My ma needed a new computer recently, and having wrestled with PCs for years she decided that she should get a Mac after hearing so many positive reports about the more user-friendly interface and ease-of-use and blah blah blah....so she picked up one of those new Mac minis that is roughly half the size of a shoebox.

The size is certainly impressive, and although the Mac OS might be more user friendly to new users when compared to Windows, my mom had lost sight of the fact that despite her epic struggles with Windows over the years, she was no longer a new user to that OS. So, the end result was that switching over to a NEW operating system still involved a huge learning curve for a 60 year old lady,and just getting a new PC would've likely been much less of a hassle for her....accordingly she's pretty much given up on using the thing on her own, and it gets dusted off every time I come over to get her over her latest road-bumps or to install software, etc. As such, the last few months have given me my first chance to play around with a Mac OS since the days of the first Macintoshes. This has been somewhat of a humbling experience for me, as I consider myself pretty computer literate, but a new OS is a new OS, and I find myself stumbling around and am easily stumped by the simplest problems.

Case in point, I recently had to install some software from a CD, a task that sounds simple enough. First I inserted the CD and clicked on the appropriate icon, which resulted in that same icon being deposited on my desktop, and...well no, that was pretty much it. After futzing around a little bit I figured out that I had to install the software by clicking on the 'Hard Drive' icon and than dragging the software's icon onto the 'applications' icon within the hard-drive....how that any more intuitive that just clicking on a 'setup' icon I don't know, but that's beside the point, because this is when the real trouble started. What prompted this trouble? It was time to eject the CD! I went to hit the eject button on the Mac mini, but there are no buttons on the Machine itself, leaving me to kind of paw the box ham-handedly. Surprisingy, that didn't appear to do all too much, so I went searching the desktop in the hopes of finding the appropriate icon to release the CD. Again, no luck, and I was left with only one option:

I had to open the fucking manual to figure out how to eject a CD.

Was I stunned by an easy answer to an obvious answer? Hardly. "To eject a CD, drag the CD icon on your desktop to the 'Trash Bin'" Riiiiiiiight. Uhhh, score one for Mac's vaunted usability. To be fair, I have put about .0001 percent of OS X to use, and I know I can't judge the entire package based on such an insignificant case, but I could hardly start off on worse footing.

I've continued to mess around with the OS when I get the chance, but I've yet to stumble upon a single killer feature that can begin to reverse my opinion that the Mac is just a PC in a SLIGHTLY different wrapper, and any claims to the contrary are built entirely on smoke and mirrors. If I have to DIG deeply into the OS to discover any of the purported benefits, then just how beneficial are they to the neophyte users for whom the Mac OS supposedly holds such appeal? As far as I can tell, despite claims from both sides of the OS wars, the differences between OS X and Windows remains mostly aesthetic. Surely, internet security is a valid concern to new users and geriatrics, but frankly anybody who actually spends as much time wrestling with viruses and malware, as Apple would like to suggest, is mentally challenged, and that has much less to do with the OS than the user.

Anybody had any similar or opposite experiences with Mac OS X? I know this subject can devolve into a flamewar, and despite my negative tone, that's not my intent. I've pretty much detailed the extent of my experiences, so I don't have any more ammo left for a flamewar, and I'd much rather hear some positive stories about Macs and some features I may have missed, rather than the same tired 'what better' debate.

I think it's just like anything else, once you get used to it, those items of frustration will be a thing of the past. Macs vs Pcs is no different from the old Ford vs Chevy debate. I think it really boils down to personal preference. Though, I don't have the lock ups and driver issues that are ever present in PCs as often, now that I have used Macs. Don't get me wrong, I can get a Mac to lock up though.

I too had the same issues when I first started using Macs. Especially ejecting a dang cd or dvd!!! Of course, you can also eject and load cds and dvds from the keyboard as well.

Some programs you can just drag into the Applications directory and others you have to do the install by clicking on the temporary hard drive icon. I think the more you use it, the more you will be comfortable with it.

Also, I work at Apple, but, still have a PC at home. That's not a slam on Apple, it's just that I haven't bought an Apple for the house yet.

those little hard drive things were a head scratcher for me as well. i thought you had to keep them on the desktop in order for the programs to work. after some looking around and saying 'duh' i figured out the procedure.

I still use OS9 in the studio at home. at other studios i work at, it's all OSX now. OSX is smoother than 9 for first timers (IMHO).