My Ferrari 3400 has aged pretty badly and now that the defacto laptop option in our team has become MacBooks it is finally time to give in and be assimilated. So here's some impressions after my first day on a Mac. Note that Windows holds no dear place in my heart and I have actually wanted to rid myself of it for quite some time. My main computing goals outside of work are stability and simplicity.

• So far the change in keyboard is probably the most annoying difference. I'm sure it's just a matter of learning the differences, but nonetheless it can be frustrating. Things I'm not particularly fond of on the Mac are the loss of having both a backspace and delete key, and the addition extra command key. That and the fact that the control key is in a different position. blarg.
• The touchpad is sweet. I still need to get a bluetooth mouse 'cuz it's just faster and more useful, but the touchpad is silky smooth. It took me 'til this afternoon to figure out you can scroll by using 2 fingers. super sweet. I do still long for the right click, but it's not a big deal.
• The overall look is just much more comfy than Windows. You can tell Apple goes the extra mile to apply little details that make your desktop look and feel nicer. Shadows between overlapping windows, lots of little animations, things bouncing in the dock. I'm sure you can do all that in Windows, but on a Mac they are default.
• I wasn't impressed with my first attempt to install an app though. I went to download and install Firefox and since I didn't know anything about .dmg files it was a little confusing. I actually ran the app out of the mounted .dmg at first because I hadn't realized you need to copy things into the "Applications" folder to install it. Once you sort that out it's fairly straight forward, but as a total newb it was not apparent to me at all.

Most of the rest has been more or less equivalent to the Windows experience IMO. The "System Preferences" on a Mac does seem much better organized and easier to modify than the Windows "Control Panel". I actually learned a number of things just be fidgeting around in there a bit.

Now the one thing I want more than anything is the ability to paste-selection using a mouse center click. I sure hope that's possible on a Mac. That's probably the only thing I have felt my Solaris desktop at work does so much better than Windows. Oh, that and the ability to have a window roll up on a double click rather than minimize. Those two features are gold.