I came across this interesting post the other day.  Seems the author recently switched to OS X and while for the most part he seems to like it he has come across a few things that he misses from Windows.  What I enjoy about his post is that it feels more like he is comparing tools vs. religions, with calm observations vs. frothing at the mouth.  Some of the more interesting tidbits:

- He dislikes iPhoto and considers it featureless.  I usually hear OS X users touting iPhoto as one of the key features of OS X so to hear someone pine for Picasa, which doesn't seem to be available for OS X is new.

- He considers Window's Explorer the better file manager, citing among other things the fact that it feels more functional  I've always wondered about this because every screen shot I see of Finder shows these 32x32 or 48x48 icons of each file.  I'd go crazy looking at a source code or music folder unless I could see them in either List or Details mode.  In fact switching out of the default 32x32 icon mode in Explorer is the first thing I do on any new computer.

- At first he missed the Start menu but as he grew to use Spotlight and Quicksilver he no longer pines for it.  What's odd is that when I'm on a Vista machine I almost never use the Start menu anymore, instead I press the Windows key to bring me to a search box and I just type the first few letters of the app I'm looking for and ta da, there is my app.  The only time I use the Start menu is when I install a new app, I'm not always sure how it's going to be named so sometimes I have to go hunting for it.

- No good IM software with iSight support.  This just blows me away.  The whole camera bit is one of Apple's big selling points and there is no rocking IM client with native support?  Someone suggested Skype but that's not going to do him a lot of good for his buddies on AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo!.

All in all it was refreshing to see a level headed discussion about OS X.  Most people rave about the wonderfully sexy Mac hardware, and I do agree, Apple makes some damn good hardware, but oddly enough I don't hear much about OS X itself from new converts.

Lot's of action on Microsoft's Live brand lately.  All of this activity reminded me of my own rather strong feelings about Microsoft's handling of Live and how everytime I hear "Live" I cringe a little.

You see, I’ve always thought that attaching the Live brand to so many properties was a greedy attempt to capitalize on the only hip branding Microsoft has, XBox’s Live.

As far as I remember and know “Live” first started with the XBox and became synonymous with “social gaming with a set of friends” and it was strictly limited to the XBox. With the 360 it moved to the web with your gamertag and contact list available from xbox.com. Live was doing well, it was often cited as the one thing Microsoft did right, a younger demographic plugged into it.

Then Microsoft got desperate. They really have nothing that’s iconic anymore, except maybe lawsuits, while Google has this “mega startup” feeling and Apple has the iPod and the silhouette commercials. Microsoft also lacks cohesion, seems every product looks a little different, has a different installer, acts differently, integrates differently, has a different look to the website, etc.

Microsoft tried to *capitalize* on the Live brand but instead they just *cannibalized* it. Putting 5 random people into a room and calling them all “Smith” doesn’t make them a family yet that’s what Microsoft tried to do with Live.

Any service that doesn’t use your Live gamertag or have seamless integration with the “real” Live service’s contacts and assets (such as Points, Account Management, items purchased via the Marketplace) doesn’t belong in the Live brand. They watered-down and squandered a lot of the Live cred where they could have extended it in logical ways.

Instead of just smearing Live on top of everything they should have kept on the path it was going. First XBox Live, then xbox.com interacting with you Live contacts, then merging in the Zune to the Live, then merging XBox Marketplace and Zune Marketplace into simply the “Live Marketplace” where any content bought under your gamertag is available to anything that plugs into the Live framework. Next Live Points that work across XBox, Zune and future properties along with a micro transaction framework API, again under Live. Through all of this though the same contact list and assets.

They must have had to tranquilize J Allard when he found out they had co opted the Live brand.

I often hear how OS X "just works" and how it's so easy to do pretty much everything.  Often the differences between the Windows and OS X way are just that, different, not really better or worse.  That's why I was so surprised to find out how relatively hard it is to assign a drive letter to a network share on OS X.

Chalk one up on the Windows side of things.  On XP and Vista it's as simple as right-clicking on the share and selecting "Map Network Drive..."

I'm sure this is old hat for people hip on their YouTube classics but oddly enough I've never come across this before.  Nothing is perfect, not Windows, not OS X, not PC's, not your childhood puppy and this guy does a great job of pointing out some of his Mac frustrations.

Why Macs Suck