I recently received a lightly use Mac G5 from winning a drawing at my school, ITT Tech. It is a 2004 model with OS X 10.4 and comes with a single 1.8 Ghz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 80 GB hard drive. Although it is not one of the more powerful models it still runs very well. It also came with several expensive programs such as Photoshop CS2 and Final Cut Express HD.
(I realize that OS X 10.4 is out of date, I believe I only address parts of OS X that are in the new version as well, correct me if I am wrong. I am not trying to review an out of date system and call it current)
This is my first time using OS X outside of using it in an Apple Store. So far I like OS X, it is a very stable system, much better than anything from Microsoft. At first I found the interface kind of clunky. The part that seemed the hardest to get used to was having the menu bar detached from the windows. I may have a window open at the bottom of the screen and have to go all the way to the top of the screen to access a control. I still find this kind of a pain for any window that is not full screen although it does streamline the system.
Another thing that I do not like about OS X is how locked down it is to customization and some features that I would just expect it to have. I do not get why there is no way to change the cursor built in. I have found some programs that will allow me to do this, but I would have to pay for them. I would really like to change the cursor so if anyone knows how to do this for free please, leave a comment on how to do it.
As a Linux user I am used to being able to customize just about anything to the way I like it and to also be able to find a good program for free just by searching in the package manager. I do not like having to search all around the web trying to find one simple program. Also the support on forums that I find on average does not seem to be very friendly, even hostile, and a lot of the times not helpful. I find that most of the time when I have a Linux problem I find real help from people that know what they are doing, or at least are trying to help, with the occasional person that just wants to start a fight.
As far as the hardware Mac G5, it is well designed and I can tell it is high quality. However there are some things that do not seem well thought out. One of these is the length of the cable on the keyboard and the mouse. It is not long enough unless you have the tower next to the keyboard. I do not have enough space on my desk for this because I already have one desktop computer and a 19 inch widescreen lcd and a 17 inch lcd. The cable is short on the mouse also, but it can be plugged into the usb ports on the keyboard so it works fine. The mouse also has only one button this requires me to control+click if I need to right click. It also does not have a scroll wheel. I believe however that the later versions do not have the single button and now have a scroll wheel.
So in conclusion the Mac G5 is a good computer except for some of the complaints I have. What Apple needs to do to make a even better computer is to unlock the operating system so that it can be customized more and I think that they should ad a package manager, sort of like the app store for the Iphone, as long as it has free software in addition to paid software.
