Comfortable Tool, Less Pain

These days I have been busy adapting to a new tool, Mac OS(Operation System) X, developed by Apple corporation. Before I got in touch with it, it is kind like a secret world, many people on Internet talked about it, speaking highly of it. Now I know why such a large group of people fall in love with it, and I am not willing to return to use Windows as my first preference OS since begun the journey with Mac.

Well, I would like to share experiences using Mac computer, trying to note several top advantages of Mac. It’s very worthwhile to know a bit more about Mac, if you were tired of the exhausting Windows OS, and planing to buy a new computer.

[The picture is dedicated to represent Windows and Mac]

Tidy Desktop, Excellent Art

The first impression I use Mac is the amazing graphic animation. The motions of hiding and showing windows perform smoothly and elegantly, give me a lot of pleasure and comfortability. The operation on it is pretty easy, I don’t even need to take any tutorial about it, as it has a assistant function I can search topics about how to use specific function. The more I use the desktop, the more conveniences it offers I realize. There are many features of its desktop offer great efficiency and usages, which you can figure out on Apple Website.

Overall, the desktop management is pretty convenient, especially in a situation when there are a large number and various kinds of windows opened. I think the Mac system have developed a mature desktop, being able to offer a tidy environment . This plays an important role in our daily use of computer, as it is very similar with our desktop in real world. Try to image that lots of books, pager, pens and electronic equipment mess up your desktop, how are you feeling while working in such environment?

Just Necessary and Powerful Application

When I first got this computer and turn on it to try out, I found many most-needed applications have been built in Mac system. It’s not necessary to install ones such as Picture viewer, PDF reader, DVD burner, media player and so on, because there are a number of built-in applications perform very well in normal use, and they are excellent software in my opinion. As I spend most of time improving English, I realize the built-in dictionary is so nice that even better than ones I used before, in which definition is in a nice structure and more sensible.

Apple has strengths in multimedia area, several free multimedia application it provides are fantastic, offering professional, efficient and easy-use tool to its user. These tool are so easy to use and user-friendly that you don’t even need to learn about making movie or special effects on picture in a class, but you can easily be professional at multimedia with them.

In Windows OS, you might like to install small application on windows system, such as showing lyric of current playing song, weather forecast, calendar etc., but fear being at risk of infection of virus, worm which is at risk of ending up with OS reinstallation OS. In recent versions of Mac OS, However, installing a small applications is easy and safer. Mac system provide a platform, called Dashboard, where you can select ones from the Internet and put them onto it and manage them conveniently. These small applications are contributed by various kinds of organization or even person who are good at programming and are willing to share their small applications.

Still No Virus Nightmare

When I go back to the Windows System, the most familiar OS I had used for near 10 years, I start feeling everything works uncomfortable as I have to mind whether the anti-virus, firewall software were turned on, which significantly reduce the computer’s performance. We pay a large sum of money to get a powerful computer, and then have to make additional payment to security software, finally the computer is full of crap and working slowly. Should we deserve it?

Of course, whenever it’s a computer software, malicious ones could be developed. Also, there is virus can exist on Mac OS. The first one is found in the early 2006, but no other one has been reported. It’s hopeful that this is the only one ever. As Mac OS have done a good job on security issues, I can get rid of anti-virus or firewall softwares, saving a large amount of hardware resources.

Windows OS, a Servant

The recent versions of Mac computers have capability to run various sorts of OS on Mac OS. Softwares such as Parallel and VMware Fusion can perform as a virtual machine, acting as a real computer. With this kind of software, Mac OS is able to setup a Windows or Linux OS etc, and allow the softwares not supporting Mac OS to work on Mac.

So you don’t need to worry about some of your favorite applications can’t work after migrating from previous OS you have got used to. This means, on Mac OS, your choices of applications is enhanced, but not limited.

Overall Feeling

After the experiences with Mac during these days, I realize software should be designed to care more about the its user, but not be cared. I think Apple has achieved this very well. However, Microsoft seemly go in the reversed way.

Access to Blocked Website

VOA Website

VOA website is excellent for English learners, as it provide short stories accompanied with voice records. So English learner is able to take advantage of its voice records to practice listening skills, while improving reading skills. On the website, there also is a section called VOA Special English, which aims to provide stories for people with intermediate level of English proficiency. After studied English through it for a certain time, I realize that although the words used in stories of special English is very easy, they have various meanings in different news, and are totally different from what I learn it before from Chinese - English dictionary. So I strongly recommend VOA Special English for you to extend usages of each word you have known in different situations.

Nice Websites been Blocked

It's a fantastic website providing free, interesting stories. However, because of some negative news about China provided by it, China has banned it, and people in China can't have access to it directly. It's not the only one banned by China , but also a number of good websites, such BBC news, Wikipedia. These websites provide a large amount of useful resources, which everybody could have rights to reach. It's a shame that the resources are unavailable to almost all Chinese people.

Thanks to the open source software called "TOR", we can use it as a proxy to access these banned websites. TOR is originally aimed at offering people a safer Internet environment, as taking advantage of it allows people to have activities on Internet anonymously. This means it's difficult for someone else, such as hacker, to trace where you are from, what you are doing on Internet, avoid exposure of private information.

Advantages of TOR

1. Bypass the firewall in some countries

Basically, TOR works in a P2P way to fetch data from destination. In this procedure, it isn't connecting to target website directly, instead it achieve that through set up a link chain which is made up by links between several TOR users. Therefor, TOR user is able to have access to blocked website with the assistance of other TOR users. The original purpose of TOR is to safeguard information exchanging on Internet, So there are many users would like to use it to ensure safety of their Internet activities. This means as we want to use it as a web proxy to bypass firewalls, we don't need to worried about the reliability of the proxy, because there are so many people using it, providing plenty of points acting like proxies. Actually, it is not just one proxy, but a plenty of proxies.

2. Speed up loading pages

Each country has certain amount of Internet speed limitation to connect to foreign countries. When a large number of data transfer to foreign countries, the transfer speed of data to certain country for each domestic Internet users would be reduced. As TOR is able to connect to nearly every country in the world, it is capable to find the most fast way through other countries to destination, which help balance the heavy load of data to specific country.

The most recent version of TOR have ability to select fast users to connect to, which could promote the speed of transferring data. So when you are browsing some foreign websites, which is loading slowly, try to access it with TOR. It may surprise you.

Websites referred in this Blog
TOR
VOA Special English (Requires TOR to access)