NOTE: This is a guest post by ex-PC user Mike Wilson. It was originally published at Gears of Biz.
I have a MacBook at home and a Mac Mini at work. I absolutely love my Macs. I can’t live with out them. However, there are still things I hate about my Macs that I wished weren’t a part of my life. So don’t hate me for taking a couple shots at my machines… It’s all in good fun.
Below are those Top 5 things I hate about the Mac.
#1 – The Rainbow Wheel
Oh, rainbow wheel. How I loath you sometimes. For those of you that don’t know the “rainbow wheel” (also known as the marble of doom or the beach ball of death) is the Mac version of the turning hour-glass. It sometimes can laugh in your face for up to 5 minutes if you are trying to do a task that is too much for your RAM or processor. Sometimes the rainbow wheel will appear at the worst moments and for the dumbest reasons. Because the rainbow wheel taunts me, laughs at me like a circus clown, and ultimately reminds me that I went “cheap” by not upgrading to a bigger processor or spending $300 from Apple on RAM, it earns my top hated thing about a Mac. Yes, my frustrations are deep-rooted.
#2 – Default Settings
When you first buy a Mac you expect it to function like a PC. Maybe because I’ve spent all my life on a PC, I’ve become expect that “right click” is as common as understanding how to walk or ride bicycle. However, that is not the case. By default when you by a Mac you have to use CTRL + Left Click in order to “right click.” That can be changed, but you have to go to “System Preferences” to fix that (which by the way should be called “settings”). Another default feature I dislike is that all of the “close, minimize, and maximize” buttons are in the upper-left… not the upper right. Sort of annoying. Last but not least, it annoys me that the “dock” is huge and stagnant. You can change it to animate, which makes life much better and make me feel that I spent $1,300 for a good reason. There are a handful of other odd default features, but for now, I’ll leave you thinking about those.
#3 – Microsoft Office On A Mac
Coming from a PC, again, I made the assumption that Microsoft Office would look, feel and function, just like the Windows version of Office. No. No sir. The Mac version of Office is so different it might as well have been made from some other company. The experience is more “mac like” but it’s so far deviated from the Windows versions that you’ll be spending a good 3 months trying to figure how to do a mail merge. Given that Microsoft Office was so different, I chose to go with OpenOffice, because it was free. I might as well use something free if I’m going to have to start from scratch, right?
#4 – Mounting and Ejecting
What the heck is mounting and ejecting? Great question. When you plugin a USB device into a Mac it wants you to “mount” that device into your Mac. Basically saying “ok, yes. Connect this device to my computer.” Which is no problem. However, when I (like most people) just pull the USB drive out of the computer, the Mac freaks out and tells you “This disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off.” While it’s never caused an issue to my data or my machine, without failure this message continues to pop up. It’s as annoying as a gnat at a BBQ and gives me the eerie feeling of a 2nd grade teacher telling her/his students to wash their hands every 5 seconds. I got it, “eject” before removing a device. Yup. I got it. Nope, Nope, I read you. Loud and clear.
#5 – Mac Cults
Sorry boys and girls. I may be an avid Mac user, but I’m not the guy that walks around the office telling you you’re dumb because you use a PC. Most people that act like that have never used a PC and therefore assume that because they spend more money on a Mac, it must be better. For years, Mac “followers” have impeded Windows users from switching due to the fear of looking like tools. While adoption of a Mac is growing by the day, we are still stuck dealing with Mac Crazies that ruin it for the rest of us.
There you have it. I do love my Mac, but it feels good to talk about some of the annoying features that I incur daily.
83 responses to “Top 5 Things I Hate About The Mac [Gripes Of an Ex-PC User]”
Taking out the drive without ejecting first can damage your data. I do not recomment it. You must eject on PCs too, it’s just that Windows doesn’t warn you. I bought two USBs once. Same company, same capacity, identical in every way. But when my dad took one out without ejecting, it stopped working, whereas the other one got taken out a couple of times too, but it never stopped working. It just depends. Apple would rather you be safe than sorry. Or maybe it’s just protection from lawsuits or whatever. IDK.
“Most people that act like that have never used a PC and therefore assume
that because they spend more money on a Mac, it must be better.” Actually, most Mac users have used PCs, whereas most PC users have not even seen a Mac apart from an Apple Store maybe. As for the “Cult” ones, it’s just them building trust with Apple, because of how well Apple has treated customers, since, forever. There are some horror stories, sure, Apple employs many people and there are bound to be those employees. But, for the most part, they are number one in customer satsifaction, customer support, and many other things. They innovate and innovate and try to get things the consumers’ way as much as possible. As one example, Steve convinced the record labels to put DRM-free music in the iTMS.
#1, Fair enough :) we all hate dilemma.
#2, Again Fair enough. But you must go into preferences and in doing so discover all the options available, for example the track pad settings, I opt for the 2 finger tap right click. The functionality of the track pad is so refined versus Windows PC’s that it more than makes up for the initial inconvenience on day one.
#3 You really must have a good run through iWorks, Apple offers many videos, many available directly from the welcome screen on each program. Numbers is really unbeatable at this stage, even more so if you have it on an iPhone/iPad, they’re fully functional & extremely intuitive.
#4 I don’t want to come across rude but you must eject any powered USB, this has been well known for more than a decade. It’s not only very possible to loose data on the drive but you can also short the terminals & completely cook your main board of the computer. I learnt that the hard way on XP back in 2001… The function is there to eject on all versions of windows except the icon is set to always hide on the notification bar. When I install Windows 7 for users it’s one of the first things I do is set it to always show. It’s silly that MS don’t have the warning. You will have noticed a window pop up at times “Do you want to scan & fix removable disk”. This is because windows detected data errors.
#5 Like the comment below most of us Mac users were avid Windows users. All the torment, “years” of crap & so many wasted hours from Windows, that is most likely what makes us “Mac Crazies”. Remember the tech savvy saw the problems & new it was MS at fault & it drove us nuts. Hell, Windows ME, that OS, wow, how they weren’t sued? Because the average joe thought they themselves were at fault. Ignorance…
All these Windows versions & they still haven’t fixed system wide scrolling, I still have to select the window & drag on/scroll on the side bar! Same goes with the start menu. Also I still have to enter a mass of icons in control panel (which seems to be getting larger with each new version). Compare that to the simplicity of System Preferences & you complain about the name? It only takes a week at most to be comfortable with Apple’s naming convention but you never get comfortable with control panel, like most of the system it’s all over the place…
Putting it simple Windows is Like a maze you know well. You know every turn to get from the start to the finish but darn it you just want to go directly to the finish. You don;t want to go through a maze every day…