You Looked.

Working at the Application Support Center (ASC) at the University of Florida, I have come across a number of Mac users. One thing that has always surprised me about them is that no matter what, they always vehemently swear by the Mac. I have, till date, never met even one disgruntled Mac user. And its for this reason that even though I love the Windows Operating Systems (including Vista), I have made up my mind to buy a Mac for myself one of these times, and see what the fuss is all about.

I have to give Apple one thing for sure. They somehow get animations, whether on computers or iPhones, super fluid. One such animation that put me in awe of the Macs was the one they have used for their feature Exposé. I saw this for the first time around two years back (the Vista era), and my client at the ASC (another Mac user) explained me what it was. He said it made switching between opened applications a cake-walk, and I could see what he meant. This person just dragged his mouse to the top left corner of his screen which flooded his screen with beautiful clear thumbnails for all opened applications on his screen. Clicking on any thumbnail closed the remaining thumbnails and opened the relevant application. This feature excited me! It was beautiful, and truly seemed to improve productivity. The moment I reached home that day, I searched for windows applications that promised the same feature.

To my surprise, the internet was full of such software. After trying out a bunch of software, some free, others trials, I finally zoned in on a free application, “Switcher” that seemed to do the job most efficiently. The thing I liked most about this application was that it was fast, had great customization options, and did a good job at making thumbnails out of applications. Other applications on the other hand were either buggy, or paused for a half second to create and display thumbnails. I must admit however, that while Switcher was the best of the lot, it was still not as fluid or fast as Exposé (for the Mac) was.

Recently when I switched to Windows 7, I found that Switcher was giving me a few problems – after some random period of usage, it would simply refuse to create the thumbnails for my applications and nothing would happen on my screen. My guess is that this was because as opposed to Vista, all corners in Windows 7 are reserved for one purpose or another- the top left and right corners are used for snapping windows; the bottom right corner is reserved for aero peek and show desktop; and the bottom left corner is for the start button. Thus, there is no exclusive corners left for Switcher to function in – which leads to conflicts with Switcher. So I decided to look for alternatives, hoping to find applications that offered other hotspots (areas on the screen that respond with a predefined function once you move your mouse there, or carry out some activity there) other than corners on the screen. Most noticeably, I tried dExpose2 again – I remembered the name from last time, and it was free too.

Even though it was fast, what irked me about dExpose2 was that it did not create thumbnails for applications properly. It created two thumbnails each for every Google Talk conversation that I had open. It also thought that Windows Media Player was not one but three different applications, and had three thumbnails for it. Even though I might’ve put up with such quirks, worst of all, dExpose2 had the same problem as switcher, only worse – dExpose2 would also stop working in the middle of nowhere. I finally concluded that these softwares were acting up because they were made for Vista, not Windows 7, and apparently that did effect how they worked.

For the moment, I have switched back to Switcher, and am trying it out one last time – after all, it did work perfectly on Vista. Bao Nguyen, the creator of Switcher, seems to have got most of the things right in this application of his, and it doesn’t come as a surprise then that he was working for Microsoft at the time of writing this application. Unfortunately though, it’s been three years since he last updated this software, and I won’t bet my money on a new version of Switcher coming out anytime soon.

But still, try Switcher. Google it, install it and use it. It’s beautiful. And you might just find a new way to spoil yourself.