To Apple or not to Apple! (Part4)
(or Apple iMac G5 from a PC Guys perspective)
Part 4 of my 5 Part White Paper on my experiences using an iMac from a PC user experience has been released. Part 5 will be forthcoming this weekend, with a Wrap Up and recommendation for those who want to know if they should take the plunge.
Part1
Part2
Part3
To Apple or not to Apple! (Part4)
(or Apple iMac G5 from a PC Guys perspective)
Written by Will Wagner
http://weblinksnewsletter.net
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Well, with the announcement of the newer Intel iMac, my review of the G5 seems to now be very old and outdated. Better get my butt in gear and finish this review! Apple sure does do business via Internet time, it seems that Microsoft is in delay mode for all of their products in comparison. Sure says a lot for a smaller company (Apple) compared to the behemoth (Microsoft). The latest G5 with the remote was released only a few months ago. Now the iMac, like I have on my desk, comes with an Intel chip inside. Oh well, I have my thoughts together, and have made an attempt to speed up the release of these last 2 parts. Part 4 which you are reading now, will cover real productivity, and Part 5 will be my recommendation or lack of. I guess the review will be more of a wide perspective of Apple and Mac, versus just simply this iMac G5, but I will try to be specific in my views on both topics. I anticipate the final part to be out in less than a week. I feel that you can get a bargain sale price on the iMac G5 right now, so if ever there was a time to purchase one for your own review, that time could be now. More on that in Part5!
What Have I done?
The title doesn't really imply "Oh no, what have I done!" but rather, "“Ok I have an iMac, not what have I done, with it?"
As far as productivity software goes, I have fully tested AppleWorks. AppleWorks, as you may recall, is the productivity suite that is bundled with the Mac OS X Operating system. Wow, is it simply jam-packed with templates and options. There are templates for web pages, newsletters, letterhead, greeting cards, signs (for sale), banners, awards, postcards, posters, and calendars. Like I said jam-packed!
In AppleWorks you get a paint program, much like Paintbrush on Windows. The single most amazing drawing tool (to my simple mind) is the triangle tool. Sure other apps can draw circles and squares, but I have never seen a tool that can draw triangles. Hmm, I could envision usage for this, such as creating cool Halloween pumpkins hand crafted for a greeting card. You can also paste a pattern into the background or just about anywhere. Change the colors, and create unusual backgrounds. Now I admit, this is not Photoshop, but it is a cool tool that goes a long way for the price of bundled software. Save the image as a BMP, PNG, TIFF, TGA, JPEG and a few others. Noteworthy, you can also save in ClarisWorks format, which indicates to me that this part of the package is a direct licensed copy of the real ClarisWorks.
You also have Assistants that walk you through a few choice documents. Certificates, envelopes, calendars, business cards. All in all some very useful items. Major format styles are covered too, word processing, spreadsheets, line drawings (a second program other than paint), presentation software, and finally a database utility.
This AppleWorks application has really grown on me. As a PC guy I recognize these tools are commercial quality. They are not flashy in any stretch of the imagination, but very useful and complete. Beats the large price tag for Microsoft Office.
Apple has packed some fantastic Internet Utilities inside the Mac OS X. I have been using the Mail application on the Mac and comparing in parallel to my PC. Mail is full featured, has a spell checker, rules "wizard” to set various sorting options as messages come into your Inbox. I couldn't find a Vacation Message option, but I suspect you could create a rule to email all recipients you are away. But the clear best feature Mail has to offer is the Bounce capability. This means that if you get junk from someone, you can reply with a bounce message. This means that the junk mail sender gets a server type message saying unknown recipient, and that can get you removed from the Spam list. Kool!
How about if you want to avoid someone, just bounce the message back. You could also redirect the message, which is better than forwarding. When it is redirected, the original sender remains intact, versus a forwarded message, which gets your address in the From Field. I see this very handy for those with multiple mail accounts where you may wish to reply from a specific account or service, back to this sender. Kool #2
You can also edit and cater the button menu to your liking. Place all of the buttons you frequently use, such as Get mail, New, Reply, Reply to All, Print, Redirect, etc. There are buttons to change the font ala IE for font increase and decrease, on the fly. Highly configurable, and easy to use package overall. You can even drag the default set back to the toolbar to get back to the original setting. Yes it is that easy!
I have to tell you, I really don’t see any major drawbacks with this commercial grade and high quality Mail program. It has all the normal features plus what I outlined above.
I use the bundled Safari web browser to surf the net. It is fantastic too! There is a modern Flash player, which I feel keeps your sites looking like they do on the PC side. But on top of that compatibility you get so much more. Safari is an RSS newsreader, which just makes plain sense. RSS is built on the web server structure, so why need a separate reader?
Block Pop Ups! Surf PRIVATELY if you like! Your History is kept in the menu, which breaks it down by days on which you browsed. The Bookmark editor looks just like the Finder file Manager, so it is easy to use as well.
How about this one? You can open all your bookmarks at one time. Yes, each Bookmark child menu has a listing to Open in Tabs. This executes each bookmark in the current drop down to open in Safari. Now as you might expect, I did this on my large bookmarks section, and nearly 50 bookmarks opened all at once. It worked great, with only a moment of wait to begin using the bookmarks. If you are working on several projects, I like this option to open all the pages at one time.
Safari is fast too. It runs as fast as the Gecko engine on Mozilla. Not sure which is faster, I suspect Mozilla, but it is peppy. Not to mention you can also watch all of your file downloads and activity via the separate Activity and Downloads boxes. I can download many files at once, and they show status all in one place. WasnÂ’t sure I would like this, but I actually do. Makes for less screen clutter. I was even able to pause or stop a download, and click on it and it would pick up where it left off, for large files. Awesome features that users love, and they are all here.
I imported all of my Bookmarks, by the way, and have them on my Mac now as well as in Netscape on the PC. Even though I don’t use all of them all the time, and prefer the Google bar for finding pages, it imported flawlessly.
Another fine application that is unique to the Mac OS X, even if they are not glamorous, for an Internet junkie like myself, they are critical to making the iMac useful for me.
I dabbled with iTunes. I realize the market of the iPod, so I won’t spend too much time here. I myself like iTunes for what it can do. It catalogs and sorts your audio library, allows easy burning of CD media and music, and allows you to purchase some great songs and videos for cheap. I am not a fan of having to be forced into any package that requires me to use it to do simple burning of music files. But on the PC I had to get third party software to allow me freedom as well. To simply play audio files or downloaded content, I prefer QuickTime or the free VLC Player.
iPhoto is the software that handles all of your photos and allows you to view and preview them, then print or share. I imported 4600 items into iPhoto and it choked. Not right away, it seemed to import, but while managing some photos, moving them or indexing them, basically sorting them to other folders, iPhoto locked up. Now I did dump a lot of photos. so I give it that.
I don’t care for iPhoto that much. Like with my music, I simply prefer to place my files into my own folders and sort system. I don’t mind a viewer of sorts, but have no need for a separate library to catalog my photos. I can view them in the Finder. So no thrills for iPhoto, but I can see why it is nice to have for those people who are not keen on file management and direct manipulation of files and folders.
iDVD is awesome though. It was simple and easy to create some really professional DVDs. I had a few troubles getting my real content on the DVD at first, being lulled into thinking the nice animated intro menus linked directly to content. It didn’t for me. But once I got the hag of making links to content and the real movie, I got it. Bottom line is it is not as easy to use as everything else on the iMac. But once learned, it does become effortless to create a nice high quality DVD. Oh and the templates in iDVD are incredible!
iMovie HD beats many of the movie making packages I have seen though. The drag and drop features are cool, and I could actually simply record voice via the internal mic, and add some of my own commentary to the video.
The effects are abundant. Probably more than a “basic” package such as this really needs. But they are there if it strikes ya. Normally you should stick to one particular wipe style, so the audience is not distracted, but for creative genius, you can do almost anything.
Better yet Make a Magic Movie. This means that you select footage, place a default scene transition between the scenes, and send to iDVD to create. This thing then creates the DVD for you, and does a good job! Keeps ya from doing all the planning and creation for simple family DVDs you want to get out the door while your family is waiting to take a copy home.
GarageBand is the now very famous musical creation application in OS X. It comes with some demo music, which you can edit and mess with to learn how to use GarageBand. I am not very musically inclined, so struggled at first. But I then figured out how to edit and create new tracks and musical instruments. Now I did take music in school, played the guitar for a half semester, tuba for a year, and drums (bass, snare and cymbals), and recorder (flute like thing) but my ability to really create was very limited. I was never really that good. I have to admit I was better at lip sync or air guitar.
Nonetheless, this application is awesome. For those of you who have musical ability, this tool brings to you all instruments you could want. Drum rhythms, guitar riffs, various different keys that can be inserted as individual notes, via midi keyboard (or like me, by using the on screen keyboard with mouse). It is a lot of fun to use, and tinker with, and I plan to invest much more time to create something, no matter how lame it may be.
Oh if you do actually create something worthwhile, send it to iTunes, and burn it to a CD. That may be one of the best features.
QuickTime comes with OS X. QuickTime is the video player. I just had to finally purchase the PRO version so I could record and view MOV files full screen. For $30.00 it is a bargain. I must say that Windows Media Player has many of these features, and is free. So that has to be taken in consideration.
Once you go PRO you can record any audio and video you wish to. In a previous section I noted how liquidly smooth the size adjustments are for movie resizing, 2x and back to 1x. Grab the window and move it, and note just how smooth and clean the video remains while it is moved.
QuickTime is a very well written and refined package, especially from a few years ago. Back then I had all kinds of troubles with it on Windows 95. Finally I see it has matured into a viable recoding application that we were waiting for.
So what have I done? Basically I have used the major packages to create music (bad music), create cool DVDs from movie clips, listen to free pod castings on iTunes, and read my mail. I actually prefer Safari to any browser I have tested or use today.
In addition I have downloaded several free software programs for the Mac OS X. There has always been an insistence that there is no software for the Mac. Well, you can’t buy software in any store, YET. But you can get Mac software for free, via shareware, and via commercial terms on many sites across the net. There seems to be plenty of software.
I have purchased Toast 6 Lite via eBay. I am looking for a good deal on Toast 7, and plan to grab that soon. But this Lite version allows me to easily wipe rewritable cd disks. It can be done via the disk utility, but easier via Toast.
I also purchased a Slots game, which was on sale, from CompUSA. This was more for my wife, to acclimate her to the iMac. She likes the iMac, but could care less what I have on the desk. She just wants it to work, and it does.
I also added Konfabulator, which is now called Yahoo Widget. I like this better than the Apple widget engine, since I can place widgets directly on my desktop. I found some hacks, which enable you to drag your Apple widget to the desktop, but it stays on top by default and is difficult to close the widget. I use the Activity Monitor to close wayward apps anyway, so thatÂ’s the solution! But I encourage you to grab the Yahoo Widget engine, FREE. It really dresses up the desktop and can make it very useful. Whatever widget engine you use, Widgets are an integral part now of any OS. When will Microsoft come up with this idea? Lets hope not!
Finally, I would be inept at reviewing the iMac if I didnÂ’t mention the Unix frame underneath. Unix is the backbone of the Internet, as well as the phone networks. It is used by engineers to do real work, and is very popular in the Linux flavor across the Internet.
Now we have Unix underneath the famed Apple platform, and I like that idea. I donÂ’t know a lot about Unix administration, but I can use the command line for viewing permissions and using basic commands.
For those out there who want Unix, the Mac is no doubt a compelling option. Based on BSD, the version out of Berkley Unix. Mac OS X boasts the Mach Micro kernel. Unix experts like to use various different kinds of script languages, and all of the major versions are supported. Perl, PHP, TCL/TK, Ruby, and Python and Korn Shell. Heard of Microsoft Vista doing 64 bit addressing? OS X already does that. Woa!
Wrap Up!
(Next - Final Issue Part 5 Wrap Up! available at http://weblinksnewsletter.net)
