In summary I’m feeling far more comfortable with things Mac but I can’t say I’m convinced it is that much better than the world of Windows – maybe I need to go back to Windows for a bit to appreciate it? Also I still have a way to go in terms of efficiency of use with keyboard shortcuts but I’m getting there.

The Good

1. Use of the “magic corners” are great.
2. Dual finger scrolling is brilliant, without a doubt my favorite feature.
3. It’s fast, damn fast. It’s wonderful to be able to have so many applications and windows open. My productivity (or level of distraction) is much greater.
4. The battery life is amazing, I rarely need to use my charger if I take my computer home of a night and use it.
5. The speed at which the system boots up or comes out of sleep mode is awesome. It wakes, sorts the network out lickety split and you’re off and into it.
6. The system preference area just seems so much better than on teh PC where you get lost 3 screens deep
7. The spotlight search is cool – I’m still integrating it into my everyday usage and I expect it to become a bigger part of my navigation flow as I become more comfortable with the system.
8. Spaces, while I’m still getting used to them, are a really powerful feature and makes my workspace and desktop feel so much bigger and easier to manage.

The Bad

1. It has crashed far more than my PC ever did, averaging once a day compared to once a week.
2. I’ve had countless compatibility issues with other users mainly around corrupted images and videos.
3. No SnagIT or GTalk on a Mac – I miss them both immensely and Adium and Skitch just aren’t the same I’m afraid.
4. The screen does not fold back far enough for me to use it in bed and it keeps falling over on itself when I’m in bed or on a beanbag using it – very annoying!
5. The fact that I can only use the bottom right corner to resize the application windows kills me.
6. Command tabbing (the equivalent of Alt Tab on a PC) doesn’t work how I would like it to. I want to see a list of all the documents open not just the applications that are open. There is no way for me to easily get a sense of everything I have open (that I know of – any tips welcome). On the PC a quick Alt Tab revealed everything that was open on the system, including dialog boxes. On the Mac I am always loosing screens and especially dialog boxes and
7. When I do Command Tab to an application, often the application window is not selected so I have to click on it before I can do another keyboard short cut which is really annoying. For example I Command Tab to Firefox and then press Command T to open a new tab but I can’t until I have clicked on the Firefox window.
8. Generally I find I loose tools palettes, dialogue boxes and windows on the system a lot. When I Command Tab to Photoshop for example the palettes more often than not diappear.
9. The finder I have issues with too, I like to have a sense of physical place when navigating a folder structure and I don’t feel I get that through the Mac finder.
10. I feel the layout of the keyboard is more style over substance. I like a big return/enter key (because I use it a lot as does everyone right?) and the Caps lock key, seriously does that have to be as big as it is? What shouting typists out there use it that often? I feel it’s a case of the visual symmetry of the keyboard took precedence over the usability of it.

But it’s certainly not ugly! Far from it in fact :) It’s a nice machine and I’m liking it.

I’m sure it doesn’t work for everyone but it certainly works for me and that’s the new search engine Searchme (still in beta but open to the public).

The Pro’s

1. The obvious one (and certainly the one that’s creates the wow factor) is the screen grabs of the resultant pages. I find this quite useful for a majority of my searches. For example I was searching for accommodation in Grampians National Park and using Searchme I was able to get a great sense of the different businesses before I even visited their website. Used in conjunction with the text abstracts (ala Google) it gives me quite informed choices.
2. Being able to filter the results based on a specific meaning or a sub category is another powerful feature for my mind. Searching for “Boulderdash” I get the option to filter the results to the board game, computer games or online games which I think is a huge help to me when I’m actually searching for the board game. And the position in the UI of the filtering controls and their subtle graphical representation are perfect too.
3. Being able to easily control the emphasis on screen grabs or text information gives my control over what is more important for me in the context of my search.
4. Highlighting the searched keywords on the screen grab is a nice touch and helpful in a lot of situations.
5. And the controls in general I find quite nice and seemless which is important.

The Con’s

The only things that hold it back for me are:

1. The depth of content is not there yet – I did a search once that had no results at all.
2. Search relevance does not seem to there as yet and there will no doubt be some work to do to match the big players.
3. It seems to be full of link farm type sites that are full of keywords but not good content.
4. It’s built entirely in Flash so from an accessibility point of view it’s not great. I don’t imagine I’ll need to print and bookmark pages but scaling the text will be important to a range of users.

I’m very curious to see how this search engine goes against the big players – I’m tipping it will get bought out soon :)

It’s ironic sure, but Google’s new offline mode for their online suite of applications is fabulous. As a public transport user and someone who likes to maximise the use of time, I’m finding it’s making me much more productive already.

The design and integration is also really nice. It starts off as an understated link in the top right of the UI with the typical NEW text in red next to it. Once you’ve gone through the simple setup process a small icon in the corner indicates if you are working in offline or online mode. The new offline mode is also added to all your other Google applications and I’m finding it particularly useful for Google Reader where I can get all my RSS feeds updated for reading on the Tram.

To me it’s another WOW in the Long Wow effect that Google do really well.