Yeah, macs have some annoying properties that don't do exactly what you want. But, all that 'gloss' that O'Reilly refers to is the reason he purchased the Mac. Furthermore, OS X is still leaps and bounds better than other OS's for most users. The conveniences that most people would fail to notice is part of the beauty of the OS.
Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
81–90 of 459 posts
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you hate learning the "myriad of keyboard shortcuts needed to get stuff done on a Mac," but are praising the intuitiveness of "hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it?"
Well, there are a couple of subtleties that are being addressed, that maybe need to be said better. 1) Mac keyboard shortcuts are confusing and inconsistent compared to other OSes. They're not as discoverable. Maybe this is why it seems like there are more of them or that they're harder to learn. When I say they're confusing, I mean that they use those funky characters instead of the words Ctrl, Alt or Shift. Those c…
Ah yes, OS X keyboard shortcuts sure do have bad discoverability.
I'm in Safari, I wonder how to see page source. I click the Help menu (or Cmd-?) and type in 'source'. It finds the 'View Source' menu item. I arrow down to it and not only does it open the menu containing it, but there's a big animated blue arrow pointing at the keyboard shortcut.
And what do you know, those funky symbols are in fact printed on my keyboard. Not that I have to look at it much, because the shortcuts I use are mostly consistent between apps.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suum cuique but some of your concerns really aren't: > In OSX you can only resize a window in the bottom right corner, in Ubuntu I can resize from any corner, or I can hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it. No more hunting for the resize sweetspot. They changed that in Lion to every corner, every side. And you don't have to press ALT to do it. > When I click the Maximize bu…
>> I just want to see hidden files in Finder, why is that so hard? > defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE ? > Or just use the terminal ? You just proved his point.
> You just proved his point.
Granted, it's not candy-color obvious. But for a developer working on Linux, "hard" should represent a different barrier than for Joe Sixpack, yes?
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#84I came from a windows background, tinkered with Linux for a few years on and off, and when I started my current job I was given a Macbook Pro. After a few months of using it I as so frustrated, and found myself spending more and more time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, that when they were ordering new MBPs for the design team I offered to give mine up to a designer and buy a ThinkPad, thus saving the company over $1,0…
When I click the Maximize button on OSX, it doesn't actually maximize the window 99% of the time, it just picks a seemingly random size. I saw an app a while ago that would let you control how your OSX apps are resized when you maximize them, but if I have to buy an app just to make my OS do what it should do anyway, there's something wrong.
If you're going to judge it based on your existing preconceptions, of course it's going to come up short.
Windows: The button makes the open window fill the screen.
Mac OS: The button instructs the app to make the window larger to fit the open document.
With larger and larger desktop screens (27" iMacs, 30" Cinema Displays), the old idea that you'd want the one window to fill the screen doesn't hold as often. Then came the rise of the laptop and it does hold again. So Lion gained fullscreen.
This doesn't mean it wasn't frustrating, or badly done by many programs, but I object to you describing one way as "what should happen" as if there is a standard, or as if OS X < 10.7 claims to do fullscreen but fails to. You're buying an App to make it work like another system, because you prefer that behaviour.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#85What about a paid GNU/Linux distro that runs perfectly on recent Apple hardware? No drivers bullshit, just works?
Sure, would be nice to have option.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In OSX you can only resize a window in the bottom right corner, in Ubuntu I can resize from any corner, or I can hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it. No more hunting for the resize sweetspot. In Lion it's possible to resize from any window border. I don't know what these other complaints are. Personally, coming from Windows & Ubuntu, I just fell in love with the way ever…
> In Lion it's possible to resize from any window border. Holding down shift and alt while doing so is also quite fun, give it a try.
Wow, I had no idea that was possible. Many thanks! I could see this being useful for resizing my Finder window without losing the nice rectangular aspect ratio I have.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worst parts of Lion over OS X: 1) Removed "Save As". You now have to duplicate and then save the file. 2) Smaller resize/minimize/"maximize" buttons. 3) The green maximize button still doesn't maximize. 4) Switched default behavior with mouse scrolling. 5) Generally slower and more resource intensive, noticeable on older (2009) Macbook Pros. 6) Terrible, lengthy switch over from the previous version of FileVault, if…
Seriously, wtf is up with removing "Save As"? I had to copy the text from a file I was working on and paste it into a new file because the "Save a new version" option wasn't doing anything. One you missed: really horrible auto-correct feature Apple added. It will replace a word when you're in the middle of typing it. Completely broken and totally transparent. At first, I thought that WriteRoom was just buggy. Oh, and…
The new "Duplicate" then "Save" paradigm is not making me particularly happy.
It must be so automatic to me to go to Finder >> Preferences >> Sidebar and check / uncheck stuff that I didn't know Home wasn't checked by default.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#88I currently use OS X for all my work and for personal/home use. But I have to agree with the sentiment. I have had nothing but praise for Apple and OS X up until Lion release. But this year has been a major turning point. End of XServe, end of Apple java, talk of end of Mac Pro and the whole post PC world thing, turning OS X into fisher price phone OS. Honestly, at this point I have to re-think my future and make a p…
Completely agreed.
I dont see why valid criticisms of what Apple is doing get such a negative response. A lot of us love Apple software and hardware, and have invested a lot of money in various parts of the ecosystem. We are not windows fanboys who are making a fuss without having ever used Mac OS.
A lot of changes I can understand; moving forward may mean annoying a portion of your users. But a lot of these changes do not change anything for the better. There are no reasons for them at all, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#89These threads follow a common pattern. Someone makes a list of things they dislike about an OS. That's not interesting, so they'll include a bit of a rant. Other people will agree, and add their own annoyances.
Then a bunch of people will pop up and explain how to achieve most of the things that are complained about; or explain that they're not problems but features. (The green pseudo-maximise being my most frustrating example.)
What people seem to miss is that discoverability is lousy in OSs. HN isn't read by stupid people who are un-used to tech. So why are what should be simple features either hard to find, or not present? Why do HN readers struggle with simple aspects of modern OSs? Apple (rightly, IMO) gets a lot of praise for usability. MS spent a lot of money on usability testing. Both of them have some awful awful things going on.
My example of a hard to find feature: In windows XP when you copy many files from one directory into another directory you'll get a dialog saying "The folder already contains" etc, with 4 options, [YES][YES TO ALL][NO][CANCEL]. There was a secret option of [NO TO ALL] if you held shift and clicked no.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there are a couple of subtleties that are being addressed, that maybe need to be said better. 1) Mac keyboard shortcuts are confusing and inconsistent compared to other OSes. They're not as discoverable. Maybe this is why it seems like there are more of them or that they're harder to learn. When I say they're confusing, I mean that they use those funky characters instead of the words Ctrl, Alt or Shift. Those c…
Ah yes, OS X keyboard shortcuts sure do have bad discoverability. I'm in Safari, I wonder how to see page source. I click the Help menu (or Cmd-?) and type in 'source'. It finds the 'View Source' menu item. I arrow down to it and not only does it open the menu containing it, but there's a big animated blue arrow pointing at the keyboard shortcut. And what do you know, those funky symbols are in fact printed on my key…
>And what do you know, those funky symbols are in fact printed on my keyboard.
Some of them are not— at least for my MacBook. The caret symbol is for the control key (think caret -> control), and the slanted-looking T is the option/alt key (if you look at the graphic as though it's a path, you can see the path takes an alternate route).