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 32×32 or 48×48 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 32×32 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.