friends. I think you’ll find it very helpful and a great time-saver.

At least until MacJournal gets up to code.

However, one program I recently started to use, or rather, am starting to use again, has put me in a bit of a bind.

You see, even though Mailplane is a great program that does exactly what it advertises and is very polite with my system resources, I simply cannot justify the expense.

However, I’m not some cheapskate that refuses to buy software. I am a happy customer that just dropped $100 for Screenflow, and $20 for Gyazmail (though I have since stopped using it full-time). I’m the type of customer Mac software vendors love, a small business admin with a decent-sized PayPal account and lots of discretion to buy software I need.

Still, I can’t see myself spending $25 for Mailplane. The reason is that the price point is horribly wrong and $25, though reasonable for other applications, is far too high for this app.

What Mailplane Does

Fundamentally, Mailplane is a standalone Web browser, much like one that you would create with Fluid, that only works with your Gmail account. It pulls up your Gmail account in a new window, letting you interact with it just as if you were using it in Firefox or Safari.

That alone is actually a pretty neat idea. Keeping Gmail in my browser tabs has been dangerous in the past. I can’t count the number of times I’ve accidentally navigated away from my inbox or closed the tab I was using.

But Mailplane does go a good deal beyond that, including adding the following features:

• Drag and drop file attachment
• iPhoto intergration
• Integrated screenshot function that attaches the images to your email
• On the fly image resizing
• Use email links (mailto:) with Gmail
• Download management
• Growl integration
• Address book integration

In short, Mailplane tries to take your Gmail account and turn it into a full-fledged Mac email client on par with Mail.app. It is pretty neat and it works very well for the most part (I’ve observed a minor bug with the check spelling as you type feature, but nothing serious).

In fact, as a solution, it is so elegant that it almost doesn’t seem to belong on this site. Still, whenever I consider buying a license, part of me cringes.

Mailplane, as cool as it is, can’t convince me to wire over $25.

Where Mailplane Fails

My problem with spending the money on Mailplane is pretty simple, I don’t know if I get $25 worth of features out of it. For all that Mailplane does, there are many things that it does not do or you already have without the application installed. Consider the following:

• Gmail Does All of the Work: Despite the new additions, 90% of the interface and almost all of the functionality is Gmail-driven. Gmail is free and can be access from a browser. Seems odd to pay for something you pretty much have already.
• I Don’t Send Many Attachments: Email attachments, especially image attachments, are not as common as they once were. I rarely send any images, including screenshots via Gmail so the file attachment and image features are almost completely unused.
• Official (and Free) Alternatives: Growl integration is pretty neat, but if you use Google Notifier you get Growl-like notifications for free. Also, Google Notifier can let you use mailto links with Gmail, once again for free. Likewise, the interaction with your Mac address book is strange since you can import and export contacts to and from Gmail freely.

Worse still, there are actually a few drawbacks to using this application over just accessing Gmail in your browser.

• Extra Computer Resources: Even though the program is pretty light and doesn’t leak memory, it still takes more RAM and CPU power to run two programs than one. It is that simple.
• No Ad Blocking: If you use Adblockplus or even Privoxy, you won’t be able to block the Gmail ads. Not very annoying to most Gmail users, but certainly could catch some off guard.
• Minor Bugs: Though even the new version 2 beta has fewer bugs than most “finished” projects, there are still added hiccups and problems, no matter how minor. It comes from having the extra layer on top of Gmail and interacting through it.

So, when it is all said and done, you have only a few compelling features that aren’t available for free elsewhere, minor bugs that don’t exist when using Gmail normally and a $25 price tag.

The question remains, is Mailplane really worth $25?

Comparison Software

Consider the following applications that provide similar functionality to Mailplane:

• Gyazmail is a full email client with POP and IMAP support for only $20. It is also done by a small Mac development shop.
• Thunderbird is also a full email client available for free.
• Opera is a browser that works with Gmail and has a full mail client, for free.
• Fluid is an application that can create site-specific browsers, much like what MailPlane is, for free. It can even be used to add Growl notifications and badges.
• Prism works like Fluid for Firefox and is also free.
• GMDesk is an Adobe Air-based application that allows users to maintain Gmail, Google Calendar and more. It is also free.

In short, every application that does something comparable to what Mailplane does is either free or priced much less than it. In fact, when a similar Mac developer can build an entire standalone email client, no leaning on GMail, and price it five dollars cheaper than Mailplane, clearly something is up.

Mailplane may have some great features. But not enough to justify buying it, at least for me.

Conclusions

Mailplane is a great app. There is not much debate about that. If you like Gmail now, you’ll probably like Mailplane and you’ll probably prefer using it over using Gmail in a browser tab.

I really like this application and wish that I could continue using it. But, I can’t.

By the time you read this, my Mailplane demo will have expired and I’ll have moved on to either using my Fluid App or just running it in a tab again.

It is very frustrating for me though. The developers seem to have done a great job building the app, but have completely overshot the price point. Whether they think the app is worth more than it is or they have some kind of marketing strategy behind it, I don’t know.

Normally, I would just wait for the app to go on sale or become part of a bundle. However, over the next few weeks, I’m going to get very used to not using Mailplane. Meaning my desire to plunk down any cash will fade very fast.

Perhaps I am the only one that feels this way, but I just don’t see how the features of Mailplane add up for me.

However, as anyone who has opened up a Mac Mini knows, the slick operating system belies a real mess under the hood.

No computer should ever have a putty knife listed as a required item for a ram upgrade, which the Mac Mini does, but the mess that comes with upgrading the Mini does not stop there.

As I found out this weekend, Apple took extra steps to ensure that their product would disintegrate upon opening, by making a bevy of internal layout choices that are at best hard to understand and, at worst, make no sense at all.

If Cars Were Macs

The Mac Mini is a strange beast under the hood. If it were a car, it would be like finding out that your brand-new Ferrari needed to have the engine dropped just to change the oil. Tasks, which should be very simple, are amazing complicated.

As someone who has upgraded a lot of machines, I’ve seen a slew of bad designs. I’ve worked on HP desktops that literally required you to pull apart the frame to get at the RAM slots, an old Compaq that required you to pull the entire hard drive bay out to slide another drive in and my personal favorite, a different HP that forced me to undo all of the ribbon connectors to add a video card.

Yet, none of these messes equals that of the Mac Mini.

However, some of the “challenges” are expected. It is harder for me to forgive HP and Compaq for their design flubs as they were all full tower systems, supposedly built to be easily upgraded. The Mini, on the other hand, focuses on being small and cute. It is meant to be elegant on the outside.

So when I was forced to remove the drives from the mother board with a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers in order to upgrade the RAM, I just laughed about it. Everything was tiny, no space was wasted and the entire system is like a giant sandwich, with the motherboard (and RAM) as the bottom slice of bread.

Likewise, when I had to deal with the stupid laptop-style RAM pins, I didn’t grumble. It was a necessary evil. A small price to pay for a full computer smaller than my first CD burner.

It wasn’t until I put it all back together and found out that I had no wifi and my computer sounded like it was trying to take off for a flight to Memphis that I got upset.

These were not necessary evils, just stupid design choices.

The Wifi Problem

If you face your Mac Mini, the wifi antennae is located at the very top on the back right hand side of the Mac, right up against the plastic top. This is a great location for picking up a wifi signal and ideal for the computer overall.

The problem is that the antennae still have to be connected to the motherboard and that, as we discussed above, is at the very bottom.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

In the image above, the antennae is circled and the highlighted cord is the one that connects it to the motherboard. You’ll notice that the cord completely bypasses a nearby board, one that is connected to the main board via a ribbon, and instead goes down underneath the drives.

While that is odd, what makes the problem worse is that they decided to have the cord go over the fan. This makes it so that, when you open up your Mini, you are virtually guaranteed to rip out the wifi antennae, especially considering the clip holding it on is so weak.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

In this image, the person who took apart the mini was aware of the issue with the antennae cord and moved it aside before opening. However, it shows you where it connects to and how it goes over the fan.

The end result is that it is very easy, unless you are aware of the issue, to rip out the antennae without even realizing it. If you don’t use wifi regularly, as I don’t, you might not notice the issue for weeks or months.

Fortunately, the fix is easy, simply a matter of reclipping the antennae, but it does mean that you have to take the entire computer apart again.

Not a critical flaw, but definitely annoying and, at least theoretically, is easily fixed.

Fans Full Speed Ahead

The wifi is bad because it makes it possible for the person upgrading the computer to make an easy mistake. However, the fan controller raises the stupidity bar just a hair by actually requiring you to disconnect something to get at the Mac.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

The wire highlighted in the image above connects the fan to the motherboard. In order to open up the Mac, as seen above, you have to first disconnect this wire. If you don’t see it and fail to read the instructions, which luckily I did, you can disconnect it without realizing it.

If you forget to put it back in before you power up, you’ll be treated to the loudest sounding Mac in history. The fan will instantly spin up to about 5500 RPM and stay there, no matter what the temperature inside is.

While this is better than not having the fan spin up at all, I have lost one Linux system due to a processor fan that wouldn’t switch on thanks to a bad kernel, it doesn’t make any sense to me to require this wire be unplugged when others, including a ribbon connector, don’t come out at all during normal opening.

For a company that is legendary for its elegant design, these are a pair of head-scratching decisions. Though I am certain that Apple had their reason for both of these, they are hard for me to understand from where I am sitting.

Conclusions

Apple is known as a company that has impeccable attention to detail, as one that polishes every bit and tightens every screw. Unfortunately, under the hood, there are a few details that didn’t get a lot of attention.

Some might argue that it was never Apple’s intention to for users to open the Mini and do fundamental tasks such as upgrade the RAM. However, even if you only intend certified technicians to crack the case, the more steps you give them, the more opportunities there are for mistakes.

Think about it for a second. How many times has a Mac technician opened up a Mini to replace the RAM but forgot to either replace the wifi antennae or the fan control wire. If they didn’t test adequately, a broken system was shipped back to the customer and would have to be returned again for repair.

It doesn’t matter if they’re making things harder on me or their own employees, it will affect the consumer eventually.

Seriously guys, these are the kinds of details you’re famous for addressing and the mistakes you usually don’t make. Overall the Mini is a great product, why make it so ugly under the hood?

Ferrarri wouldn’t do that.

That being said, there is no reason to believe that Mac is perfect and I cringe at the fan boys that seem to think that it is. Being the best among these three systems is a bit like winning a three-legged race. Sure, you won, but you could have gotten across the line a lot faster without cousin Ralph tied to your right leg.

Even though I love my Mac there are still a lot things about it that irk me. So, in celebration of thinking different (I know, it’s an old slogan), I present to you my top ten pet peeves about Mac.

10. The “Plus” Button

Even though I have been using a Mac for some time, I can not say with any clarity what exactly the plus button does.

For the record, the plus button is the one at the top of most windows, to the right of the close and minimize buttons.

Logic would indicate that it would work like the “maximize” button in Windows and Linux, making the Window fit the screen. In some cases, it does. In both Firefox and Marsedit, pressing the button makes the window fill the screen (though in Marsedit, pressing it again does not make it return, making me resize it by hand).

Yet, if you press it in iTunes it shrinks the player, reducing the full iTunes player to a mini-version with just the controls.

So here we have a button that is available in all programs but, in at least two of them, it has the exact opposite effect. Makes one wonder how Mac got its reputation for great user interface…

9. Lack of Free Software

Once you’ve got your bright, shiny new Mac, you’re likely going to go searching for some new software for it. However, as you do so, be prepared to pay. While there are a lot of great applications for the Mac, most of them require at least some money.

This isn’t to say that there is no good free software for the Mac, just that it is more limited than it is on Windows, which has a large library of great freeware, and Linux, which is comprised totally of freeware.

Though you can get great deals through sites such as Macheist and Maczot. When you find yourself paying for software you can get free on another OS, it still hurts.

8. No Significantly Better Apps

If you are like most Mac users, once you’ve got your computer set up, you are going to find yourself downloading Firefox, Thunderbird and/or OpenOffice (or Neooffice). The problem is that you can get all of these applications on any other OS, including Linux.

Even if you prefer Safari or iTunes, Apple has been kind enough to port second-rate versions of those programs to Windows.

In short, no matter what application you work the most in, odds are you’ll be able to use it easily in another, cheaper, operating system.

7. No Application Launcher

Apple does a pretty good job keeping your most-used applications at your fingertips. It’s dock is a pretty neat way to both switch between running apps and quickly launch ones that you use regularly.

But what happens when you need to run an app that you haven’t needed in a while? In Windows and Linux you both go to the start menu but OSX is strangely devoid of such a menu. The Apple menu at the top only shows your most recent apps and documents and to launch an application not either there or in your dock, you need to open up your applications folder, sort through it and open it like it’s a Word file.

Great.

This problem is why Quicksilver is a virtual requirement for all Mac users. It and other launchers are the only way to quickly open any application on your system, regardless of how much or how little you care about it.

Granted, the Windows start menu is a mess that’s no better than looking for the file, but after using the new start menu from KDE 4, I have to wonder why the Linux guys are now beating Mac ones in usability. That thing is incredible.

6. Dashboard

It takes a very special kind of fail to come up with something as useless as the dashboard.

So let me see if I understand how this is supposed to work. I hit F12 on my keyboard, the screen grays out and I get greeted with a series of “widgets” that I can customize and reposition at my will.

Sounds really cool and all, but I challenge anyone to come up with three widgets that would make me want to switch to this regularly. Most of the widgets are completely useless gimmicks and can be replaced by either Firefox extensions or other applications.

However, even if there were widgets I wanted to use, why can’t they sit on my Desktop like in KDE or, dare I say it, Windows Vista.

When you’re getting your lunch eaten in usability by Windows Vista, it is time to seriously re-think your direction in life. Perhaps this UI thing isn’t for you.

5. Opening Trashed Items

Quickly, if you have something in your Mac trash, try to open it. You can’t.

With a Mac, you can’t open files that are in your trash can, you have to first restore them, then open, then decide they’re junk after all and then re-trash them.

It’s annoying, especially when Windows doesn’t do that and the Linux distros I’ve used haven’t done it to me either.

Opening a trashed item is not an optional activity. The whole idea of a trash can is to keep you from accidentally deleting important documents permanently. However, it can’t provide that function if you can’t see what it is you’re deleting.

End result: You’d be better off with a real trash can.

4. Gaming

Games on the Mac have never been a high priority for me, or most other Mac users I’d guess, but it would be nice if, every once in a while, we were thrown a bone and got a decent game to play.

Actually, the only reason this burns as bad as it does is because Halo was originally supposed to be a Mac game, that is, until Microsoft saw it and bought Bungie Studios to make the game an XBox/Windows exclusive.

The bitter truth is that Macs don’t get that much gaming love and probably won’t for a very long time. With PC gaming already on the ropes, there isn’t that much to motivate game developers to spend all of that money to port their games over to a system with only a fraction of the users.

3. Brushed Metal Overdose

I get it guys, Steve Jobs really loves brushed metal. I understand. But is it really necessary to cram it down my throat at every turn? Seriously?

To make matters worse, I can’t even change the color of the metal in question. Where Windows and most Linux desktops come with a wide variety of colors and appearance setting, my Mac gives me two, “Blue or Graphite”.

In the spirit of Apple, I’ll soon be offering this site in a choice of two colors: Black and Gunmetal. Enjoy.

2. The Pinwheel

Call it what you want, the pinwheel, the beach ball, the circular rainbow or the Skittle, it’s annoying. It’s the Mac equivalent of the hourglass on any other system and, though it is bright and colorful, that doesn’t make me any less likely to hurl my monitor into a trash can (The only thing that stops me is a strange fear of not being able to open it).

What is strange though is that the pinwheel seems to come at completely random times, not just when I’ve put the system under heavy load.

Sure, the system moves great when I try to compress my latest screencast, but if I try to pull up CNN in Safari I’ll be taking a coffee break.

It would be much less annoying to have someone randomly break into my office and spin my monitor around for fifteen seconds at a time than put up with that pinwheel whenever it feels like showing up.

At least the other way I’d have someone to talk to and yell at without seeming crazy.

1. Price

I have some very bad news for the people that do Mac marketing, a $600 Mac Mini is not “economical”. Pound for pound, it isn’t even average.

When you can get an EeePC for under $300, Dell desktops for $280 and full laptops for under $500, your “budget” computer seems like a rip off.

Sure, Mac users understand that the price is worth it, but explain that to your parents when trying to sell them on a Mac or, even better, tell it to your office manager when your company starts looking to upgrade its computers.

Simply put, Macs are more expensive and, compared to their Windows counterparts, are less powerful. Granted, Macs get that horsepower back by not running Windows Vista, but the magic numbers on the box tell a different story.

If Macs could get a real desktop in a price range that is reasonable to those of us who do not make six figures a year, I would certainly have a lot more love for the little white box.

Conclusions

The reputation that Mac has such a refined operating system has nothing to do with it actually having a refined operating system. Rather, it has to do with the fact that the others are such a kludge that Mac looks great.

Mac needs to watch out though. The Linux guys are getting their act together and KDE is tacking on both an easier interface and more brushed metal. If those guys can finally resolve all of the pesky hardware issues (Mac gets to cheat by only running on systems it wants to run on), it could easily become more Mac-like than, well, Mac.

Something to think about the next time you see the Macbook Air commercial…

Other Mac Hate Lists

Peachpit
Chris Shiflett