So, is the Mac OS user friendly? In one word, yes.
I’ll admit it. As a longtime PC user and despite Mac OS X’s reputation for being a very user friendly operating system, I was still nervous. Plucking down several thousand dollars on a new MacBook Pro without every owning a Mac before took a little courage, but after week one of living with Mac OS X… I’m thrilled.
I haven’t had a single crash or hiccup yet, aside from a problem with Firefox hanging (this had nothing to do with OS X, it’s a bug in Firefox 2.0 that I resolved by disabling the Google toolbar). Getting around in Mac OS X is a piece of cake and although the organizational style is different than Windows, it’s very easy to get familiar with.
The Dock took a little getting used to at first, but I really like it now. I’ve moved the placement of the Dock from the bottom middle to the right side of my screen. On the MacBook Pro widescreens, there is more space to burn on the sides of the screen vs. the bottom so I switched the Dock placement to take advantage of this.
There are 2 things however that I still am not used to:
- No Backspace - In order to access the backspace feature, you have to use fn+delete. Sure, this isn’t the end of the world, but a traditional backspace key just makes things easier.
- ctrl Key for Keyboard Shortcuts - I’m still getting used to the Mac command key which replaces the ctrl key on Windows machines. I’m so used to using ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v, etc., that switching to the command key is causing a little frustration. I’m sure it’ll get easier as time goes on, but it’s a pain as of right now.
Overall, Mac OS is very user friendly and making the transition from Windows to a brand new operating system has been no big deal so far.
