It’s been a couple of months that I’ve been using my Mac Book Pro now, so
what’s the verdict?

Definitely mixed.

With the help from the people who posted comments on my previous posts (here
and here), I was
able to configure my Mac in ways that I feel very comfortable with, now:

  • Double finger tap is equivalent to a right click.
     
  • I love scrolling with two fingers (more convenient than my Thinkpad’s
    pad side scrolling).
     
  • I had to activate keyboard shortcuts for all widgets.
     
  • It feels good to be back to zsh.

Having said that, there are a few things that still bother me and probably
won’t go away at this point:

  • Eclipse is harder to use.  I blame the Command/Control key insanity. 
    It sounded simple at first:  "Use Command whenever you used to use
    Control".  "Great", I thought, "because the Command key is easier to
    reach than Control".  Except that…  there are exceptions
    all the time (H and Q come to mind), and for these, you need to revert to Control. 
    Now I find myself always having to remember when I should use Control or
    Command, and it’s slowly driving me insane.
     
  • Mac OS is still not keyboard-friendly, and I find myself having to reach
    for the mouse way too often.  I find this very insulting to disabled
    and power users alike.
     
  • Mac OS X feels less snappy than Windows, even on my two-year old Thinkpad. 
    It’s hard to describe, but in general, switching windows is faster on XP,
    Widgets are more responsive (they react when the mouse passes over them),
    and overall, I feel that I navigate faster between different tasks on
    Windows than on Mac OS.  Also, the Windows command prompt, while underpowered
    compared to UNIX shells, scrolls much faster than any Mac OS consoles I’ve
    tried.
     
  • The user interface is inconsistent and limited in silly and irritating
    ways (I still find myself wanting to resize my windows from anywhere, or
    wanting to resize certain dialogs, or moving columns around in table
    widgets).
     
  • Mac OS is not Java-friendly.  It doesn’t support any wireless
    toolkits, so no Java ME development is possible, and the recent decision to
    drop the Cocoa bindings sends the clear message that Apple doesn’t care
    about Java.  I want to work on a Java-friendly operating system.

But the ultimate test was a few weeks ago, when I was about to fly out to the
East Coast for the weekend and I found myself wondering if I should take my Mac
or my Windows laptop.  It didn’t take long to choose Windows for the
following reasons:

  • It’s lighter.
     
  • It doesn’t burn my thighs if I keep it in my lap for more than a half
    hour.
     
  • It has better battery life (do I really need two CPU’s if I all I’m
    doing is watching a DVD on the plane?).

The bottom line?

Both operating systems are good, you won’t be disappointed whichever you pick, but Windows remains my operating system of choice,
especially for development.  Windows is and remains the ultimate operating
system for hackers and tinkerers.