At work I have an awesome 23″ Apple Cinema Display with 1920×1200 resolution. When I’m doing the work I’ve been doing in the last few days, its just not enough space. I have way too many windows open, and I need to see them all!
What I really need, of course, is Spaces, but that’s not coming out until October. Or VirtueDesktops, but its completey unstable.
Top reasons my desktop (both home and work) is linux not Mac:
– Virtual Desktops are a first-class citizen (and have been for years)
– There exist terminal applications that actually work
– Java support isn’t totally broken
– Alt tabbing through windows (including windows belonging to the same application) works properly (for example if you have more then two iTerm windows open and you want to be able to quickly switch back and forth between just two of them, you can’t just use Apple+~ to switch, Apple+~ to switch back, etc… because it will continue to cycle through the windows)
I still love my Mac laptop; instant sleep/wakeup, wired, wireless and DVI port that always “Just Works”, excellent hardware integration with the OS. If anyone asked me what they should buy, that would be it. Still, I don’t think *I* could spend a whole day doing real work in front of a Mac. At the very least I’d be too distracted by wanting to lick all the bits of the interface (oh, and those issues I mentioned above).
But hey, at least you aren’t running Windows.
1) Yes. Mac needs Virtual Desktops real bad. Spaces is coming. I want it NOW!
2) iTerm has worked fine for me for months, no crashes or problems. Try the new versions.
3) I don’t know anything about Java support. 🙂
4) Actually, yesterday I installed Witch which solves this very problem (and lets you choose how your application tabbing behaves as well.
I’ll add a #5 to the list:
5) I miss GNOME’s tendency to line up windows on a grid and to make the left and right edges of the screen “sticky” so that its easy to get something up to the edge without it going off. Sorta hard to explain, but for someone who likes things nicely laid out, being able to get windows up against each other and the edges of the screen easily without overlap is great.