I spent the last two days using an iMac G5 at work because my laptop is now practically useless for development work.  I didn't want to rush into buying a PowerBook without trying out OS X so my interest was keen.

My trouble began from the start.  How do I turn it on?  While I might have noticed the power button in the back if I unboxed the iMac but it wasn't very obvious when I started by just sitting in front of it.  When I pushed the button, nothing happened.  Hmm.  Maybe it's booting.  iMac is very quiet so it's difficult to tell what was going on.  After waiting a minute, I tried the button again.  Finally, the client's CTO came over and pushed the power plug in deeper.  A white dot appeared and iMac started booting while I cursed the crazy designer who placed the power socket in the only difficult to reach area of the iMac.  It was in, dammit, but not deep enough to satisfy the designer.

Once iMac was up, I started missing the right mouse button similar to the way an amputee might with missing limbs.  With two button mouse, I often get to take my left hand off the keyboard.  With Mac, I had to leave a finger nestled on top of the control key.  Result was an endless loop of mouse-click…oops…control-key, mouse-click…ah ha.

Anyway, rest of my experience which involved installing, writing code, and debugging with Eclipse and Tomcat, was not positive either.  There weren't any serious problems, just unrelenting trickle of minor irritations.  Maybe OS X will grow on me.  Maybe not.  Performance of iMac G5 was also not great which makes me doubtful of PowerBooks which currently ships with G4.  When PowerBook G5 is released, I'll revisit, but I won't be buying a PowerBook until then.

As to raves by others about the Mac and OS X, I guess one has to fall in love.