#18, Customization

Let me start by telling you what was the reason behind the topic for this week. First, when I discussed the games for Mac last week, I mentioned the lack of choices for graphics card and we had some discussions on Facebook about that and also audio devices. Second reason was related to Centretown Movies Outdoor Film Festival (centretownmovies.org) that I help organize. Last Friday was our first night this year. Our DVD player failed. I brought my Linux laptop and it couldn't play the encrypted DVD (later I installed VLC and got rid of Totem player which didn't work well even after I installed the decryption stuff). I tried to use my MacBookPro but I had forgotten my DisplayPort-to-VGA adaptor and couldn't connect to the projector. Together, these made me think about the whole issue of customization for hardware and software on Mac. But before I go ahead, that night we borrowed a Windows laptop and showed our film, and the next day when I had the adaptor I couldn't get my MBP to detect the projector and so used the Windows on my MBP to show the movie!

Now let's see what exactly I mean by customization. Simply said, it is the user's ability to change hardware and software features. Customization comes with choices and flexibility, and usually goes against simplicity as it can cause different ways of doing things and a more complex experience. Being able to customize, i.e. changing your computer from its default factory setting, also can affect the stability and performance as the system is no longer optimized for a certain configuration known to the manufacturer and OS designer. PCs were originally made by IBM. At that time, IBM PC was kinda like Mac computers because everything was designed (or at least put together) by the same company. But IBM clones changed everything so PCs became very different. This meant cheaper and more customizable hardware and software but at the same time less reliable and stable. This trend has continued to this day, although with some changes.

Macs claim to be very easy to use and stable. To some degrees, this is correct. If the hardware is good enough for what you want to do, and you do typical stuff the way Apple people have in mind, then things are pretty straight-forward. But when you get to changing things, you'll see the problems. PCs on the other hand were on the other side of the spectrum. You could change any hardware component and OS was more customizable, from installing drivers to changing system settings. But that made them harder to work with. Both systems have tried to get closer to a middle ground. Macs allow you to have some limited hardware options and do let you configure your computers (especially if you are a little geeky and can use Unix-based text commands at a terminal window), and Windows is trying to become more friendly by "guessing" things for you. A simple example of this trend in Windows can be seen by comparing Windows Explorer from XP to Win7. It used to have the options of customizing toolbar, and all sort of folder options. Now it sets them based on the types of files in the folder which can be good for less techie users but I find annoying as I like to customize them the way I want.

Anyway, here is a quick look at hardware and software customization issues for Mac and OSX.


Hardware
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There is really not much to say about this, as it's pretty clear. Some things to note are:

1- You have very limited choices for hardware component. This has become less of a problem considering that Apple is using high-end components like NVIDIA graphics and fast HDDs, but still you face problems such as need for a professional graphics card or audio system, updating your removable disk drive or other parts when new technology comes, adding/changing RAM modules, and CPU upgrade.

2- It is difficult, if not impossible, to use specialized hardware like Analog-to-Digital or other peripheral cards unless designed specifically for Mac.

3- The video out is DisplayPort (not VGA or even DVI or HDMI) and you need an adaptor to connect to common monitors and projectors. Apple claims that this is because VGA is an old standard and DisplayPort is much better. What they don't talk about is "what if you don't want it?" Nobody else seems to be using it, even DVI and HDMI are not that popular yet, and you are stuck with no ability to change.


Software
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It is true that you can customize a lot of things on a Mac. If you go to System Preferences, you'll see a lot of options. There are also good amount of tricks to change things that are not directly visible there. Here are a few good websites that discuss such tricks:

Apple: Mac101
MacWorld: Customize your Mac
MacGeekery: Customization
Custom Mac

Does this mean OSX is customizable enough, or customizable without much difficulty? No. Here are some things I don't like about OSX when it comes to system configuration:

* My most disliked part of OSX, the Finder. There is not enough customization for the way you view your files and folders. If you go to Get Info for a file, you can set some options like Icon and Showing Extension for that file or files of the same type. But not much more. Things like customizing toolbar and adding/removing the separate tree view pane don't exist. Folder Options are non-existent or hard to set.

* System sounds have more restricted options compared to Windows that allows you to set all the sounds even with your own audio files.

* Display details are hard to change. Advanced settings on Windows, especially the control panel provided by hardware manufacturer, allow you to control much more such as colour setting, 3D parameters, etc.

* Firewall and internet settings are limited in System Preferences, for example allowing or denying access for specific programs.

* Disk Utility doesn't seem to have tools like defragmentation and optimization.

* Last but not least, as we can expect, there is no Device Manager as we have in Windows that allows you to control your devices at low level.

On the other hand, the Unix-based nature of OSX allows you to use typical text commands at terminal to control a lot of things but I haven't really tried that yet. So there are more to say.

I'LL BE BACK!