I’ve really refrained from saying much over the past month. A lot of my friends and coworkers are in love. I can say whatever I want to them, just don’t say anything bad about the Mac. So I’ve bitten my lip and held back.

Out of respect for those of you that are in love, I won’t say much. Here’s the thing, even with 10 years away, I’ve been a Mac user a lot longer than most. I know Mac. I know Mac all too well. To borrow a phrase from Judge Judy “don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining!” The whole Macs don’t crash or freeze?! Really? Try editing a field in a MyISAM table in MySQL Query Browser. Let me know how that works out for you.

This isn’t about Windows either. That’s a whole ‘nother topic. CentOS 5.3 64bit is my favorite OS in the world. It’s stable, open-source and has an unbelievable repository. It’s also a command line server and isn’t what I am going to run for day to day tasks.

The Mac (Mac Book Pro 15) has some cool features. I was willing to overlook a lot to make it work. I have been using the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard for the past 11 years. I will not use a different keyboard. Unfortunately the Mac uses the middle (Windows key) as the command key. That has completely thrown off my key commands (copy, paste, application tab, etc) but I’ve sorta gotten used to it. I’ve let that go. It’s especially a pain when I switch to a PC, cause now I be all messed up and shit…but fine, I’ll deal.

Here is what I can’t deal with anymore:

• Mac doesn’t format a CSV with proper line breaks.
  Mac OS Line Endings: Carriage returns, ASCII : 13
  Unix Line Endings: Line Feeds, ASCII: 10
  Windows Line Endings: Carriage Return + Line Feed (CRLF)
• No IE Support past 5.0. While this isn’t really the fault of the Mac OS, it’s still a problem that I face. I work with software built by Indians and Serbians that still favors an IE interface. Yes they are outdated…but that doesn’t matter. I need to use it, daily.
• Entourage is not Outlook. Yes, Outlook is a memory hog. It’s also the best email + calendar + contact manager + task list I have ever used. I have hosted Exchange so my Blackberry and Outlook are always in sync. I miss Outlook. Entourage can barely check my IMAP email. It takes 9 minutes (yes, I am clicking send receive) from when my Blackberry receives an email.
• Last but definitely not least. The most important of all…blurry fonts! For the past 2 years it’s been well documented that Mac fonts are blurry. The irony is that ClearType, which is used by Windows for anti aliasing, was invented by Steve Wozniak while at Apple. But due to licensing and beef between Jobs and Woz,  Apple no longer uses it and their font rendering and smoothing are just terrible. At first I thought it was me. But then I looked at other screens. I even looked at my Blackberry Bold and it’s perfect.  Don’t believe me? Google “mac fonts not sharp.” It’s documented. Even the experts like Zeldman weighed in. It’s making my eyes hurt. I am literally getting eye strain from the blurriness. I can’t work like this.

So that’s it. Regardless of Excel’s inability to open a large file, MySQL Query Browser constantly crashing and CSV file fail, if my eyes hurt from looking at the computer, I can’t use it. It’s not something I can think about. It’s not debatable. There is nothing anyone can say and a clever commercial with the guy from Dodgeball can’t convince that me that my eyes should hurt after using the computer for 20 minutes. I wish I could convince you that whole “just install parallels and also run Windows” after you spent $2500 on less hardware is something *you* should think about… but I won’t try. You love your Mac. I get it. I don’t love blurry vision…at least when I’m not drinking.