I am a new convert to mac a few months ago, where I was previously a windows user. though I love mac, there are a few things that I don’t like about it. it really was hard to think of ten things, and that’s saying something, but here they are. (sigh).
What I don’t like about my ibook G4:
1. narrow hardware support. I have had 2 scanner/copier/fax/printers, and neither of them have worked with mac. they have been recognized by mac, but the drivers could not be found or downloaded. from what I hear, even if they had been found, many of their features would not have worked (like the scanner). I have also had a bit of a problem having one of my digital camera memory cards mount as ‘volume’. It will show up in iphoto and let me import photos, but will not mount as a volume. I had another digital camera that did both (would work in iphoto and also mount as a volume). the camera that wouldn’t used an SD card, the camera that would mount used a MemoryStick. I don’t know if that matters. did I just get the short end of the stick, or is this narrow hardware support a bit of a trend, like I have heard?
2. mac / windows network integration. when I used a windows machine, I took for granted how easily they made networking. now that I have a mac, I have found it nearly impossible to transfer files over a Ethernet or wireless network to a windows machine. please tell me if you know of an easy (free) way.
3. I have had problems with my external hard drive. I use a 2.5 inch, 80 gig laptop harddrive connected via usb2.0 for my large (40 gig) itunes library, and I run my music library directly from the external hard drive. I don’t know if it is just me, but I constantly have problems with it freezing and crashing (both the hard drive and itunes trying to use it). I have had to reformat it once before, and it looks like I will have to do it again. please tell me if there is something that I need to know to help ease my pains.
4. limited options. I miss having something like a hardware manager, that I had in windows. I miss some of the extended menus and options that windows gave me. I know that the whole Idea of mac is to keep it simple, but I wish that there was some way to keep it simple and somehow have these kind of ‘advanced’ options available if you wanted them. again, if these exist, please tell me.
5. imovie. I don’t know if it is just because I have worked with programs like adobe premiere, but I tried to use imove to make a little movie for myself and it drove me crazy. it sucked so bad. I don’t know. I just thought that it was way too simple for some things (like not being able to easily change the length of photos that you import, not being able to add an extra video or audio track for overlapping music and voice, etc.)
6. no multi-protocol chat client that supports voice chat. Adium is great, but I cant use my nifty built-in microphone. I know, im getting kind of specific, but I was saddened when I couldn’t find one for the mac (trillian and gaim do this for windows, as far as I know – correct me if im wrong)
7. my battery. I have read up on it a bit, and tried to treat my ibook’s battery right, but I still cant seem to get more then 2:30 – 3:00 hours of battery life out of it. the box it came in said it would get 5-6 hours. now, granted, I am usually using my airport, listening to music with itunes, surfing on firefox, and have a couple little programs running in the background (quicksilver, konfabulator, growl, adium,) but still shouldn’t I be getting around 4 hours most of the time? does anyone else have this kind of problem?
8. more plugins. not really something I don’t like about my ibook, just something that would be nice. I could always use one or two more usb2.0 slots, and I wish that apple put a plugin to be able to show your screen on a tv or something, without having to buy a separate special mac cable.
9. well, I would say that I wished mac was a little quicker and didn’t bog down as much, but I think that my wish came true when they switched to intel processors. we will see soon if my new mac has got a speed lift.
10. iphoto. not being able to be more selective when importing photos into iphoto from my camera. you plug in your camera and you can either import all your pictures or none of them. you can delete them all off your camera or keep them all on. I wish I could see what photos are on my camera and be able to import certain ones, while deleting others from the camera that I don’t want. it also bugs me that there arent some basic options in iphoto that will let you do the things that the program ‘preview’ will let you do, (such as zoom in on the picture, show it full screen, etc). I also want to be able to sort my photos much like I sort my songs in itunes, by their title, date, description, rating, etc. you can do some of this in iphoto already, but I think that It could be improved.
That really is everything I can think of that I don’t like about mac. and I strained on a couple of them. That truly is amazing. the list would never end if I did one of these for windows. it would also never end if I did one on the things that I love about mac. I appreciate any input and responses.