I always thought osX was suppose to be all that and a bag of potato chips... I'm mean, it HAD to be!! It looks AWESOME on commercials!!!

"They should just let anyone run it.. I would definitely run osX if I didn't have to buy a $2000 computer to do so."

These are actual words that came out of my mouth more than once... I said it a LOT. I mean, Leopard looked AWESOME! Or maybe it was just the hype? I dunno. Maybe I'm just missing something...

I spent last night installing Snow Leopard 1.6.4 on my Core 2 Duo laptop with 2GB of ram. The install was a cinch, very little effort. In fact, using a retail DVD is suppose to be even easier (and at $30 it's cost is trivial) but the stores were all closed and I didn't feel like waiting. A few things on 1.6.3 were really buggy, but the auto-update popped up and wanted me to update, so I did. A few min later, it reboots into 1.6.4, and all my issues were gone. Nice surprise.

So why am I bitching? The install was slow and clunky on my laptop. That may be a non-apple hardware thing. The boot time also really sucks. Windows 7 boots faster than 1.6.4. How crazy is THAT?! The GUI is solid, but sluggish. In Ubuntu and OpenSolaris, the GUI is fast and snappy. You can tell osX is eating up some resources.

Then there is the GUI itself....

OMG, my wrist hurts, people!!! My mouse has to travel all over Job's creation (see what I did there? Puns use to be considered the highest level of humor) to get to everything I need. Changing the background, for instance. I have to move all the way to either a menu at the top or to the "launch bar" at the bottom. If I try to get there from "finder," it opens up a window where I have to choose "Applications," where I see all these huge clunky icons and realize "Oh, I have to go through Sys Preferences... I figured there would be a shortcut somewhere."

Don't get me started on installing software. Someone explain to me why I need to drag and drop programs in there equiv of an install wizard in order to install programs? What is the point in that? It's not even logical... in fact, it's so illogical that I didn't realize what I was doing wrong until I got to Adium. It's install GUI gave me pictures that animated the dragging and dropping motion. Firefox actually had instructions on their download page... I know why... Because who the hell would ever guess I need to drag shit during an app install?! Are they trying to make installing stuff fun? Should it really be that much work?!

Nothing in this OS is fast or easy.. The only shortcuts are the launch pad, and it takes you forever to have to get all the crap off of it so you can drag and drop the things you would actually use onto it. Even then, you have to play with it to figure out how that works, because there are no option menus for anything.

I take it all back... Ubuntu is easier, faster, and more intuitive than osX. Snow Leopard is an exorcise in making things so pretty they are more painful to use. That is... unless I'm missing something.. Someone, PLEASE!! Tell me I'm missing something!