MacinWoes

I've been using PCs for over twenty years, and whether I was using DOS, Windows or Linux, I always knew more or less what to expect and how to proceed.

Recently I took a job where I am expected to use a Mac and develop for Mac OS/X ... and it's been a hard-sell.

First the good: the Mac is sleek, very well designed hardware. The display is beautiful, and text is displayed more nicely than I've ever encountered on a PC. The set of applications pre-loaded on the machine is good for casual users, and everything works the same way, and everything works together. The machine is fast and quiet. The video effects are very cool. The underpinnings are BSD-Unix, so there is a lot that is familiar to Linux hands. That's the good.

Now the bad:

• The built-in wireless cannot be set to use a WEP key besides the first key. So if your wireless router uses WEP key 2,3 or 4 -- you are just out of luck. This is an incredibly stupid design decision, as many corporate environments require other keys.
• The mousepad. I mean, why insist on doing everything via the mouse? Because there is only one mouse-key, you need to use two, three and four-fingered "gestures" to accomplish things.
• Almost nothing works like you are used to from Windows or KDE or Gnome. Apple insists on using a stupid "Command key" instead of a Ctrl key (there is also a Ctrl key), so if you know how to touch-type on a regular keyboard, you are screwed.
• The "enter" key on the MacBook is tiny, and where it should be is the "\" key.

that's the list for now ... it's bound to grow as I find more irritations with the MacBook