The one Mac feature you can't live without
I was reflecting on my friend and colleague's, John Newton, post about his recent adoption of the Mac. He asked us to suggest which applications he should get (Adium, Handbrake, NeoOffice, etc.) and it got me thinking, "Beyond third-party applications, which features on the Mac itself could I not live without?
Pushed for just one, I think it might well be Expose. Given that through the day I tend to open more and more windows, it can get confusing to find my way back to the one I need at a given moment in time. I use the Dock, yes, but I find Expose the best tool of all for sorting through the clutter to hone in on the application I need, and the window within that application that I need. Invaluable.
If I were given two choices, my second would be the Mac's native support for PDF. It is mind-expanding to suddenly be able to create a PDF from any application. This ends up saving so much time (and money otherwise spent on Acrobat). You don't recognize what a lifesaver it is until you try going without it for a few days/hours/minutes/seconds.
What are your must-have features on the Mac?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
- by acheron5 January 11, 2008 9:13 AM PST
- The one feature that I find extremely compelling on the Mac, is oftent taken for granted, and absent on Windows is how the Mac bundles its applications. In OS X and previous Mac OS versions (as well as in other OS's), applications in the GUI are bundled with the icon. The application can be installed, moved to a different location, and deleted simply through drag and drop. At the user level, it isn't a shortcut to an executable that is located elsewhere and that relies on confusingly named .dll files spread throughout the system folder as is the case with Windows. While many OS X applications do have installers they are mostly a convenience rather than a necessity when installing an application. Removing an application is just a matter of dragging the application to the trash. The user is never asked to remove related .dll files that are mysteriously named and which can result in the system becoming unstable. It's not perfect in that removed applications frequently do leave behind some configuration files, but these files don't bog down the system and removing them manually doesn't destabilize the system.
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(3 Comments)I'm also fond of the fact that Apple makes a good effort at shielding the user from the innards of the OS, an example being how OS X defragments files on the fly. This doesn't mean that the OS is inaccessible to advanced or technical users, simply that one doesn't have to get technical with the OS in order for it to work.