Since Thursday 30th March Iíve been pretty much exclusively using the Mac for everything. Chatting, browsing, games, peer to peer (p2p) and movies. I was aiming to do this but I probably wouldnít have been so excusive if my PCís monitor hadnít died. It was trying to tell me something.
So when youíre a Windows geek and you have shuffled across to a Mac how easy is it to do your everyday stuff. Iím not talking Office [www.microsoft.com/mac] type programs, I mean the home based use. The unsupported nitty gritty of your day to day programs.
Chatting is easy, Aqua X-Chat is a breeze to setup and use for IRC. Other stuff is around the Mac too if they float your particular boat, MSN [www.microsoft.com/mac], Yahoo [www.yahoo.com] and ICQ [www.icq.com].
Browsing is handled by Appleís own Safari [www.apple.com/safari], or would be if I hadnít switched across to Firefox [www.mozilla.org/products/firefox]. Safari doesnít offer built in advert and flash blocking. I canít browse the net anymore with adverts on, Firefox on XP has spoiled me with its joyful ad-less experience. Seriously, get Firefox and add the Adblock and Flashblock extensions. Joy.
Loads of game freebies and demos are available on appleís site [www.apple.com/games/demos] and other sites. Mac gaming isnít as bad as some would lead you to think, itís no-where near as good as the Windows gaming scene though, the one area it really lags behind on. 3D gaming is good for me but I have the 15î PowerBook with a Radia 9600 card.
p2p was slightly harder to sort out. OSX has an official Bittorrent clientñ my p2p of choice; the drawback is itís dire. Its user interface should be taken outside and shot. Step in Azearus and Tomato, Iím using the former and itís performing OK, if not as well as ABC on XP. I tried Limewire out to, and much to my utter non surprise shock and cardiac arrest, it was bloody awful; just as bad as on XP. Limewire just plain sucks, you can run it on anything and it will suck just as hard. A Mac only competitor to Limewire is Acquisition and it works like a charm, great speeds and lots of files available. Why canít Limewire manage that? Acquisition impressed the hell out of me.
Movies were somewhat harder. After all the default player on the Mac is Quicktime. Windows Media Player 9 is available and for standard WMA, WMV MPG and AVI it does the job. Neither of these work well if you roam off the video beaten track and start to use Xvid, Divx, OGG, MP4 and mixtures of all of those. You can get some really odd files when you watch as many fansubs as me, bless their hearts.
Iíve solved it by using the following, so far I seem to be able to play anything:
OGG audio codec : [www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13012]
VCL a great video player that plays SVCD, OGG Video and more : [www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14738]. VCL on the Mac is way better than the version I last used on Windows. Is development that fast or is the Mac version better, dunno.
MPEG4, Xvid, DivX, 3ivx : [www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9563]
Ac3 audio codec: [www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22994]
Note to self, when out of work add links in to these programs.
