So now that the raving about the hardware is over, let's talk about the Mac OS X. Built largely on NeXT's OpenStep architecture, the Mac OS X has a robust foundation. Some people would argue that it is also an inherently slow design. I'll leave it to them to argue. To me it is simply a design decision that has both positives and negatives.

Speaking of the positives and negatives, let's start with the things I like. A lot of old school Mac users have issues with Aqua. I actually like the Aqua user experience, with some exceptions. The exceptions are all tied to a single concept, consistency.

There are two places where Aqua is inconsistant. User interfaces, the brushed metal look and the Aqua look. Pick one or the other. I've read thier guidelines, I just don't agree. The second is the behaviour of Carbon applications versus Cocoa applications. The sizing differences between the two will drive a user crazy.

Other strong positives, shipping development tools with the Operating System. They are solid tools, and open up all kinds of doors to new developers.

Commerical application availability. I can't emphasize this enough. On the Mac, you have MS Office, Photoshop, Flash and Quicken. These may not be the best solutions, but they interoperate with thier Windows counterparts, and they legitimize the platform to the casual observer.

Interoperation with other protocols and platforms. Built in support for nearly every major file sharing protocol, be it Mac, Windows or UNIX. Built support for most Internet protocols, and ready availability of those not shipped in the box.

Availability of Virtual PC, bringing those Applications that you have on Windows and can't replace on the Mac, not for gaming, but good enough for Visual SourceSafe and VisualStudio.NET.

But on the downside, are the shortfalls. And in my opinion the Mac has two big ones.

I've touched briefly on one of them already. Network browsing is terrible. Unless you know your network topology, it can be very painful. Making matters worse, once you do find the correct network path, and try to map it, you will get erratic problems, with cryptic and arcane messages like 'Error -36' when trying to map a Windows share, one that mapped just fine 2 hours before.

Which brings me to what is probably the worst problem on the Mac. Printing.

I think I've mentioned that I'm a programmer. Fairly good technically, I know enough to know that the current state of printing on the Mac OS is a disgrace. It's not that it doesn't print well, it does, it's that getting it to print is frequently an adventure of epic proportions. It's taken me a couple of months to establish a satisfactory network printing environment that happily supports two Windows machines, two Red Hat 8 Linux machines and two Mac OS X machines. This is not likely to be atypical in todays technology world. In this case, I elected to host the printers on a Windows 2000 machine. However, the machinations it takes to make this work from the other CUPS machines was painful. And the Mac people telling me to use GimpPrint need to get a grip, this is something Apple needs to address yesterday.

I'd like to see Janie Porsche save Christmas if they need to print thier photos to a Windows hosted printer.

And yet, despite these issues, I'm still a happy user, and a happy developer. Looking at Microsoft's roadmap for Windows, Apple has some time to get these things right. Perhaps, they are already on the right path. I'm not so sure that Microsoft is, but that is a topic for another article.

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