What Does A Windows User Think Of Tiger?

Marcus Kelmon had enough of Windows XP a couple of years ago and switched to Mac OS X.

What does an experienced Windows user think of Apple’s new Tiger, the Mac, and a comparison with Windows? Inquiring minds want to know.

It’s seldom that we read of a Mac user who’s ‘had enough’ and switches over to the Window side of the computing world. More common is the former Windows die-hard who decides, “I’m mad as heck and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Such is the story of Marcus Kelmon. Two years ago, this avowed Windows user stepped over to the Mac side of life. Why?

The standard tale tells all. “...because the OS (10.2 Jaguar, at the time) was meant to be very stable and, er, it looked pretty.”

The ‘pretty’ of course, means that Mac OS X, even back in Jaguar days, was attractive enough to attract new users. Table stakes. An OS has to look good enough, or good enough to lick. Choose your poison.

The other item is more telling. ‘Very stable’ means something to computer users. No Blue Screen of Death. No spyware. No viruses. No malware.

Marcus goes on to recount his experiences with Jaguar, then Panther, then Tiger; he does so in an even-handed, straightforward methodology that underscores the fact that using a Mac is NOT religion.

For example, when talking about early OS X, Marcus says, “The initial releases were (allegedly, as this was before my time) slow, buggy but ultimately showed good promise. Jaguar, back in 2003, was the release that made the OS practical and, from experience, I can say that it was a reasonable alternative to Windows but that it lacked some of the features that I used to use a lot (the Alt-Tab method of switching applications was implemented but wasn’t done very well).”

As a Mac OS X user from Day One (beta), I would agree with his assessment. While early versions were stable, it was not a player ready for Prime Time. That changed with Panther.

“Panther, however, was a stunning release as it offered better stability, faster performance and a good number of niceties, such as the Expose method of organising windows, fast user-switching and fast searching. In contrast, the changes made in Tiger aren’t as big and the difference felt between Panther and Tiger don’t seem as big as that between Jaguar and Panther.”

See? Great minds think alike.

What’s the biggest feature in Tiger for a former Windows user? Spotlight.

“The biggest feature of the release is undoubtedly Spotlight. Spotlight is the primary reason why I bought Tiger as soon as possible rather than waiting for the initial bugs to ironed-out following release.”

It’s here where Marcus is introduced to something that Mac users have long known about, but is less commonly understood in the Windows world. The Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.

“The demonstrations that were performed by Steve Jobs at MacWorld and World Wide Developers Conference clearly used a PowerMac G5 and his results came back instantly with “hits” being displayed as he typed. To a degree I get similar responses on my aging PowerBook but there is a noticeable “thinking time” between keys being pressed and results being displayed/adjusted.”

All I can say is, ME TOO! Steve’s Macs always perform faster than my Mac, even if it’s the same model. Reality is faster with Steve’s Mac.

What else does Marcus go ga ga over? Dashboard. Surprised? Glitter and eye candy affect the most experienced computer user.

“Following on from Spotlight, Dashboard was the next biggest feature and is one that I use daily (not constantly, I should note). Dashboard is effectively a secondary desktop that can be summoned by pressing a hot-key (F8 for me as the default F12 on a PowerBook is assigned to the Eject Disk action) and which is home to Widgets, small applications built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.”

How does Tiger compare to Panther, and Panther to Jaguar? Well, for most of us, Jaguar was a jump. Huge. Except Panther was even more huge, more stable, more, more… just more. Marcus agrees.

“Overall, I find Tiger to be a good release in terms of its stability and some of the new features that it offers but I don’t think it is as much of an upgrade as Panther was.”

There’s a great list of Pros and Cons (according to Marcus) when you Click Here. 

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