Craig Knows Things

            Over the last thirty years a battle has been raging on in our homes. The battle is that between Windows and Mac personal computers. The windows operating system has found its way into the homes of many simply because of some good business decisions made early in it’s life, however the Mac revolution has come, he is fighting a loosing battle. There are countless reasons for why Macs are better then PCs we’re going to learn about a few in this essay. More and more people are buying Macs over PC’s and this is especially true for college students.

            The Princeton University newspaper reports that Princeton’s Mac marketshare has been rising dramatically, with 40 percent of students and faculty currently using a Mac as their personal computer. Also According to a separate Pioneer Press survey, Dartmouth is up to 55% freshman with Macs (up from 30% in 2005), University of Virginia with 20% of freshman with Macs (up from 17% in 2006), and Cornell with 21% dorm network users with a Mac (up from 5% between 2000-2002).

            Mac OS X takes all of its powerful functionality and wraps it in a remarkably beautiful user interface. The user interface is what you see when you sit in front of the computer. When apple acquired the technology that runs OS X they basically had a chance to build their user interface from scratch. Apple states that their user interface was, “Designed from the ground up to make computing virtually second nature, every visual element gives you important information about the activity status of your Mac.” Apple has accomplished this goal. 

            In Mac OS X every desktop is equipped with a Dock. The dock is a series of icons at the bottom of the screen each of which can animate and update. When clicked these icons open their corresponding application. The Dock also provides a place for windows to go when they are minimized. Because of the way the operating system is designed it can handle onscreen graphics and video with ease. When a window is minimized it will show a live preview of what is happening in that window. If a video is minimized to the dock it will continue to play in the dock. Each icon also dynamically and smoothly scales in size along with the Dock.  There is also a magnify effect, which allows users to shrink the Dock down to a small strip, but blow up icons to a larger size when they are moused-over and icons bounce to indicate that the application demands your attention. Users can also rearrange Dock items using drag-and-drop, dropping new items into it, and dragging unwanted items out. All of this makes the Dock highly customizable and information rich, despite being very simple and easy to use.

            Another innovation of Max OS X is a technology called Dashboard. Dashboard is the home of widgets. A widget is a mini-applications. Widgets let you quickly complete common tasks and also provide you with fast access to information. To access your widgets a user simply clicks the widget icon in the dock or presses f12 on their keyboard. The widgets zoom onto the screen as the desktop fades providing access to real-time weather, Dictionaries, a calculator, instant web searches and more. Dashboard disappears just as easily, which is very convenient for when you only need a widget for a few seconds. Get the information you need and nothing more.

            Amid the aforementioned features and design elements we can all see why Mac OS X is clearly a winner when it comes down to which operating system is better and easier to use. Whether you’re a college student, retired adult, child, or parent it is clear that a Mac is the right choice for you.